My friend Mike sent this email to a list of friends post-election day. It was powerful to me and I want to share it out...
Like a lot of off kilter people, I didn't just follow this election. I stalked it; staying up every night watching election coverage; driving around listening to angry talk radio; obsessing over polls on the web. My mental health was riding on the outcome.
Because for the last eight years, I've watched on as Bush and company have exhausted our military, burned through the national treasury, attacked our constitution, politicized justice, institutionalized cronyism, rigged elections, neglected our infrastructure, and drove us to the brink of financial ruin. It's far more damage than Osama Bin Laden could have ever hoped to inflict. But Bush the cowboy played right into his hands.
And as Bush destroyed everything he touched, I felt like Chief Inspector Dreyfus in a Pink Panther movie, being driven insane by Inspector Clouseau. First with the nervous facial ticks, then the inappropriate mad laughter. And if McCain and Palin had won the Whitehouse, I would have been wrestled into a straight jacket and carried off to a padded cell.
Instead, I feel like a huge Bush tumor has been removed from my brain. And I need to go through some sort of therapy to deal with all the optimism. And since I no longer have the compulsion to watch Keith Olbermann shout into the camera every night, I have some free time work on my post-Bush rehab, starting with an examination of an embarrassment-free Presidency. For example:
Can scientists now speak without getting shouted down?
Will the new guy at FEMA actually do a heckuva job?
Will reality be the new reality?
And who's embarrassed to be an American now? Racists? Neocons? Neil Cavuto? But I repeat myself.
Will these be the people who threaten to leave the country? And just where does a racist go with their white sheets and pointed hoods packed neatly in a suitcase? Mexico? Antarctica?
Who cares? It doesn't matter. It's just the asking that cures me. Sure, there's a lot of serious work to be done in this country, but for now I can take comfort in knowing that when our President steps up to a podium, it won't be like Inspector Clouseau stepping onto a museum filled with priceless artifacts.
God bless you Mike. You put into words that which I could not. Morning in America.
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