Bush makes me sick
What a week. There was all the hubbub of wedding and then of the Hallow’s/Wedding party, and then the scramble to get packed and ready to head to Las Vegas for a few days. On Election Day. I had voted early so I didn’t have to worry about anything but catching the election returns as I could. We had a layover in Phoenix around 9PM, and some returns were available then, but even when we left I was pretty sure we wouldn’t know the outcome until I was in Vegas solid. There was hope. We had hope. Trepidation, and hope.
It was decided among the 8 of us in Vegas that if things went poorly, we’d simply pretend it hadn’t happened until we returned. And now that I’ve returned, I still reside in a place of shock and disbelief. Maybe it’s the head cold, maybe it’s the Nyquil (and the 15+ hours of sleep a day). But I can’t quite fathom that our nation is 51% morons and simpletons. Because you’d have to be simple to believe in George W. Bush.
That’s so flip to say, and so rude. Demonization of the other side has never been more prevalent than it is in this election, a year when just the invocation of the political direction “liberal,” “conservative” carries the force of an invective. Liberals are free-spending tree-hugging wack-os. Conservatives are over-zealous hypocritical bible-thumpers. Each side despises, decries, the beliefs of the other.
I’d like to say it’s wrong, that we’re mistaken, can’t we all just get along. But even the peacemaker in me hears Bush’s talk about a ’society that values life’ as an boldly spoken threat to Roe v. Wade. I hear his vow to ‘protect marriage’ and understand that means shutting gay people out of its joys and benefits. I hear about his love for God and translate that into a love of One God and One Theology and an unbending disdain for the rest of us: Jew, Hindu, Pagan, whatever.
And I see the detrius of the first term — lax environmental rulings that allow drilling in the Arctic, the Patriot Act swiftly divesting Americans of their privacy and security, Guantanamo Bay doing the same to international folk, the quagmire in Iraq. I see the opinion of the world — a world that one would be foolish to declare unimportant in this increasingly global time — heading towards the cellar. I mean, who still believes in the ‘truth and justice’ part of the American Way? Us and… Poland? Yeah.
But regardless of what I think is Important in the world (like intellectual curiousity in the Oval Office), just listening to Bush in a thirty-second soundbite or — gods forbid — in what passes for a speech makes me physically ill.
So ill that I wasn’t surprised at all to find myself returning from Vegas with a head full of rocks, queasy stomach, and the propensity to sleep obliviously for days on end. The thought of another four years watching that man preen and cluck is enough to make anyone feel a little green.
Sigh.