I'm here, Huckleberry

My professor asked me what I am going to do in six months when I graduate. I told her earnestly: "I'm moving to a blue state!" I had seriously considered leaving the country for a while, but I don't speak any other languages, and I figured that Los Angeles or Boston are about as foreign to those in the red states as Mogadishu. The election of 2004 wasn't decided by a populace concerned with politics. Instead, those who went to the polls in support of Bush went because of a mystification: "moral values." Though the conservatives have us liberals on the run, echoing the sentiments of Doc Holiday, I have only one thing to say to George W. Bush: "I'm here, Huckleberry."\nWe are a nation at war, under a terrorist threat and living in an economy choked by ever-ballooning corporations, and we bought it! Four more years! Make no mistake about it, the election of 2004 was an attack on the progressive ideals of the 1960s. Time will tell whether the retroactive revolution will eradicate the long legacy of liberalism. Karl Rove, the Republican Spielberg, has buttressed conservatism with words like "good," "moral," "resolute" and "faithful," thereby distracting rural voters from the state of the nation. Meanwhile, those who looked at the issues in this campaign and the glaring incompetence of this administration were portrayed as "outside the mainstream of America," "liberals" and "unpatriotic." \nGeorge W. Bush's record is inexcusable. His administration's ineptitude is legend, and his refusal to accept responsibility for failures embodies the temerity of Ahab. Yet we are the bigger dunces for allowing him and his sycophantic neo-conservative flock to be re-elected! Bush lost the popular vote in the last election, has taken us to war twice, almost doubled the deficit and has redivided this country into a 1950s Manichean scheme: conservative/liberal, blue/red, right/wrong, good/evil. Tell me, what will he do now that he has won the popular vote and has a Republican rubberstamp in Congress? \nOver pizza, my roommate mentioned that he likes Bush. My roommate is smart, hard-working, funny and honest. He is like my brother, and he has not a drop of insincerity in him. However, he loves movies. And that is what the Bush administration is -- a movie, a trite theatrical distraction reminiscent of a John Wayne western. My roommate, like a majority of America, has been misled by Karl Rove's smoke and mirrors. Our leadership has been sold to us as a Western with George W. Bush as the intrepid, inarticulate cowboy fighting boldly against the forces of evil -- the common man who is willing to throw his sheriff's shield in the dust and go it alone for what he believes in. Even I would vote for that! \nBut the nameless cowboy was born in Connecticut and attended Yale. He has a Tuco, a right-hand named Deputy Rove who tells the townspeople about his boss's belief in "morality" against "evil-doers." But the cowboy isn't helping the townsfolk; he is protecting the rich robber barons of the West and is more worried about fighting internal deputies, scaring the townsfolk and having a showdown with a broken down old villain named Saddam who messed with our hero's daddy than fighting the marauding Indians who blew up the saloon. \nOur Western will end tragically, whether it be in the cowboy's downfall or that of the town. Nixon, McCarthy and Gingrich showed us that hubris is implosive. I have no doubt that the rest of the nation will see this administration for its duplicity and arrogance; I am a patient man. So, giddee' up, the fight for Amer'ca ain't over yit!