RESTORATION

It is done. The 800-year Bush Dark Age. As Howard Cosell said, 'IT'S OVAH! IT'S ALL OVAH!'

Now the tough part: how to heal.

I'm hearing lots of voices on the Net, saying that Obama's just the same as BushCorp and that he's already slipping into predictably sleazy behavior. Well, about an hour ago he just became president. (Never mind that Plain John 'Android' Roberts mucked up the oath; puppets are rarely ready for Prime Time...) My default is to give the man a chance.

Why not be suspicious? Because I am weary of the conditioning which the Bush Dark Age has inculcated us with. In other words, we have been forced to inflict our own thoughts, our own minds, with the hideous rot spawned by BushCorp and its Neocon interests. When sociopaths are in power, they produce strains of subtle and insidious thoughts, notions, and opinions that, when ingested, retard and pervert even healthily critical-thinking minds. Propaganda has a way of doing that. It's great to be feisty and skeptical, but when the show runs on and on, and the task looms daunting and never-ending, the resistance erodes and the depression takes over. That's what a Dark Age is.

But, on this day, a Dark Age has just officially ended. It really has.

How then, to negotiate this historical fact and embrace it? How can we mature with it?

These are the inner questions which we must ask ourselves, again and again.

I shall of course remain wary, and ready to leap into critique mode When and If. But for the present, if only for a day, the liberated mind cries: Peace! Restoration! A saner path has been opened! An end now to suppression! An end to insanity! An end to fascist manipulation!

Better a flawed nation with sincere intent than a false and dangerous empire. History has not ended, as was the Neocon dream. We are still its subjects, and we'd better restore our wisdom from its lessons if we intend on navigating the future. Obama's address touched on this and other issues. Purposeful words they are, and hopefully, not just words.

In short, I would rather now regenerate as a somewhat hopeful naif than remain in the toxic mud puddle of dreary expectations that, when chosen, cement the mind with their fastness.

What We Need Right Now: Neil Hamburger!

The Upper Lip Perspiration Factor

Everybody who is anybody remembers one of Tricky Dick's most blatant giveaways: that when he was in the hot seat and lying about something, his upper lip would noticeably perspire.

Well, ever since them days, every self-aggrandizing Republican knows one thing: don't let 'em see your upper lip EVER perspire - not one lil' ol' pore's worth!

Don't miss 'Vanity Fair's latest issue, which features a stinging preliminary oral history of Dubya's Thousand-Year Reich, complete with life-size (and kissable) portraits of all the essential sociopathic egomaniacs in the Bushy cabal. (And not one trace of sweat! I notice though that my good buddy P. Dundas Wolfowhatever's character-laden mug is conspicuously absent . . .)

Some of the players in this oral porn saga are obviously trying to acquit themselves, a la Dougie Feith, but at least they're going on record, confirming what we already know.

Leadership is everything in mass media. VF's editor, Graydon Carter, has long pursued critical and exposing avenues concerning BushCorp. He's no firebrand, but at least he's using his leverage to allow for intelligent discussion. This, from what is supposedly a style/fluffball/glam mag. Contrast that with the supposedly 'thinking' NPR and one has no choice but to surmise that NPR = Nationalist Propaganda Radiation - yet again.