At a Bus Stop
The man is basically trolling around to do some anti-war in general anti-Bush proseltyzing.
“You know what Bush’s campaign slogan should be?” he asks one soon-to-be bus rider.
“No, what?”
“Bush and War for 2004.”
The bus rider smiles in agreement or in apathetic social congeniality, and gets onto the bus he’d been waiting for. So, the anti-Bush proseltyzer walks over to me.
“You hear what Bush said the other day? We’re Now Martching to Peace! Can you believe that?”
I shrug. “You hear the whole story of why he said that, didn’t you?” I ask.
“No,” he shakes his head.
“Well, what he said was that the economy went down — in this case meaning primarily the stock market — because ‘We were marching to war but now… now we’re marching to peace so, the stock market is rebounding.”
The man senses I’m a kindred soul of sorts, so he launches into what is, evidentally, the next phase of his efforts.
“You ever hear the station on my cap?”
I look at his cap. KBOO — the left-wing Pacifica-type radio station in Portland. “Sure, Sure.”
“My favourite show is on Friday mornings… Marlene (I forget the last name)’s show… at 10:00 there’s this guy, I forget his name…”
“Uh huh”
“He sounds crazy, and talks about stuff like the Bush Family’s connections to the Nazis and… I went to the website and, although he sounds crazy, the footnotes are all there.”
I sort of roll my eyes. I’ve heard the show. My favourite bit of “information” from the show was the fascist-underground connection between the well-connected anti-tax Movement Conservative activist Grover Norquist with the left-wing (and indeed, Communist) anti-war organizer Ramsey Clarke by way of a speaker that Clarke invited to speak at an anti-war demonstration that was in good standing with Grover Norquist’s organization. Scratch my head in wonder at this left-right fascist alliance!
“There’s this extreme right-winger from Texas who did this video about how Bush knew about 9/11.”
I smile and nod.
At this point, a young man — probably mid to late 20s, turns around and says “What was up with Bush’s activities at the time of the plane crashes?”
“Well, he was reading to school kids. When he got the word from the secret service, he just kept reading.”
“Yeah. I wonder what he was reading. Must have been some sort of Skull and Bones book or something.”
I say, “I think it was The Hungry Little Caterpillar.”
The bus comes around, and I get on it, leaving the other two to discuss their political matters.