LUDIC LOG

It's a hell of a relief to talk about it. I know no one will ever hear it. I know what would happen if they did. I know these machines aren't even on. But it feels good, talking about it like this. The book, I mean the real one, it was awful doing all that. That awful woman from the Orlando paper, kissing my ass. I thought she was gonna make a pass at me a dozen times, right in front of Laura. It's funny calling that the real book. This is the real book, right here. What I'm saying is the real book. But no one will read it but me.

Laura was always the one. I had to be strong, for the whole family. I remember how they tore Dad apart, so I was Mr. Tough Guy out there. But it was a good time to be tough. America needed toughness. But Laura, she didn't think I could be that strong. She would always ask me if it bothered me, what people would say. Like the thing about Dick. How he was the power behind the throne or something. Hell, no, it didn't bother me. You don't let ignorant people who don't know anything about your job get to you. Dick took care of a lot of the day-to-day running of the administration, sure: that's what we hired him to do. You don't hear people complaining that the sales manager does the selling instead of the CEO; that's his job.

And I know what they all said. They'd say anything, becuase they're a bunch of goddamned jackals, the press. Like when they were calling Dad a wimp, after he gets shot out of the air when he's still a teenager fighting the Japanese. Making fun of the way I talk. I knew guys like that at Yale, too. You know where they are now? Still at Yale. Ain't no place else will have them. The press never bothered me one bit. They're just like the greediest guy on the line in a factory: got nothing to do but complain about how shitty his job is and how rough he's got it and how much the guys on top are screwing him. Of course he's not giving up his paycheck, oh no. Slackers. Complainers. Bottom-feeders. Did they bother me hell. Like a mosquito does. I got in some trouble with those thin-skinned sons of bitches when they caught me calling one of them a major league asshole. That's the least of what we called 'em. You know what we called 'em? Me and Dad, and the boys? What we still call them. Little people. That's what they are, is little people. And if you're little people, guess what? You're for shit.

You want to know why they all hated me? Because I'm a businessman. Because America needs a businessman to lead it. Always has. Always will. And I was the first real businessman to lead America, and the little people, the losers, they couldn't take that. They couldn't tolerate this country getting what it needed. That's why they tried every goddamn trick in the book to put me down, because they were afraid of success. That's why they made fun of the way I talk. That's why they called me out about the cocaine thing, those fucking hypocrites. I was never some kind of crazy right-winger, who yakked about pinkos and homos and all that. I left that up to that creepy fuck Ashcroft. You put the right man in the right job. He liked to talk about that kind of shit. But still they made it out like I was Hitler. Anything to make me look bad. "The Worst President Since Reagan". If they only knew how stupid that made them sound.

This country is a business. This country ought to be run like a business. And if you've got a bunch of slackers out in your workforce bitching all day about conditions and management this and that, your competion is going to eat you alive. You'll spend so much time focusing on little unimportant stuff that you don't focus on your important goals. That's what's so crazy about all this talk about rights, about pissant little laws. You want your CEO to make you money? Or you want him to walk around the shop floor, hearing everyone complain about how their wife don't love 'em? You want your president to avenge the deaths of his countrymen, or go around to all these little people in jail and ask 'em when then want their trial scheduled? That's what makes it so absurd.

That, see, that's why we had to go after Iraq. Because they were a threat, yes. I believe that to this day, no matter what people say and write. I hired the best people, like a good executive does. And when my people tell me there's a threat, I believe them and I act on it. But more than that, pursuing a definite goal -- the war with Iraq -- gave us something to work towards, instead of letting the country focus on petty little squabbles that tear us apart. If your company is starting to squabble, you don't let 'em keep squabbling. You give them a project, a goal, to keep them in line. And when you got the press complaining about rights, and the opposition complaining about what's happening to the little people, and that dirty prick Gore still harping about something that happened 2 years ago and he lost fair and square anyway, you don't let those people control your agenda. You set a new agenda and you give everybody a goal to work towards and make sure they do it. The boss ain't there to make you feel good or to listen to all your problems. The boss is there to give you a job and make sure it gets done.

That asshole from the Times out here last month. Asking me if I ever thought about them, all of them Iraqis and Syrians and Afghanistanians and all. If I thought about them, how many of them died. Thought he could catch me. I told him "I prefer to think about the Americans who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They're my priority." Shut him up. If I didn't think about...who does he think he is? Little people. I think about them. I know. They don't think I know, but I know. You think I didn't know all the things they did? We did? That I never thought about...what kind of a man would I be? Run back to New York, you bastard. You think because you were there, that makes you special? You ain't special. You don't have what it takes.

They're still talking, all of them. Our side is talking too. I read in the papers -- not our papers, you know the ones I mean -- that things are worse now. Don't you believe it. Don't you fucking believe it. From where I sit, things are great. I don't see any loss of freedom. I don't see any economic downturn. I don't see nothing but problems. I look at my family, at the numbers we've put up. Yankee numbers. Three presidents and counting. Those are winners' numbers. You know who sees nothing but problems? Same ones who always do. Little people.

Fuck 'em!!!