Kiki’s Disillusionment

Ed Note: I wrote this before the last election, obviously. Sadly, I was pretty fucking prescient.

                                                                                                                                       4:23 p.m.    2/1/05

rageI was talking to my best friend after the Iraqi election. Full disclosure-I have stopped reading anything Bush says. Well, almost anything. I find that it upsets me too much to read it, or it sinks me further into cynicism. Suffice to say, I know that I will disagree with everything he utters. So it was my best friend doing most of the talking about the election, and she was getting upset. How could I tell? Because she was raising her voice and getting heated. Now, you have to understand that my best friend is the ultimate optimist, though not in that Pollyanna sort of way. She truly believes if you can sit down and talk to people one on one, you can get them to see reason. At least, she used to believe that. She is also the quintessential mediator who tries to soothe relations no matter how tense.

To hear her almost yelling is quite an experience. I’ve only heard her raise her voice once or twice in our ten-year relationship. To me, this was a signal of the apocalypse-the end of the world as we know it. What, pray tell, was she almost yelling about? Why, about our so-called president, of course. I guess he had proclaimed that seventy percent of the Iraqis had made it to the polls to vote without too much violence occurring. Of course, we always have to qualify statements about violence in Iraq because it’s on a different plane there. If we Americans had to go through what the Iraqis do on a daily basis, well, we would have started a jihad ourselves. That’s besides the point, however, though it’s tangentially relevant.

My friend was saying she simply did not believe Bush that seventy percent of the Iraqis voted. She said seventy percent of Americans didn’t vote. I pointed out that it’s because we-meaning the current crop of voters-have never known what’s it like not to be able to vote. She then said that we couldn’t run the polling places in America properly, so how the hell could we do it in Iraq? This was a good point, and I conceded it to her. The thing that bothered her the most, however, was that she didn’t believe Bush. Oh, she knew presidents have lied before-Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, to name a few-but she says what bothers her is that she can’t believe anything this president says. Or rather, she doesn’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth. She thinks he rigged it somehow to make it say seventy percent of Iraqis voted, and she’s not a conspiracy buff by far.

I have to admit that I laughed at her at this point. Not because I don’t feel her pain, but because she sounded so much like me. Or rather, like I used to sound. As I chided her, she must not be hanging around me enough because nothing this president says surprises me, shocks me or whatever to me any more. I expect him to lie, spin and twist every time he talks. That’s why I don’t bother reading or listening to anything he says. I simply don’t buy it. I have never loathed a president the way I loathe this one, and that includes Bush the Elder and Reagan combined. It bothered me, however, to have my best friend come to that realization because as I said, she’s the ultimate optimist. I like to joke that she’s the yang to my yin because we don’t disagree on hardly anything, but she’s more upbeat than am I. She’s the positive to my negative, and we are in dark times, indeed, if she feels more negatively than I do.

It’s ironic that Bush has lowered my expectations so completely that I can’t get too upset by anything he says and does. I shouldn’t say that because I’m sure he’ll find a new way to make me mad, but I expect him to be lower than low, baser than base. In my mind, he is nearly as corrupt a person as can be because he doesn’t know how corrupt he is. Or rather, he’s more dangerous as a corrupt person because he believes he’s doing the right thing all the time. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, remember, and he’s trying to set a record to see how quickly he can make it there.

It does anger me that he’s the straw that broke the camel’s back with my best friend. She’s not naïve by any means-she works with at-risk youth-but something about Bush is really getting to her. I don’t want her to become embittered and feeling hopeless like me. I don’t want her to feel that there’s nothing she can do-even if I feel that way much of the time. In other words, I want her to keep being the optimistic one so I can be the cynical one. I realized that what Bush has done to me is to completely crush the optimist in me. A friend of mine once said I was an optimist because I still got so upset when people did the wrong thing. That shows that I expect them to do the right thing, otherwise I wouldn’t get so upset. I’m well on my way to apathy because it just hurts too much to care right now.

My best friend and I did agree on one thing-how astounded we are that America as a collective has followed Bush so docilely into self-deception. I mean, I’ve never had a high opinion of Americans in general, but it amazes even me how Bush can get away with basically anything. He can lie with impunity and not feel the ramifications, so I guess he’s justified to feel he’s sitting on the right-hand side of God. We keep thinking after every fallacy is exposed that this one, this is the one which will do him in. It never is, though, which is why I truly think he’s made a pact with the devil.

There is a Boondocks which compares him to Hitler. I have to say, the similarities are disturbing. He’s an egomaniac who believes he and only he knows the one true way to a righteous world. He has God on his side-Hitler was Catholic-and he brooks no opposition. His minions bleat they were just following orders, and nobody is questioning his questionable decisions. Or if they are, they are being ignored. He starts a war for his own personal purpose-where’s the war in the Sudan? If we really care about genocide, that is-and doesn’t recognize his hubris when it’s pointed out to him. Now that he’s been elected for real, he feels as if he has a mandate to do whatever he wants. And really, he does.

So, let’s start by dismantling Social Security because, of course, people are smart enough to invest for their retirement on their own. Sure. That’s why we’re a nation drowning in debt-because we’re fiscally responsible. Then, let’s relax EPA standards because, what, it’s too difficult for businesses to meet the current demands? Then, let’s relax OSHA standards because it’s too difficult for small businesses to meet the current standards. Then, let’s give bigger tax cuts to the rich and penalize the poor for having the audacity to not make six figures. By the way, does anybody doubt that if Bush the Younger wasn’t the son of someone powerful, he’d be flipping burgers at a McDonald’s somewhere? He certainly didn’t make it where he is on merit alone.

Oh, hell. What’s the use? The people have spoken, and they want Bush. Therefore, whatever happens from now on, you have no reason to complain. None. Not when the economy tanks even more than it has because of egregious spending. Not when Bush decides that education must take a back seat to defense. Not when our civil rights have eroded to such a point that we might as well be living in the nineteenth century. I don’t want to hear from a single Bush supporter when this country reaches the nadir of its short history. If I do hear any complaining, I might have to pull out my state-approved hand gun and blow some motherfuckers away because of their sheer stupidity. Maybe that would finally make me feel better.

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