And now, all outrage has become muted and lethargic. All protests, in the wake of BushCo’s nauseating fear-based win last November, have become pale and moot and limp. We are numb and resigned to the steady stream of lie and abuse. This is the sentiment, even among many fear-hammered red staters who insist on seeing Bush as their pseudo-religious dumb-guy Messiah: a sort of national teeth gritting, a dark period in America, a hunkering down and waiting for it to be over and for the light to emerge again.
- Mark Morford
Four years after he managed to steal an election, George W. Bush took the office for his second term, his election the product of lies, deliberate perversion of the truth, and 1400 dead American soldiers. Along the way, he has parlayed 9.11 into the underlying reason for virtually every decision he has made. In fact, if one were so inclined, one could reasonably argue that 9.11 was the best thing to ever happen to George W. Bush. I’m not grotesque enough to belabor that point, but it’s a very trenchant reality.
Now we get four more years. It’s enough to make those of us who care deeply about our country want to go home and kick our dogs.
And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now “taking steps” to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue.
And don’t forget the part about how Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the futile WMD search, with no public accounting of the money, and the entire budget and the expenditures are to remain classified, by order of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ha ha. Sigh.
This is about the time your head spins all the way around and you shudder in disbelief and you stifle a giggle and hold your sides and restrain yourself from gagging, think happy thoughts about sex and love and trees because otherwise you just smash your head with a brick and throw puppies into paper shredders to numb the pain and quiet the screams.
Because if you’ve been paying any attention at all, this is when you remember that it was at Bush/Cheney’s own order that the CIA intelligence reports be intentionally skewed and rewritten, that they doctor their reports to say what BushCo wanted them to say to justify their vicious and unwinnable little war that is quickly shaping up to be one of the most economically debilitating, socially humiliating, deadly quagmires since Vietnam.
I do not wish for George W. Bush to fail. That sort of small-mindedness helps no one. What I DO wish for is exactly what is NOT going to happen: that Bush recognizes that America is not defined by his narrow, moralistic Christian faith. Religious belief can be a wonderful thing, if and when it is used to enhance the life of those who believe. When it is used to marginalize and diminish those who do not share those beliefs, it is just plain wrong. Yet Bush and his neo-Conservative cohorts seem to have no problem with trampling on the beliefs of those who think differently.
I understand that Michael Newdow lost his bid to eliminate the prayer at last week’s Inauguration. While I thought his crusade to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance was the moral equivalent of pissing into the wind, I do think that removing the Christian prayer is an idea with some merit. America is a nation of more than Christians. We are Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Packer fans- among other things. What kind of message does it send when the only religious observance offered is the majority Christian one?
But, I digress. I am trying to be optimistic about the next four years, primarily because there isn’t a more palatable option (or, really, ANY option). I fear, however, that the reality will be somewhat different. Iraq has become George W. Bush’s Vietnam; with no exit strategy and no apparent plan, hundreds, if not thousands more American soldiers will come home in body bags- and for what? The appalling reality is that we are in Iraq because George W. Bush sold us a bill of goods, and as a nation we were too stupid to ask the questions that needed to be asked. We swallowed it whole, because anything couched in those magic numbers: “9.11” seems to bring critical thought to a screeching halt.
For someone who grew up during the Vietnam War, I fear we are headed down the same path. Congratulations, America; you have exactly the quality of leadership you deserve…and how many of our sons and daughters are doomed to come home in bags because of abysmal, undemanding judgement?
