The dehumidifier here in the bunker is kaput. Again. It seemed to me a very short time since this last one was purchased, so I spent part of my morning digging around in drawers and files in a fruitless search for warranty paperwork and/or receipts that I could possibly take back to Sears and get a freebie replacement be made whole again. Alas, it was not to be.

As often happens in an unsuccessful search, the mind begins to wander, and, in an apparent antithesis to the old joke about always finding something in the last place you look, the search ceases to be about finding anything and becomes simply exploratory, you give up on what you’re looking for, yet continue looking, just to see what’s there.

Amongst my collection of useless crap my kids will throw away when I die, I stumbled across an old, blue paper folder containing a few sheets of yellowed paper torn from the stenographer’s notebooks in which I used to write all my thoughts, dreams, poems and various attempts at literature thirty-some years ago. There’s not much left, in fact I was surprised to find anything at all. At one time I had several of these folders and a stack of those notebooks, but I burned it all over a decade ago when (I thought) I gave up on the notion of being a writer. I often wish I had saved all that stuff now. At the time, it looked amateurish and unfinished, but now I realize I was just blogging before blogs existed. Yeah, that’s it, I was ahead of my time.

The oldest piece of paper in the folder doesn’t actually hold my own work. Printed in pencil, in the meticulous handwriting of the serious young man I was then (I must have been 12 or 13) is a copy of one of the epitaphs from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Here it is in full:

The Unknown

Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown 
Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. 
As a boy reckless and wanton, 
Wandering with gun in hand through the forest 
Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield,         
I shot a hawk perched on the top 
Of a dead tree. 
He fell with guttural cry 
At my feet, his wing broken. 
Then I put him in a cage  
Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me 
When I offered him food. 
Daily I search the realms of Hades 
For the soul of the hawk, 
That I may offer him the friendship  
Of one whom life wounded and caged.

 
I have no recollection of why I felt moved to hand-copy this particular piece, perhaps if I read the whole collection again I could place it in context. The fact that I can so clearly visualize the cover of this book - an ancient paperback copy - makes me think it’s probably not far from where I’m sitting, somewhere in one of those boxes of books I’ve been carting around all my adult life. But that’s a search to get lost in some other day.

I’ve just discovered why my father-in-law abandoned five La Cerveza del Pacifico Clara in my fridge; it’s a fancy name for a crappy beer. It tastes like a good beer that’s been frozen and thawed a few times, and then allowed to go flat. Halfway through the second one, I’m increasingly unsure I can go the distance, but it’s gotta be done, so I’m going to try blogging to take my mind off the agony.

I’m very proud of my country right now. Last Tuesday, we (yes, we did!) elected a brother President of the United States of America. That. Is. Huge. As a country, we just grew up a little bit. Of course my home state didn’t contribute to that victory. (Although McCain probably won Misery, we still don’t know for sure ‘cause we’re so fucking backward we can’t even get our votes counted in a timely manner.) Sigh. But I’m not bitter about it. That’s the shitty beer talking. {Our protagonist opens number three.}

In the two days following the election, the economy and the stock market got back to disintegrating before our very eyes. On Friday, Barack Obama addressed the economy in his first press conference as President-Elect. He said:



And the stock market rebounded, gaining approximately 2.5%, and there was great rejoicing throughout the land! Seriously! I saw it on my teevee. Honestly though, it was a refreshing change to hear Obama take questions, and answer them, in a thoughtful, intelligent manner, addressing the American people as if they, too, are thoughtful and intelligent. For me, in press conferences, dubya has always come across as childish and sullen, like he was pissed he had to answer questions at all; his answers merely memorized talking points, often unrelated to the actual questions. {Four. That third one just got away from me.}

Obama has a tough road ahead of him. This is shaping up to be a really bad time to be president. We’re headed for some tough times as a country. It’ll take some real leadership to preside over what I believe is the coming death of the world’s last superpower. I’m fairly confident he’s up to the task. This guy projects nothing but competence. He ran a near-flawless campaign and his transition team seems to have hit the ground running, but it will, of course, be some time before we find out, first, just how bad things are going to get, and second, how Obama will handle the situation. Worldwide, there’s little doubt that he will be much better than dubya, but the question is how much better. I’m liking what I see so far. The Washington Post is reporting that Obama already has plans to immediately undo some of dubya’s more glaring fuckups.

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues,...

That’s certainly a good start, but it’s in those “other issues” that a real integrity check awaits. {Last one, it’s no better than the first. Gahh!} Bouncing around the intertoobz, I found political cartoons by Mike Luckovich at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This one sums up my hopes perfectly:




I really, really want Obama to forcefully and publicly refute the worst excesses of our preznit, to take a step back from all the extra-legal claims of “unitary executive” authority to declare the presidency above, or outside, the law. If he’s the man of honor I think he is, he’ll start repairing our constitution by making previously illegal acts such as warrantless wire-tapping, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition and torture illegal once again.

It’s a beautiful Fall morning here in Misery. The leaves have turned and are falling, the air is crisp and dry, perfect leather jacket weather. I just returned from carrying out my civic duty, and I have proof. Check it:



My elementary school polling place was very busy, but not overly crowded. A sweet, little old lady poll worker told me they’d already had over 400 voters and they hadn’t yet been open 2 hours. As I suspected, turnout is going to be huge.

After voting, as I was forking my scoot, buckling and zipping and whatnot, a guy pulled up on a tricked-out Heritage and parked right next to me. In the few seconds of relative quiet between when he shut his shiny American motorcycle down and I started mine, he looked over at me, raised his eyebrows and said, “Are we bikers for McCain?”

I grinned at him and said, “Negative.”

He shook his head resignedly, mumbled “Damn” and walked away.

I’m hopeful that our conversation, brief as it was, holds a harbinger of today’s events.

I’m getting pretty stoked about this election. Voter turnout is going to be high throughout the country and all the latest polls are indicating America is about to elect a black president. (Even Faux News, though they are still pretending McCain is gaining ground fast.)

Surprisingly, Obama is showing a small lead here in Misery. As a result, all the right-wingers I know are shitting their pants. They’ve been subjected to such a prolonged hate and fear campaign — courtesy of the right-wing noise machine — that now the true believers are experiencing a self-induced nightmare. In their minds a mysteriously-funded-elitist-black-Muslim-probably-not-even-really-a-citizen-anti-Amurkin-won’t-say-the-pledge-of-allegiance-or-wear-a-flag-lapel-pin-terrorist-sympathizer-black-Islamofascist-sleeper-agent-sworn-in-on-a-Quran-raise-your-taxes-and-give-out-welfare-Cadillacs-madrassa-educated-liberal-Democrat-uppity-negro-Socialist-possibly-the-anti-christ (OH-MY-GAWD-THE-BLACK-ANTI-CHRIST!) is about to be elected President of the United States of America!

It’s like the end-times for them, and for me, that is both sad and funny. The funny is, of course, just schadenfreude from witnessing befuddled arrogance and angry cowardice properly rewarded. I’d wager that in the last month, I’ve heard more grown men, usually men in their 50s and older, start conversations with the question “You know what scares me?” than I had previously heard in my entire life. The sad comes from the fact that there still exists a solid third of this country for which facts and truth do not exist. Whether through laziness or ignorance or just plain hatefulness, they are willing, eager even, to believe and propagate any slur, rumor, or urban legend created about their latest chosen enemy. For these people, Karl Rove style, anti-intellectual, accuse-your-opponent-of-everything-from-treason-to-witchcraft politics will always be effective.

I’m stoked because I’m optimistic the other two-thirds of America has finally woken. Seven-and-a-half years of an administration destroying both our nation’s government and reputation capped off by a nasty recession has gotten their attention. Imagine that.

UPDATE: This guy makes the exact same point better than I did right here:

The current economic meltdown, a fumbled response to Hurricane Katrina and a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" are but a few of the things that will make up Bush's legacy. But it can be argued that through his ineptitude, Bush has shaken the electorate out of their apathetic daze, and in doing so, strengthened democracy in the United States. How's that for irony?

Nail, meet hammer.

My co-worker, Mike, sees an alarming parallel between the political climate surrounding the current presidential campaign and that of 1960. He’s old enough to remember all the anti-Catholic rhetoric directed toward a young, charismatic candidate back then, and he’s noticed the same people acting the same way now, except in this election that heady combination of fear and anger coming from the religious right is aimed at Muslims, and by superficial extension, Barack Obama.

Mike sees danger in religious people letting their politics and their religion mix to the point that they are no longer separable. For lack of a better term, he calls this politigion. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but a quick search of the intertoobz shows he is not the first to use it, so who knows, maybe it has legs. Irrespective of the label, Mike and I are in agreement that those who suffer from it bear watching. While not entirely relevant to our subject matter, Mike and I both noticed that JFK’s assassination was right there, just sort of hovering over our conversation. It is a definite cause for concern. I’ve heard more than one loudmouth goober proclaim that Obama is just a holiday waiting to happen.

As I noted, Mike, who is a practicing mythologist, though not outspoken about it, thinks the problem lies in the mixing of religion and politics. He sees either ingredient alone as useful, even essential for certain purposes, but much like mixing ammonia and bleach releases deadly chlorine gas, mixing religion and politics releases a concentrated distillation of hate. Of course, being an evangelical atheist, I blame religion.

By looking at the evangelicals and fundies of the Amurkin religious right and declaring them — albeit correctly, in my opinion — to be a little “fucked up”, Mike is doing what I’ve seen religious people of every persuasion do all my life. He reinforces his own beliefs by pointing out the differences over there while downplaying the similarities over here.

For the atheist, the outsider looking in, it doesn’t matter whether you rattle beads and chant or pray to the east, recite litanies or roll around on the floor speaking in tongues, burn incense or handle venomous snakes, all religions have one thing in common. They allow one group of people to choose to believe in a supreme being based on no evidence whatsoever, to not only believe in this invisible cloud-daddy, but create an entire belief system around it, worship it, pray to it, build monuments to it, and wage wars for it, all of this while simultaneously allowing them to believe that a different group of people who have done the exact same thing in a different language or a different culture are evil, and their belief system ridiculous. It’s mind-boggling.

I have a theory that somewhere back there in the primitive part of the human brain, the part that controls our bodies most basic functions like heartbeat and breathing, the part that keeps us alive when the earth shakes, there exists a very rudimentary logic center which, when presented with the stress of accepting two mutually exclusive ideas, reacts with a basic fight-or-flight response. I firmly believe this cognitive dissonance is the source of most of the divisiveness and anger that emanates from the most religious among us.