They Were Careless People

My attempts to characterize the expansive damage left by the Bush administration have yielded either painfully long lists or profane rants. In either case, the results were too tedious to post. The inauguration is just hours away, and I can't sleep until I declare something to close this era of arrogant failures. I found an appropriate metaphor at the Booman Tribune, quoting from F. Scott Fitzgerald:

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .

I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace—or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons—rid of my provincial squeamishness forever.

– Nick Carraway, referring to Tom and Daisy Buchanan at the end of The Great Gatsby

Of course, Tom and Daisy would be George and Dick, or Don, or Karl, or Alberto, or many others. Thank you, Booman.
Edited 1-20-09 at 9:45 am