Why Impeaching Bush Is Good for Our Species

By Robert Weitzel, Smirking Chimp. Posted December 21, 2006.

In congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's recently filed Articles Of Impeachment Against President George W. Bush, a significant portion of Article 1 accurately describes his lying to justify a war that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Okay, so nobody's perfect. But could Bush be the "best" our species has to offer at this moment? What I mean to say here is that he may well represent the vanguard of our species' future evolutionary development. This is a disturbing proposition. However, please rest assured that I will address the moral question it raises below (i.e., whether the evolutionary path that we apparently have chosen is the optimal path).

We're the only animal that is aware of its own intelligence, so we vainly call ourselves homo sapiens (Latin for "wise man" or, as we Americans would say, "wise guy"). Admittedly, we've done pretty well since the wheel. But should we ever stop congratulating ourselves and remove our blinders, the equally characteristic, though less laudable, devious side of our nature would be revealed.

Relax! We humans come by this Dark Side naturally. Being the only primate species with concealed ovulation, we are literally conceived in deception. And our apprenticeship in artifice begins with our first breath.

Consider how much time we spend deceiving or being deceived.

I don't just mean out-and-out lying. I mean deceptions by exaggeration and omission, by facial expression and body language; deceptions that are meant to either spare feelings or exploit them. Think, "Great dress, honey. I love the chartreuse and the sparkly stuff."

Ask yourself this: If our species is not predisposed by evolution to be both deceptive and gullible in equal proportions, how is it that we are so completely susceptible to propaganda, photo-op rhetoric, televangelists and backseat affirmations of love?

Very "wise guys" make up these lies and we believe them because it's easier than trying to figure out why we shouldn't (i.e., because we lack critical-reasoning skills). So, given our species' proclivity for deception, a more fitting Latin nickname might be homo sapiens fallaxcis ("wise guy who lies").

Although we often practice deception, most of us approach deception skills in much the same fashion as we do muscle tone -- developing just enough to allow us to get by.

However, George W. Bush belongs to that peculiar breed of homo sapiens fallaxcis that has, with notable exceptions, developed its evolutionary predisposition for deception to Charles Atlas proportions. To stand out amongst this breed -- charitably referred to as "politicians" -- one needs the advantages of both nature and nurture, of genetics and environment.

Anyone who knows the history of George W. Bush's meteoric rise to the Oval Office will appreciate the role that nature and nurture has played. He was blessed with the genome of a successful political family. Hence, the Y-chromosome certainly wasn't the only piece of genetic information that Papa "Read My Lips" Bush passed on to him. You can also be certain that Papa Bush and his privileged buddies nurtured the current president through many of life's trials and setbacks.

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Robert Weitzel lives in Middleton, WI. His essays regularly appear in the Capital Times of Madison, WI. He has also been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Skeptic magazine, Freethought Today and on the websites SmirkingChimp.com and CommonDreams.org. He can be contacted at: rweitz@tds.net.

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