How about the 2000 presidential election for starters? Even Macbeth's three witches could not have had a better starter ingredient for their slimy brew than that mess. After all the hanging chad had finally settled and the so-called judicially restrained Republican majority on the Supreme Court anointed the Clown from Crawford in a 5 to 4 vote, we should have known that bad times were looming on the horizon.
Then of course there was September 11, 2001. A tragedy made worse by politicizing imperial expansion into Iraq and the Cheney led assault on all the rights and privileges that marked the United States as a true beacon of hope, rather than just the latest bully on the block. Remember the now infamous "Axis of Evil" speech by Dubya? Followed closely by Operation Iraqi Freedom, and "Mission Accomplished." Yeah don't you just feel all warm and cozy inside, knowing that the world is so much safer now after all that? Do you think that Colin Powell would like to go back and Etch-A-Sketch erase his "Weapons of Mass Destruction" speech before the UN Security Council? One thing you have got to admire about the Bush clan, they were completely non-partisan when it came to throwing people under the bus. They gleefully shoved friends and foe into political oblivion. Hey there is a bright side, we get to have a shiny new war memorial in Washington when all this is finally over. Nothing like a little marble and onyx to salve the pain of another failed military incursion. Isn't it funny how often the most rabid saber-rattling bluster spews forth from those who never volunteered to serve?
And just when you thought it couldn't get worse, we had the Revenge of the Ordinary, Part II, with the Election of 2004. Can you remember how badly things must have been for Republican Senators like John McCain, Richard Luger, and Lindsay Graham to violate the 11th Commandment of the Republican Party and openly criticize their syntax-challenged leader? Too bad that they waited until after the election to find their collective conscience. Meanwhile the assault from the religious right was in full blossom as the born again Bushies were moving against Federal prosecutors for failing to carry out their political, er, legal agenda. And don't forget who was at the head of this political cleansing of the Justice Department, come on, you remember, that penultimate legal scholar, Alberto Gonzalez! Can any of us forget his blank stares and Cheshire Cat-like grin sitting before Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate?
Don't get me wrong, there were some good times too. We progressives held our collective breath in hopes that the oxycontin bust of Rush Limbaugh would rid the airwaves of at least one voice of bigotry and hatred. But no, alas, there was always the illegal alien maid to take the fall for making his street purchases. We should have known better. Even that bullying racist, Don Imus found his way back on the air. But hey, we still had the purity of American professional sports to divert us from all that wrong in the world, right? I mean, who doesn't get all teary-eyed and joyful when thinking about Barry Bonds, Kobie Bryant, A Rod, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Marion Jones, and Tiger Woods? And don't forget, we got a front row, HD TV seat for a blood doping American having to forfeit his Tour de France yellow shirt for cheating. So things weren't all bad!
But then there was that glimmer of hope when the corporate lackey Republicans in Congress were replaced by their corporate lackey Democratic counterparts in 2006. Remember what the "now we're in charge" Democrats did first? They passed a record expenditure bill for continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh yeah, that was right after they told their progressive constituents that there would be no impeachment proceedings for the Bush/Cheney crowd. Any of you still waiting, as I am , for all those regulatory reforms we were promised? Makes you want to jump up and whistle a few bars of "Yankee Doodle Dandy," now doesn't it?
And finally, as the presidential election season was swinging into high gear, we were all treated to a complete melt-down of our entire financial system. Hey, good news for Obama on his "Change We Can Believe In" magical mystery tour, and bad news for McPalin. Out with the old, in with the new and finally in the last year of this miserable decade we would see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Nah, it wasn't sunlight we saw, but the high beams of the oncoming misery train bearing down on us. Trillions of borrowed dollars to bail out the greedy bastards responsible for the mess, and for the rest of us. . . record home foreclosures and double-digit unemployment. Remember to tell your grandchildren that you were there the day we ended any possibility that theirs would be a better standard of living than ours. But at least we ended those wars in the Middle East, right? How many troops in the Obama surge? OK, but we are getting fundamental healthcare reform, and that is something. Ummm, no single payer system, no public option, no expanded Medicare, no prescription drug reform, no checks on runaway costs, and no major insurance company reforms until 2014. But the insurance companies get thirty million new mandated customers, now that's something, right?
Let me ask you then, how could it possibly be worse in the next decade? Surely the economy will get better, the war in Afghanistan will end, we will all be free of Islamic terror, global warming will be on the decline, medical bankruptcy will be a thing of the past, and Sarah Palin will be fading comical memory. Seems to me this is how I felt back in 1999. Thank God I am getting old and can't really remember back that far.
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