President Bush is the devil. You’ve heard people say it, felt their conviction while they loosed their raw emotion from snarling, quivering lips. Is it true? No.

I hated the man for days uncountable, because of how it seemed our country and our relations with the international community were being handled, how lies were being told at every turn. When the Trade Towers fell, I listened to Bush’s impassioned speech, his declaration of intent to go to war and find the people responsible for the deaths of countless innocents. I rallied behind him in my mind, in my heart, and trusted his demeanor, his exuded conviction.

I still don’t place any faith in the man – don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I know he won’t be around for long. His presidency will end, and his policies, influence and mistakes will be healed and forgotten.

I had the pleasure, late one night earlier this week, to watch an OPB special on the Middle East – the war, the strife and struggle – all because of religion and stubbornness. It told of the U.S. reaction, and tried to elaborate as to a more neutral rationalization of the Bush Administration’s handling of everything controversial.

I’m very independent when it comes to party association, and I’ve tended to critique the way things have been going in this country with a slant against Bush.

But it’s been tough. He hasn’t had the best presidency to deal with, and when he came into office I bet he thought it’d be cake. Then some buildings fell, some bombs went off, we invaded at least two countries, and the pain keeps coming. He’s had to deal with natural disasters, political dissent, all while trying to conduct operations that may lead to a safer world. Will it really reach that end? I don’t know.

What I do know is that there is a cyclical nature to the world. The Red Scare was worse than this. Vietnam was worse than this. And while Bush may not be the greatest guy in the clump, he could be the figure that spurs the angst and anxiety that’s bubbling within our country to explode, and put into motion change that could cast a light on Bush’s influence in a severely different way.

Is he the devil? No, maybe the antichrist – even then, with Muslims, Jews and Christians around the world claiming to know the way to truth, it’s relatively easy to see that there is no damn thing as god. It’s all a dying belief structure, especially with the advent of science and logic, self-discovery and realization of self-worth.

Once we can accept our mortality, our fallibilities, it may become more natural for us to evaluate the world and its occupants on less of an exponentially sliding and variant scale. We’re not all so different, we’re all so very much the same – yet unique in absolutely the right ways, such that it will lead this world to a penultimate evolution of the mind.