It's Sick To Be The King

My memories of boarding school are not particularly happy ones. In fact, I hated the place in New Hampshire so much, that when I was driving someone there after I had graduated, I refused to go near the school and made my passenger walk in from the edge of town.
800 preppies bogged down in the snow; the mood was beyond cynical. I always felt the spirit of Exeter was captured best by one really harsh breakdown in crowd etiquette.
They brought this pompous nitwit in to lecture us in one of the general assemblies - a big puffy bastard. There we all were in our coats and ties, and this guy leapt into an overly dramatic delivery, thrusting his finger skyward. This is an exact quote, all these years later, of his opening line: “A word by itself means nothing!” It was so exaggerated, like a speech in an old movie about the 18th century.
At the conclusion, the student body leapt to its feet, applauding wildly – even cheering and whistling. The man beamed with pride for quite a while till it slowly dawned on him that he was being mocked. He was receiving something we called the bag standing ovation. His face drooped in pain and he walked off the stage, crushed and humiliated. Boarding school could be a cruel place.
Yet I found myself thinking of one of the history teachers tonight. I believe his name was Gilchrist, and the man was great. I don’t know if schools still do this, but he was actually teaching us to think for ourselves.
This took the form of reading a historical account and then analyzing it, and the big payoff would be hidden in some minor detail that we had to figure out.
In this case it was about a king of England returning to London through the countryside. King Charles the whatever. The point was that on the way he paused in this little town, and settled a dispute by having someone executed on the spot. Gilchrist was really working the room now, expounding on what that meant by drawing it out of us. This king thought he was God’s direct representative on earth. He was the law and therefore it was okay for him to execute someone based on his wishes alone.
Newsweek is reporting that President Bush and his “justice” department believe he has the power to have people murdered within the United States simply on his orders. President Bush now believes the regular laws don’t apply to him. In fact he is the law. It is the completion of a power grab these megalomaniacs have been working on since they first hatched the scheme to run this mediocre clown for office. And it's a giant leap backwards for mankind. Why are they doing it? They blow a lot of smoke about legal interpretations of the Constitution, but I believe they just enjoy the feeling of power. That’s all that’s really driving these fools, just as it drove King Charles all those years ago.
I just thought of something. It’s a little hidden detail like Gilchrist wanted us to catch. President Bush lost the New Hampshire primary back in 2000. Maybe he tried to run his twisted jive past my old boarding school and they gave him a bag standing ovation. I’d like to think so anyway.