Preach, pastor, preach!

Today, as I was walking home, a man driving by leaned out of his pickup and yelled "GEORGE BUSH!" at me. I'm guessing that, due to my high-tops, hair bleach, striped tights, and green backpack, he'd pegged me as a Wesleyan student, and therefore some kind of supersensitive gender-queering wheatgrass-chugging leftie, and that this would provoke some sort of exciting reaction from me.

I really just looked up, then he drove off, and then I kept walking. Because, what? How absurd is it that the President of the United States has now become a provocative epithet? ...and, well, how rottenly representative of what's happened in this country the past few years.

Last night, we (by which I mean the constituent madmen, fools, and petty criminals who form a large part of my social base) watched Kerry's appearance on Letterman. We all clambered onto the couches and made sure there were cookies and milk ready for deployment, be it as celebration or consolation.

After the usual skits and hoo-ha, Kerry is announced and at last strides on, suited up and smiling that strange basset smile of his, and hunkers down to chat. At this point I was already scrunched into a small, tense ball, clawing into a pillow, and cutting off the circulation in Ben's legs.

And Kerry came through. He threw out articulate responses, jokes, laments on the Red Sox; he called Dave Letterman "David" and it worked, he sipped from the mug. The one moment where the tension in the room began to rise was when Letterman began to saw on him about the Iraq war votes he had cast.

He succumbed to a brief fit of circumlocution, at which point we were all about to cry out in agony---and then lobbed a well-timed and clearly deeply sincere obeisance to Letterman about his shows after 9/11.

Then he said what he should've said:

Look. When we voted to give the President the authority to go to war, we did just that. It was not a vote to go marching in post haste, but to allow, in the case that all expedient diplomatic options had been exhausted, the country to prepare for invasion. And the administration instead seized that vote as a "Go" sign.

And that was the response I was looking for. He said it cleanly and with calm intent.

And then he read, with a lot of hand gestures and still more of that goofy smile, the Top 10 list--- (that is to say,)

Top 10 Bush tax proposals:

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.

9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.

8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund cheque goes directly to Halliburton.

7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.

6. Attorney General Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.

5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.

4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa to cover the whole damn thing.

3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.

2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."

1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

...and on that last one, the entire house (and the Late Show audience) cheered as Kerry tossed the card Dave-style off the stage.

Robyn commented afterward that the strange thing about this campaign is the less you pay attention to it, the more you somehow assume it's doing badly, that Kerry is a popsicle stick, that somehow everybody really does just buy into the blatantly painful things this administration has bungled in the past four years.

And then everytime you actually stop to consider it, to actually listen to this guy, you go:

Who the hell was it said we were down on the mat? Screw this Curse of the Bambino mindset, I don't want to wait till next year.

I want to hear the words President John Kerry was sworn into office today, I want this country to rejoin the planet Earth, I want national forests and fuel alternatives and united allies and goddamned better health care than this corporate bleeding machine we have now.

I want terrorism to decrease because we're aiding the Middle East instead of exploiting it, I want AIDS funding worldwide, I want couples, no matter what their chromosome tally, to be able to raise children and own houses and go to work without being terrified it will all be taken away.

I want to stop seeing blocks of red and blue, I want a conservative party whose causes I respect with freedom to dissent, I want a liberal party not afraid to be exactly that, and I want moderates to bridge the gap and small parties to give us all a good sock in the nose now and then.

I want American kids to be taught to eat good food, I want schoolteachers to be paid like doctors instead of like dishwashers, I want a strong and able military but one which no longer cancerously devours billions of unnecessary dollars.

I want women to keep their hard choices about childbearing between themselves, their doctor, and their own conscience. I want my library record to be between me and my librarian, I want a working class that doesn't sell itself out to culture war charlatans in fear, I want solid jobs that are for the good of America and not the board of executives.

I don't think Kerry can give us everything we want. No administration could. This country is too big and too populated and too, say it with me now, pluralistic, for anybody to take the reins and drive us straight to the Promised Land.

But there have been moments during this campaign where I've seen a flag, and instead of recoiling in anticipation of jingoism, as I have since 2001, I've thought, "that's mine, too." And that, that's worth paying attention to.

So, this guy... he's better than we all seem to think. We even like the sumbitch when we actually give him a shot, instead of bottomfeeding off editorial cartoons and soundclips. And he really can do it. In the course of one day, ONE MOTHERLOVIN' DAY, the polls nearly reversed (or maybe I should say flip-flopped?).

This wonderful crazed-out nation of ours is up for grabs and it's not even the top of the 9th. Let's hustle like we for God's sake mean it.

Because THIS is the goddamn year, man.

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