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Four years ago I was in a deep funk. I wasn’t convinced anyone could right the ship that is America. It took an amazing amount of ignorance and fear to re-elect that rotten fuck. Sadly, it took another four years of his ineptitude for this country to realize that fear and loathing had crept back to the pinnacle of the political world.
I was watching one of the lesser-known (Read: not Jesse or Al) civil rights leaders, former mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young, on Colbert last night and he summed it up pretty well for me:
“People rejected fear and decided they were going to have faith in America. He awakened the faith that all of us want to have.”
For clarity’s sake, lets establish some language here other than Republicans and Democrats. Because I think that devisive line isn’t so clear after Tuesday. Let’s just say there were people who believed the gospel of the W and his evil handlers. They ate it up. They swallowed, too. Then there are those that were a bit more cynical. We said, whoa, hold up, let’s think about this thing. We gave Bush a chance to bring us together after 9-11. It seemed like the right thing at the time, lets unite behind this guy. He took advantage of us all and when we began to spit his vile bullshit out, he and his swallowers called we spitters un-American.
Aside from the asinine decision-making and pretzel-choking going on in the White House over the last eight years, that’s what made it so miserable for the left; if you questioned, if you spoke out, you weren’t patriotic. We realized how ridiculous the argument against us was at the time, but in the years since too many people began to believe it.
Bush will rightfully be judged a victim of the horrific terrorist attacks that opened his presidency. Unlike the innocent, however, he was a victim because he chose to be. He bought the fear and loathing first, then he peddled it to the masses. He will be judged a victim, but in my humble opinion he partook in the subsequent crimes on humanity.
The expectations now levied on President Elect Obama seem unfair to me. I’m right there hoping with the most desperately optimistic, but the swallowers were right when they said rhetoric isn’t going to get the job done. It is clear, however, that Obama has inspired a great many Americans. And like JFK, he will ask for us to rise to the occasion rather than sitting back to judge the government’s shortcomings. I HOPE we have an answer.
Five Dollar Footlongs?
And on the lighter side, I leave with this picture of Obama’s first hire, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The West Wing character Josh Lyman was based on Emanuel, which in my mind is a beautiful thing. And if you need more reason to believe in him, his unfortunate finger disfigurement is a direct result of his high school job at Arby’s. American Roast Beef, Yes Sir!
