Vacations and Elections

My wife and I recently returned from a week in Cabo San Lucas. We have vacationed in Mexico countless times, and I have gradually developed a strange love/hate relationship with the country: I love the Mexican people but I hate the country. This isn’t a casual observation; we have traveled to Mexico every few years since 1971, we have stayed in a dozen cities, and I’ve learned an essential truth:

Stripped to its core, Mexico is an open toilet surrounded by beaches.

More precisely, Mexico is a brown toilet surrounded by white beaches. The coastal beaches are white - sparkling, glistening, shimmering, antiseptic white - and the interior is a drab brown desert. The whiteness is shallow – a thin layer of sun-bleached sands and sun screen-coated tourists – but the brown is deep. Centuries deep. Travel a few miles inland from almost any beach and there is little but bone-brown sand and poor brown people and fetid brown fields of vegetables fertilized by anything brown. An open toilet. It’s like falling asleep and waking up in 1732. Some towns somehow manage to be magical, but vast areas are lawless, run by crooked drug smugglers and crooked government officials and crooked crooks.

No wonder Mexicans are so willing to risk crossing the border to get back-breaking work for wages no American would accept. America must seem a more enticing paradise than the one with those 72 virgins that we keep hearing about. (Actually, I’m not so impressed by the virgins. Dennis Miller says that after 6 or 8 virgins, he would want a pro.)

Regardless, we went to Cabo. We needed a vacation. After three years it was finally time to play and we did. As the old expression goes, I may not be as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was. And to tell the truth I was never that good even once so I had a low standard to maintain. Didn’t have to work hard.

Most vacations are memorable for something. This one was most memorable for nothing. By choice we did nothing for eight days. No fishing, no sailing, no hiking, no touring – not even any shopping. We sat by the pool, read books, had quiet meals, and enjoyed each other’s company. It couldn’t have been better.

We came back to the US on Election Day, learned that our connecting flight had been delayed, and spent three hours in a remote LA terminal watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN. I actually shouted “YES!” when CNN showed a large screen with the words “DEMOCRATS WIN CONTROL OF THE HOUSE.” I was thrilled, even though in shouting “yes” I knew that my vacation was over. I had left the imperfect magic of Mexico and come home to America. Home, to the cesspool that passes for American politics. Home, which has become infested with crooked drug smugglers and crooked government officials and crooked crooks. Home, where hooligans masquerading as Republicans have turned the nation’s capital into a kleptocracy. Home. When I saw that the Democrats had taken control of the House of Representatives I rejoiced.

In 2000, I was a Bush admirer. He cleaned Al Gore’s clock twice, even though Gore held the stronger hand each time. However, my admiration didn’t last long. Two years later I learned to despised Bush and his administration, and I’ve mourned for my country as our national debt was doubled, our environment was trashed, our most precious freedoms were eroded under false claims of ‘national security’, and we were subjected to a non-stop barrage of lies told by a disgraceful collection of liars.

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Jay Garner, Mike Brown, Michael Chertoff… they comprise a partial list of the worst presidential appointments in modern history. Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Kenneth Blackwell, Mark Foley, Conrad Burns, Richard Pombo, Dennis Hastert, Michael Scanlon, Scooter Libby, Ralph Reed, David Safavian, Grover Norquist, Tom Noe, Jack Abramoff, … Google these names. They comprise a partial list of officials and supporters of the most corrupt party in American history. Democrats have had their share of crooks from LBJ on down, but the current crop of “Republicans” stole control of the legitimate GOP and turned Washington into a third-world-style free candy store. This is an historical consortium of sons of bitches.

Stripped to its core, the Bush White House is an open toilet surrounded by bitches.

The toilet surrounded by bitches was itself surrounded by fools. Far-Right Fools willing to believe anything they read as long as it insults Liberals and the Clintons. Evangelical Fools who worry about the people teaching evolution instead of the people stealing their tax money. Frightened Granny Fools who believe the next terrorist attack will be against their local shopping mall. Frightened of Brown People Fools who believe poor illiterate Mexicans are going to steal their high-tech jobs. Frightened of Gay People Fools who act as if homosexuality is contagious. Unwilling to Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes Fools who believe that the greatest and most powerful country in the world can be run by borrowing from their grandchildren. And let us not forget the assortment of overwhelmingly White Voter-Fools whose numbers peaked at a still-incomprehensible 56 million in 2004.

Excuse me while I take a breath. And a nitro.

I switched from believing Bush was merely ineffective to hating him earlier than most - in September 2002. I stopped trusting him when he suddenly switched topics from Al Qaeda to Iraq and then started chasing a minor dictator instead hunting down America’s Number One Enemy. It was as if Roosevelt, after the sneak attack against Pearl Harbor, had ignored Japan and declared war on Italy. (Imagine this picture: Hitler’s ground forces invade London, Japanese troops march into a defenseless Moscow, but Mussolini swings from his lamppost. And Roosevelt appears in front of a giant sign proclaiming, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” Now picture Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity holding hands high and shouting, “We’ve won! We can bring the troops home as soon as we can pacify the Italians!”)

In 2002, I argued with both Conservatives and Liberals who bought into the ridiculous line that “We have to fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here.” Apparently, the inconvenient fact that we were fighting “them” where they weren’t didn’t matter. Even my liberal friends accused me of being a leftist appeaser, despite the fact that I’ve been a war hawk since Scoop Jackson converted me in 1972.

In October of 2002 George Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had helped Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda as they planned the 9/11 attack. Utilizing all the international experience I had gained from running an ice cream store and reading an occasional back issue of Time Magazine while waiting to see the dentist, I knew this claim was false. Osama is a fanatical Shiite whose goal is to devolve the world into a single Muslim state; Saddam is a lackadaisical Sunni whose goals were to maintain power and steal oil revenues. These two lunatics would hate each other. If I knew this, why didn’t the President and his advisors?

I write this not to brag but to complain. Everything in the preceding paragraph was common knowledge in 2002. I knew it because literally millions of others knew it. No serious scholar of the Middle East believed that Saddam and Osama had plotted together, just as no serious scholar believed that Saddam had WMDs. However, serious scholars were ignored. Bush et al spread transparent lies about non-enemies, non-existent WMDs, and non-threats from non compos mentis terrorist wannabes, and not just the Wacko Right but the American Center lapped up the entire steaming pile. How did the country get taken in by such obvious deceit?

And how did we allow the worst element of the Right Wing to take control of most of the media even as they whined about Liberals controlling the media? Wild-eyed extremists like Ann Coulter gained a fervent national following by loudly proclaiming, of the Middle East, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity!” Now, looking at the disaster in Iraq caused by similar mutton-headed policies, are there any Conservative leaders with the backbone to publicly call Coulter a sociopathic pinhead? Sure. Just as there are thousands of Mullahs writing fatwas to condemn Osama to death for crimes against Christians and Jews. Cowards all.

As you can see, more than a week after the American public finally came to its senses, I remain angry. Thank G-d the System worked this time. However, if Bush and his Radicals had had a few more years to gerrymander districts, to take away our constitutional rights under the claim of protecting us from big-time terrorists like John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla, to invent new bogus terror alerts to frighten grandma, to erect more straw men to frighten the Evangelicals, to pass more laws allowing warrentless searches, etc, then Radicals would have taken control of our country. The System worked, but it almost didn’t.

Perhaps the worst sin committed by the Bush Administration and the current crop of Republicans is the damage they may have done to the Conservative Movement. This is a strange thing for a lifelong Democrat to write, but the country needs a vigorous Conservative Movement almost as much as it needs a vigorous Liberal Movement. Historically, most great change has come from the American Left. However, the Right has served as a valuable brake, preventing the Left from moving the country too fast or in the wrong direction. Now, given the events of the last six years, I fear that future voters may confuse legitimate Conservatives with the Radical Right-wingers who have driven the country into a hole in the ground. Into an open toilet.

The Bush Administration was a toilet surrounded by liars and fools. Today it is newly surrounded by enthusiastic “Under Construction” signs. Will the Democrats tear down the kleptocracy erected by the Republicans? Some will try. Can they erect something better? Only if they can do what the Bush people were incapable of doing: learning from history. However, if the Dems win the White house in 2008 and control all three Houses, sanity will not last past 2009. We may all move to Mexico.

I have one enduring memento of that vacation. While standing in the shabby AA terminal in LA and watching the scratchy image of Wolf Blitzer on election night, I took out my cell phone to call my son. Then the announcement came from CNN: DEMOCRATS WIN CONTROL OF THE HOUSE. I used the phone to snap a picture of the TV and the image is now my screen saver. Every time I see it, I calm down just a little. But I’m not home yet.

J