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November 2 is now in the past and I'm of two minds.
In my first mind is a cacaphony. It keeps replaying that Marlon Brando line from "Apocalypse Now":
"The horror! The horror!"
One hundred thousand Iraqi people dead. And 59 million Americans who could care less.
In my second mind, I'm plagued by perspective. I know we've seen George Bush and his handlers before,they were Hitler, they were Stalin, they were Idi Amin, they were Saddam Hussain, they are Osama Bin Laden.
We have seen them before, in a thousand other times and places where greed and ignorance and fear and insanity and manipulation and bigotry found ascendance. And we know their atrocities are always carried out and made possible by masses of warrior-rubes, the Nazis, the Communists, the Baathists, the Al Qaedas, and now the "Christian" Right. Blinded by delusion, pawns in the game. With some people, it all never registers until they're on the median strip with a "homeless vet" sign, wondering what happened to their legs and why the VA hospital closed. With some people it doesn't register even then.
To quote Boy George, who said it best: "War is Stupid". You'd think we would have figured this out by now.
I have always been a pacifist, albeit an often-pissed-off one. I've hung out with the Buddhists, but I'd never claim enlightenment, or really any other high level of moral superiority. Also I'm kind of cheap, I really don't like wasting money, especially money that's been extorted from me.
I will admit, I do think of myself as reasonably smart. Clearly smarter than those 59 million or so Bush voters, who are, at the end of the day - and I can say this with no doubt in either mind whatsoever - complete dumbfucks. They may or may not be a majority, but clearly theit numbers can get the Diebold machines close enough to steal the election.
So it's just sad what has happened to America. My core identity is "citizen of the world", but I talk like an American, the culture's familiar, San Francisco is still a great place with amazing, creative people, and Mt. Shasta is beautiful, even if Siskiyou County votes like dumbfuck central.