It's Nice Not to Be Dumb Anymore

Our national foray into extremism has ended and in the wild world of professional horseshoe-throwing and handgrenades, the "almost" principle was never more real. We ALMOST ended the evolution of our revolution which gave voice to the little man against inbred kings--and in modern day lore, inbred CEO's, the modern lords of their manors (read: companies).

Yet, before we can fully appreciate what we almost lost; we must come to terms with what it was they (our forefathers) gave us. To begin with, The American Revolution was not really so revolutionary. We didn't raid any villas of the rich and cut their arms and heads off. We did not appropriate businesses from the wealthy and give them to supporters of our revolutionary cause.

We did not enter into the massive homes of the wealthy and divy them up so that less-well-off families could take up residence in what used to be the pantry off the kitchen. The American Revolution was violent, of course, and even more so than we learned in school. Yet, it was really child's play in comparison to other world revolutions.

What was revolutionary, however, was the simple proposition as put forth by the authors of this Declaration of Independence in which they stated that "every man" (for argument's sake we are not discussing slave's and women) has the God-given right to have a representative voice in the governing of this nation.

And then, so as to ensure that demigods and simple human stupidity could not tear us asunder, they created an ingenious system of balances--no one branch can completely dominate another for things like simple math prevent this (2/3, 9, etc.).

And then, from our victorious moment against Cornwallis in Yorktown, we went forward with earnest as we crafted a nation for the people, by the poeple, of the people. Education and haute couture became acceptable while at the same time our truly American love for commercial art and pop culture crap (which existed even in 1805) managed too to set a balance between the "elite" and the empowered masses.

There were times during the 19th century when big business tycoons were winning and goverment was corrupt, yet, we survived. And, most importantly, the value of an education, the strength and necessity of a trained and enfrancised electorate, principles put forth by our revolutionary forefathers, were never in danger of being erased from the nation's mission statement.

In December 2000, a crack appeared in the evolution of our revolutionary process--the Supreme Court selected a President (the majority of whom had been put on that court by this new President's father, a former President).

In the aftermath, page by page, brick by brick, torture by torture our values as laid out in a Declaration and affirmed by the Constitution were erased from our national psyche. And, in a fashion that has proven so successful at maintaining control over the populous in modern-day Russia, Americans were made to believe that being smart (Eastern Establishment, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, etc.) was wrong.

The majority party, the ruling one, scoffed at intelligence and made fools out of anyone who used words with more than 5 letters. Being smart was dumb and being dumb was supreme--our president's inability to speak his native tongue was simply overlooked by his followers!

Yet, the new leaders under Bush are all smart men and women. They were almost genius as they had ALMOST succeeded in permanently altering our American thesis. They linked themselves to the greatest dividing factor in the modern world--man's misuse of God--and went forward pillaging all that American science and corporate R&D had accomplished over the past 100 years.

Like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where truth and facts are tailored to fit Party principles, so too did the Bushies alter reality, hide facts and just plain lie to guarantee their hold on power.

America's best, brightest and most capable for solving our national problems were not permitted to do so not because their resumes were lacking experience but because they didn't believe that George Bush was Jesus Christ, they didn't care if a man kissed another man and they believed that global warming was truly killing the world.

Barack Obama yesterday introduced us to his national security team--Mr. Gates is a Republican and voted for John McCain, his national security advisor, an ex-Marine probably also voted for McCain--and these people are truly bright, smart and have experience to carry out their missions. None of them know anything about Arabian horse, I am sure.

It is a great moment yet sadly one that should not be so great. We should never have permitted 2001 to 2009 to have happened in the first place!

I was against both George Bushes from the moment I laid eyes on them. But, for those millions of Americans who supported him and believed in him, there is another period of time, of disbelief, of regret that might be able to offer consulation--May, 1945. The German nation was rebuilding what had truly been a great nation prior to November 1933 and they too could not understand how they had fallen so far, so fast.

It's good to be smart again. Now, let's go back to the future and reverse the effects of the last 8 years.