The Mad Bull Of The Pompous

Aloha! It's been a while...

I've finished my screenplay. Spring is almost here. The deafening peep of hungry chicks tended by their mother hens awakens me most mornings.

We have a president again. The mess left to Mr. Obama by the Bush administration is the most horrific since Herbert Hoover passed the torch to Franklin Roosevelt. The movement that began with the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and came to fruition during the presidency of Ronald Reagan has proved itself again.

Conservatism...

It's a word that still commands respect if it means what the late Bill Buckley meant. It's a word that means something good if it means what Theodore Roosevelt meant: Patriotism. Prudence with the taxpayer's money. Respect for the land, the law, and the legacy of American Democracy.

But that's not what we have now. The so-called "conservative" movement has done more damage to this country than any terrorist could have hoped to do. The Bush foreign policy has cost more lives--needlessly--than did the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11th, 2001. The conservative mantra against "tax and spend liberals" can't hold a candle to the damage done by "spend and don't tax" conservatism. Capitalists who have known that the cops weren't watching have stolen oceans of money, kept wages so low that working people now think little of using a credit card to buy a hamburger, and have the nerve to command the right to continue steering the ship that they've let run onto the rocks.

What do we have now? The Great Depression's Sequel.

What do we have now? Cries of "class warfare" from the right-wing bastards who made this bed in which we lie (""class warfare" being the outraged cry of an abusive husband finally shot by his wife).

What do we have now? Fear and uncertainty bordering on panic.

Our new president is taking steps to fix the situation. He has tried to enlist the assistance of every patriotic American in the task.

But what does Rush say? That "Obama should fail."

An American president should FAIL! Why?!

Rush Limbaugh is appealing to the dried-up promises of three decades. He's appealing to the intellectual bankruptcy of a movement that considers Alaska governor Sarah Palin a serious candidate for president. He's appealing to those who believe in the ravings of über-anti-tax activist Grover Norquist who identifies our government as "the problem" and prescribes no government at all for us--a government we can reduce to the size that can be "drowned in the bathtub." He is appealing to those too ignorant and too arrogant to face the cold, hard realitlies the rest of us face.

The government IS us! For good or ill, it is the expression of how much we care for ourselves and for others. The right-wing cries out against "socialism" after wrecking their country through sheer greed for the second time in the span of a century. Reality is literally forcing us toward a more equitable arrangement of our national affairs.

Good conservatives like Bill Buckley and Teddy Roosevelt might have questioned the path we travel toward restoration of American prosperity, but they would never have railed against setting out for the destination. The Republican Party--sixteen years removed from its effort to "destroy the Democrat Party as a viable political entity in this country"--stands at the brink of having done themselves in instead.

Payback's a bitch...