Alice in Wonderland

Yesterday afternoon and evening we were pleased to have a visit from our Democratic candidate for Congress, Larry Grant. He and members of our local Democratic group, among other things, spent a few hours knocking on doors and campaigning. My friend Alice knocked on one door and found a man who said he was completely pleased with Bush and believed in everything he was doing. Alice, completely taken aback, said, "you're just kidding me, right?" She literally did not believe him. He was not kidding. What might one make of this? Does this man live in a world completely devoid of news so just has no idea of what is happening? Did he just say this to shock a democratic canvasser? Could he possibly really have meant it? Is he just some kind of Republican sadist who enjoys seeing innocent women and children slaughtered? Perhaps he is merely insane and has no idea what he is saying? In any case, friend Alice is still in shock, incapable of believing there could actually exist such a Bush supporter. I'm with Alice. However, it appears there is still some one third of Americans who do support Bush/Cheney. They obviously do inhabit an Alice in Wonderland world, where might makes right, black is white, up is down, immoral is moral, mush is brains, and unchecked evil is the order of the day. Nowadays it's just kill, kill, kill, torture, torture, lie, lie, lie, and keep on doing it. It's called "staying the course."

In a little more than two weeks this election will be over. Thank god! I'm not sure I can survive much more of this miasma of propaganda and bullshit. Now it has become no more than miserable attack ads (which they keep claiming, work). It's as if there is nothing positive about any candidate anywhere, or about their platform (if such a thing is even mentioned). Candidate x's mother wear army shoes. Candidate y is gay. Candidate so-and-so once voted to drown kittens, still another doesn't believe that a few cells are a person, this one is soft on terrorists, another believes that someone, somewhere, somehow, someway, might actually engage in something enjoyable, and so it goes. A pox on all of them I say. Let's get this ridiculous business over with and have done with it (not that it will end there, we'll still have to deal with the cheating and whatever). It's nice to remember that we once had a system that more or less worked, that although the politicians were a bit devious, they were not out and out merely dishonest greedy thieves and criminals. I can still remember when our politicians, whether Democrats or Republicans, still had the needs of the citizens and the nation in mind, rather than just desperately clinging to power for its own sake. Paradise lost? I guess.