Don't read this if you are about to go to bed!

From the SF Gate....a viewpoint I have thought about before, but hadn't dared to express it. It's depressing stuff, people. Handle with care. I am interested in opinions on this, I find it fascinating in a morbid sort of way. Does history run in cycles and are we in the midst of a particularly nasty one?

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

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, September 15, 2004


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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.

let's just end it early. Like in 2 months?

There are too many signs that the shit has just not gotten deep enough to wake up the average American.

But how much shit will it take, and will our children survive these atrocities?

I think it's about run its course.

I was not posting this as any kind of statement on the upcoming election. I am still working my ass off for Kerry and will continue to all the way through election day, when I will be serving as a citizen observer at the polls in my precinct all day long.

I just thought it was an interesting pov.

I certainly hope with all my heart and soul that Kerry wins in 48 days. The article scared me with respect to my daughter and our planet.

I agree with this. I think Kerry will be in for only 4 years unless we investigate these bastards and put them away. If they are allowed freedom after all of this they will be back with a vengence and we will head directly into this scenario. Of course, I am depressed at the moment so hopefully my pov will change tomorrow. This was a good article as sad as it is.

I can't believe anybody would want to live through a Revolution. The violence, the waring factions, the loss of food, shelter, supplies, jobs and especially the uncertainty of who's going to be left standing when the dust clears. It could be the Jeffersonians. It could be Bastillites, or it could be the Bolshevics, or worse, the Nazis. Nader's shining belief that he can pick the pieces up as if his time will come is not what history tells us about the majority of the world's revolutions. We could be balkanized. Imagine a former US territory of 7-20 different nation states that put up walls and barbed fences between each other. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

No. We know we're heading on the wrong path now, so the idea that this path must be taken to it's final stupidity is by no means inevitable if we work to change the course we already know is wrong. All that's needed is leadership.

France survived Napoleon, we can survive Bush.

because I think the conservative cycle started in 1980.

Even though Bill Clinton was Prez for 8 years, a good part of that was during the Gingrich revolution. I think Clinton s domestic policies were quite moderate, & in some ways conservative, such as balanced budgets.

And I think the last 4 years were an abberation because of the wacko election.

It was Reagan and his voodoo economics, the 80's "Me Generation" selfishness, the new political power of the right wing Christians (Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in particular), etc.

But if Bush wins, I will have absolutely no pity for this country. The people in this country need to learn that when you elect retarded leaders with retarded policies, you're going to get retarded results.

I don't know about the cycles and so forth, but, on merit, * should be polling in the teens. I think that the destruction of the US has to become much more complete before we can begin a resurgence on the scale that we are in need of. IOW, I want to bounce back from *'s Murka feeling that a person like Tom Delay will never again hold national office. That neither Jeb or any of the other Bushes can ever be in a position to deny people's voting rights. That a Rupert Murdoch clone will never again tell people what to think or whom to vote for.

A Kerry win will be great for morale, but is probably a band-aid where the nation needs chemotherapy.