The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder

Rating:
Summary: Not a Bush Bash Book
Review: This book is not a typical Bush bashing book. The author engages in a detailed analysis of Bush by looking at how Bush speaks. While other books use fact manipulation and anecdotal evidence, this book uses the language strait out of Bush's mouth. One aspect of this book that is particularly helpful is that when quotes are used, they are large enough to provide a context for what is being said. This lends credibilty to the author's analysis.

Overall, this book is well written, informative, and easy to read.

Rating:
Summary: To the Authors of "Hey, Democrats!" and "Whiney..."
Review: This book would have been funnier in the year *before* Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11, when all we had to worry about was whether our Prez had smoked ganja when young or had received sexual favors from a woman not his wife. Now it's officially crossed the line from "funny" to "frightening." Maybe we don't need a president with a silver tongue and a talent for gab, and God knows I didn't like the Clintons; but do we really need a president and a cabinet who have lied to us at every turn, have gleefully blown our economy to smithereens and apparently planned from the beginning to hurl us headlong into a war to smash a small, ostracized country in order to install a government staffed by people every bit as evil and corrupt as those who preceded them, based on intelligence that was apparently known to be suspect by pretty much anyone who's ever *read a book*? Or who now seem to want to extend that war to every country that seems vaguely unfriendly towards the West, in spite of the fact that our military is now stretched to the breaking point? Or who really like being in bed with the Saudis and Pakistanis, governments with far, far stronger (verifiable) ties to Al Quaeda than Iraq ever did? Who have so far managed to avoid capturing or killing the architect of all of this rampant misery? Who have gutted benefits for the American military? Who apparently take advice from believers in Christian Reconstructionism, and people who believe in a literal Biblical Apocalypse? Who have passed the biggest civil-rights rollback in American history complete with (fortunately vetoed) sequel, placed convicted criminals like Henry Kissinger in positions of authority again, crippled American stem-cell research, and, most recently, managed to effectively gut CDC programs to study the spread of HIV or prevent its spread--unless those programs teach "abstinence only" sex ed, and nothing else? Or, finally, that his administration is violating treaty after treaty, and is frantically trying to restart a nuclear arms race?

I'll give you that the author is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Big deal. That doesn't automatically make him wrong, any more than being a conservative automatically makes Colin Powell--or you--wrong. He's recognized an important fact--a man's unguarded, throw-away remarks can give many important clues to his inner character, and his actions will do the rest. This book points out that Bush is not an especially literate man, but he *does* have the ability to read people--and he likes his decisions simple n' snappy, because that appeals to his voter base, whether those decisions are correct or not. His remarks reveal a lack of any real empathy or compassion for other human beings, and a nearly complete lack of concern that his war in the Middle East is costing the lives of Americans and others, or money and resources that would be better spent almost anywhere else. He seems even less concerned that he's managed to alienate virtually every country American has ever been allied with. Four more years of this may kill us all, and it may be that nobody can fix this mess, even if Kerry or (God help us all) Nader manages to get elected come November '04. The DYSLEXICON is comedy, in much the same sense that Orwell's "1984" is satire.