Putting Last Week's Victories Into Perspective

[Yavin4]

I just read Skinner's beautiful journal entry, and man, did he ever capture what I was thinking. Yes, I too am pleased with the results, but I also have an empty feeling. I think I know why.

Before Bush came to power in 2001, the future looked bright for all of us. We had a budget surplus. We were creating new industries, new jobs, and lifting the poor out of poverty. We were heading in a positivie direction.

Then came Bush, and all hell seemed to break loose literally from election day in 2000. Ever since the butterfly ballots, it's been one up hill battle after another. The worst day was 9/11. Not only was it tragic for all Americans, it gave an incompetent, petulant, small-minded man seemingly unlimited power for almost five years. Whatever he wanted by way of policy, he got because he played on the nation's post-9/11 anxiety.

He got an illegal war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich, no-bid contracts for war profiteers, illegal wiretaps, the outing of a CIA agent, corruption, prisoner abuses in Iraq and Gitmo, and near complete silence and compliance from the media. It took hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Hurrican Katrina to wake the country up to the fact that emperor had no clothes.

Last week's victory was America's way of demoting Bush and stripping him of his unlimited power. It was a necessary and vital act, but it still does not give us back our six years of struggle, and it does not put us back on the path where we were in 2000.