Independent Liberal Columnist

Long has it been since ever I wrote this column, and to some, not nearly long enough. Early on, I became an Obama fan and boldly predicted that he would shock both geographic and political worlds by winning the November, 2008 election for President of the United States of America.

I was scoffed at, lectured to and denigrated. Even my biggest critics, who are usually careful to avoid the embarassment of falling prey to my political predictions at all costs, went to great lengths to tell me how Obama could NEVER take on the Clinton political machine nor win a convention week knife fight against them. MUCH to their dismay, and against their best efforts to put Hillary over the top by voting for her in red states during the primaries at the marching orders of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos, Mr. Obama prevailed.

Then we moved into the general election period and I was "reminded" for the twelve hundredth time that this is a "right-of-center" nation and no leftist like Obama could ever hope to prevail against a white war hero in a time of war. Of course, these people live in an echo chamber where one presumes that if something is repeated mantra like, over and over again, then surely it will create its own reality. I mean, if they learned nothing else from Karl Rove, surely this was Gospel. No matter how much I reminded them that the GOP had methodically alienated every single large demographic minority constituency in the country...hispanics, blacks, women, youth, environmentalists, homosexuals, atheists, agnostics, ad nauseum...and enraged a large segment of the voting public, they insisted that, indeed, Mayberry remained the norm and Ward Cleaver would deliver the party of Reagan to the throne of democracy.

Yet here we are today, only slightly removed from the tectonic shift in political reality that the 2008 U.S. election represents. Predictably, the Republicans have recoiled of late at the spectre of irrelevance and regressed back into a confrontational, arrogant bluff position. It is too soon for them to get their arms around the new political reality. They are now solidly in the denial phase of their grief and they shall not be consoled by any vision of the future so they make their futile attempts to recapture the good ole' days as they always seem to do.

But, their protestations notwithstanding, the pendulum has already reached its farthest right limitation and now swings back toward the left. I think they could have had a longer run if they had been more loyal to their country and ideology than to George W. Bush and the Republican party bosses. But history will record that they lazily rubber stamped everything he did, mindlessly defended his most absurdly stuporous decisions and trumpeted that intellectualism is dead.

But that is all well documented and taken for granted. I will go that one better and pinpoint the exact moment in politics when the pendulum ceased it's eastward motion, paused for just a reflective moment and then began its inexorable swing back towards the west.  It was the moment when Republicans began accusing those who disagreed with the strategic and moral decision to invade Iraq of being traitors. They arrogantly and smugly questioned the patriotism of those who would eventually win the intellectual argument, force Bush to dump Rumsfeld and be ultimately proven 100% correct in their suspicions as to the motivations and justifications for what would become known as the debacle in Iraq. One can scarcely grasp the level of malevolent arrogance that it took to cast such aspersions. We may never get our arms around it much like we cannot fathom how a kind and gentle race like the Germans followed a demon like Hitler into Hell. But we can be thankful that the Etherial Powers that be decided, at that moment, to exile the Republicans to the vast desert of political irrelevance, hopefully for a long, long time.

So, from here we start fresh. Though the economic Depression that unfolds before us every day consumes our news flow and consciousness, let us not soon forget how far we have come since the darkness of Dick Cheney held our souls and our precious Constitution hostage to the abject desecration of all that America was founded and built upon. Though we all share equally in the lack of fiscal discipline that has landed us in this predicament, let us never forget who was in charge of governmental policy for the vast majority of the last 28 years, who soiled our mostly glorious national honor and who drove this awful wedge between once amicable countrymen. And let us also learn from their mistakes and keep a sense of humility and grace about us that has heretofore been buried in layers of hate, fear and propaganda for the past 8 years.

Long live President Barack Hussein Obama. Longer still live the utterly brash American dynamic that saw fit to bring him to power.

As I have been wont to do on this date for the past 5 years, I have spent most of the day in somber remembrance of that day 6 years ago. I listened to some tributes, read a few articles and watched a special on PBS about the vulnerabilities of large buildings to catastrophic failure, what engineers learned from the destructive forces that hit the Twin Towers and what technologies architects will incorporate into new buildings to better withstand such attacks. It dawned on me that that was probably the most constructive thing we have learned from those attacks.

Soon after the towers fell, I was so moved by the unity of the country and the sympathies of other nations that I naively thought that a silver lining of global unity would, ironically, be a lasting legacy to that most horrific of clouds. Years later (speaking of irony) it occurs to me that just one man, a foreigner, Osama bin Laden, was capable of bringing this whole nation together as it had never been before and seems may ever be again while yet another singular man, an American president, was equally capable of tearing that newly spun fabric of national and global unity to complete shreds in just a few diabolical strokes of his political narcissism. To think of that, the immense power of the individual to change history and the lives of us all, took my breath away.

As that breathlessness gave way, I found myself in tears yet again, remembering vividly that moment as I watched the Twin Towers come crashing down. I thought then of what surely must be tens of thousands of innocent people surely dead. Did I know anyone in those buildings? Surely so, though I would learn later that I did not. I watched, through tears, the rest of the day unfold as an entire nation, my beloved country, the most blessed and prosperous nation in the history of the world, wretching in grief and agony at our unspeakable collective loss.

I grievingly remembered back to that most romantic and love filled night I had ever experienced in my life with a girl I had been in love with for years. The sheer bliss of that night on the town with the love of my life capped off by a long and dreamy conversation about our future over Frangelico coffees and dessert at the Top O' The World, the restaurant at the very top of the World Trade Center is burned into my mind forever. We sat for hours right next to the glass with what must surely have been the most breathtaking view in the world and basked in what was, for me, an immortal moment of bliss. The WTC ever after represented everything that was good and right in the world to me...America, prosperity, and, most especially, the triumph of love and patience over adversity and  distance.  Yet there it was, crashing down into itself and plummeting into the bowels of the Earth, taking life and love and everything precious down to hell with it. Transformed in an instant from a beacon of hope and symbol of love into a smoldering disaster representative of everything evil, vile and remorseful in the world. How could this be? How will I ever recover? How will the city rebuild? How will my country heal?

As has been my tradition in years past, I will leave it there. An open question and an open sore of grief and pain and hostility. There is no salve, no silver lining, no answers and, most certainly, no triumph of good over evil...at least not yet. I am now wretching again in anger and pain and my most violent and ugly personnas are worn right here on my sleeve for all to see.

And the biggest irony of all?

While we Americans seem to live with a sense of perpetual fear amid greatly diminished civil liberties and freedoms, the man who caused all this mayhem and grief still walks freely in the mountains, sipping tea with his friends in complete privacy and security.

God, help us.

Even I am amazed at the depth and breadth of the collapse of the Republican party. It is so utterly destroyed that what we are seeing now is like the death of a star. The GOP is totally collapsing in on itself at a rate and magnitude that is exponential and almost incomprehensible, and that is just the beginning. Much like a dying star, the best is yet to come. After the collapse comes the big bang...the explosion that will tear apart the party in a way never before seen in American politics...and then a big, Black political Hole.

The collapsing phase, which we see the beginning phases of now, is represented by the heretofore unheard of representations by intelligent members of the right-wing media. They are starting to say that the party is...well...in a state of collapse. Even George Will stated as much this morning in his weekly appearance on ABC's This Week. It is in a state of collapse because everything the party was built on has either been proven horribly wrong or totally betrayed by core members who were entrusted with their perpetuance.

Fiscal responsibility has been shattered by runaway government spending. Conservative foreign policy pillars have been torn asunder by neo-con fantasy conjured up in a cognitive vacuum for historical and common sense perspective.  Good stewardship of taxpayer interests have been run through the garbage disposal of blatant corruption. The role of government in balancing the interests of corporate America with that of all its citizens has been dead for so long now that the stench rivals that of the mass graves in Iraq. Christian principles have been sacrificed on the altar of blood lust for Muslims. Common sense has been replaced by ignorance and truthfulness with deceit. To top it all off, any American citizen who has had the courage to stand up and challenge the controversial "war" in Iraq has been branded as no less than a traitor. In fact, the Republicans have so casually thrown that once brutally meaningful term around so much lately that it has lost all of its meaning.

All these issues, and more, are coming into the light of American consciousness, but ownership of the disaster by conservatives has not yet begun. The first rumblings are being heard, but they are nothing more than buck passing at this point. "Bush really screwed this up" is the mantra. They have yet to own up to the fact that they applauded and supported, with all their considerable might, every single step he took except the one GOOD thing he tried to do with comprehensive immigration reform. They were the ones calling their fellow Americans TRAITORS and COWARDS for questiong the judgement and timing of the Iraqi occupation. They are the ones that would rather see more American kids die in Iraq than have to face up to their liberal friends and family members, apologize to them for getting caught up in nationalistic group think and calling them TRAITORS, admit they were wrong, and demand a change of course in Iraq. How cowardly and pathetic is that?

And that, my friends, is why we have seen only the beginning of this collapse. They betrayed themselves, they betrayed their principles, they betrayed their friends and families, they betrayed  our troops and they betrayed our country. There is nothing for them to build on at this point. And there will be nothing for them to build on until each and every one of them apologizes to their countrymen for their corruption and exceptionally poor stewardship of our country. They cannot sweep this entire era with all of its unimaginable tragedy and incompetence under the rug and just say, "oh well, that was then, this now...lets talk about the way forward". There will be no way forward with them until they fess up to what a national tragedy they've been.

We will all know that critical mass has been met and the horrible explosion that will scatter the party to the far corners of the political universe is imminent when President Obama or President Clinton goes on national television to announce to the world that we (DEMOCRATS) have killed Osama bin Laden. The euphoria of that moment will ignite a moment of national cognizance not seen in a century or more. On top of all the corruption, incompetence and bigotry, the reality that the Republicans traded Osama bin Laden's life for those of the nearly 4,000 American soldier's needlessly sacrificed in Iraq will finally sink in. At that point, their national security credentials will be utterly destroyed. Then to what issues will they turn for votes? Fiscal responsibility? Family values? Integrity? Competence? And to whom? UFOlogists?

That, my fellow Americans, will be the big bang and the political Black Hole that they will not recover from for a long, long time will follow. Libertarians, get ready to make your move. The door is WIDE open.

I'm wondering if anyone else is taking notice of just who is "cutting and running" from Iraq now and why the press (eternal scapegoats of all who have a political gripe), or at least the pundits, haven't picked up and communicated the irony in watching the Republicans head for the door on Iraq. This is a humiliation of a major political party of historic proportions, not because they (conservatives) have gone through any difficult process of analysis and reached a logical conclusion...no...its because they are the very same crowd that had the shameful audacity to call fellow Americans who have called this war for what it is from the very beginning "cowards" and "traitors". Can you imagine the arrogance, the stupidity, the cult-like adherence to a failed ideology that would cause any American to call any other citizen a "traitor" just because he/she holds a different opinion on something as serious as sending our young men and women to die in a war? I'm sorry...I just find them to be a scurrilous, despicable lot. They, each and every one of them, encouraged and enabled an administration, indeed an entire political party, to undertake a political war using propaganda and obvious, outright lies. What a shameful and hypocritical lot those Republicans are. The self-proclaimed party of "God and Country" used God as a tool to convince the gullible to sign up for fratricide and genocide and waved the Red, White and Blue the whole time. When the light of Truth was shined upon their evil ways after Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame rightfully demonstrated to all Americans that Bush/Cheney knowingly and purposefully used forged documents to promote their political war in a State of the Union address, Republicans turned once again to the dark side and villified the messengers of truth. Then, on cue, they failed to hold those responsible accountable so that Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby all got off scot-free. Now they are a cuttin' and a runnin' like scalded dogs  just to save their political skins...and with nary an apology from a single one of 'em. Now THAT'S the definition of the word "coward". If anyone else out there gets it, raise your voices to the highest levels so that this outrage of calling a fellow American a "traitor" while simultaneously usurping the Constitution, sacrificing American blood and promoting obstruction of justice in order to wage a political war WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! The best way to do that is to stay motivated, never forget what those people did to our beloved country, give money...lots of it...to your favorite Democrats and STEAMROLL those dirtbags in the next election.

Well, AG Gonzalez made his much anticipated appearance in front of Congress and no one was suprised by the outcome. There is a reason that cronyism has such bad connotations. Like nepotism, it denotes a lack of management skills and a certain paranoia. Why in God's name would someone appoint/hire a friend or relative to a tough job when there must be countless others more qualified? I'll tell you why...ignorance. GW, as I have previously discussed, was a total failure at everything he ever did because his father did not allow him the opportunity to pay the consequences for his failures. Every drunk driving conviction, every coke bust, going AWOL, every bad wildcatter venture, every bad business venture was "fixed" by GHWB. Thats why he has proven to be such a poor manager and a "miserable failure" at hiring the right people for the the jobs, starting with Dick Cheney, Brownie, Harriet, Tommy Franks, Bremer, Gonzalez, etc. and why his administration will certainly be remembered as possibly the worst in American history. I have taken some flak from "the cult" (see first journal entry) for proclaiming confidently that GW will go down in history as the worst president ever. Their logical fall back position is that no one knows how history will be written so close to the fact, that it will be 25 years before we even have an inkling of how GW will be remembered in the high school textbooks of the future. I understand the logic, but GW has introduced a factor not yet seen in that equation for hundreds of years...utter and total incompetence. There is no way to spin out of the incompetence cage. One cannot realistically presume that what passes for gross incompetence today is, somehow, going to be miraculously transformed into an asset down the road. Policies, strategies and manuevers can look brilliant today and moronic tomorrow, and vice-versa, but managerial incompetence is written in stone forever. Even if things turn out OK in the long run, those events will be seen as more having dodged bullets or that God or lady luck or whoever kept the corrosive effects of incompetence from having had a ruinous effect on our beloved democracy. The bungling and mismanagement on the part of this administration will, in my opinion, always be incorporated into the reading of the historical significance of his presidency, regardless of the outcome in Iraq and/or New Orleans or attorney firings. That is never going to go away, my fellow Americans. It will be as much a part of the remembering of the man as honesty was to Abe Lincoln. In fact, it has already become the legacy of this president even before he has left the office. Just yesterday, we got to see a great example of a premiere bungler in action in AG Gonzalez and it just has to make one wonder. Can this country and its citizenry, already suffering from a hopefully temporary blow to its reputation in the world community, overcome the image of the stupid, ugly American, even to ourselves? Not until we get someone with good management skills, be they Democrat or Republican, to get to work to fix things and to be blunt and tell it like it is...GW was the worst, most divisive president in American history.