But

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a particularly successful blogger. Not because the quality of my prose is lacking, or because I have an audience of four readers, but because this blog hasn't quite conformed to the nature of popular blogs, which is to present doctrinaire, strident comments on critical issues, challenges to the powerful to cleanse their act, or simply manic declarations on cultural topics indicative of fringe lunacy.

Like another version of advocacy journalism, radio's Air America, this blog has suffered from too much moderation, too much objective consideration of the issues, eschewing radical viewpoints or even partisan stridency in the interests of reasoned discourse. That is the way I am personally; I seek out conciliatory positions, always trying to understand disparate viewpoints rather than summarily dismissing them, and trying to find acceptable accord for all to live with. Nothing can ever be gained by polarization, which is the situation in early 21st century America, as the cultural divide widens like the foreboding cracks in the caldera of Mount St. Helens.

After the dismal and depressing election of 2004, whose results were dictated from religious pulpits by spouters of fire and brimstone fantasies, I tried to accept the results pragmatically. We were stuck with a Republican adminstration and a smug Republican congress and nothing short of revolution could change that. And I'd survived and flourished through many more Republican presidents than Democrats over my life span. The undeserving and incredibly lucky George W. Bush had been thrust into his executive CEO role through a combination of oil interests, old boy political networks, a hypocritical Supreme Court majority-of-one and clever but scurrilous manipulators like Karl Rove. Oh well, shit happens, we all die, fa la la la la.

But.

Something snapped in me recently when I read Dubya's comments about the validity of teaching "intelligent design" as an alternative theory in public schools. This is far worse than his insistence that stem cells are incipient human beings whose DNA should be preseved rather than used in research to cure Alzeimer's Disease. That position, even dissed by 2008 presidential aspirant Bill Frist (and wait till flip-flopping gets resurrected in that campaign!), is at least defensible on some spiritual level, however weak the "life-affirming" argument holds from a President who has initiated so much death and destruction in Iraq. When putative leader of the most powerful nation on earth stands up and a) refutes accepted scientific theory on evolution--which he did by subsequently announcing that he believed the universe was God's creation--and 2) suggests that religious dogma be presented as plausible fact in public schools, he steps beyond the level of tolerable. Hey, let's leave the supernatural speculations to catechism class, where they belong, okay? I don't want my tax dollars going to the perpetuation of fantasy as reality.

Georgie, you are an idiot. You have been long before you traded Sammy Sosa. I cannot look at you standing at your podium any more without actually seeing someone else entirely in your stead. That is Howdy Doody. Yes, every time I look at you now all I see is a jolly wooden puppet flailing around, dancing to the strings pulled by the Radical Right. You are a spokesman for Ignorance, for dogmatic theocratic government, for exclusionary social policy.

The Europeans have you pegged correctly. You have turned the White House into a Citadel of Ignorance. When I think that you are, titularly, the most important human being on Earth, it really makes me weep for our species.

If I can credit Dubya with anything, it is making us reconsider what a dignified figure his father made in comparison, not to mention the otherwise doddering but sincere Reagan or the slimy but pragmatic Nixon. Gore Vidal was once quoted as saying that when Bush Jr. leaves office, he will do so as the most repudiated president in our history. There are three years of scary history ahead of us to determine if that will be the case, but I would not doubt it. He is an insult to scientific progress and an embarrassment to modern civilization.