George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 246

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“Mr. President, you seem to be completely insane.”

If it were just a fleeting feeling, I might have been able to dismiss it, but the fact that I was thinking he was newly insane almost every day was truly perplexing. Now, he was even saying he would use a civilian aircraft resembling an armed helicopter instead of Marine One for transportation, which was driving me crazy.

The reason was as follows: “Well, I just want to.” That was the answer I got. He even said he would make it look like an armed helicopter, and then he painted it up flamboyantly like a motorcycle gang’s ride, which was enough to drive anyone mad.

“Isn’t this a reasonable amount of crazy? Isn’t it hard to find someone sitting in this position who isn’t crazy?”

Every past U.S. president had been obsessed with something. Usually, it was ‘work,’ so it didn’t stand out much. In short, all the former presidents were secretly and diligently crazy people.

“So, I’m just being a bit brazen.”

“Perhaps if they saw it from the sky, they would say that human brazenness has gone too far and send down a fiery hail.”

“Are you going to turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah?”

If that happened, I think I could somehow endure it. Unless meteors covering the Earth’s surface rained down like a storm, it was too late to do anything to America with just fiery hail.

“If you don’t like brazen, then call me selfish.”

“It’s hard to see it as selfish, no matter how you look at it.”

Despite wielding such power and being aware of its weight, he had never committed a single act of corruption. Wouldn’t that be enough to call him altruistic? At least, the chief of staff thought so.

‘If the chief of staff thinks so, then it’s probably what most people think.’

Bush himself thought he was the most selfish person in the world. It was just that the direction in which selfishness operated when applied to Bush was a little different. Isn’t selfishness, when you get down to the essence, just a word for pursuing one’s own interests?

If that’s the case, then what Bush had been doing was clearly rooted in selfishness. The selfishness to make the country great. The selfishness that he could do better than others. The arrogance stemming from the selfishness that he was not just a foreman who would stay at a construction site. The selfishness to cram the ideal of not letting the hungry and naked, or those unfairly treated due to all kinds of discrimination, into reality and implement it. The selfishness to reduce corruption as much as possible, except for legal lobbying. Even the selfishness to raise the world’s strongest military to a dimension higher in terms of technology and tactics.

However, if you look at it this way, the boundary between selfishness and altruism might blur. But what Bush had was clearly selfishness, not altruism. Rather, if he had been altruistic, he couldn’t be in this position. This position was like that.

It was a clean skull throne made in the 21st century. Although the public couldn’t see a single skull, the shadow of the throne was filled with unknown mountains of corpses and seas of blood. If he had been truly altruistic, he would have exposed the hidden atrocities of America and returned the country itself to the Native Americans.

But he didn’t. Instead, he molded America to his liking. He acted selfishly to create the utopian America he imagined, and he acted selfishly enough in the process. However, there was a line he had set for himself.

For example, it wasn’t that he never had ‘this thought’ when he was frustrated that things didn’t go his way immediately and had to go through Congress for approval.

‘How great would it be if I could proceed with everything without the legislative process of Congress through executive orders?’ But that is dictatorship, coercion, and a sense of chosenness. For the better future Bush envisioned, it was merely trampling on the most important value of democracy, the democratic process.

This was the line Bush had set in his heart. ‘Never disregard the democratic process,’ things like that. The body’s owner is kind. Kim Gap-hwan, the foreman who used to get angry and swing his shovel when he heard insults, was completely moved. Perhaps this is why selfishness works in a constructive way.

Going wild is Kim Gap-hwan’s thing. At least, going wild in a way that doesn’t cause great harm to others is Bush’s own thing. Kim Gap-hwan’s last thought as Kim Gap-hwan was, ‘I can do better.’ If it had been just Kim Gap-hwan, he would have gone through many trials and errors. In the end, he would have fallen for all sorts of reasons. Bush now had that conviction.

‘Anyway, it’s finally the main race.’

The U.S. presidential race is divided into a 6-month primary process and a 6-month general election process. In the primary process, voters elect delegates. Delegates are divided into caucuses [meetings of party members to select candidates] with party membership and primaries with general qualifications, and primary candidates are, strictly speaking, waging a war to secure ‘delegates’ rather than voters.

However, it is also necessary to pay attention not only to the delegates but also to the voters because of the ‘winner-take-all structure’ of the general election. In the general election, the candidate who receives even one more vote while traveling around each state will monopolize the electoral votes, so in the United States, the side that secures more electoral votes, even if the total number of votes from voters is small, becomes the next president.

‘This isn’t very important in a battle we’ve already won.’

So, to summarize the main points again, unlike other countries, the process is more important than the result in the U.S. primary. That’s because the result has already come out in the process. But that’s only the case in ‘normal cases.’ A race where the result is visible even before the process begins.

To be honest, this election was truly annoying. And to be honest, the decentralization of power that I am currently focusing on was more urgent than the election.

Even without that, the president’s authority was so strong due to the misinterpretation of the law in the original history. The 모습 [Korean word meaning ‘appearance’ or ‘state’] of America collapsing was very similar to what happens when the monarch is stupid in a strong centralized autocratic state. Of course, America is a democratic country and a country ruled by law, so there may be some differences, but at the time, President Bush had ‘completely extra-legal authority.’

Rather, if Bush’s personality had not been somewhat good, America might have entered the path of ruin, not just collapse. In other words, the power that Bush currently has is too excessive for the president of a democratic country to have. The only reason it didn’t become a dictatorship was because Bush himself restrained himself and because the Democratic Party was still strong enough to be excessive.

Bush rather sided with the Democratic Party in some areas, but he did not suppress or weaken them. It was natural, but conversely, if he had tried to stop and destroy them, he could have brought them to the point of near death, not completely, but to the point where they could never be reversed.

In the original history, President Bush was re-elected even after making that ‘mess.’ So, what about the current Bush?

“Mr. President, the speech preparation is complete.”

Someone might think, ‘If you stay leisurely like in Aesop’s fables, you might be overtaken like the tortoise and the hare.’ But this primary is clearly different from Aesop’s fables that are read to children before they go to bed.

This is not a normal race. It was an absurdity itself, like a race to reach the ‘moon,’ a race between a tortoise that cannot fly and a space shuttle that can go to space. No matter how hard a mere tortoise tries, it cannot go to space, can it? This primary was like that.

As the vice president, his running mate, finished speaking and called Bush’s name with applause, Bush moved his steps to the podium at a leisurely pace. There was confidence in his steps, and on the other hand, he was moderately relaxed because he already knew the result.

A huge man, completely different from the beginning of his term, stood on the podium for the speech. The seats were filled with those who supported him, and even though there was a considerable distance due to the risk of the virus, the heat felt as if it were right in front of him.

What they were shouting was only one word.

“Bush! Bush! Bush!”

Everyone gathered in this speech hall was shouting, wanting, and enthusiastic about him. Their actions were only to shout his name in excited voices, but there was a common emotion in it.

It was a celebration of the election victory. The general election had not even started, but they were already celebrating the victory. There was not even a speck of doubt or confusion in that fact, and only belief existed.

Popularity was popularity, but the candidates who were competing were also nameless candidates. John Kerry, who was originally supposed to come out, realized that there was no chance of winning and did not run, so the focus was on Bush, the current president seeking re-election, and Obama, who was officially supported by the Democratic Party, but there were not only Bush and Obama in this primary.

There were two more people Bush had truly never heard of. Not ignoring them. They were really people I had never heard of. Perhaps they were people I had heard of but did not remember. These people were not seriously running, but rather wanted to add a line to their resume that said ‘Presidential Candidate.’

When Bush raised his hand to stop the people, silence came to the speech hall. The words subsided, but instead, the passionate gazes of tens of thousands of people were felt.

“Before we begin, I would like to say the following. Perhaps other candidates are talking about a so-called ‘political revolution.'”

That was actually the case. The most fatal part of America right now is the political part. That was what happened because there was nothing else to hurt. Of course, even if it wasn’t this, it was a phrase that always came out at least once in every election season, regardless of country or rank, as long as it was a political election.

“Then I should say this. America will not change. It will always be great and powerful, and it will get better without falling. Just like now.”

When Bush paused to take a breath, applause that seemed to tear the eardrums followed. No matter how good a person is, even if what comes out of that person’s mouth is the unchanging truth of the universe, if there is no one to listen and empathize, it is just an empty cry.

“I can promise you. Believe not my words, but my career! Please evaluate for yourselves what kind of country I wanted to create during my term!”

It was a series of truly rough words. But being rough is by no means a disadvantage. Originally, a speech is not grand, but it is enough if it is delivered to the public with sincerity. There is no need to force the heart to cry. In severe cases, there is no need to create emotion.

“A great America.”

In response to Bush’s question, the public answered with a standing ovation.