- Oh dear God, please, not again.
-
- Oh dear God, please don't let it be all convoluted and
depressing and messy and stupid and please don't let it all embarrass us
on an international level all over again even more than it already has
and even more than it already is and even more than we've endured lo these
past four debilitating and soul-crushing years. Hello? Please? Is it
already
too late?
-
- Why yes, yes it is.
-
- And lo and behold, it's apparently another completely
tortuous and entirely knotted presidential election, still not finished
and still not all ironed out and as of this writing Ohio is headed for
a recount and Kerry still has a glimpse of a chance, and hence we still
don't really know the outcome, even though it appears to be leaning toward
the utterly appalling notion of another four years of Bush and another
Republican stranglehold of Congress and repeated GOP chants of "More
War in '04!"
-
- Which is, well, simply staggering. Mind-blowing. Odd.
Gut-wrenching. Colon-knotting. Eyeball-gouging. And so on.
-
- You want to block it out. You want to rend your flesh
and yank your hair and say no way in hell and lean out your window and
scream into the Void and pray it will all be over soon, even though you
know you're an atheist Buddhist Taoist Rosicrucian Zen Orgasmican and you
don't normally pray to anything except maybe the gods of really exceptional
sake and skin-tingling sex and maybe a few luminous transcendental deities
that look remarkably like Jenna Jameson.
-
- It simply boggles the mind: We've already had four years
of some of the most appalling and abusive foreign and domestic policy in
American history, some of the most well-documented atrocities ever wrought
on the American populace and it's all combined with the biggest and most
violently botched and grossly mismanaged war since Vietnam, and still much
of the nation still insists in living in a giant vat of utter blind faith,
still insists on believing the man in the White House couldn't possibly
be treating them like a dog treats a fire hydrant.
-
- Inexplicable? Not really. People want to believe. They
want to trust their leaders, even against all screaming, neon-lit evidence
and stack upon stack of flagrant, impeachment-grade lie. They simply cannot
allow that Dubya might really be an utter boob and that they are being
treated like an abused, beaten housewife who keeps coming back for more,
insisting her drunk husband didn't mean it, that she probably had it
coming,
that the cuts and bruises and blood and broken bones are all for her own
good.
-
- And this election, it might be all be very amusing, in
a Mel Gibsony, blood-drenched hamburger-of-Christ sorta way, were it not
so sad and dangerous. It might all be tolerable and cute, in a
violence-engorged,
sexist, video-gamey sorta way, were it not so lopsided and wrong.
-
- This election's apparent outcome, this heartbreaking
proof of a nation split more deeply and decisively than ever, it simply
reinforces the feeling among much of the educated populace: It is a weirdly
embarrassing time to be an American. It is jarring and oddly shattering
and makes you rethink what it really means to be a part of this country.
The answer: It doesn't mean much at all. Not really. Not anymore.
-
- This is the common wisdom on the progressive Left. Those
first four toxic Bush years? A fluke. A phantasm. A stolen election. A
gaffe, a mugging, a crime. But this? An election this close makes you
reconsider.
Maybe, after all, we aren't nearly as far along as we think. Maybe we're
not all that sophisticated or nuanced or respectable a nation as we
sometimes
dare to dream.
-
- Maybe, in fact, we're regressing, back to the days of
guns and sexism and pre-emptive violence, of environmental abuse and no
rights for women and an sincere hatred of gays and foreigners and
minorities.
Sound familiar? It should: It's the modern GOP platform.
-
- Here's the thing: For tens of millions of us, it is
simply
unconscionable that we could possibly be led for another four years by
a small and spoiled little man who has very little real idea what he's
doing and even less of how the hell he got there. It would be funny, in
a Adam Sandler, toilet-humored sort of way, were it not so poisonous and
depressing. And yet it looks like we're stuck with it, like a shard of
glass buried deep in the eye.
-
- And the rest of the world? Well, it can only watch us
and shake its collective head and wonder just what the hell is wrong with
us, why so many millions of us would even consider re-electing the world's
most inept and war-hungry and insanely inarticulate man to four more years
of unchecked power, why our much-hyped much-coveted supposedly
ultra-superior
democratic system is so very deeply blotchy and knotty and spoiled.
-
- So then, to much of Europe, Asia, Canada, Mexico, Russia,
the Middle East -- to all those dozens of major world nations who want
Bush out almost as much as the educated people of America, to you we can
only say: We are so very, very sorry. We don't know how it happened,
either.
For tens of millions of us, Bush is not our president and never will be.
That's how divisive. That's how dangerous. That's how very sad it has
become.
-
- And all signs point to the fact that the GOP steamroller
appears to be just too powerful, just too well-oiled and blood soaked and
fear inducing to be stopped just yet. After all, the Right has been working
on this master plan and building their takeover strategy for about forty
years. It's gonna take those of us working for change and progress and
raw spiritual juice a little more than one or two to dissolve it away like
the cancer it so obviously is.
-
- Apparently, there are lessons yet to be learned.
Apparently
we must hit some sort of new low between now and 2008, attain some sort
of seriously vicious status in the world before we will snap out of it.
You think?
-
- This much is clear: We are not, should Bush finally be
declared the victor, headed for buoyancy and friendship and sincere hope
for something new and refreshing. We are not, with another four years of
what we just endured, headed toward any sort of easing of bitter tension,
a sense of levity, or sexual openness, or true education, or gender
respect,
or a lightness of spirit and of step.
-
- Maybe the best we can hope for, at this ominous and
slightly
sickening moment, is one hell of a lot more patience.
-
- (c)2004 SF Gate
-
- http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi
- ?file=/g/a/2004/11/03/notes110304.DTL
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