oh the humanitySometimes when I'm in the car and a song that I absolutely hate comes on the radio, I'll turn it up. Why? So I can hate it in detail. I get that same feeling reading Glenn Greenwald's merciless take-down of President Bush and his coterie of sycophants and demagogues in Tragic Legacy, Greenwald's latest book, which chronicles how an overly simplistic, black and white, Good vs. Evil mentality has destroyed the Bush Presidency and by extension, inflicted heavy damage on the Republican party, the United States, and the world.

Initially, I was a bit skeptical about diving headlong into another 300-page tome detailing the third act of the pitiful "Flowers for Algernon"-style psychodrama that's currently playing out backstage in the Bush Administration. You and I already know that George W. Bush is a man of intractable stubbornness, hot and cold running religious fanaticism, and truly breathtaking ignorance, a combination that makes him singularly unsuited for his current employment status. Why get an upset stomach and a rage-induced headache learning about it in even greater detail?

And yet, I was dead wrong, and I knew it before the end of the first chapter. Tragic Legacy is, in fact, a highly entertaining read, if you, like me, enjoy the sensation of (in the words of Jane Austen) "reveling in angry pleasure" at seeing so insidious an enemy taken down point by point and left huddled in the smoking ruins of his own hubris by the end of the book.

An alternate title for Greenwald's second book could be, How to Talk to a Rightard About President Bush (If You Must). The book is divided into three parts. Part One is a detailed study of President Bush's jejune, Manichean view of the world, as expressed in his own speeches, writings, and in the voices of his peers.

It is not a kind portrait. To many of us, President Bush's decisions over the last six years seem to emanate from no fixed set of values. We have wondered from time to time if he is losing his mind, hitting the bottle, or is merely adrift, making sweeping policy decisions on the spur of the moment, based on the sketchiest of details and an imperfect understanding of the issues at hand.

Greenwald provides us with an illuminating view of a President completely unencumbered by nuanced thought. His whole notion of history and America's role in the world seems to have been cribbed entirely from 1950's cowboy movies and "Sgt. Rock" comics. In George Bush's world, his friends, admirers, and supporters are all on the side of "Good", whereas anyone who disagrees or opposes him is on the side of "Evil".

This binary view of the world permeates everything that the President says and does, and he is constantly surrounded by a troupe of Neoconservative toadies who know that they can convince him to sign on with even the most outrageous and ridiculous policy initiatives by presenting the issue to him drawn in huge bubble pictures that would be comprehensible to a child, and as long as they are sure to couch the question in terms of a struggle between Good and Evil.

Nowhere is the danger of this kind of reductive thinking more apparent than with regards to US policy toward Iran, which takes up the second, and longest, part of Tragic Legacy. In this section, Greenwald lays out in chilling detail how White House policy seems to be headed inexorably toward a war with Iran. No matter how foolhardy this course of action may be, the "Decider" has included the nation of Iran in his armies of "Evil" and seems bound and determined to strike at any time, regardless of the consequences. As has been documented by numerous sources, Bush has come unmoored from the considerations of the real world (i.e., public opinion, the Pentagon, and sticks-in-the-mud like the Iraq Study Group) and decided that only "History" can be the proper judge of his legacy.

An armed conflict with Iran is possibly the greatest danger we face from the Lame Duck Bush Presidency. As is illustrated in the book, as well as in today's "We're just starting the surge!" display of petulance, George Bush is at his most bellicose and defiant when his back is against the wall. No amount of empirical evidence will dissuade a man like President Bush who is completely convinced that he is on a personal "Mission from God".

In reading the book over the weekend, I was lucky enough to have my reading punctuated by further updates about the defection of multiple members of the GOP away from Bush's Iraq policy. Perhaps being disowned by his own party apparatchik will begin George Bush's slow and painful re-integration into the real world. I don't have quite enough faith in that prospect, however, to sit by and wait calmly until the end of his term and hope that somehow, everything is magically going to be alright.

It's a shame that thus far not a single Dead Tree Media outfit has seen fit to review or feature Tragic Legacy. This book is an explicit elucidation of the madness driving this administration, and yet it never falls into the trap of being an extended rant. Greenwald calmly and methodically builds his case with exquisite care, proving that his writing on the printed page is every bit as pithy and trenchant as it is on the computer screen, then surprises you with dry, bitingly funny asides like this from p. 88:

Bush's evangelical conversion seems beyond doubt, given the profound life changes it facilitated, most particularly the abrupt and total cessation of what was, by all accounts (including his own) a rather severe addiction to alcohol. But in another, equally significant sense, replacing an alcohol-fueled life of unbridled hedonism with a fervent evangelical certainty can be seen as a lateral, rather than a vertical, move.

Indeed. And heh.

If you don't have a copy of Tragic Legacy yet, get one. If you have a copy and haven't read it, what are you waiting for? It's not like it's some piece of Ann Coulter tripe to be purchased and displayed, unread, on a moron's bookshelf. Greenwald has crafted for us and the world a moving, cathartic, and insightful book that hopefully will give the non-blogging public a new level of comprehension as to the dangers we face under an unbridled chief executive whose view of the world is not much more nuanced nor a great deal less fanatical than that of, say, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also just so happens to believe that he's on a personal "Mission from God".

Ignore this book at your peril.