Yeah, Right, Whatever

I have a good friend who believes, gloomily, bitterly, resignedly, that not only are we in for four more years of painful and cheerless BushCo-branded tyranny and misprision and aww-shucks dumb-guy shtick, but also that we are actually at the beginning of a long, brutal, fear-based Republican juggernaut that will last a good 16 more years, at least.

Because this is how long it will take for the current horrific conservative cycle to play itself out, and this would resemble a more typical and historically proven 20-year pendulum swing, in this case one toward neoconservative right-wing hate and homophobia and warmongering that will careen us toward heretofore unprecedented extremes of sadness and isolationism and far too many overweight white people with guns.

It's my hope that this is actually a sign of a longer-lasting trend of "normal" Americans taking back their country and refusing to be battered by moonbats who fell off the left end of the ideological scale. And I'm not even sure how to convince these people that we're not full of hate- that's their territory. Homophobia? Nah- we just don't want their deviant lifestyle in our faces 24/7. Warmongering? Only when necessary. And "too many overweight white people with guns"??? Nope- no stereotyping there. (Hey- any skinny minority conservative gun owners out there? We need you to start speaking up- NOW!) Not all conservatives are white, many are health conscious, and they don't all own guns (but they should!)

But here's the catch. Here's the argument: This dark era, this wicked 20-year dystopia America could now be facing, it might be a very good and necessary thing indeed.

Not, as you might dream, because four more years of BushCo and a dozen more of sneering Republican domination means there will likely be good times ahead. Not because we will enjoy an unprecedented era of peace and stability and generosity and environmental sustenance, humanitarian progress and U.N. cooperation and fiscal responsibility and a generally relaxed and open-minded attitude toward religion and multiculturalism and sex. I mean, don't be ridiculous. Besides, the Clinton era already happened.

Nice to know y'all enjoyed the fruits of the Reagan Revolution! You really think Clinton did all that? He just demeaned the Office and questioned what the meaning of the word "is" is. As for open-mindedness toward sex, all Clinton did was give a bunch of kids wrong ideas. When 7th graders say "What's wrong with it? The President said it wasn't sex", you know we're in trouble. Thanks, Bill.

But, rather, it will be necessary because the moral and spiritual and physical hemispheres of our existence will quickly become so dire and toxic and the nation's socioeconomic situation will become so extreme and desperate that maybe, just maybe, we will finally learn something.
This is the argument. It is bitter and defeatist and, maybe, if you let your inner devil's advocate speak, a little bit true.

Dire? Toxic? Last I heard (this morning on the news), our socioeconomic situation is getting better. We are learning something- give a person a bunch of freebies, they have no incentive to get anything on their own.

Look at it this way: If Kerry wins now, the nation won't have suffered enough, won't have traveled far enough down the road of right-wing egotism and misogyny and homophobia and religious self-righteousness and deficit mauling and sanctimonious ideology and mangled grammar...

Egotism? Is not ego- it's confidence. Mysogyny? There is nothing hateful toward women in this administration, no matter what Planned Parenthood might have told you. Homophobia? We're not afraid of homosexuality- we're afraid of it being taught as perfectly normal in our schools. Religious self-righteousness? Not quite- evidently Mr. Morford has never met any conservative atheists. Could do him a world of good. Deficit mauling? Thank Mr. Clinton's recession combined with war for that. Mangled grammar? Geeez- not everyone can be a gifted orator.

...to really learn anything indelible, nothing that will affect a permanent sea change in our worldview, and we will just continue to limp along, never really healing and never really refocusing our intention and never fully understanding the depths of our dark side.

Mr. Morford, the Left is the Dark Side. We understand its depths, and it sickens us.

And, furthermore, if Kerry wins, history might not be as fully and inevitably antagonistic toward BushCo as his short, dreadful despotism deserves. Our national memory is frightfully short. Everyone will think, oh well, it's all over now and the damage has been done and it wasn't all that bad, really, was it?

So, you want Bush re-elected just so he'll be hated for the rest of eternity. That's just... sad.

I mean (they will say), sure Bush is widely regarded as the most politically inept and ethically dangerous and environmentally hostile president in American history, and sure women's rights were hammered and civil rights were shriveled and every single major ally we have in the world now either disrespects us or mistrusts us or openly abhors us like an Olsen twin shuns direct sunlight.

I would really love to see documentation on all of those allegations. But, alas, it's all a bunch of lies, so...

And sure Dubya's sanctimonious and violent warmongering actions in the Middle East have done far, far more to inflame anti-U.S. hatred and have amplified the threat of terrorism against us a thousandfold, but hey, the Texas schlub only lasted four years and now we can move on, right?

Amplified the threat? Then why have there been no more attacks? They hated us long before Bush took office (the 9/11 plan was begun back in the mid to late 90s). They will hate us as long as we are free.

Wrong. Call it the fatalist maxim: The only way the national soul can really change is through serious crisis, through near-death apocalypse, through things getting so dire and tormented and swollen that something finally has to give, the psycho-spiritual levee at last has to break. And it won't be the slightest bit pretty. But it will be mandatory. And in the long (long, long) run, ultimately healthy. Sort of like finally purging a massive cancerous lump from your colon. Only not as much fun.

True. And that levee has broken. We have survived the feel good era that began in the 70s and continued into the early 90s. But we were beginning to once again embrace traditional values. 9/11 was our wake up call- our cancer scare. Now we're out to embrace those values with all our strength.

History and the culture, it would seem, bear this view out: We don't shun pollutive monster SUVs until gas prices hit five bucks a gallon. We don't quit smoking until we have a lung removed after coughing up enough blood and phlegm to gag a horse. We don't take care of our bodies until after that second heart attack and we don't ease up on the toxic garbage foods until we get so fat they have to haul us to the lipo appointment with a forklift.

Well, we won't shun the pollutive SUV until the market demands a cleaner version of it. Then we'll have it. As for the rest, he's got a point. Most people don't make sincere change until there ceases to be any other choice, because sincere change is often difficult.

We don't lift a finger to protect the environment until the hurricanes slam down and the heat waves crack the streets and vaporize your precious swimming pool and ruin the ski resorts. And even then we just sort of shrug and move somewhere else.

Funny. I just watched an interview with a guy from the Hurricane Center, and he said that hurricane force and quantity per year is cyclical, and we are (unfortunately) in the high point of the cycle. Nature happens, Mr. Morford. And the whole "global warming" thing? Some experts believe that the only thing keeping us from a global Ice Age (also cyclical) is humanity. Drat. I like snow.

We ignore the Social Security nightmare until 70 million boomers retire and the infrastructure collapses. We don't touch the truly dire water-supply issue until the reservoirs dry up and the pipelines crack and Earth recoils. We glut on the planet's natural resources until the land is choked and billions go hungry and even then we seem to think, well, why the hell don't they get themselves a nice Costco?

The Social Security system has been in trouble for a very long time. If Congress would actually privatize it, we'd be ok. As for ecological issues, non-industrialized countries put a larger strain on natural resources and cause more pollution, but their governments will not allow substantial modernization because it would make their citizens less dependent on the people in charge. And, I hate to sound cruel, but it is not the job of the US government to feed and water the world. Sorry, but that's the cold, hard truth.

We are, ultimately, a species of stasis and lethargy. We are rarely sympathetically proactive, always violently reactive -- and only when the threat is immediate and overwhelming. We have a fetish for shortsightedness and instant gratification and damn the costs and the impending toll on our stunned mal-educated children. We move, in short, only when we have to.

Uh-oh. I agree with him. Scary. Especially with the mal-educated children part... I'm all for vouchers.

So then. Maybe it has to happen. Maybe we need four more years of BushCo (though not, let us pray, 16 years of toxic Republicanism) just to see how bad it can get, to snap us out of this fearful lethargy, this ignorant numbness, this weird and tragic belief that it is only through sheer faux-macho posturing and pre-emptive bombings and through decimating foreign relationships and igniting holy wars and trying to prove that our angry acidic well-armed God is better than their angry acidic well-armed God, that we are actually safe and healthy and spiritually attuned.

I hope it happens. I hope we have at LEAST 16 years of Republican leadership, not to see how bad it can get, but to show the nay-sayers how good it can be. We can be safe and healthy and spiritually attuned, not because of all the false reasoning he gave, but because we have the freedom in this country to seek it. There is no faux-macho posturing- it's diligent preparations. The pre-emptive bombings were because those countries contained a clear and present danger to the US (and, yes, I know we didn't find the WMDs. Doesn't mean they weren't there to begin with or that the government in question didn't provide aid and comfort to the enemy.) And, "our God" (I presume he means the God of Christianity) is not an angry and acidic God. Nor does He need to be armed. Their "god" is (angry and acidic, not armed). That's a statement of fact.

If the past four years are any indication, four more years of BushCo would be just unimaginably dreadful for America, for the health of the planet, for human rights, for the poor and for women and minorities and gays and non-Christian religions.

How has the President trampled on human rights? What has he or his administration done to any of those groups? Once again, accusations with no documentation. Lovely.

After all, no one could have predicted, four years ago, just how much damage this boot-lickin' puppet president could have wrought on the culture in such a short time. He seemed so harmless and bumbling and lost -- at first.

Hmmm... military enlistments are up... more people going to church... conservatives becoming more vocal about their opinions. Yup- our culture is collapsing, even as I type.

But, then again, no one anticipated that he would be handed the golden political grenade that was 9/11, and no one could have imagined the he and his snarling administration would so shamelessly, so heartlessly leverage our most horrific national tragedy for such brutal and oily gain...

PLEASE tell me he isn't going down the "No War for Oil" road! Please. And to assume that Bush saw 9/11 as anything but horrific is incomprehensible.

...using it not only as a fear tactic and a justification for multiple wars and as a vicious excuse to quell dissenting voices, but also as an actual political slogan, a veritable trademarked brand for the Republican Party. BushCo '04: Vote for Us, or Die.

So, the US wasn't supposed to retaliate after we were attacked? We were supposed to just sit there and understand why everyone hates us? No, I don't think so. And, going back to the pre-9/11 attitude will not help.

By the way, there is another option. The path of direness and cataclysm is certainly available and will almost definitely eventually result in significant change born of pain and war and dread.

But know this, too: The mystics and psychics and the energy workers, the healers and the deep astrologers and the ancient shamanistic texts, all tend to agree that a major shift is already under way on this planet, a massive spiritual/energetic transformation slowly sweeping all of humanity, right now and throughout the coming decade, affecting everyone and everything, ready or not, bringing the world's issues and conflicts and spiritual questions to a critical head.

So, we're supposed to agree with you that the US is going to hell in a hand basket because someone looked into their crystal ball and told you? We should prepare for a major transformation because a group of worshippers of I-have-no-idea-what tell us to? Honestly, all that talk sounds a little like End Times prophecy... are you sure you're not trying to get us to all prepare for the Second Coming? I'm ready. Are you?

Here's the bottom line: It is our choice.

Can I choose to vote you off the island? (Sorry... had to be done.)

It is up to us whether this astounding and deeply profound change will be, as my friend's opinion suggests, bloody and violent and full of disease and death and flagrant corporate-sponsored abuse of the planet, or whether it will be, instead, full of light and generosity and awareness and a deep, abiding respect for those who share this pale blue dot with us.

Have you ever seen what happens in a Left-controlled country? There is no light and generosity and awareness and respect. There is poverty and cruelty and a lack of respect for individual rights. Even now, years after their freedom from liberal rule, the abuses of liberal governments on the environment can be seen in former communist Bloc countries. It wasn't corporate-sponsored- it was government sponsored.

Both avenues, after all, will cure the cancer. The question then becomes, Do you want it sliced out with a hatchet, or with a feather?

Well, since cancer can never be cured with a feather, only utterly and completely destroyed... You answered your own question, didn't you?

One look at the cruel and arrogant BushCo agenda, and the answer seems evident: We are already making our choice.

Ask the Afghani people if they think Bush is arrogant. Ask the Iraqi people if they think Bush is cruel. Not the insurgents trying create chaos and the former government officials. Ask the ones who had been beaten and tortured by those regimes. They're happy with the choices we've made so far.

// posted by Beth @ 1:37 PM |