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George
W. Bush Owes Me a Kiss
November
9, 2001
by Robert C.
It is an unusually warm November afternoon here in the suburbs
of NYC, and I'm in my backyard doing more autumn clean up
work. To me, yard and garden work, mindless and solitary work
tied to the changing seasons, has always been a way to recharge
myself, and offers a perfect opportunity for reflection and
contemplation - a chance to think about how much, if any,
my life has changed since the last time I performed these
chores.
And today, as an abnormally warm November sun beats down
on me, and I'm thinking that I can't ever remember wearing
shorts and a tee shirt this late into autumn - thanks, global
warming! - I realize that this abnormal weather is a fitting
end to what has been quite an abnormal year.
Around this time last year I was anxiously awaiting election
day, heartened by the poll numbers, and confident that America
would not elect the imbecile son of a failed president - and
in this I was correct, America didn't elect the imbecile,
I just hadn't counted on the Xtreme Court making that fact
irrelevant. Last year at this time I thought that I lived
in a democracy. Last year at this time, as I watched my children
play, I had all the hope in the world that the America that
they would inherit would be an America that had wisely built
on an unprecedented period of prosperity.
Last year at this time I wasn't afraid of losing my job.
Last year at this time I was confident that our government,
as flawed as it has always been, and as deadly partisan as
it had recently become, would always come together in a crisis
to do what was needed - to do the right thing, partisanship
be damned! - to protect it's citizens. Last year at this time
I was not afraid to fly on a commercial airplane.
When I think back to "last year at this time," it seems
like a remembrance of a past life - an existence in a more
pastoral time - a remembrance made possible perhaps only through
hypnosis. This past year has unfolded like a recurring nightmare,
only it's not sleep that you are afraid of, it's waking up
that is the terror. A right wing coup - which rapidly thrust
it's extremist agenda on the country, and a vicious terrorist
attack - which is now being used to further solidify that
extreme agenda - two events that my gut tells me are somehow
related - have changed my life, and they have changed the
future of the world.
As the unelected imbecile son of a failed president romps
around the country with sky-high approval ratings, reciting
simple declarative sentences to a worshipful media while the
economy tanks, our wealth is squandered, and our liberties
are trampled - and as he pursues his "god given" mission to
rid the world of evil - I just know it in my bones that I,
and all of us, are being screwed.
And so, that's why George W. Bush owes me a kiss. As the
character that Al Pacino played in the movie "Dog Day Afternoon"
said, "When I get fucked I like to be kissed."
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