Post Selection, Post 9/11

GriotPoet

I work as a full-time business owner and part-time at UPS from 3 AM to 9 AM most mornings. I have a friend that works as a store manager at 7-11. I have another female colleague that works at a grocery store and another part-time job. We all contributed to the robust job report post election. We're all former engineers from the dwindling high-tech industry in Austin and America.

This is George Bush's America, post selection, post 9/11. The decision did not have to go to the Supreme Court this time. It was finally a majority: based on yellow and orange alerts and fear of "boogie men" in flowing robes and turbans that -- as a wealthy man -- is most likely NOT in a cave in Tora Bora!

It is a selection of values: gay and lesbian marriage, abortion equals anti-family. The Catholic Church came out with a diatribe denying any parishioners the sacraments if they supported the right to choose. Three points: 1) abortion has been practiced since the Roman Empire, not an endorsement, but nothing new; 2) it will be interesting to see if with a majority in all branches of government and no reelection to focus on if the procedure will actually disappear; 3) isn't this the same Catholic Church that had a major problem with pedophilia in the pulpit?

To paraphrase the Vice President's comments on deficits, "The facts don't matter." Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. 1,100 plus lives. A war based on lies. Part-time jobs that pay less than the previous professions. The market surges; a job is a job.

By definition, both candidates were products rolled out to market. As market-driven commodities, the best explanation of the election is the public went with the easiest and simplest digested message. No complexities of gray: black and white, good and evil, us and the "evil doers."

The second terms of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton historically have not been as good as the first. I have witnessed the death of intellectualism for market-driven dogma and slogans. Time will tell if it means the death of democracy as well.