Dreamtime

I'm in some kind of large organization, bureaucratic, government service, I think.

And we're in some kind of semi-deployed location, not our regular offices. Everything is managed chaos, just short of the inability to work. Everyone is busy, too much to do, not enough equipment and materials for all of us to get everything done. There is a massive sense of urgency, but I can't get a handle on the why. Time of war? National crisis? It's something on a very large scale, something important, clearly, but I can't determine what it is.

Then we get the word: everyone out of the building now. The boss is going to speak, an impromptu thing right up the hill, and everyone has to turn out to hear the words.

Okay, sure, whatever. I'll wander outside on what is a beautiful day, to hear what's going on. I'd like to know what we're doing, what we're so busy about, and I guess The Boss will give it to us. And I'm unclear exactly who the boss is.

Sure as shit if it isn't George W. Bush, our very own tip-top Commander and Chief. So I'm on the White House staff or some such, apparently. And we're out here in the woods, in the sticks, in borrowed spaces for something big. No one has mentioned the word "exercise," so it all seems real enough.

So the Great Non-Communicator launches into his remarks. I first notice the semi-casual slacks, the open collar, with the tie loosened just-so. His folks have put him together so well, so carefully, that much is clear to me. He's struggling to appear casual, yet this is all scripted, all planned and blocked, every single bit of it. The only thing they don't have control over is how badly he'll mangle the message, or if he'll even manage to get it out.

And the security guys are everywhere. They're also roped into the casual show, in their pressed jeans and safari jackets, bulging everywhere with their comms gear and weapons, lots of weapons. The stupid sunglasses, so stereotypical, the comms rigs, too. They just keep getting in the way, standing in front of The Man, The Boss, obscuring the view. But then again, that's kind of their job, disrupt that line of sight.

So Dubya starts his talk, but not before checking his watch. Then some dumbass words of intro and attempted humor, his idiotic breathy chuckling telling me that even he doesn't think what he's doing is working. Then a check of the watch again. I can tell he's got somewhere to be. He'd rather be doing something else, not standing in front of this workforce supporting him and his government. He'd rather not be here, and that's got me pissed off.

More hollow crap, more hollow praise, the names of his singled-out individuals clearly passed directly to him in prep, every scrap of his mental capacity struggling to remember the names and details, the furrowed brow communicating confusion and lack of confidence rather than the seriousness and concern he thinks he's conveying. His details are so compact, so packaged, so rehearsed and stiff. He wouldn't know these people if they climed up his ass and lit a Presidential campfire, and his delivery is giving it away, with another check of the watch.

I begin to mumble that he's checking his watch, that he's got something better to do than talk to us. As I say it, he checks it again, and someone near me, all of us standing slightly downhill from Dubya in a lovely green field of dandelions, whispers, "Hey, he's right."

More hollow bullshit, and more time checks. More people are noticing, and murmurs are rippling through the crowd. I'm emboldened, but only a little, and I start to critique his speechifying, offering counter-facts to his statements, counter-arguments, alternative explanations, but audible only to the maybe ten people standing around me. I hear a few whispering, "Yeah, maybe you're right," and even a "Fuckin' A."

I don't think I'm being actively subversive, but then I think on it and discover, yeah, I am being actively subversive. I don't like this guy, his politics, his cronies, his background, and what I see as cynical lies, and I want a change. I'm not going to take the bullshit anymore, not from this moron.

Then I see the security guards starting to look in my direction. I wonder what I've gotten myself into.