Sometimes it does not even seem real.
The back of my car is still covered with anti-Bush stickers. "Turn Left at the Next Election" "Aren't you POOR enough? Vote Democrat in 2004" "Drunken Frat Boy Drives Country into Ditch". These all seem valid & reasonable. I even left the "Donald Rumsfield/Doctor Strangelove" one on long enough, we thought he was leaving - then he's staying - now they really might get rid of him. (Despite his "Craptacular" job that Lizz Winstead reminds us about, what a great description, eh?)
Its all part of my poor relationship with TIME. No, no, not the stupid weekly mag rag that just named Dubya the man of the year, in a giant "Take that you bad 54.5 Million people voted against the Emperor". I mean, the ever quickening pace of the hands on the clock, the pages on the calendar... flying by faster than I can prepare!
Why does Christmas always get here so quickly and yet, when I think about saving money for the trip to Ireland or embarking on a diet or exercise plan, the prospect of taking that AMOUNT of time seem so long? Is just further proof that Einstein was correct? Is TIME RELATIVE??
It seems like a few weeks ago only that I took into account all the possible Presidential challengers and weighed their chances for electability, well before the Primary season. I was pretty darn certain early this time. I signed up with the Kerry campaign in November 2002. Just a few weeks after the sad news about Paul Wellstone.
Now, its not that I was so very certain about Kerry that WHOLE time. I really liked Dean's message. I could have supported him, had he prevailed to the convention. What happened to him was not fair.
I wanted to back the man I felt sure that could trounce Dubya and send them back to wherever Connecticut Cowboys go. I was a little conflicted about my goals for world peace but, hey, the trade off was going to be worth it. I knew that if we were looking at a Kerry inauguration in a few weeks, we would have our hands full- working to pull the Kerry people to the left.
But now... look folks, you've all experienced at least a bit of my disorientation since November 2. When you hear about further civilian deaths in Iraq, more torture, more civil liberties trampled and when you see that cast of clowns taking up all the public space for Corporate sponsorship on Inauguration Day.
Wasn't it just a few minutes ago we were contributing to effort in Ohio?
I really think, since we are already disenfranchised, we should demand a more liberal agenda from the minority party. It is almost truly come true that the Democrats have become a party like any of the others, Green, Libertarian, Looney and all the others, any but the one, the Corporate Republican party.
I really feel that as long as the damn Democrats want to be Republican-LITE, they cannot be anything but shills taking the corporate crumbs and working the periphery of the political system. Like political vermin, opportunistically gorging themselves on the leavings of this not-so-GOP-like party, whatever the hell they are.
Anyhow, as I have always been a Democrat, like my mother & her mother before her, etc. I am not necessarily advocating starting over with a new party. The same as I am not ready to scrap the friends I have here & farm out the aged feline to move to Europe. Its our country, too, dammit!
What do you do to keep your tenuous grip on the passage of time, the lunacy of another four years of Dubya?
