Everything's Gonna Be Just Fine
June 18, 2002
By Mark W. Trude

To hear the pollsters tell it, a full 70% of Americans support the actions and policies of the Bush administration. To those Americans who find themselves out-of-step with seven tenths of their fellow citizens, these numbers are an abomination.

Many observers -- on the left, especially -- speculate as to how the pollsters could have arrived at that 70% figure: the questions are slanted or incomplete, people are afraid to say what they really think, the samples are skewed toward testosterone-addled, gun-toting, Christian Republican males in the south and midwest, the numbers are pure artifice or invention. But the left just refuses to admit that all that inexplicable support for the anti-democratic squatter in the White House is real.

The time has come for the naysayers to join with the fans of this pre-emptive striking, civil rights-squashing, constitution-shredding, global warming-ignoring, free speech-hating, Social Security-raiding, rich guy-helping buffoon and believe that everything's gonna be just fine.

If you're reading this, you probably don't believe that everything's going to be just fine. In fact, Zantac and Paxil are probably staples of your diet and you're probably not sleeping much and you probably pick up your daily newspaper like it's a cocked and loaded .357 whose safety is missing and whose barrel is about two inches from your face.

You've probably taken to wearing an elastic headband to prevent your skull from exploding from all that "Bush was elected" and "we must sacrifice our freedoms in order to be more free" cognitive dissonance you've got banging around up there. You most likely don't think that the inability to form a coherent sentence is a desirable trait for the so-called leader of the so-called free world.

And speaking of desirable traits, you undoubtedly believe that the trait of being able to pronounce "nuclear" is one that you want in the guy who gets passed the "nucular" football. And to think you're bringing all this anxiety upon yourself.

Settle down. Everything is going to be just fine. It is. Really. If you've got your big-screen TV tuned to the big game and you're drinking a big Coke to wash down that big Domino's right-to-life pizza, then what reason do you have to worry?

If you stop at Starbuck's for that grande cup o' Joe on your way to the Judeo-Christian house of worship of your choice before making that post-supplication run to WalMart for 48 rolls of toilet paper and the latest ghostwritten celebrity autobiography, then what could possibly be wrong?

If you festoon your Ford Explorer with tattered, made-in-China American flags and show your terrorism-resistant patriotism by rolling up to the gas pump every three days to satisfy your insatiable 8-miles-to-the-gallon appetite for cheap, Saudi Arabian terrorist-financing petrol, then why the uneasiness?

If you leave the latest computer-generated, character- and complexity-free summer blockbuster and use a gallon of SUV fuel rushing over to the megastore that killed the "mom and pop" record store and pay too much for the calculatedly inoffensive CD soundtrack of said blockbuster, then there's nothing to fear.

If you turn off the CD and turn on CNN or Fox or MSNBC for the corporate-approved truth and man, ain't the media liberal? and Ashleigh Banfield is a babe and dammit, that Bill O'Reilly makes a lot of sense, then the world, as they say, is your sewage- and phytoplankton-strangled oyster.

If John Ashcroft doesn't remind you of that creepy shop teacher who used to brush up against you and linger way too long while he showed how to "work the lathe" and you really like that "Mighty Eagle" song he sang on CNN that day and you can't wait 'til you can download the MP3, then the future belongs to you.

If you think that George W. Bush -- with his "gentleman's C" malapropisms and Reaganesque inattention to minor details like intelligence briefings with words like "bin Laden" and "hijack" and melting icebergs the size of Rhode Island -- is just like you, even though your daddy couldn't afford to buy you an Ivy League education or a National Guard slot or a CEO position or the presidency of the United States of America, then you will be well taken care of.

If your name is easy to pronounce and you shave everyday and your nose never touches the floor when you pray and your idea of headwear is a baseball cap turned backwards, then you will be free to move about, provided that you move where you're told and have the proper ID and maybe the correct color iris and don't mind the odd surveillance camera.

If you only surf the web for hot teen action or to download Christian "rock" songs or buy the Bush "out of harm's way" 9/11 photo from the RNC website or to order the latest typed-with-one-hand, anti-Clinton screed from the stable of maniacs at Regnery publishing, then you needn't fear a visit from the Secret Service or the FBI or some other new, more malevolent SS-like agency to whose existence Ashcroft may or may not admit.

So, just be sure to follow the above steps, and you'll feel the weight lift from your shoulders faster than you can say "military tribunal."

There now. Don't you feel better?

Mark W. Trude tightens his headband daily.