All the Cake Eaters:
During Thursday night's inauguration events, at the Commander-in-Chief Ball, the one new event this year, the President and the gathered attendees will salute 2000 "just-returned" or "soon-to-be-deployed" troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. There, in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum, the soldiers will be toasts of the town, having been entertained the day before by a concert hosted by Kelsey Grammer, starring Gloria Estefan and John Michael Montgomery. The Great Hall is a gorgeous space, like a Venetian square, and no doubt the buffet will balance exquisitely between beluga and buffalo wings, the bar between Busch beer and Bushmill's. One of the attendees will be Technical Sergeant David Lee of the North Carolina National Guard. He's done three rotations in Iraq and is heading back there in March, but he's thrilled to be in the presence of the President. Others will be soldiers who haven't seen any combat yet.

Yup, it's gonna be amazing, with all those fine, fine men and women in their dress uniforms, spit polished, looking around at those who look upon them as conquering heroes, and then there'll be that moment when some soldier who lost his leg in Mosul takes his wife onto the dance floor. God, how the Halliburton lobbyists will weep at such courage. How the Merck executives will nod their heads that they, truly, live in a great country. Behind the different columns of the first balcony of the Great Hall, secretly, others will be watching: it's where Sean Hannity will be getting a vigorous, yet surreptitious blowjob from the Fox intern he took to the ball, Hannity weeping, weeping at his transgressions; where Ann Coulter will be finger-fucking herself, shedding tears for the Crusaders below, yet alternately turned on by thoughts of their wounds, the screams of pain of their long physical therapies, and, god, yes, the nightmares, Jesus, how she's turned on by their pain, how she's dripping wet thinking of the horrors they have witnessed, how her clit throbs at how haunted those men will be the rest of their lives; where Bob Novak and Bill Kristol will be tonguing each other, whispering promises of liaisons to come at the W hotel, Novak telling Kristol he wants the Weekly Standard editor to pretend he's a wife waiting for Novak to come home on a two-week leave. And on the dais, George, maybe in one of his multiple Commander-in-Chief costumes, and Laura, in an exquisite gown by Who The Fuck Cares, holding each other, Laura jacking him off behind the podium as he smirks, winks, and salutes at soldiers in the crowd who catch his eye, how they'll think of God's graces that have brought them to this moment. Next to him will be Rumsfeld, squinting at the lights, his eyes too dimmed by cataracts and age to be able to truly see any of the individual soldiers. Instead, he'll just yank the chain around Colin Powell's neck and tell the outgoing Secretary of State to fetch him some cognac.

Maybe that soldier with one leg will feel a moment of deep disgust, remembering how laying in the next bed at Walter Reed was a guy who'll never stand again, how the wards of Rammstein Air Base are filled with the echoes of yowls and curses of the wounded. Maybe he'll see the black ties and designer dresses, and the smiling faces of the people in them, and he'll realize that he's the main attraction at Bush's freak show ball. "Dress 'em up and parade 'em around and make 'em feel like everyone else, but, you know, they're different from you and me, but it's so fuckin' touching to see them acting 'normal.'" Maybe his leg will ache, as it so often does, and he'll think about, as he so often does, how it was shredded there, at the calf, and the wonders of the body, his own body, were splayed out for him to see, like a lab model, like a Rembrandt painting he remembers.

Maybe he'll think about the millions and millions of dollars poured into this event, all of them, and wonder why Exxon/Mobil couldn't throw in for some Humvee armor if they could toss in hundreds of thousands for this ball and the others. Since it's too late for him, maybe for some other poor son of a bitch hitching his ass to sandbags and twine. He may wonder how well-armored Bush's parade Cadillac is. Maybe he'll feel disgust well up in him, or maybe it's just the dense stink from Ann Coulter's pussy and Bush's spooge, settling over the crowd like cheap perfume. Chances are he'll be a good soldier. He'll stay - his wife deserves such evenings - but he thinks he'll cut the throat of the first person who comes up to him and thanks him for his sacrifice.

Bush, though, will only be there briefly, quick enough to toast, thank, wink, ejaculate, and move on. He's got other balls: the Freedom Ball, the Patriot Ball, the Liberty Ball, the Independence Ball, all named after things that are anathemic to Bush's agenda, but, hey, it's a ball, it's a fancy costume party, really, it's all just pretend. Nothing as fun as the Black Tie and Boots Ball the night before, where Bush and the really big money spenders all get to pretend they're faux rednecks, licking their fingers as the ribs of Sunni Muslims are grilled up, basted in fine Babylonian oil, and served with a side of rice pilaf, 'cause, you know, we don't wanna get fat. Well, too fat. God, how they'll gorge themselves, T. Boone Pickens, financier of the Swift Boat Vets, perhaps commenting how Iraqi ribs are not as piquant as Vietnamese ribs; with former Enron President Rich Kinder and his wife perhaps playfully wiping the dripping fat off each other's lips. Oh, God bless America, man, God bless America.

Here's what oughta happen on Thursday while Bush is taking the oath of office, which says, in case we need to be reminded, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God" (What a wonderful exit clause, "to the best of my ability"). There, above Bush and (perhaps) the decrepit, hunched shadow of William Rehnquist, with the Capitol behind him, there oughta be giant plasma screens broadcasting live from Fallujah, from Haiti, and from downtown D.C., so that we can see all the cake eaters everywhere, down on their hands and knees, begging, digging through rubble, killing for food. Bush won't even need to speak. Bush could just point up at the screens and say, "Lookee there, motherfuckers." Then we'll know what to expect for the next four years.

Washington, D.C. is a city in lockdown. Over a hundred planes are gonna patrol the skies. Thousands of armed officers and military will be on the ground, snipers, undercover agents. No one will be totally trusted. Fear has formed a canopy over the capitol. There is a threat to all of us, but is it from outside the tent or inside?