I don't know about anyone else, but I've spent the last eight years living with the feeling that history took a wrong turn. In the history of should've-been, George W. Bush should have been a footnote in politics, 9/11 should have been either stopped or blunted, and Iraq should have been a diplomatic victory rather than a military quagmire. Instead, on November 7, 2000, we became a nation of the emotionally abused, willing to accept the old saw that all politicians lie, but they do it for our own good, all for our own good. They only hurt us because they love us.
As a moderate with liberal leanings I never felt that love, but I'm not one to readily accept abuse, either. I watched as the political discourse shifted from the "whining" of liberals who couldn't get over Gorebot losing, to the "treason" of liberals who dared to question the administration, and thus opposed our country, after 9/11. In a country built on discourse and disagreement (read the histories to find out how "unified" our founding fathers were), debate of ideas, and post-partisan compromise, I was disgusted to watch as political vultures like Ann Coulter defined patriotism as unthinking agreement with anything the administration does.
Much talk is made about how we unified after 9/11, how we were all Americans. We're all Americans even without it. But the Republican dick measure continued thereafter, forcing us all to whip out our patriotisms and lay them across the bar. And while we were all Americans, we were Americans who had just been given the rawest hiding we'd taken in more than sixty years. The Republicans took that opportunity to further push their emotionally abusive policies. We spent years and years after 2001 living in abject fear of color-coded alerts.
In 2004 I hoped everything would change. Unfortunately, the Democrats had fed into the Republican abuse, and while also whispering to themselves, "They only hurt us because they love us," had allowed the administration free reign. John Kerry was not our first choice for nominee, but we let the Republican attack machine, the Rovian smear mongers, let us believe that Howard Dean was some kind of ticking time bomb. So we had Kerry, who was a respectable enough candidate with proven military credentials. His problem was that he took the high road, which only left him an easy target for shots below the belt.
The election should have been Kerry's, but it's tough to take down any incumbent coming down from a post-9/11 approval rating of 90% (and I was one of the 10%) no matter how fast he plummets. The election was too soon, and it wouldn't be until two years later, in 2006, that people would start to wake up from their abused stupor.
This is not about people being bitter and voting guns and gays and abortion. I don't believe people are bitter. I believe people are blinded. I think the abuse has so rooted itself, that people are happy to say, "It's all right that I can't make my mortgage, so long as those queers can't marry and babies aren't being cut up for their stem cells." People rationalize and justify poor treatment by a party that only pays them lip service, because the party tells them they're pretty, and makes them feel special, and says, "I only hurt you because I love you."
I'm not running for anything, so I can say these things. I'm an American, so I can say these things. I'm not a traitor, nor an elitist. I don't think some people deserve better treatment than others. I do believe, however, that some people accept worse treatment than others. They eat the shit sandwich handed to them by their leaders and say, with a grin on their faces, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"
My reaction was to become more and more liberal as the years went on.
History took a wrong turn, and the American people were too long complicit in brushing that path. In Barack Obama I see the course correction.
~PO