Mark Morford On Hope....a TINY GLIMMER

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George W. Bush Gives Me Hope
The astonishing collapse of the Bumbling One surely means healthy change is imminent, right?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 18, 2005


Here's the good news: It really can't get much worse.

We cannot afford any more wars. The environment has been sold to the bone. The national spirit has been beaten like an Alaskan baby seal and the GOP has worked our last nerve, passed through the karmic blood-brain barrier, reached saturation to the point where even moderate Repubs and gobs of intelligent Christians are finally saying, Oh my God, what have we done, and how did it all go so wrong, and how much Prozac and wine and praying to a very disappointed Jesus will it take to fix it?

Which is why I'm here to tell you hope abounds. In fact, George W. Bush gives me hope. He gives me hope because he has led the country into a zone where the only way to go -- morally, spiritually, economically -- is up. Is out. He gives me hope because after it has all appeared so bleak and ugly and lost for so many years, it would now appear that all laws of karmic and poetic and moral justice still hold true. And how reassuring is that?

It is the eternal formula: When all is at its darkest, you cannot help but feel that some sort of transformational upswing must be just around the corner, one that maybe, just maybe contains the seeds of something resembling health and progress and revolution. Darkest before the dawn, baby, and don't you see the sky getting just a little bit lighter?

George W. Bush gives me hope. He gives hope because his narrow and myopic political ideology is right this minute being proved wildly unsound across the board, and his vicious leadership circle is revealing its true bloodstained colors and his party is crumbling at the center due to some of the worst policy decisions you will see in your lifetime.

Simply put, the collapse of BushCo represents the intrinsic unworkability of a war-hungry, thuggish ideology. It is the failure of the bully, the innate defect in any political philosophy that has at its heart dishonesty, and fiscal irresponsibility, and death.

See, Bush has run out of options, of mumbled half-excuses, and many in his own party are abandoning him as they fear huge losses in next year's congressional elections. Bush's nauseating pro-torture policies are appalling even his staunchest pals in Congress, not to mention just about every remaining international ally, and even "mastermind" Karl Rove is on the ropes and there appear to be no genius strategies to help Shrub recover. Yes indeed, hope drips from the boughs like honey.

I know, it ain't over yet. You could easily argue that there are three toxic years left and there are plenty of other countries we can vilify and invade (we'd be bombing Iran right now if we weren't fresh out of both disposable U.S. soldiers and cash reserves) and there will be plenty of opportunities in the next 1,000 days for Bush to suck up to his terrified fundamentalist base and cause even more damage as he hunkers down and pretends to know how to go about the business of running the nation.

But in many ways, it feels as though the most severe damage has been done (yes, Samuel Alito excepted), and there now appears to be a hint of a wisp of a spark of imminent upheaval. Can you smell it?

Do you feel the hope? Not yet? Look closer: It's been over four years now that the GOP has had it all locked down tight, the stranglehold to end all strangleholds, owned Congress and stacked the courts and shut down the media and demonized all voices of dissent and ran the president the way a pimp runs a prostitution ring.

No light escaped. They had masterminded one of the most brutal and mean-spirited and thoroughly effective subjugations of the American idea in 100 years, and it looked as though their power and reach knew no limits. It was astounding: No matter what atrocity or torture or war or violent abuse of nature, they would simply gloat and the media would cower and the people would merely look on, beaten and glazed and tired, and accept it as dark manna.

But now something has shifted. The iron grip is slipping, sooner and more quickly than any of the right's political architects predicted, surely sooner than Rove had strategized, far sooner than the 20-year master plan the GOP had in place.

What happened? Simple: The horrible policies, the lies and the lies on top of the lies (if "we do not torture" doesn't beat "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" as the impeachable BS of the century, we are lost) became just too much. The center could not hold. The atrocities are now paying their moral dividends. The GOP is now reaping what it has sown. Which is another way of saying: The system works.

After all, you cannot keep pumping junk food into the body and expect it to stay upright and functional. You cannot force so many toxins into the planet and not expect it to break out in rashes and pimples and heat waves and violent storms. Eventually, the body recoils. The spirit shudders and throws off. The disease runs its course and, barring any permanent scars and mental derangement, the fever breaks.

Look, I shall not argue that this hope, this light is coming from millions of people finally waking up to the progressive truth. I shall not be so foolish as to suggest that a grand anti-war pro-sex pro-intelligence happily spiritual but deeply nonreligious enlightenment is taking place. I am not so naive, and as I said, there are three treacherous years left. The reality is less pretty than that.

But there is a hint of a whisper of a possibility of a deeper change, of the pendulum swinging back, finally, to humanity and love and something resembling progress, which is more than we've had in five years, and certainly more than many of us expected, given the alleged strength of the GOP choke hold.

So thank you, George, for bringing such delicious sips of renewed hope. Thank you for reminding us all, through such a litany of painful and nauseating policies and lies, that the universe still repays such abuse with well-deserved slaps upside your aw-shucks head. You give us hope. Because as you and your administration careen and implode and sputter and stutter and fail, well, the world is only the better for it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.


As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SF Gate Culture Blog.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/11/18/notes111805.DTL


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2005 SF Gate