A Note To Mr. Bush and Inhabitants of the Red Planet
An editorial from Wild Democracy Ride's friend Fletcher Christian...
Dear Mr. Bush:
I hear that your re-election campaign is going quite well. Congratulations! The crowds have adored you from West Texas to South Carolina, and everywhere in between.
It appears you’re rolling to victory, even turning states won by Vice President Gore from Blue to Purple to Red. It could be 1984 all over again (sorry, not in the literary sense, Mr. Ashcroft).
I know, Mr. President, there do appear to be some stubborn holdouts out on the Coasts. Those damn Californians seem to love the star of T3, but not 43. And those East Coast elites! You never really liked them when you attended Andover or Harvard Business School, and they still aren’t fond of you. And insult of insults, the residents of the Greatest City in the World – where you rediscovered the spring in your step and got a bounce in the polls – they prefer Flipper and John Boy.
You might ask, as the 9/11 country music revenge anthem goes, "Do You Remember?" Don’t they recall your moving performance standing on a pile of rubble at the World Trade Center site, telling New York firemen that the dead would be avenged? They do, Mr. President. That’s why they’re voting for the other guy.
The vast majority of the World Trade Center victims lived in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. None of these states will endorse a second term. These Americans wept on September 11th. They still cry when they see their lost loved one’s winter coat hanging in the front closet or their daughter’s face reflecting back the image of her lost mother.
For many of them, their surviving loved ones, their friends, and thousands of their neighbors; their memory is only big enough for the details of a life cut short. You’ve got no place in their past, or their future. The present is frightening enough.
After spending $200 billion on Iraq, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and Al Qaida’s forces are growing stronger. The insurgency continues to rock Iraq and more than 1,000 Americans have been killed. August 2004 was the bloodiest month on record. Iran and North Korea are still building nuclear capabilities. Our military forces have been depleted and are less prepared to go to war today in another part of the world than at any time in the past 20 years. The United States no longer has the international goodwill it had after 9/11. Our military might has suffered, but so has our diplomatic strength and influence in the world.
The man whose daddy got him out of Vietnam finds himself in his own quagmire because he ignored said daddy. There’s nothing less attractive than a 50-something man-child still acting out against his father. Residents of Manhattan know a daddy complex when they see it. They have been talking to their shrinks about their own complexes for years. They see strength in people who admit they need help.
The East Coast sees no strength in you, W. The Blue States see through a man whose blood never seemed blue enough for the blue bloods. The brush clearing is just another way of sticking it to the elites that gave you the brush off.
The Evel Knievel jump-over-20-schoolbuses-with-your-hair-on-fire foreign policy is just proving your manhood to a Republican base who didn’t find 41 sufficiently manly.
The memory of the World Trade Center seems to be little more than a campaign commercial in the world of Bush-Cheney 2004. Ground Zero is now a film set for the Republican Party’s November blockbuster, "Bush II: Four More Years."
Red America may want to see this hackneyed sequel, but at Ground Zero, they want something new. Different might not always be better, but at least it is different.
Dear Mr. Bush:
I hear that your re-election campaign is going quite well. Congratulations! The crowds have adored you from West Texas to South Carolina, and everywhere in between.
It appears you’re rolling to victory, even turning states won by Vice President Gore from Blue to Purple to Red. It could be 1984 all over again (sorry, not in the literary sense, Mr. Ashcroft).
I know, Mr. President, there do appear to be some stubborn holdouts out on the Coasts. Those damn Californians seem to love the star of T3, but not 43. And those East Coast elites! You never really liked them when you attended Andover or Harvard Business School, and they still aren’t fond of you. And insult of insults, the residents of the Greatest City in the World – where you rediscovered the spring in your step and got a bounce in the polls – they prefer Flipper and John Boy.
You might ask, as the 9/11 country music revenge anthem goes, "Do You Remember?" Don’t they recall your moving performance standing on a pile of rubble at the World Trade Center site, telling New York firemen that the dead would be avenged? They do, Mr. President. That’s why they’re voting for the other guy.
The vast majority of the World Trade Center victims lived in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. None of these states will endorse a second term. These Americans wept on September 11th. They still cry when they see their lost loved one’s winter coat hanging in the front closet or their daughter’s face reflecting back the image of her lost mother.
For many of them, their surviving loved ones, their friends, and thousands of their neighbors; their memory is only big enough for the details of a life cut short. You’ve got no place in their past, or their future. The present is frightening enough.
After spending $200 billion on Iraq, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and Al Qaida’s forces are growing stronger. The insurgency continues to rock Iraq and more than 1,000 Americans have been killed. August 2004 was the bloodiest month on record. Iran and North Korea are still building nuclear capabilities. Our military forces have been depleted and are less prepared to go to war today in another part of the world than at any time in the past 20 years. The United States no longer has the international goodwill it had after 9/11. Our military might has suffered, but so has our diplomatic strength and influence in the world.
The man whose daddy got him out of Vietnam finds himself in his own quagmire because he ignored said daddy. There’s nothing less attractive than a 50-something man-child still acting out against his father. Residents of Manhattan know a daddy complex when they see it. They have been talking to their shrinks about their own complexes for years. They see strength in people who admit they need help.
The East Coast sees no strength in you, W. The Blue States see through a man whose blood never seemed blue enough for the blue bloods. The brush clearing is just another way of sticking it to the elites that gave you the brush off.
The Evel Knievel jump-over-20-schoolbuses-with-your-hair-on-fire foreign policy is just proving your manhood to a Republican base who didn’t find 41 sufficiently manly.
The memory of the World Trade Center seems to be little more than a campaign commercial in the world of Bush-Cheney 2004. Ground Zero is now a film set for the Republican Party’s November blockbuster, "Bush II: Four More Years."
Red America may want to see this hackneyed sequel, but at Ground Zero, they want something new. Different might not always be better, but at least it is different.
posted by Todd at 10:33 AM
1 Comments:
Thank you for the great post!
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