Waarom het beter is dat Bush wint....

[Lenny Bruce]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Mark de link werkte niet voor mij daarom gewoon heel brutaal het artikel
'overgenomen'. Voor 80+ hollandse lijsters moet dat kunnen. Het laat zien
dat niet iedereen voor Bush zal stemmen EN veel Amerikanen precies weten wie
hij is...

ARTIKEL door Mike Monford van de SFGate.......

Love Masochism? Vote BushCo!
Could four more brutal years of the Dubya nightmare actually be *good* for
America?

I have a good friend who believes, gloomily, bitterly, resignedly, that not
only are we in for four more years of painful and cheerless BushCo-branded
tyranny and misprision and aww-shucks dumb-guy shtick, but also that we are
actually at the beginning of a long, brutal, fear-based Republican
juggernaut that will last a good 16 more years, at least.
Because this is how long it will take for the current horrific conservative
cycle to play itself out, and this would resemble a more typical and
historically proven 20-year pendulum swing, in this case one toward
neoconservative right-wing hate and homophobia and warmongering that will
careen us toward heretofore unprecedented extremes of sadness and
isolationism and far too many overweight white people with guns.

But here's the catch. Here's the argument: This dark era, this wicked
20-year dystopia America could now be facing, it might be a very good and
necessary thing indeed.

Not, as you might dream, because four more years of BushCo and a dozen more
of sneering Republican domination means there will likely be good times
ahead. Not because we will enjoy an unprecedented era of peace and stability
and generosity and environmental sustenance, humanitarian progress and U.N.
cooperation and fiscal responsibility and a generally relaxed and
open-minded attitude toward religion and multiculturalism and sex. I mean,
don't be ridiculous. Besides, the Clinton era already happened.

But, rather, it will be necessary because the moral and spiritual and
physical hemispheres of our existence will quickly become so dire and toxic
and the nation's socioeconomic situation will become so extreme and
desperate that maybe, just maybe, we will finally learn something.

This is the argument. It is bitter and defeatist and, maybe, if you let your
inner devil's advocate speak, a little bit true.

Look at it this way: If Kerry wins now, the nation won't have suffered
enough, won't have traveled far enough down the road of right-wing egotism
and misogyny and homophobia and religious self-righteousness and deficit
mauling and sanctimonious ideology and mangled grammar to really learn
anything indelible, nothing that will affect a permanent sea change in our
worldview, and we will just continue to limp along, never really healing and
never really refocusing our intention and never fully understanding the
depths of our dark side.

And, furthermore, if Kerry wins, history might not be as fully and
inevitably antagonistic toward BushCo as his short, dreadful despotism
deserves. Our national memory is frightfully short. Everyone will think, oh
well, it's all over now and the damage has been done and it wasn't all that
bad, really, was it?

I mean (they will say), sure Bush is widely regarded as the most politically
inept and ethically dangerous and environmentally hostile president in
American history, and sure women's rights were hammered and civil rights
were shriveled and every single major ally we have in the world now either
disrespects us or mistrusts us or openly abhors us like an Olsen twin shuns
direct sunlight.

And sure Dubya's sanctimonious and violent warmongering actions in the
Middle East have done far, far more to inflame anti-U.S. hatred and have
amplified the threat of terrorism against us a thousandfold, but hey, the
Texas schlub only lasted four years and now we can move on, right?

Wrong. Call it the fatalist maxim: The only way the national soul can really
change is through serious crisis, through near-death apocalypse, through
things getting so dire and tormented and swollen that something finally has
to give, the psycho-spiritual levee at last has to break. And it won't be
the slightest bit pretty. But it will be mandatory. And in the long (long,
long) run, ultimately healthy. Sort of like finally purging a massive
cancerous lump from your colon. Only not as much fun.

History and the culture, it would seem, bear this view out: We don't shun
pollutive monster SUVs until gas prices hit five bucks a gallon. We don't
quit smoking until we have a lung removed after coughing up enough blood and
phlegm to gag a horse. We don't take care of our bodies until after that
second heart attack and we don't ease up on the toxic garbage foods until we
get so fat they have to haul us to the lipo appointment with a forklift.

We don't lift a finger to protect the environment until the hurricanes slam
down and the heat waves crack the streets and vaporize your precious
swimming pool and ruin the ski resorts. And even then we just sort of shrug
and move somewhere else.

We ignore the Social Security nightmare until 70 million boomers retire and
the infrastructure collapses. We don't touch the truly dire water-supply
issue until the reservoirs dry up and the pipelines crack and Earth recoils.
We glut on the planet's natural resources until the land is choked and
billions go hungry and even then we seem to think, well, why the hell don't
they get themselves a nice Costco?

We are, ultimately, a species of stasis and lethargy. We are rarely
sympathetically proactive, always violently reactive -- and only when the
threat is immediate and overwhelming. We have a fetish for shortsightedness
and instant gratification and damn the costs and the impending toll on our
stunned mal-educated children. We move, in short, only when we have to.


So then. Maybe it has to happen. Maybe we need four more years of BushCo
(though not, let us pray, 16 years of toxic Republicanism) just to see how
bad it can get, to snap us out of this fearful lethargy, this ignorant
numbness, this weird and tragic belief that it is only through sheer
faux-macho posturing and pre-emptive bombings and through decimating foreign
relationships and igniting holy wars and trying to prove that our angry
acidic well-armed God is better than their angry acidic well-armed God, that
we are actually safe and healthy and spiritually attuned.

If the past four years are any indication, four more years of BushCo would
be just unimaginably dreadful for America, for the health of the planet, for
human rights, for the poor and for women and minorities and gays and
non-Christian religions. After all, no one could have predicted, four years
ago, just how much damage this boot-lickin' puppet president could have
wrought on the culture in such a short time. He seemed so harmless and
bumbling and lost -- at first.

But, then again, no one anticipated that he would be handed the golden
political grenade that was 9/11, and no one could have imagined the he and
his snarling administration would so shamelessly, so heartlessly leverage
our most horrific national tragedy for such brutal and oily gain, using it
not only as a fear tactic and a justification for multiple wars and as a
vicious excuse to quell dissenting voices, but also as an actual political
slogan, a veritable trademarked brand for the Republican Party. BushCo '04:
Vote for Us, or Die.

By the way, there is another option. The path of direness and cataclysm is
certainly available and will almost definitely eventually result in
significant change born of pain and war and dread.

But know this, too: The mystics and psychics and the energy workers, the
healers and the deep astrologers and the ancient shamanistic texts, all tend
to agree that a major shift is already under way on this planet, a massive
spiritual/energetic transformation slowly sweeping all of humanity, right
now and throughout the coming decade, affecting everyone and everything,
ready or not, bringing the world's issues and conflicts and spiritual
questions to a critical head.

Here's the bottom line: It is our choice. It is up to us whether this
astounding and deeply profound change will be, as my friend's opinion
suggests, bloody and violent and full of disease and death and flagrant
corporate-sponsored abuse of the planet, or whether it will be, instead,
full of light and generosity and awareness and a deep, abiding respect for
those who share this pale blue dot with us. Both avenues, after all, will
cure the cancer. The question then becomes, Do you want it sliced out with a
hatchet, or with a feather?

One look at the cruel and arrogant BushCo agenda, and the answer seems
evident: We are already making our choice.




>From: "Mark Giebels" <mark at giebels.org>
>To: <heinwvm at chello.nl>, <d66 at nic.surfnet.nl>
>Subject: Re: Waarom het beter is dat Bush wint....
>Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 11:45:02 -0700
>
>REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
>
>En toen las ik vanochtend dit opiniestuk van Mark Morford, de sfgate
>pagan anti-conservative columnist, over dit onderwerp:
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/09/15/
>notes091504.DTL
>
>Mark
>
><-----Original Message----->
> >From: Mark Giebels
> >Sent: 9/20/2004 11:33:29 AM
> >To: heinwvm at chello.nl;d66 at nic.surfnet.nl
> >Subject: Re: Waarom het beter is dat Bush wint....
> >
> >REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
> >
> >
> >
> >Nog een belangrijk nadeel als Kerry wint: De oppositie aan de
> >linkerflank verdwijnt volkomen. Dit zal Kerry nog meer naar rechts doen
> >opschuiven, en met hem de algemene opinie. Het tegengeluid zal immers
> >nog conservatiever zijn dan het beleid.
> >
> >Slechts als Kerry zich na de verkiezingen ineens ontpopt als een echte
> >liberaal, die bereidt is de neoconservatieve agenda omver te schoppen,
> >is er hoop. En dat is niet helemaal onmogelijk, want Bush heeft zich
> >
>
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