The gift that keeps on giving

Electing then re-electing George Bush did more damage to the US than possibly any other action ever taken by its citizens or, for than matter, by anyone. At a critical point in our political and economic history, election of a fool backed by selfish knaves created a government that gutted regulation, created hatred toward this country by reducing diplomacy to playground taunting, and committed us to two ill-considered and unaffordable wars. The first election was close -- arguably a loss reversed by an activist Supreme Court. However, the second election was not so close, and the forces of stupidity and greed eked out a victory that has pretty much done us in for at least a generation. In a democracy, we all share in the mistakes of the majority. America's adventures with what passees for conservatism have pretty much all gone badly, but we seem to come back for more. We are, classically, repeating the mistakes of the history that we didn't learn.

The current Supreme Court, a version of which helped bestow GWB on us, has now decided, contrary to generations of precedence, to gut gun-control completely. Violence and "conservatism" seem to go hand in hand nearly everywhere, but nowhere more dramatically than here in America. We will continue to pay the price long after the Bush administration has been consigned to the compost heap of history.

(Speaking of composting, I'll be away for a couple of weeks tending my crops and following the news. I hope things get better.)