the rix mix

Barack's more than raised my eyebrows over the past 2 1/2 months. He really angered me only once, over a minor matter with major reverberations. But I haven't dogged him. I believe we ought to let ourselves enjoy this change, an awful president & administration going away at last; the wonderful spectacle of a young, intelligent, compassionate man taking office, a black man (& a Hawaiian, to my mind). I wish he didn't have such a terrible burden at the outset. His first task is comparable to cleaning the Augean stables, the fifth labor of Hercules. Joe Biden mentioned this during the campaign. Hercules had to do it in a single day. Barack has to show some real progress in a hundred. (Joe's own task was to slay the Wasillaean Hydra.)

America has been through hell the past 8 years. About 20% think we haven't been, or won't put the blame where it belongs. Some crazy people still think Al Gore would've been worse. Even James Buchanan wouldn't have been worse. Buchanan only gave away federal arms & property to traitors. So Bush didn't cheat on his wife while he & his pals raped America. That's an achievement future historians will praise?

We were in a recession in 2001. Most intelligent people saw the dot com bust as an unavoidable correction, investment running too far ahead of the consumer market. Home prices were inflated - that did bite us. But the nation was in pretty good shape to absorb the emotional & economic traumas of 9/11 & then Hurricane Katrina. It's reasonable to ask why America didn't recover from the recession or the terrorist attack. It's reasonable to ask how America got to our current sorry condition. It's certainly reasonable to investigate this & punish some of those responsible, in & out of government.

Repugs & "conservatives" are angrier & more embittered than they have ever been. They had all three branches of national government. They were in control. For them, what's happened to America during their rule is unbelievable, impossible. Surely everything must be different than it is, liberal media is just reporting it all wrong. Their last hope was that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could not possibly be elected President.

The Bush years have been hell for me personally. It wasn't his doing, but he hardly gave cause for any greater hopes; he was all about war, deceit, stupidity, ignorance, avarice.

At the start of the Clinton presidency I was falling for a woman who loved music, art, & boardwalks. During the Bush years I was briefly with a local gal who had voted for him (if she had actually voted, maybe she just listened to AM talk radio). How messed up was that? Me, a guy who had banned all registered Republicans from his home social events during the Reagan years.

So I'm going to enjoy the next few days. I'll laugh at Rick Warren. He's an updated character from a Sinclair Lewis novel; secure, self-righteous, falsely humble, a bit corpulent beneath his suit, preaching Gospel as middle class boosterism. In Lewis' world he'd have been pastoring the biggest mainline protestant church on Main Street.

We're getting change one way or another. In countless ways President Obama will be better than Bush because he is Barack Obama, not a Bush. As for the Augean Stables, we'll see. I have my tests, & they are changes in tone & emphasis on the various federal websites I frequent for information. Those will tell me how well he's getting rid of the bull shit. But the irony is not lost on me that as Barack takes office, that office has become a job no one in their right mind ought to want, & is not what he expected when he announced his candidacy two years ago, or even when he accepted the nomination in August.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, George W. Bush, THE election