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Saturday, November 06, 2004
Very Sleepy

That's how I feel, but I've been slacking on the blog, so I wanted to let you know I hadn't killed myself. I've been working a lot of hours, and let this thing fall by the wayside. But I'll try to do better.

As for the election, it's finally over, and that's good. Having hope for change was kind of wearing me out, and now that Bush has his "mandate" (according to Dick Cheney), and has earned "political capital, which I intend to spend" (according to himself), I can pretty much officially give up. The brain tells me that things are going to get even worse, and yet...

Karl Rove is a genius. He knew that by appealing to the worst instincts of the Republican base, he could get even poor white trash to vote contrary to their own economic interests. That's actually quite an accomplishment, if you think about it. This administration has spent four years demonstrating, with no hemming or hawing, that it is only interested in making things simpler for corporations and the wealthy who own them. And we all understand why people who have to work too hard to stay even ended up voting the way they did. It's been examined to death, and I won't rehash it now. Yeah, the lowest common denominator thing again...

But now that the suckers, ah, the people have spoken, what happens next? I'm no optimist, as regular readers may have divined. But the part of me that still has hope (for some reason) wonders about the following scenario:

George W. Bush was appointed to office by the Supreme Court in 2000, after losing the popular vote. He spends four years, assisted in his quest, if we are to be blunt, by Islamic terrorists, scaring the hell out of Americans, and gutting the civil liberties of those of us too stupid to be moved by fear. He appeals to bigotry and ignorance in many forms, and Real Americans turn out in record numbers on November 2 to save our land from towel-heads and damned liberals.

George has no more elections ahead of him. He has no reason to pander to anyone. I'm sure Ralph Reed feels he is owed something, but in reality, has no way to collect it. So, what if...

What if George decides to appoint moderate judges for the inevitable vacancies that the Supreme Court will have open before 2008? He can always tell his base that he is being statesman-like by compromising, and they believe everything their told, anyway. So, maybe?

What if George decides to go back to the UN and make a pitch for a multilateral effort at ridding the world of terrorists? Would they listen? I just don't know. The problem is, that the world is a big set of scales, and America is the largest thing on them. And as scales wish to stay balanced, the further America moves away from balance, the rest of the world lines itself up in a manner to counterbalance our position. If everyone looks to be moving away from us, well, we're moving away from them, too.

My optimism has limits, of course. Will George start trying to help Americans get good jobs and improved health care? I doubt it. Why should he? This administration has been quite clear in it's disdain for the working man, and they ran out in droves to re-elect him. So, I can't even hope for improvement in an economic sense. The stock market is more important than the supermarket, and ultimately, I can't really afford to dabble in either.

In the meantime, I will take solace in the pending resignation of John Ashcroft, who as Bill Maher speculated, wanted to get back to his first love, "standing on a street corner, ranting about the coming end of the world." I'll be glad to see him go, although we look to be burdened with the so-called Patriot Act for the foreseeable future. Small victories, I guess I should take them where I find them.

So, I probably won't watch too much TV for awhile, and that's likely a good thing. I'll try to discuss other things in this forum, although I probably won't. I'm still pretty irritable, but I am working hard at becoming resigned. And I'm told that I can always find peace in Jesus, and for better or worse, I don't have to even look for him. Apparently, the FBI has already given him my address.

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posted at 11:59 AM

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