Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 22, 2008
Even the Teapot Dome bozo was popular when he died -- and other thoughts to console yourself during the Bush reign.
May 23, 2003 | My bad back and I have just returned from six days in Kauai. Hawaii is full of sweet, easygoing people and I am glad to be home where I can be more edgy and not stand out. I was an outsider in the small Hawaiian town where my boyfriend and I stayed, and I much preferred this to feeling like an outsider at home, as I have during these last seemingly hopeless months. At the same time, it had been good to get away from daily life enough so I could see it more clearly, even with my failing vision.
When I got back, a lot of people were going around saying that the war in Iraq was over. Karl Rove said we didn't win the war in Iraq, we won the Battle of Iraq. In any case, now we're in the less festive, "everything has turned to shit" stage, the "granny getting wheeled off to the hospital in a wheelbarrow" stage. People are starting to badger us into "admitting" that the war was a good thing; also, that Bush is not as dumb as a lot of us think. I'd like to point out nicely that they also tried to get us to "admit" this about Ronald Reagan. What can you do in the face of this but just smile prettily? The important thing to remember is that we survived Ronald Reagan, and we will survive Bush. It gives me hope to remember this, because that was really scary -- under Reagan's happy-go-lucky demeanor was true malevolence. On the other hand, I don't think Bush can pull it off. He just doesn't have it. He's Alfred E. Newman in "Top Gun." He's still just a bad boy trying to redeem himself and his father.
Another thing that gives me hope is knowing that historically, what is done in secret will be brought to light. You can ask Jesus, or J.Edgar Hoover, or Clyde. This should scare our little Republican friends to death. History promises that the pendulum will swing back to the left. The truth of this smoke-and-mirrors, smirky, smug, pimping White House will be exposed. Everything always is. Even Warren Harding was popular when he died. We've been wearing glasses scratched with fear for nearly two years, but with no WMD, no Saddam, no Osama, people are beginning to see better.
I feel more despair in some areas, though. The White House actually seems to believe that it is fighting a holy war. By the same token, so did Pope Urban II. He thought the first crusade would be a breeze, that his forces were noble and heroic and of God, and that they would rescue everyone. He did not think about the aftermath, what effect the ripples from his rock would have on the pond. For 90 years people thought he'd won, and then we got a thousand years of rage between Christians and Muslims, endless death and brutality in the name of sanctimony and obsession.
But when this makes me feel hopeless -- I don't think I have 90 years -- I remember that the current pope, John Paul II, for all of his disastrous policies, apologized a few years ago to the Muslim community. He said, in the presence of Muslims, "Every single one of the crusades was a mistake, and I am sorry." Then he went into a mosque, and kissed the Koran. This sharp spiritual vision takes my breath away.
One nice thing I've noticed since my return is that I no longer have to go around saying I supported our troops every few minutes; people don't try so hard to badger you into supporting an occupying force. Also, it's OK again to express tiny, tiny worries about John Ashcroft, within reason: A certain special friend of mine said in an e-mail that we never see Ashcroft anymore because he's supervising the torture on Guantanamo, and I'm sure that certain special friend of mine is going to get audited this year.
But what gives me the most hope of all is that the more suffering and bullshit there is, the more good you see called forth -- caring, generosity, courage. For awhile, everyone seemed so afraid that they went along while our liberties were being stolen. But recently it's been possible to bank again on the knowledge that the American people really, truly love freedom. I think things will be harder for the right again. They've been crystal clear for a long time now on what they are up to, from Ashcroft trying to make the PATRIOT Act permanent, to Bush flogging his obscene tax cut and then landing on the aircraft carrier with his pleased-as-punch little turtley smirk. What's not clear is how many of us there are, and how hard we're willing to fight for this unbelievably touching, vulnerable experiment called democracy.
And one last wonderful change: We get to whine again. We get to mention our bad backs, and broken refrigerators, and failing vision. During the shocking, awesome part of the war, before the dying grannies in the wheelbarrow parts, if you complained that your freezer wasn't working, someone would say, "Yeah, that's really awful, compared to a mother holding her starving child in a bombed-out basement in Nasiriya." Or if you mentioned that your allergies were terrible this year, someone would say, "I guess it's not such a catastrophe compared to people in bombed-out hovels in Baghdad who've lost limbs."
Now you can talk about insomnia, bad backs, how crazy and depressed you still feel about the war, and people respond with kindness. I noticed that at church, people are singing again with abandon. We lost our fight to stop this war, and now we are more desperate than usual to let the music take us to the place inside where the mind and the media can't get to, to something bigger than ourselves, something intuitive, ethereal, beyond words and opinion. I danced in church last Sunday, and sang as loudly as I could, and the notes drifted up into the ether, and it pulled a part of me along with it, pulled me higher.
I think some of us lost our vision briefly while the bombs were falling, like people who took acid and stared at the sun. It was hard to think straight, and you were supposed to feel ashamed to be a progressive, or even a yellow dog Democrat, whose vision is of freedom, equality, peace and social justice. And that was about as frightening as it gets -- when you lose your vision, you're really doomed. Your spirit is in danger. If you weren't careful during the good part of the war, throbbing Testosterone Mind took over your attention: It was like cobra hypnsosis. The only places I felt safe were peace marches and church; singing, in community. The rest of the time I felt mentally wounded. I think I was, too; that the cell membrane that contains me was torn. Spirit was and is the only thing that heals spirit, like cool compresses for your soul, or soft warm hands, and without it, you are so fucked. Only church and peace marches could knit the torn cell membrane of me back together, just enough so that I was still permeable for good to get in and out, yet protected from danger.
Get Salon in your mailbox!