November 03, 2004
#268 :: Root
Nature's tenacity and Southern California's voracious appetite for water created this thing. 66 years ago, men of vision and will bade the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dam the Kern River, with a mind to bring more water to Bakersfield at the southern end of California's fertile crop growing region, the Central Valley. Slowly, the water rose. Huge, old California liveoaks sank beneath it, their deep roots still clutching the dirt their kind had owned for thousands of years. It crept up on an abandoned village and drowned it. Eventually it made a reservoir, a source of hydro power, a pretty recreational lake for vacationers and fisherfolk and hophead jerks on Jetskis. And people forgot about the history that lay beneath it, and the living things it had killed. As Southern California grew, so grew its thirst, to unslakeable proportions. The water began to shrink from the land again a few years ago, driven back by drought and a million washed cars and irrigated lawns, and the appetites of hundreds of dairy and produce farms. And one by one, the trees began to emerge - twisted and dead, but undeniably strong, their roots well intact.
This is one of them.
Before long, this blog will return to its little mission; to do otherwise would be to let the jingoistic evangelical forces trying to subvert the core values of the constitution - that all men are created equal and are entitled to certain unalienable rights - win.
We need art more than ever before, and if there's a bright side to the election of Bush for a second term, it's that this sanctioning of American warmongering and greed will spark an era of raw, visceral and eloquent creativity across the globe, the likes of which haven't been seen since the Renaissance.
We'll survive this presidency. We'll survive the "good things" they claim they're doing for the country, no matter how many of us they send off to feed their illicit, profiteering disaster of a war, no matter how many of us are crushed for being the wrong gender, the wrong sexual orientation, the wrong color or the wrong socioeconomic class. We'll get through it with fierce, vigilant, unswerving minority leaders, with grace and soul, and with as much hard-edged art as we can muster. In the end, it's still our country. And I'll be damned before I give up on it and "move to Europe" like so many of my weaker-minded friends are threatening to do, before I give up on the poor moderate victims of GOP propaganda who were misled into betraying us all in this bitter cultural battle.
I've had an ongoing correspondence this week with someone who's contemplating departing the U.S. because he believes it to be irretrievably broken, and he cannot bear the shame of being American.
I'm proud to be part of the "other" half of America. We still believe it stands for something better than what the beasts in the Beltway are creating. We believe the majority will come to realize how badly they've been played and that we can restore a sense of reason to our national voice. Nobody ever died of shame; what really sent millions to an early grave is far more insidious: it's apathy.
I'm tough. I'm busy. And I'm plenty pissed off. How about you?
Posted by mack reed at November 3, 2004 10:54 PM | TrackBackhell yeah. besides, what else were we going to do, roll over & go to sleep for four years? we can't let up at all, unless we want "them" to take the rest of the country, too. those "red states" aren't so "red". 50% (or 49%, 51%) ain't 100%. not at all.
Posted by: devojane at November 5, 2004 11:48 AMYou are not going to believe the horrifying rhetoric they've already started putting out. Check this out.
Posted by: mack at November 5, 2004 12:05 PMI would not STFU for Nixon.
I will not STFU for Bush.
Now I have the internet.
Now I have 55 million like-minded patriots.
I do not fear their God, for he is my God,
and they're taking his name in vain.
You're reminding me of one of my favorite recent bumper stickers:
JESUS TO BUSH:
STOP USING ME AS A REFERENCE
What if you realize that those who voted for Bush aren't "victims," like you claim?
"Liberal Elites" like you keep saying things like "we pity the people in the Red states," or "how can they be so stupid?"
Well, to quote a commentator above me here, just STFU. Instead of voting for "Chimpy McBushitler," you were willing to vote for someone who had no position he wasn't willing to change.
It wasn't the Gay topics. It wasn't Religious topics. It was the Terrorism topic. Bush supporters voted for him because they knew he was telling the truth about staying in Iraq. Kerry supporters voted for him hoping he was lying about staying in Iraq. Oh, and because they HATE Bush. And isn't THAT a good reason to vote for someone?
Face it: your hatred, your bias, your close-mindedness lost you this election. You sided with Michael Moore, and you LOST. Get over it. Lets put a GOOD candidate up in 2008, and I'll vote for him (I'm not a huge fan of Bush, either) over the Republican. Until then, just stop whining.
Posted by: Wonderduck at November 6, 2004 06:45 PM'duck, counting on us to stop protesting the direction the administration is taking this country is pretty much like pretending that half the people in this country who voted Democratic - whether for Kerry or against Bush, will just go away. I've heard a lot of bigoted, destructive rhetoric in that vein lately ("Fine, let 'em move to France if they don't like it") and I have to point out that this country was founded on the values of diversity and tolerance. "Liberal elite?" Get off your high horse and acknowledge that there are millions of people in this country who think differently than you, who love the country just as much as you do, and who have just as much a right to speak freely about its future. Spare us the easy, empty buzzwords.
There's a central dichotomy in this country right now along ideological lines, a really very frightening rift of intolerance that threatens to tear us apart.
But I'm gonna skip that argument for the minute, and any argument on the candidates and zero in on Iraq: What. Are. You. Talking about? Telling what truth about Iraq? It's been proven that the war was predicated upon lies at the very worst, and completely inaccurate intelligence at the very least. To wit, there were no weapons of mass destruction, Hussein had no direct ties to terrorist organizations, and in fact hated Bin Laden and the Saudis for a variety of complex reasons. The fact that it's become a rally point since then for every Islamic fundamentalist terrorist with an ax to grind against America is tragic and horrible, but had nothing to do with the trumped-up pretenses for war.
How do you reconcile the fact that people in the very states that *have* been the targets of terrorism - principally New York and California (my very own L.A. was to be blown up in a 2000 attack on the airport that was thwarted thanks to good FBI work) - voted to remove Bush from office in large numbers because of his ruinous policy on the war? Many of us feel Bush's actions have made us less safe and wish he'd stop saying irresponsible things like "Bring it on."
Can you stop for a second and imagine the other guy's position - that this war was begun badly for bogus reasons, continues with no intelligent plan for completion, and that the guys responsible should be removed - might have some truth to it? Is there room in your head for that, or is it all just blind allegiance and derision? C'mon, man, we're all Americans.
Posted by: mack at November 6, 2004 11:16 PM