The elections in November 2004 brought a great darkness to my soul. 2000 was bad enough, though it was a different time. President Clinton had fallen on a morality pot-hole, and, in my opinion, took Gore down with him. In 2000, I guess I thought we were going to have to endure another one of those no-movement Republican terms of office with slashes in social programs and tax breaks for to rich. But, as we know, it turned out differently. So by 2004, we needed a turnaround. What we got was a nosedive. By the summer of 2005, I opened my first blog [3oldmen.com] with a piece about The Bush Doctrine. It didn’t belong there. That blog was for something else, so I started this one. Its sole purpose was to give me a place to think about that darkness on my soul from November 2004.
I still don’t quite get it, what happened back there. By 2004, it was clear that the great Christian Agenda from 2000 was a vote-getting ruse, that the War in Iraq was running on a different agenda than was publicly acknowledged, and that Cheney was reconstructing our government in his own paranoid image. The whole thing was like a very Grade B summer thriller, except the ending wasn’t shaping up to resolve things – the nightmare kept playing. Over the last year, things have changed! Apparently, I’m not so alone as I felt back then.
A year ago, there were just a bunch of bloggers, posting day after day about this Administration. I read them like it was the Newest Testament. They were people "in the know" who analyzed and researched and preached a sermon – sometimes a rant – that resonated with my own disgust at the downward spiral America had entered with Bush’s election. Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe I should say, with Bush’s inept reaction to al Qaeda’s attack in 2001.
In this last year, the complaint that the "Mainstream Media," MSM, was complicit with the Bush Administration has largely disappeared. There are articles about the problems on a daily basis. It was impossible just a year ago to have a discussion of today’s politics. The "talking points" were in the mouths of the people on the streets, not just the papers. Bring up Kerry, and you’d hear, "You know, his Purple Hearts were fakes, scratches." No matter what one said, there was a canned retort. That’s no longer true.It’s as if the populace has been under some kind of "Spell" cast by the horror of seeing the falling Twin Towers in New York. It’s been like there’s an sense of Plagues – 911, tsunami, Katrina, Global Warming – like the planet itself was turning against us. More to the point, it has been like we’re all in the grip of a collective post-traumatic stress disorder that has literally driven us crazy. And now we’re waking up some.
Donald Rumsfeld made an absolutely monsterous speech the other day – the Nazi speech. In one way, the Nazi analogy does have a contemporary resonance – not the one Rumsfeld said. Germany was a wreck after World War I. They had suffered a crushing defeat. They were in economic ruin. Their national pride had been obliterated. Along came Hitler and his cronies, whipping up their national pride, defining the enemy, rattling sabers. I guess we’re in the same boat. No longer invincible, our pride was decimated. We followed a fool in a machismo attempt to reconstitute ourselves. Bad idea.
So we’re waking up this year. We can never undo the last four or five years. We can only move forward, and only move very carefully. Let’s hope it starts in nine weeks. The only thing that helps me not be gloomy about the future is this last year. It’s been wonderful to see how far we’ve come in the last fourteen months trying to dig ourselves out of this abyss of world terrorism and neoconservative madness and fear. So I’m hopeful about this November. I’m hopeful about this November. I’m hopeful about this November. [Maybe if I keep saying it, it will turn out to be justified hope].
As a child, Peter Pan was my most important book [growing up? not my plan!]. Towards the end of the book, the readers are exhorted to clap together to revive Tinkerbell.
Do you believe in Fairies?
If you do – clap your hands
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