The Five Stages of Grieving For George Bush's Re-Election

Stage 1: Denial:

Yeah, yeah, we know, we know, we know, we fucking know - Ohio was, in theory, still up in the air. We know that Kerry could have eked out a victory there if there were enough absentee and provisional ballots, and, frankly, every vote should be counted. And, yeah, yeah, we know, we know, we know, Christ, how we know that we'll never know if there was rampant fraud through the use of touch screen voting and voter roll purges and other irregularities throughout the country. But without a whistleblower, anyone who accuses Bush of winning because of fraud is going to be marked as an insane conspiracy theorist. And, besides, back in 2000, we were pushing so hard for Florida to go to Gore because, well, Gore won the popular vote and there was demonstrable voter fraud. But, you know, we're talking 3.5 million votes in Bush's favor. We're talking gains for Republicans in the Congress. We're talking 11 ballot measures that ban gay marriage. Which means even if there's a miracle of miracles and Kerry had "won," we've still lost. Which means we must move on to Stage 2: Anger.



A Nation of Savages:

We are a nation of savages. That is what we decided last night. We belong to the "most advanced" society in the history of the world, and we decided that we would rather be barbarians, hunched over fire pits, ripping meat off the bones of our enemies, raping our women, howling out at the gods for peace in the afterlife.



Oh, how when this glorious nation began, we believed we knew who the savages were, the Indians, worshipping their mad array of deities, slaughtering each other in wars over hunting grounds, enslaving each other, living in caves and teepees, creating communal existences where each member of a tribe had his or her place and his or her job to contribute to the life of the group. God, how we hated them. How we entered their villages and tried to convert them to the single God. How we massacred them regularly when they would not give up their centuries-old existence in favor of the obvious good and rightness of the European way. Sure, sure, they tried to strike back, but that made our bloodlust even stronger. We white people showed them what savagery was, and it made their bows, arrows, axes, and (later) rifles seem like so many sticks tossed against a brick edifice. King George III loved his gifts of scalps, cut off the Indians skulls by loyal white subjects of Britain.



When the majority of the country voted for Bush yesterday, what they were saying, in Alabama, in Wyoming, in Indiana, is that they want blood for blood, and it doesn't matter where that blood comes from. The economy didn't fucking matter, health care didn't fucking matter, certainly peace didn't fucking matter, the Supreme Court didn't fucking matter. None of it. And the rest of the world can go fuck itself. It came down to who was the most bloodthirsty candidate, and George Bush transformed himself into a man who would shit on Saddam's cut open abdomen and eat his balls, and no Massachusetts peacenik faggot lover was gonna defeat that in our deluded American mindset.



As we learn from the religious right every day, a well-told lie trumps the truth every time. And that's what those motherfuckers in the Bush campaign did, day after goddamned day - they trumpeted lies as if they were the truth. The caressed lies like they're lovers, like you could make 'em hard and make 'em cum all over the eager faces of the public. They revised history and expected everyone to fall in line in complete ignorance of the facts. Dick Cheney could have been caught on video eating the still-beating heart of an Iraqi child that he just raped with a gas pump nozzle, and they'd be able to make a majority believe that Cheney was a victim of the liberal media and that to bring up Dick Cheney's child-raping, heart-eating ways is "beyond the pale." Christ, how the yahoos in Kentucky would lap that shit up. It confirms what they want to believe, that somehow they are cozy-buddies with those in power, when really, Bush and the Bushettes are laughing at them, toasting with single malt scotch that they tricked the savages once again by appealing to their savage nature with the Iraq war. Yeah, man, bleed the Iraqis, set them against each other, shoot 'em all down. They're the savages, not us, motherfuckers, not us. We'll keep bringin' them the good graces of America, and, goddamnit, those fuckers'll accept it or we'll slaughter 'em in the name of bringing civilization to the savages, when really, in the end, we are blinded to anything but the crude reduction of power to the kick of an assault weapon in our hands, the acrid smell of burnt gun powder, and the sweet, subhuman screams of the savages we kill. And in the background, the bleating of the prone media, getting fucked over and over, and screeching to be fucked again, cheering on the killing 'cause that's what motherfucking America has come down to: kill or be killed. If yer not doin' the killin', then yer just waitin' to die. In God We Trust.



Fuck it. The Rude Pundit is disgusted. No insight today. That'll come later. Let's wallow for a day or two. Let's give the final words of anger to John Dos Passos who, in 1937 in The Big Money, wrote, "America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul



"their hired men sit on the judge’s bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants . . .



"all right we are two nations America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch . . .



"we stand defeated America".



What's important is that, at the end of the passage, which is about the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the disenfranchised still stand, no matter what.



Tomorrow: Bargaining and Depression

Friday: Acceptance