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Pray It's Not Too Late I'm afraid I may have failed again. I had these grand ambitions of writing thirty or so political essays on why one must not vote for George W. Bush on 2 November of this year, taking him and his foul administration to task for their palm-greasing of the rich, their ass-licking of big business, their murderous carelessness with national security and the armed forces, their Nazi-esque lying and fear-mongering, their wanton destruction of the planet, but as is so often the case, my life has intervened, and I have been constrained to attempt to hold things together in it, rather than ranting on politics on a website that practically nobody reads. The current polls do nothing to restore my already practically dead faith in the American people and everything to convince me that my near apathy is justified. How can this race be so close? Have the last four years actually been GOOD for that many people? Are that many Americans millionaires or better? Are we so afraid of a perceived threat from "The Other" that we would willfully follow a leader who has no love or respect for anything but his family's money and will only lead us into more death, destruction and poverty while he and his sit, fat and happy, in the big white house on the hill? We must rouse ourselves from this living nightmare before it's too late and we suffocate in our own pillows! How can we go to the polls and bend over, contritely saying, "Please sir, might I have another?" (or worse yet, not go to the polls at all)! There is nothing I can say that will change anyone's mind. I know this. You who will vote for this childish cretin autocrat, being children of a childish nation, see in him one of your own kind: a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, who is so sure of his own rectitude that he will leap to conclusions based on incomplete or incorrect information, and when the consequences of his snap judgments become apparent, will, like a child, point the finger elsewhere to distract, refuse to revise his position based on evolving data, and lie outright about his intentions, his actions, his motivations. This is a man who wants all for himself, who allows no possibility for any way other than his own being right, and who provides easy answers which require little thought or understanding which might actually strain the brain in attempting to grasp that the very nature of life itself is multi-faceted, carefully-shaded, and in no way simple. You will vote for him because you believe him when he tells you he will keep you safe from the "enemy", failing to see that he is the very entity from which you need to be protected. He steals your money to ravage your planet and squanders the lives of your comrades to ensure his own future fortune while robbing you of your own, all the while smiling as he dissembles and deceives, telling you everything you want to hear. How can you not see that none of what he tells you is true? This nation is no more secure than it was before 11 September 2001, and now, our citizens die daily in foreign lands which were not involved in what happened that awful day, while the true perpetrators of that atrocity remain at large. Our brave men and women are dying and being maimed for life in an effort to stabilize societies which never in the history of the world have been stable, so that we may continue to spend our money on buying energy resources from those nations who hate us and who torture their own people, so that we might continue to destroy the planet in an ever increasing vicious cycle. His response: Give incentives to corporations and individuals to buy vehicles that will consume more of these resources for which our people are dying and which pollute our environment. Hundreds, thousands of acres of this land's beautiful fields and forests, our natural resources, the national treasures of which poets and novelists and journalists have written for centuries, are being destroyed, and you support his apathy, nay, cheering at their ruin. He refuses to enact legislation which would curtail pollution, which not only is destroying the environment, but your very personal health, in order that the rich might not have to decrease their profits. After the previous administration's work to nearly eradicate the national deficit, this administration has increased it by hundreds of billions of dollars. American unemployment rates have risen constantly throughout this administration, increasing the number of poor in our land, and you support a leader who wants to allow big businesses to send their most coveted positions overseas, claiming that other countries' workers have greater skill sets for the jobs than our own. Public education in much of this country is wretchedly inadequate; your children finish this course of study without the basic skills they need to speak and write the language, to balance their checkbooks, in short, to survive in the modern world, and you support his refusal to overhaul the system, to diversify their learning experiences, to extend programs which will keep them occupied, learning, in the presence of good influences and out of trouble while their parents work to support them. It is hideously expensive to pay for medical care for oneself, let alone an entire family, and you support a leader who will do nothing to decrease these costs. He wants to pilfer the funds you've worked for all your life (doubtless to continue to bolster his and his friends' stockpiles through further favoritism for corporations run by his cronies) and on which you hope to rely as you reach your twilight years, yet you show no resistance. You support his refusal to allow certain scientific medical research which could save the lives of your loved-ones, because he fears it might somehow offend his god that we should use the brains and the resources that deity has given us. You support his belief that people should be treated as inhuman and divested of their rights because of whom they love and who loves them. We, the nation once most desired, beloved, and admired of all the world for our ingenuity, our bravery, our willingness to help others, are now among the world's most despised, and as we become more reviled, more alone, more outcast, he tells us this makes us stronger. Would it not make more sense to strengthen our friendships in order to strengthen our security? Would not fewer people want to destroy us if more of them liked us? I walk past the former site of the Twin Towers six out of seven days a week -- You who call upon the memory of the images of the destruction of those great monuments to America's prosperity do a disservice to the memory of those who died there if you affirm the administration which permitted such a travesty. How is the faithful city become a harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. r
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