55 Days and Counting

Just in case you’re not counting, there are 55 days left to the Bush Presidency. While I’m not quite prepared to place the total blame for the ungodly mess the country is in at Bush’s feet, he certainly deserves a large portion of it.

We will recover from the current economic quagmire and we will restore the basic democratic principles so tarnished under the Bush administration. The Bush years will become another dark time in American history roughly equivalent to the McCarthy era and the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II.

Maybe, just maybe, Bush’s real legacy will be a swing to the left in this country. Perhaps we’ve learned that freedom for some doesn’t work; you need freedom for all. Perhaps we’ve learned that depending upon faith rather than facts is a piss poor way to run a country. Perhaps we’ve learned that the founding fathers really did know what they were doing when they established a secular government.

I wouldn’t take it for granted that we have though. The fight isn’t over, it’s just beginning. But at least more people seem to understand that there is a fight to be waged. There are those on the extreme right wing that are already plotting to undermine the success of the next administration and there is still a fair number of the electorate, beginning with the Evangelical Christian cadre, susceptible to the crap they will continue to spew.

Let’s not forget that people like Ann Coulter still have the audacity to claim that Bush was a great president that history will vindicate. Coulter also thinks that McCarthy was a great American somehow framed by a vast liberal conspiracy that included President Eisenhower, Congress, the news media and the U.S. Army. She has also concluded that Evolution is a discredited theory. What planet do you suppose she lives on anyway?

So, has anything really changed? I sincerely hope so. I hope that maybe, just maybe, more of us will be laughing at the lies now. I’ll take that as a start.