I don't read whole diary threads on Daily Kos too much anymore. I fact, I try to limit my time in the diaries on Big Orange in general. They're such time-suckers.
But this one, titled What was your personal "tipping point" moment? drew me in. Reading people's accounts of when they first realized that "something was SERIOUSLY wrong with [Bush's] administration--something far beyond simply being a bad President with bad policies" was such a trip down memory lane. Well, not exactly memory lane. More like memory highway to hell.
There were long-ago infractions like the China spy plane incident and the USS Greeneville's Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign-contributor joyride that ended in tragedy. There were the well-known malefactions like the seven-minute-too-long reading of The Pet Goat. Taken as a whole, the thread becomes a crushing chronicle of mass loss of innocence.
It could serve as evidence in History's indictment of Bush as Divider. The politics of all who vote have been settled for life these seven years. It will be a long, long time before anyone who was above adolescence during this administration will vote for anyone from the Other Side. Bush's evil incompetence was so apparent that it drove all liberals and many independents to willingly vote straight Democratic. These people will never again look at a Republican without seeing that hated smirk. Bush's base-- the right-wingers, fundies and Amarillo Globe-News reporters who make up the 30% that would support Bush if he slaughtered that pet goat in a satanic ritual live on Fox-- were lost to the Democrats before Bush; they are even more so now.
And if you haven't chosen a side by now, you never will. What, are you too preoccupied with drooling and counting the pretty beads?
So when did I know? Well, I never liked the dude. I have written before about the time in the mid-90s when Prodigal Son and I traveled to Austin with the Texas State Employees Union and incited a crowd to chant "Junior Must Go! Junior Must Go!" But, like many people on the Kos thread, when Election Day 2000 arrived, I had no idea that he would run such a desperately, tragically evil administration if he were elected.
The first time my blood froze in my veins was during the fight for Florida. For reasons best not elaborated upon here, I was in attendance at a fundamentalist Baptist country church. And during the sermon the preacher began suddenly to rant about the "bad, bad men" who were trying to steal the Presidency from the wonderful, godly man George W. Bush.
That was when I realized that Bush had an army ready, and that they shared his contempt for the democratic process. And that they wouldn't rest until they owned every last soul in America.
spacedark
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