My Friends, Our Long National Nightmare is Over

MY FRIENDS, OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER

Somewhere in the hazy craw of childhood memory, I can still see Dwight Eisenhower “inspecting the troops,” a Boy Scout Jamboree somewhere in safe Republican Kansas in the late 1950’s. I’m sure, as nearly always, he “carried” Kansas in the Electoral Votes, but I do recall someone saying how he scowled at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. I’ll admit I can still see Tricky Dick, but mostly due to the occasional documentaries on History Channel, as well as a slightly improved memory of his decision to bomb Cambodia, to prowl around in Democratic offices looking for scuttlebutt, and being somewhat paralyzed, as we all might have been who are still alive, by the Watergate Hearings.

Those Victory hands still pop up occasionally in my abdulla oblongata, or somewhere up there, when I see presidential candidates ascend or descend from planes from various political trips made across the world, or here in the U.S. I’ll admit I remember more from President Ford on Saturday Night Live, than I do of his presidency, but mostly I connect a few wires to the Fall of Saigon, and the Aftermath, which is still a nightmare.

Mostly, I remember Ronald Reagan as amusing, as someone who didn’t seem to attack civil liberties, or undermine the Constitution, though we still need to investigate more of the Iran Contra scandal, though most of us would just like to forget it, but perhaps not the Nicaraguans. For eight years we lived under his doting leadership, and though the specific days are just about as hazy as when Dwight Eisenhower walked by, we probably did not seem to revile the actor, but we tolerated him, knowing he earned the respect one has to accept for a landslide victory, or was it two?

George Elder was a statesman I suppose, and though no one wants to really consider that Kuwait was a legal province of Iraq before European powers separated it from the northern provinces, shortly after WWI, I still sense that George Elder was not motivated by madness as his son would be regarding who actually owns the oil fields. So as poor as my memory is, life under Republican presidents up to George the Younger was not miserable, in fact, some of those days since Dwight must have been pretty good.

But that all changed eight years ago today. I can remember “Florida, Florida, Florida,” as Tim Russet so ably put it. And then we were off to the Supreme Court to decide who would lead us into the Age of Terror(ism). The memory of 9/11/1001 is, of course, burned, singed on all of our memories, much more than any aching memory of being overrun by North Vietnamese regular Army soldiers who captured for a few minutes one mountain top somewhere in South East Asia. Soon, without precedent (perhaps I can be corrected on this) we learned that all laws and justice, a bit to our surprise, would emanate from the White House, even if they were illegal and unprecedented.

Soon we were going to muscle our way against the world, intimidating everyone, as if we were not behind George the Younger, then we were against him. Actually I didn’t want to be behind him, or in front of him, as he was such an intimidating cowboy with such unusual swagger and smirk. Well, I’m no White House historian, but looking back, it seems like the eye of Hurricane Katrina was actually hovering inside George Bush’s Office, and so the level of devastation and destruction is nearly impossible to record, but many writers will begin the herculean task.
Our world shrank after the dismissal of the Kyoto Accords, and whether it was graft, or stupidity, or just proof that absolute power does corrupt even born again Christians, to a certain degree, (and you can decide how much), we became an old crumbling Roman Empire, with too many enemies from too many borders. But last night something changed, a sea shifted, and so without tearing up, I’m just glad to have lasted as long as we all did in our makeshift foxholes. Perhaps we can join other earthlings in learning how to live together again.