These last few weeks have been interesting, to say the least. We had to say lots of Good Byes, some good, some interesting, some actually are still happening as we speak.
There was Jerry Falwell's ultimate departure: What did surprise me was the fact that even now, years after his Moral Majority -that wasn't- had lost most of its influence, people were still out there defending the man as a scion of society, a pillar of faith, and what not. If you take the measure of WWJD, Falwell failed in every aspect to be the kind of Christian Jesus had in mind, presumably. Falwell preached divisiveness, even hatred, showed disrespect and contempt for anyone not of his ilk, and particularly toward those he deemed doomed, according to his own twisted values. There are those who demanded that he be given "respect in death". No, we shouldn't call him names, curse him, but I think he as a public figure took the risk that his contemporaries would not look kindly upon him, especially after what he said after September 11, 2001. That was utter disrespect to the families of the WTC victims, the firefighters and policemen who died in an attempt to help others. He himself made sure that his legacy will be the sad laughter of history, a "dirty footprint in American History", like Father Charles Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy, but eventually forgotten. (See what others are saying).
On to another Good Bye:
Mr. Wolfowitz found his match. All his political maneuvering and skill couldn't help him out of the whole he'd been digging for himself for almost 40 years. His egotistical bluffs were finally called. And of course a president with waning approval ratings wasn't about to get into yet another fight for yet another loosing cause. Enough damage done, Mr. Wolfowitz, time to go home, maybe stop by at a store and buy a few pairs of new socks (take a look at German Spiegel magazine photos, 4th photo in that stretch of 7).
And then, there is of course our esteemed AG Gonzales, the man with a sieve for a brain ( I don't recall how many times he couldn't recall things related to his job, but he pretty much eliminated himself by showing his utter disqualification for it).
Serious now, Gonzales and his buddies did major damage to this country. The world had been working to eliminate torture, imperfectly so, but at least in civilized societies its use was despised and outlawed by legal systems. Along comes a smart boot licker, a henchman, an apparatschik who turns to the president of this country and suggests that we need not pay attention to the Geneva Convention, that what ever we want to do, we can. World and public opinion be damned. Then again, we had already lost most support from our former allies by marching into Iraq (it's pronounced Eeee -rawk not I-rack), and those were countries previously sympathetic to the United States unlike the dubious coalition of the willing who paid scarce lip service to the "cause" but not much else.
The circle closes: what you don't pay upfront, you pay later on. Our standing in the international community in the dust, thousands of our soldiers dead and more mangled for live, families disrupted, children orphaned, marriage in shambles, but the Bushies are marching on, sorry, they are limping now. Time to get this country back on course. There is a lot of goodness here, that was brushed under by the conservative self serving bullies that were swept into power. It's not too late, let's get rid of them.
