I protest.

A fool and his President...

I've been notably silent here for some time, primarily due to personal issues related to my work situation and to my own neverending struggle with clinical depression. It's not that I've had nothing to say, it's just that I haven't had the energy to say it. And I do have things to say.

A small part of my silence has been a difficult-to-shake feeling that my writing here makes little difference in the scheme of things. As angry as I am at the fools who are running this country, I will never be even a Matthew or a Jesse, much less an Atrios. I may be brighter than the average rock but when I see Republican stickers on car bumpers, the sheer idiocy and folly seems overwhelming.

I remain astounded that anyone could continue to support Bush, who is not one of the scant few who have actually benefited from his actions. Those few are the Halliburtons and Bechtels, not to mention the members of Al Qaeda. For the average person, Bush has been an umitigated disaster. So why do those average people support him? I can only conclude that they are too dim-witted to realize that they have been systematically and continuously lied to, they deliberately believe the lies for reasons that escape me, or they have been made so afraid that they cling desperately to a fantasy of Bush as a hero. I don't know, all three of those alternatives just seem like stupidity to me.

Bush and his administration are lying to us, they have always lied to us and they always will lie to us. Whether Bush actually believes what he is saying is irrelevant (although it's vaguely possible), since in that case whoever is feeding him his lines is lying.

"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."

The thing is, there are a few of us who were never fooled. I think I have written here before of my fear shortly after the events of 9/11/2001 that Bush and the Republicans would turn those events to their political advantage, using the fear so engendered to rob us of our rights so as to consolidate and keep their power. While it might have been considered unthinkable at the time, I, at least, thought it. The man had already shown his true colors, the instant he took the White House. It was obvious, to me at least, that those in power were of the opinion that their ends justified any means whatsoever. If anything, I underestimated their egotism and desire for power.

Like all of two or three other Americans, I opposed the invasion of Afghanistan. As I wrote at the time, in response to someone who claimed that "strong outside pressure" (as in, bombs) was the only possibility,

If we can deliver bombs, we can deliver food. Bomb them with kindness and don't forget the propaganda.

Dollars, food and propaganda work well as weapons, and they aren't so hard on the civilian population. Yeah, you may deride me as "an idealist" and "unrealistic," but this, at least, has the virtue of not having been tried over and over and failing each time.

Afghanistan notwithstanding, however, the invasion of Iraq was utterly beyond the pale. The day of the invasion I was shaking, pacing, as upset as I have ever been. More upset than I have ever been over something that did not affect me directly.

Just who the hell believed the lies Bush, Cheney and the rest continually cranked out? Yeah, I know, lots of people did. After more than ten years of sanctions, of bombing, of no-fly zones and more bombing, still people who should have known better believed that Saddam Hussein could have had so-called "weapons of mass destruction." And over the last few months I read of them "coming to their senses" and realizing that they were wrong to support the war.

Well, duh.

Where the hell were those senses when there was a chance we could have stopped it, huh?

Now there are over 1,100 American dead. Almost ten times that number of American injured and maimed for life. Tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and injured. Before the war I posted this picture on my main website as a protest of the run-up to war. Those are children at an Baghdad school a few months before our invasion; I used it with permission from the person who took it. Now I wonder how many of those children are still alive and healthy. Any?

While the buck may stop on Bush's desk (however much he may protest that fact), as Americans we are all responsible for what we have done in Iraq.

And not only what we have done in Iraq, but what we have been and are now doing to our own children, who fight and die at our behest in an occupation that many of them know is unjust. As with Viet Nam, so with the new quagmire: Which one of these children does Bush nominate as the last to die for a lie?

This is only one reason to vote against Bush in nine days, although certainly it is a good one. What fool would deny the truth, what fool would believe the lie that our deeds were and are justified? That fool will vote for the liar.

Fortunately, though, that fool is not in the majority. Someone pointed out in one of the many articles I read today something that I have been saying for months, although not here: How many people who supported Gore in 2000 now support Bush? How many newspapers endorsed Gore then and endorse Bush now? Conversely, how many who then supported Bush now support Kerry? Even a paper that has endorsed every Republican candidate for President since Eisenhower in 1952, with only one exception in 1964, has refused to endorse Bush this year.

Bush will lose. It is my hope that he will lose by a landslide, but he will lose. And he knows it.

The fools haven't won yet. Too bad that it has taken so long for the rest of us to start fighting them. And, of course, the fight won't be over with the election. We have lost a lot and it will take more than a single election for us to recover it. We must defeat the Patriot Act. We must find some way out of the debacle in Iraq, even if it is only a withdrawal as being the least bad of a terrible set of options. We must rebuild our links with the world and somehow regain the trust that Bush and his team of moronic idealogues has so squandered. And so much more.

But first, the election. And if you happen to be one of the fools who plans to vote for the lie, well, you should most probably just stay the hell away from me.