Friday, May 18, 2007

The long and winding road

Garrison Keillor wrote
The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life.
My question is--after that endless wait is over, what kind of country will we have left? Barring a Diebold disaster of the highest magnitude, given that one-third of the GOP presidential candidates believe that we would have unicorns dancing in the forests if they hadn't missed the Ark, the White House in 2008 must surely go blue. But what will it mean? How much lasting damage has been done?

Our standing in the eyes of the world has never been lower, and this administration has made the Middle east into a permanent nightmare. The Chinese are our Mr. Potter and we do live in Pottersville. The jobs that went across the seas aren't coming back, and precious time has been lost in avoiding more than one ecological disaster.

Those fellow unicorn believers sit not only on the U.S. Supreme Court, but on every federal bench in the country, and will sit there for the rest of their lives. Career professionals throughout the government have been pushed out in favor of small-minded ideologues. The U.S. military has been shattered in a fashion that will take years to rebuild. The young officer corps, the academy grads, the captains, majors and lieutenant colonels, are leaving in droves, and of course, one of our most valuable resources, the national Guard, has been effectively destroyed as another hurricane season awaits.

Yes, the small dim man will return to Texas some day. The question is--where do we go?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The damage will not be undone as quickly or easily as it was done. And to be quite honest, I don't have a lot of faith in the Democrats to expedite those needed changes quickly or efficiently. I hope I'm wrong.

Rousing Rabble said...

As I said in my earlier blog entry, the high hopes I had for a democrat-controlled congress have been badly damaged by an emasculated leadership apparently incapable of understanding that the deep and still building disgust for all things BushCo IS A MANDATE FOR CHANGE.