onegoodmove

Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker is a short 115 pages of dialogue between Ben and Jay. Jay is set on assassinating the President. Ben is a voice of reason. Does he succeed? What is reasonable when you have a nut job in the White House in a time of crisis. Does Ben convince Jay not to carry out his plans? Does he join him?

Jay: They say, in hushed tones, they say, "some of the Prisoner Have Died." Well, what the fuck? Yes, some have died. Some have been packed in ice and spirited away. But more than ten thousand Iraqis have been killed in this war. It's off the charts. Tanks firing on apartment blocks. Morgues and hospitals filled to capacity, blood splashed on the walls. None of it is secret. It's known, it's been reported around the world for a full year, and yet there's no outrage about that, there's no scandal. What, that? Oh, that's just the war. I mean, standing naked with a hood over your head while a dog barks at your dick, okay, that's horrible, but having a missile hit your house is a hell of a lot worse, because you may be carrying your own kid out of the rubble.

I certainly wouldn't advocate the assassination of the President of the United States, even one as fucked up as George W. Bush. I will say however that at the very least he deserves a hood over his head and a dog barking at his dick, and a national call for him to return to Crawford Texas on November 2nd.