If the Shoe Fits...

Like many, I witnessed the footage of U.S. President Bush narrowly ducking a pair of shoes hurled towards him by a protesting Iraqi at a press conference. This desperate, futile gesture of shoe-throwing reveals not just one individual's statement of visceral loathing but in a sense, symbolizes how many others both in Iraq and around the world feel towards Bush even in the dying days of his presidency. It is quite telling and remarkable that a U.S. president could have so singularly, in eight short years, successfully alienated world opinion to the degree that a reporter, in the normally safe bubble zone of a press conference, is willing to part with his shoes to demonstrate this.
I won't miss the Bush presidency and believe it was a disastrous spell not just for the U.S. but for the globe, yet, despite the administration's use of outright fabrications and perversions of justice as a rationale for its invasion of Iraq, Bush might have had a point when he brushed off the incident by remarking how this kind of protest was normal in an open and democratic society -- inferring that Iraq had achieved some measurable form of democratic progress. Of course, it's very tempting to be cynical about anything that comes out of the mouth of this president and his platitudes about democracy are outweighed by the reality on the ground there. Yet, it has become far too easy to dismiss everything about the Bush presidency as a caricature of arrogance and villainy combined with gross ineptitude. Such was the divisive and controversial nature of the Bush administration that it polarized the U.S. and the world to such and extent that any of its remotely positive accomplishments were eclipsed by its obvious failures.
There was much discussion and speculation in the news media after the "shoe-ing" episode about how to throw one's shoe is a mark of ultimate contempt in Arab culture and this was followed-up by a recounting of how hundreds of Iraqis gathered around a lowering Saddam statue to hit it with their shoes. What's curious here is that had it not been for the ill-considered U.S. invasion, Saddam might have still been around today gassing minorities, jailing opposition and torturing anyone who got in his way -- and people would have most definitely kept their shoes on. If there was one thing that came out of this that could be construed as redeeming, it was the removal of a vicious tyrant who, although some argued was a contained threat, ran his government like a mafia and repeatedly and mercilessly suppressed and murdered his own people. I describe myself as anti-Bush for a host of considered reasons -- although unlike some, I don't lay awake at night seething with his visage in mind and I don't subscribe to some of the more hysterical strains of Bush-hating out there -- I wouldn't even go so far as to assign him the equivalency of a Hitler or a Saddam - much to the surprise of some in my own circles . I've heard people time and again associate Bush to this stellar cast of infamy and I find it inaccurate, historically-ignorant and giving Bush too much credit. Bush was no evil genius but an "employee" or a "front" for a clique of paranoid, power-hungry neo-cons. As much as neo-cons have shown their capacity for inhuman enterprises, they are a few degrees of a lesser evil than Hitler or Pol Pot.
While Bush's neo-con led foreign policy has resulted in high numbers of casualties both direct and indirect during these last eight years, it now appears that it is now - hopefully - on its way to becoming another discredited, morally-bankrupt ideology like Fascism or Communism. I don't think I can recall a president who was so ridiculed and reviled since Nixon. Opposition to Bush was persistent, vocal, furious and creative in both the U.S. and internationally. True enough that the administration smugly ignored world opinion to satisfy the interests of its oil lobby supporters, yet now reality has finally come home to the U.S. in the undesired dividends of body bags and soup lines and a disillusioned and angry public has spoken by electing Obama. It would have been vindication for many had an impeachment process guaranteed an earlier exit but such is the way things are when the weight of the system and its legal obfuscation are against you.
The shoes were a size ten which almost matches the percentage of the outgoing president's approval rating. All things considered, this president led a charmed presidency considering he could have been ducking a lot more than a pair of shoes.

Goodbye, Dad

Exactly a week ago my father passed away. Knowing my father and his generally sound judgement, if the timing of his death was of his own volition, late-November was perhaps an appropriate time to go. The inconsolable drear and darkness of this month can discourage the will to get out of bed let alone live.
Although this had been long expected - with his confinement to a care home for three years succumbing to
the ravages of Parkinson's, two-strokes and dementia - the actual reality of
his passing still hit us like an emotional tsunami.
After the initial week of intense grief and sorrow and the busying around of making official arrangements and finally the funeral service, the sense of
the loss itself is only now starting to penetrate. One could say that the first week
was the early shock phase that involved denial and disbelief combined with confusion and episodic tears but now, after the ceremony and the family and public mourners have gone home, I am alone in the still moments to reflect and quietly mourn his loss and what he meant to me. He was a powerful influence in my life, as most strong fathers tend to be, and although he was absent through much of my childhood and youth, when he was present - he was unmistakeably so. He had a deep, full-timbred baritone voice that could naturally project, and a compact physique that he carried with swift confidence, but more importantly he was so energetic and driven. I think the life he lived was equivalent to several lives all concentrated into one. He was so determined and had so much fire within that he was comparable to a steamroller and it was often easy to feel flattened in his path. He was an impatient man from a very old school Catholic-Depression-era-upbringing who rose to prominence in public life here in Canada by the sheer might of his determination to succeed and his extraordinary self-confidence and focus. I always found him to be hard to live up to and spent years trying to live down to him instead. He felt that I had been given opportunities that he never had and I think he envied me for that. He and I had typical father and son conflicts,and I inherited his stubbornness, which meant that I was unwilling to admit it when he was right.
Even now, as I reflect about my relationship with him, I recognize how strained it was and how I wish that we had both respected each other more. He was a very accomplished man from humble roots who had charisma to burn and a larger-than-life presence. He was a "happy warrior" who maintained his values throughout his career and never compromised where it mattered most. It feels as if a void has opened up. That this world is less one more man of his generation -- a generation which did not eschew self-sacrifice and loyalty.
As we become more time-managed, distracted and coarsened by our lives that are circumscribed by the consumerist ethos of "more still" to placate the shallow needs of our own vanity and when we have slid into this festering hole of non-committal relativism underscored by a mistrust of social institutions, we are left softened at our edges and hollow at our core. To witness the lives of those who reflect a time in which standards existed and when values mattered is almost to be marveling at a museum display.
My father was a product of a simpler time, a time when the world was framed in dualities and not multiplicities. Obviously, significant and progressive changes have happened since then that he wasn't resistant to, and even helped to bring into being, yet for all of this, he was a man of his era and he did not swim easily with the currents that were to follow.
He did not go gently into that good night. He will be missed.