I cannot tell you how politically disconnected I’ve felt from all Republican loyalists, especially during the Bush Jr. years.
I am now going to try to put into script everything that I have felt but could not say from 2000 to 2008, for lack of being truly heard or for fear of starting some political discussion that elevates into a fiery conflagration no amount of water could douse. For those who are not right-wingers, I'll be saying nothing you don't already know:
President George W. Bush has been the worst thing that has ever happened to America.
He has degraded our standing as the moral compass for the world.
He has downsized our personal freedoms, a wallop in the face of everything that Thomas Jefferson and our Constitution once laid down for us...in the face of everything that everybody from the Revolutionary War to the Vietnam conflict has died for.
He and his cohorts have murdered our stance as the world's holders of truth and justice.
He and his administration have flummoxed our society as no one in American history has done before. I stand with many other American in this opinion.
We who opposed the policies of this world-ruining administration have stood, incredulous, as all of you have supported this godawful personality who's somehow been handed the Oval Office, wondering when this mettle test was going to end. I'm telling ya, it's been the longest eight years of my life, and it's STILL not over (wonder what W has in store for his horrible final act)? I have been rendered mute as this asshole has said the stupidest things since Dan Quayle, and you all somehow smiled and laughed and took it for the beer-drinker's gospel. “I’m the decider?” "The internets?" Wow. Remember when presidents were supposed to be wise and educated? I could have sworn most of them, a long time ago, used to be at least a little intelligent...
Look, I understand what happened, fundamentally. You were hoodwinked. You followed what you were told, and questioned nothing, and now you have no jobs, higher gas prices, an endless war, and a denegrated American society. I understand. I have little sympathy, but I understand. TV is a powerful medium, and if all you watch is FOX TV, then you've surely been brainwashed. I also understand the 90-hour-per-week/ no benefits/ scare-around-every-corner life Bush and his predecessors have made for all of us is sometimes too tiring for you to check all--hell, ANY--of the facts. After all, if the TV said whatever you already thought was so, then it was so.
I wonder, though, how you have felt as thousands of our soldiers have been killed, for no apparent reason, in Iraq. How have you felt hearing that they have been often ill-equipped to fight, with some parents having to send Kevlar overseas to their sons and daughters, because the military complex has been too busy pocketing all our money to show any concern ("Whaaaa? $100 million has disappeared from the Pentagon budget? WE don't know what happpened to it," said the general with the Armani battle bars.) And then, when the wounded have returned, how have you felt as they have been treated with indifference as they struggled to survive stateside without the necessary means to heal?
What about the financially depleted families of those who continue to serve, time after time again, long after they expected to be let go, simply because this administration deemed their loved ones as pawns in a massive game of risk?
I have idled silent as I've received taunting misinformation from all sides, as I have been gently denigrated for my stances on things by the goddamn Bushies (including by some members of my own family). And for what? Simply so that we can lay here with a monkey-boy president and a snarling vice president that, I swear, is the God's honest personification of Satan. They have left our populace on a deserted island with no leadership to trust or follow. And they are sailing away now, cash falling willy-nilly out of their pockets and into the ocean, laughing and cavorting like the robber-barons they are. "We got ours -- now fuck you," they say, even to the people who supported them--the blue-collar workers, for instance, about whom they never gave two shits, who are now out of work and out of hope. Boy, I bet those voters are surprised...or maybe they're not, since they seem to be all too ready to vote for John McCain, who defines rich as having $5,000,000. Which means that you who make $15,000 can pay more, dammit, because OBVIOUSLY the five-millionaires are better people and DESERVE their cash. We'll slit your goddamn throat if you try and take so much as a nickel of what we stole.
You must have thought all this time, after the "follies" of the Clinton administration, that all who think like me are complete morons who are "gay," the favorite term to besmirch people who care about whether we live or die on Earth.
Listen: you know what's gay? Sticking your yogurt slinger in a guy's caboose. If that's your thing, fine. But let's retire the use of the word "gay" to describe anything else other than homosexual sex.
During the Clintons, if you can remember, we were in boom times, peace times and surplus times. It's all gone now, though. And the only thing I can say is that it is you, and has always been you Republicans, that are the freakin' misguided ones. It's all I can do to control my words and swallow the insults I harbor. I'm surprised I have any willpower anymore to do so.
So, fuck all that stuff about President Clinton. Believe me, his dumb shenanigans in the Oval Office hold no candle to the copious blood that has been shed, Iraqi and American alike, since the start of this unneeded war.
And where is this Osama Bin Laden? I would like to know that. Where is this criminal—this criminal that used to be the friend of the Bush administration? Is he dead? Is he alive? Does the Administration even care any more? Was it all about cutting off the tired old head of Saddam Hussein, who spit in Bush Sr.'s eye and had the nerve to get away with it? Yes, he was a madman, but he now seems like a pathetic small fry compared to the other criminals we have failed to go after.
And here we are, years after Saddam's hanging, and we still have massive bloodshed, all over the world, really. Why is this? Where has this gotten us? And you really can sit there and say you want ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand years more of this nonsense?
And all of you who drive cars, spending $4+ a gallon as we go forward on this campaign---how do you feel? Remember when President Carter got his balls handed to him come 1980's election time because people were mad about spending a dollar a gallon for gas? When do we get to castrate W? Answer: never. He will escape justice for sure. We'll have to depend on a higher power of some sort to mete it out. But face it: Nothing is getting better. Everything is getting worse. The cost of food is up, the cost of surviving is up, jobs are scarce, the country's infrastructure is falling apart and we are the victims. All because silver-spoon-fed baby George W. Bush wanted wevenge on the wittle head of his father.
And the torture we have approved on the innocent and guilty alike? What do you think that’s going to bring us in the end? Believe me, when the bomb drops on one of our cities, you will all rue the day that Bush was ever illegally crowned. Because each and every one of us--rich and poor alike--will be marched out of our own homes, carted into a concentration camp, locked down under martial law, and denied all of our inalienable rights. Check your facts. It’s going to happen. Me, I'll long be on my way to Costa Rica, cats in tow. You know, CR has no army at all, and they do just fine! Quite peaceful there, and plentiful, too. I hope all will have the smarts to join me in escape, to wherever it may be.
And I'm not even going to go off on Katrina, a national disgrace and another failure of the administration, except to say: Look at that once beautiful city of New Orleans, now most of it still a desolate wasteland, and tell me what you see.
I am happy to say that our next president looks like it's going to be Barack Obama. He will inevitably be our most important leader since Abraham Lincoln. Barack is a complete gentleman, well-spoken, diplomatic, concerned, informed, even-keeled, fair-minded, and a likable presense to boot. For all who don’t believe in him and his vision for America (and that’s all of you, I’m sure) I say only that I feel sorry for you. How knotted up inside you must be. Believe me, I know the feeling.
Honestly, whether or not you believe in the power of one person, one political force, to change anything at any time, whether or not you believe that a politician can by necessity be nothing more than a hypocrite and a deal-maker...if you can still find your way to believing in hope, Barack is the only holder of that emotion that our country has in pulling out of this incredible mess Bush has gleefully left us to mop.
In 1999, when the 2000 election was upon us, I openly wished that the Republicans would finally gain control of the presidency, the house AND the senate, so we could see what they truly had in store for the country--what they were truly made of, what they would do if they had their way with us. I knew it would be painful, like a prison butt-pounding, but I knew it had to be done.
Back then, gas was an easy 1.30 a gallon and we had no dead in our military.
Today, thing are much, much different, obviously. And now we can only hope that the Republicans will finally shut up, sit back, and let someone else do the talking for once.
I've stood silent as I and my cohorts have been berated for being godamned liberals.
Well, no more of this, thank you very much.
It is the blind Rebublican allegiance to this asshole in office right now that has helped cause our downfall worldwide. You may say “Well, fuck the world. We’re right!” But that rings pretty fucking hollow when you look at the facts. Just read the McClellan book if you wanna know said facts. Oh, right. He's "disgruntled." Just like Powell and all the others who've fled the bloodstained acts of this administration. But what do these people have to be disgruntled about? They weren't fired, they quit. When you quit jobs you hate, do you consider yourself a disgruntled employee? I didn't think so.
If any of you out there vote for Ultimate Flip-Flopper John McCain, I'll be dumbstruck at your gullibility. (Gosh, remember when "flip-flopping" killed Kerry's chances? Why is it okay for this guy? Oh, I get it...because he's on your "team." How the rules can change in this game so quickly! Oh, wait...there are no rules.) McCain has no morals, no scruples and is just as evil as his Devil Master--dark-souled enough to sell you, your children and your children's children out to his fellow money-grubbers who can't stop killing America, because they get their only hard-ons over it all...if you vote for this elderly madman, well, then I have nothing to say to you. And that is how I truly feel. Geez, after eight years of Abu Gharib-style mental torture, I can finally say it.
And
it
is
a
relief.
Your friend,
Joseph Dean Treadway
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