Back to my aching head.

Did no one else notice that in October 2002 all of the major news shows described a war with Iraq as “imminent?” President Bush was right when he said, “In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over… to kind of catapult the propaganda.” Did the majority of people in our nation not understand that this is what was being done to them? Or do they figure only “foreigners” fall for that stuff?

In the years that followed, there were so many obvious questions that no one was asking in public or private. If Saudis flew planes into the World Trade Center then why were we attacking Iraq? Why were we allowing our constitutional rights to be signed away with the cynically titled Patriot Act? Why were we randomly abducting anyone who “looked Arab” and torturing them? What kind of people had we become? My left brain began to hurt.

When the 2004 Presidential elections rolled around I saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Surely the majority of voters must be sick of the president and his lies. But according to the major news outlets America was divided. We were split 50/50 on Bush, on the war, on torture, on global warming, on evolution. (Funny, I’ve been hearing a lot of this sort of talk again lately…). Men and women were in Iraq giving their lives for democracy, if you took Bush at his word. The time had come for me to get off the fence and take some action for democracy in the homeland. I volunteered to help the Windham Democrats to get out the vote.

I was not enthusiastic about this. The Democrats had served up some pretty lukewarm candidates over the years. Mondale, Dukakis, Gore/Lieberman. The party had slowly been turning into Republican Lite. I did not like Bill Clinton. It had nothing to do with his philandering or Hillary’s pantsuits. It had everything to do with his support of NAFTA and other initiatives that benefited global corporations at the expense of workers, human rights and the environment. The people I met through the Democratic Party were friendly and shared my frustration with the direction our country was heading in. Things seemed hopeful for a change. Exit polls on election night had Kerry ahead nationally by over 2 percent.

But then the dust settled and W. was declared Leader of the Free World again. The discrepancy between exit polls and the final results was chalked up to some voters having fun with pollsters. The 50/50 propaganda blitz lent some plausible deniability to the fishy election results. Or maybe my right brain was connecting dots again.

So why am I so hung up on this stuff? It’s old news, spilt milk, and a done deal. I should just get over it. Except it isn’t over. We are still in the middle of this mess. If you believe the news, close to 50 percent of America is willing to wrap itself back up in a warm, fuzzy blanket of denial and go back to sleep. John McCain says that Bush’s War may go on for decades and some folks are all for that. I guess I should just pre-emptively get over that as well.

I’m sure that my spouting off here has rankled some people. I won’t apologize. I’ve had to put up with a number of conservative blowhards for two decades now. My more conservative brethren can put up with one liberal blowhard until the next Patriot Act gets signed. Maybe I’ll get sent to a camp for mouthy liberals. In the meantime I will make a deal with them. I’ll shut up if they’ll wake up.