Remember Ashcroft wants to scan our e-mail and check our library books and
tap our phones ?
http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/Voting_Machine.wmv
Friday 29 October 2004 By Mark Morford - San Francisco Gate Columnist
Get Out And Vote And Scream
Now that we're all completely fried and bitter
and media punch-drunk, it's time to act
So here we are, staring down a rather historic moment
amidst the sputtering ideological orgy that is the American
experiment and if you're paying any sort of attention at all
you're doubtlessly drunk on election hype and saturated
with Bush/Kerry platitudes and you wish a white-hot
death upon every screeching TV pundit who is right now
analyzing yet another insidious national poll that seems
to reveal everything and nothing at the exact same time.
And Bush is out there right this very second stumping
and sweating and blinking fast and defending his useless
hideous little war and hurling snide little invectives and
completely fabricated exaggerations at John Kerry, and
Kerry is returning the favor by casually mentioning how
Bush has ruined the goddamn nation and decimated our
self-respect and run roughshod over our international
relations all while raping the environment like no
president in history and racking up a world-record
deficit and mangling the language like a child on
too much Ritalin.
It has been, in short, the longest and most painful
episode of "American Idol" ever, wherein the two
finalists have belted every cheesy American standard
and regurgitated every lame disco-era stage move and
hit every warbly high note and sacrificed every shred
of dignity and integrity and true individuality they
might've once possessed, all in the desperate hope
that you are finally sufficiently numbed to where you
are finally ready press the right 800 number on your
AT&T wireless service and place your stupefied vote.
We are almost there. We are so very on the cusp.
This is where it all comes down to your intuition
and your intelligence and a sheer force of will,
your ability to overcome the media-induced nausea
and deeply inbred American political ennui and
hoist yourself out of this election stu**** and go
to your polling place and punch the little card or
push the little button, and then pray you don't live
in a state where the GOP has rigged the touch screens
or shredded all the Democratic voter registrations as
you think, wow, world's foremost democracy and yet
why does it feel like I'm voting in, like, Yugoslavia ?
Why does it feel that this election is so incredibly messy
and loaded and rife with s****s and spit and hissing corruption ?
Weird. Sad. Telling.
It has become surreal, this election. It has become
beyond coherent. We are at a point where our election
system has become suspect and deeply flawed and our
ideology has come unraveled and we as a nation no longer
fully understand our role in the world and the bloom is way,
way off the patriotic rose, so much so that it's no longer
just a matter of which candidate will put a ****nier coat
of paint on the massive ****p of bureaucracy, but who will
stop us from sinking too abruptly into the quicksand of abuse
and arrogance and ever increasing irrelevance. Go, U-S-A !
So then. As we stare down this uncanny and indelible
moment in American history, there are two angles of approach.
One : sit back and reflect on how the hell we got here, what
bizarre machinations and demonic falling dominos managed
to put BushCo in power, just what sort of humiliating and
positively satanic chain reaction lo these past 50 years led up
to where we are now, to this bitter yet oddly amusing spectacle
of a massive and awe-inspiring empire in full crumble.
This approach, it is the more depressing and fatalistic and
painful of the two and will result in much sighing and the
supping of wine and the licking of lovers to deflect the pain
and energize the skin and try and put it all in perspective,
and is recommended only in small doses. Except for the
drinking and licking part.
Conversely and perhaps more enjoyably, you can project
forward, then reminisce. You can, that is to say, imagine
it's a short 20 years hence and it's about 2024 and we're
sitting there sipping our laudanum/Vicodin Colas and
injecting Nexium straight into our eyeballs and watching
our 10-foot plasma-TV walls and looking back and saying
my god, 2004, that was a weird one, wasn't it ?
Remember that ugly time ? Remember when that smirking dolt
Bush Jr. was president and we went through that dark dank
tunnel of spiritual dread and international humiliation and
we bombed Iraq for no reason and killed all those people
for no reason and gutted our own economy for no reason
other than to line the pockets of the Bush WASP mafia's
cor****ate cronies ? Wasn't that just so, like, crazy ?
We will make jokes and shake our heads and sigh.
We will say oh man remember that defense guy ?
Rumsfeld ? Remember his black and ominous eyes ?
His savage abuse of power and complete lack of accountability ?
Remember that demon-god Ashcroft and his oiled feet,
didn't dance and didn't smoke and didn't drink and didn't
have *** and wanted to crack down on nipples and scan
our e-mail and check our library books and tap our phones ?
Remember Condi Rice, that lost and desperate look, lonely
and sad and a creepy veneer of doomed longing over her soul ?
Weird times, my friend. Sip.
We know that 20 years hence, there will be no Reagan-like
legacy for Shrub. There will be no renamed air****ts or
honorary expressways or revisionist rose-colored history
books arguing the good and the bad of his epic much-loved
presidency, because there is so little good and so very, very
much bad and there is absolutely no love anywhere.
We already know that history will look very, very unkindly
upon this most booblike, lie-torn, appallingly underqualified
of American presidents. Of this we can rest assured. Of this
we will only look back and be incredibly grateful it didn't
last all that long.
This angle, it is the moderately healing and perspective-adjusting one.
It's comfortable and helpful to project in such a manner,
especially given how it's almost too hot right now, just
too frustrating and painful to remain in this moment, to
sit here and wait for the election returns and the potential
lawsuits and Supreme Court riggings all the while knowing
the GOP is trying everything short of launching another
terrorist attack to maintain power and will stop at almost
nothing to instill fear and dread and Dick Cheney deeper
into the numb American psyche.
You cannot stay ..................................................
More :
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/29/notes102904.DTL&nl=f
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