James Wolcott: Anyone Know How to Make a Noose?

[Fenris]

Couldn't sleep last night. Suspect many--most?--of you couldn't either. Didn't help that my wife and I were sleeping in separate rooms; she in her study with our eldest cat, just home from the Animal Medical Center after surgery. She didn't sleep well either, but at least if we had been in the same bed we could have stared at the ceiling together with our eyeballs glowing in the dark.

It takes a big man to admit he's wrong, and although I'm not a big man, I can imitate one for purposes of this blog. I was wrong. Wrong in my hopes, my expectations, and my sense of where the country is. Writers I've mocked about the election and Bush's popular hold--Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Victor Davis In Excelsis Deo Hanson, et al--have earned their bragging rights, and they're welcome to them. No consolation was to be found last night and this morning. All of the exit polls, good omens (Red Sox winning the series), and previous indicators (such as the under-50-approval incumbent rule), and dramatic lifts (a recuperating Clinton hitting the campaign trail) meant a jot, whatever a jot is. Philip Roth's The Plot Against America is likely to seem like a documentary when the next four years are put through the wringer, and us with them.

The election was a victory for George Bush and Rovianism, a victory for Grover Norquist. It was also a victory for Osama Bin Laden. I don't believe for a moment Bin Laden was trying to sway voters to Kerry with his taped address. This was the outcome he wanted, a gift from us to him: an unapologetic Christian Crusader in the White House whose reelection giving life to the notion that Abu Ghraib was an aberration and that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians weigh upon America's conscience. This morning America could not look more like a grinning aggressor to the Arab world, an aggressor with fresh marching orders.

But there's bitter clarity to knowing the worst. My wife has forbade me from going into the same depressive funk after this election that I did 9/11--"I couldn't take another 9 months of that again"--and I'm not depressed, being filled with far too much healthy loathing for millions of my fellow Americans to let myself droop. I do have a column that is (over)due, so blogging will be light until the weekend, when the statue of Jesus will be installed on the White House lawn.

http://www.jameswolcott.com/

[Bjornsdotter]

1. James Wolcott...

...is the one person who keeps me sane and lets me know that I AM NOT alone.

Cheers,

Kim :toast:

[Obviousman]

2. The bright side

Anyone know how to make a noose? Well, America just gave the rightwing all the rope they need. With full control of every branch of government, any mistake will be THEIR fault entirely. Even though they made gains, ultimately, the war, the deficit, and a host of others things will blow up in their face and there will be no one but themselves to blame. Now we wait for the republicans to hang themselves with a rope made of their own greed

[wickerwoman]

3. Great article.

I can think of better uses for that noose though.

Like burning Bush in effigy from every street lamp in America.

[LibertyorDeath]

4. Thanks Fenris

[Fenris]

5. Kick for James