Tuesday, August 14, 2007

GOODBYE, GOOD RIDDANCE

But, we all know he's not going anywhere. He will never go away. Whatever happens, it's quite certain the effects of his influence will take generations to purge.

Sure, division, enmity, polarization...these things have always been part of the human social condition. But Karl Rove took us to new lows. No single individual in the twenty-first century has worked so hard to consciously generate ideological division than this man. Who had ever heard of blue states and red states until this administration? When did evangelical Christianity become known almost exclusively for its opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage? For that matter, when has there ever been such a sharp distinction among Christians about which party they should support? All of this coming from a guy who doesn't even claim to be religious. He played us. Well, at least he played several million otherwise decent people into believing in a chimera, and buying into a artificially generated cultural and spiritual war that never existed, except in his evil brilliance.

No question the guy is a genius. How else will history account for one of the most incompetent presidents ever to hold the office winning an election he lost, then getting reelected? It takes an architect of ungodly skill to pull it off.

Rove, along with like-minded demagogues, has spread a brand of anger, distrust, and cynicism that may never go away. We can't change that; but we can change us. And we can decide today that we will not allow it to happen to us again.

There is only one candidate in the field today who eschews talk of blue and red, them and us, liberal and conservative, etc. Only one who thusfar has not played the game of polarization, divide and conquer. He may not turn out to be some messiah, but he is better prepared to take us a new direction than anyone else.

"Karl Rove was an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided, the special interests more powerful, and the American people more shut out from their government than any time in memory. But to build a new kind of politics, it will take more than the departure of a man or even an Administration that constructed the old -it will take a movement of everyday Americans committed to changing Washington and reclaiming their government."