Imagine that you would have to explain that as a new President was sworn in, the country would swoon into a forty plus month depression and the new President would not do anything to relieve it. Imagine that you would have to explain to Â'the you of the pastÂ' that the US would be attacked in the near future, 2400 civilians would die, and the US would respond militarily. Instead of concentrating on retaliating against those who attacked us and the people who harbored them, the new President would expend most of our available forces in the attack on a different country on justifications that turned out to be false. Imagine that you would have to explain that the new President would ask for and pass laws allowing unprecedented invasions of our privacy by the government and secret courts to provide secret warrants and wiretapping of citizens. Imagine having to explain to yourself that despite having passed those laws, the President would exceed even those boundaries and order the NSA to wiretap citizens without even going through the secret courts.
Imagine having to explain all of these things and more to the you of six years ago. When I think of trying to do this, I cannot imagine that the me of March 2000 believing it. Â"How would that be possible?Â" I can imagine the me of the past saying to the me of 2006, Â"How could the President do all of that without the congress stopping him, without the press reporting on it and hounding him and without the people at the very least voting him out of office in 2004 if not demanding his resignation and/or impeachment? What kind of screwed up, moronic version of reality are you proposing exists six years from now?Â"
Yes, we live in what I call a Moronoreality during a Moronothon of a Presidency conceived by; yes, I am sure you can guess, a moron of a President and administration. Science fiction programs like the various incarnations of Star Trek and Stargate and countless other shows and books including the Back to the Future series of movies propose situations where someone goes back in time, changes a few key things and it creates a horrible future reality. I feel like this has happened to us, as if some kid went back in a Delorean and made Biff President, it screwed everything up, and we are all just waiting for some mad scientist to get the kid 1.21 gigawatts to go back and fix everything. However, it is not going to be fixed or changed this is our lives and this is our reality. Most of what we are going through is absolutely the fault of this administration. That is the truthiness of the situation as Stephen Colbert puts it, that which the Bush administration desperately wants to keep us all from thinking about (and that is why Bush and the Republicans are so angry with Colbert). We did not have to be where we are. A better President and administration could and SHOULD have made MUCH better choices. The congress, no matter the party of its members, should have stood up and prevented this President from making such terrible choice and the press, which is supposed to be the watchdog of America was muzzled or complicit at every turn.
