fractalnavel

Wallow In Chaos, And Laugh


A Bush-leaning outcome and one enormous bitter pill and you without
your  vodka
- By Mark Morford, Ex Republican Columnist
Wednesday, November 3, 2004


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.
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