Reaping the Whirlwind.

We awakened on January 20, 2009, or so we thought, to a New Day in America, the scourge of the Bush/Cheney years behind us and the promise and inspiration of a bright young new President before us.

We will awaken tomorrow, one year later, to yet another New Day, a darker one which brings with it the terrible truth: this county is broken, perhaps irretrievably so.

Am I overstating the situation, becoming just another hysterical voice in what I have termed our post-rational world? Let's consider that.

The economic holocaust which marked the end of the Bush years is much worse, much more resistant to correction, than anyone ever imagined. The campaign of fear being waged against the future by those who cannot see beyond the past is taking root.The message of Change which propelled the first Black American into the White House, appears to have been but a chimera.

The price of all this is fearsome. We are a nation fraught with Frustration rather than inspired by Hope, overwhelmed by Anger rather than working toward Conciliation. We are seeing the triumph of the Politics of No rather than those of Comity.

The Democrats have tumbled from the heights, an historic crash which is---starting at the very top, the Oval Office--- at least partially, perhaps primarily, of their own making.

Blame will be laid. Fingers will be pointed. It is unavoidable and necessary, cathartic if not particularly useful. Fine, but that will waste time we do not have.

This swift, stunning turn of Democratic fortunes will, most likely, end any hope for health care reform in the immediate future. It will be fodder for the equivalency-blinded talking heads of the laughably mischaracterized "Liberal Media Elite" and the screamers of hatred on the Right for weeks and months to come. Vapidness will continue to fill the airwaves, drowning out reason, obscuring reality.

The impending paralysis of Congress is almost palpable. Blue Dogs will begin to bite their Democrat brethren in the ass with impunity once again, desperately trying to save their own hides. And, trust me, the GOP establishment will all too soon become aware of what they have wrought and how much their own futures are in peril.Cater to ignorance and chances are you will become caught in its tentacles.

Americans are about to reap the whirlwind of their mindless acceptance of easy answers and the babble of charlatans, of allowing shouting mobs on street corners and scripted disruptive gangs shutting down political discourse to be the images they will carry with them into history. We live now in Fox News America.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

That is a question we will explore in serious depth starting very soon. For now, let us mourn the death of the dream that we might somehow have escaped the specters of our past and the dark heart of our history.

   (Quoted text from "The Second Coming"
                by Matthew Arnold)