Based on postings and comments, there is little doubt that nearly everyone who reads and participates in Daily Kos feels that the Bush Administration represents a huge distortion of American culture and history and are counting the days until this ungodly affliction will be lifted. Many feel as I do that with the exception of the Civil War, no period in US history has been as divisive and damaging as the Bush Jr Era. Most of us were deeply disappointed and truly outraged at the the Right Wing faction on the US Supreme Court who discounted their oaths of office and installed Bush Jr in the Presidency in the first place. We were also let down by Al Gore's ineffective handling of the Florida election and his easy capitulation.
However, the elephant in that room was the fact that even taking skullduggery into account, close to 50% of those voting, voted for Bush Jr and did so enthusiastically.
However you want to slice and dice the demographics, that's a huge piece of the population. We could have talked about ignorance of politics and the electoral process, but the scenes on our television screens told an additional story. There were enthusiastic, even exuberant crowds wildly cheering for Bush Jr. Fanatic operatives stormed the Dade County election board effectively shutting it down. Overall there was little doubt that Bush partisans had a relentless will to prevail.
In the aftermath of 2000, sensing that Bush Jr was as bad as I thought he was, my first hope was that he would soon crash into the rocks from inexperience and hubris and my hope was that the Conservative movement would gutter out just from the lack of Clinton supplying the oxygen to fan the flames. Those outcomes might have occurred but for 9/11. That changed the equation and Bush's gang, being unabashed opportunists, took full advantage and made 9/11 the gift that kept on giving. It coated them in teflon and elevated their banality to the olympian in the popular mind.
Bush Jr fans appeared to grow more fanatic. The corporate media became ever more complicit and compliant and talking heads delighted in overt cheerleading for whatever talking points Karl Rove devised. Foaming-mouthed agitators on Right Wing talk radio kept the masses stirred up in a MacLuhanesque media orgy.
It was all going so well. 2004 came along and, horror of horrors, the Democrats nominated a genuine war hero. They appeared motivated and energized by their loathing for Bush Jr and we all wondered how anything could stop the juggernaut. But Swift Boat Liars neutralized the war hero and the Religious Right demonstrated that the Democrats still had a lot to learn about motivation and being energized. After another stinky election charade, this time in Ohio, Bush Jr demonstrated that an inch was as good as a mile and had a good time figuring out how he was going to spend his "political capital."
But, right after taking the second oath of office, Bush Jr hit the rocks as expected. His Social Security initiative was stopped in its tracks, poor Terry Schiavo's plight revealed crass Republican opportunism, Katrina and Rita showcased Republican incompetence and Iraq never failed to amaze on all levels.
In 2006 the Democrats retook Congress. Although there was a razor thin margin in the Senate, both houses had Democratic committee chairmen with subpoena powers and scandals broke out all over.
What's not to like? Well, with all of Bush Jr's perfidy out in the open, his incompetence well-established and his overall failures widely recognized, there are still a stubborn 30% in most polls who continue to think he's doing a fine job and strongly support him. 30% is a very bad number for Bush, but convert it into raw headcount and that's still a lot of people.
My one point of hope in both 2000 and 2004 was that Bush would so royally screw up that he would fatally discredit the entire Conservative Movement and energize Liberals. Yet as each domino falls, as each of Bush's failures reaches critical mass, I keep hoping that the political equation in this country will change enough to bring the pendulum back from the rightmost fringes.
As bad as things are now for Bush, I'm still seeing the pendulum way out there. Corporate elites are still pouring money into Republican pockets. The same compliant heads are still walking the right wing talk on cable and broadcast news and foaming mouths on Right Wing radio are still spewing venom into our national conversation. I still fear widespread election tampering and I think that the Right Wing think tank infrastructure is ready to adapt to whatever slings and arrows Bush's downward trajectory brings.
So my question is: What in the world is it going to take to turn things around? It's scary to think that it took the Great Depression to cause a sea change on the scale that we need now. Nixon and Reagan were able to change the country's direction after Vietnam and Watergate. Maybe the debacle in Iraq will precipitate the paradigm shift that's now needed.
Reagan Conservatism is deeply entrenched and seemingly has no intention of dying out. For progressive values to prevail, we are all going to have to match and exceed the right in commitment and enthusiasm before we can hope to prevail.
So the bottom line is...hard work. If we liberals and progressives really mean what we say, then we need to get ready for the long haul, because the Right is not going to go away quietly. They are deeply committed to their point of view and have shown us the lengths that they'll go to shove it down our throats.
We need to ask ourselves if we can match and exceed their committment and work to make our ideals prevail.