A few days ago I read about the Smirkster raking in $110 million so far for the party of the rich, a record for fund raising by a president. It is easy, I've found, to generalize, assuming a monolithic phalanx of the well to do, and not very bright party faithful, marching lock-step to the nasal twang of the Midland Moron. If it were so simple.

Over a year ago, I had the good fortune to attend the birthday party of a former British naval officer, now a US citizen ... let's call him James. James served on several ships of the line during WWII, and he looks every bit the sea captain, craggy face, steady gaze, a full head of mostly white hair, a very charming man. And a man, not surprisingly, of good character. He still works as a part-time bookkeeper in a grocery store, regularly delivers Meals-On-Wheels to seniors, and helps other seniors with their taxes. Most of James' time is spent taking care of his ailing wife of many years, a task he performs with love and grace. Also, James has been a Republican for as long as he's been a US citizen.

At his birthday dinner, I sat next to James' daughter, Lois. We quickly established some common ground. Lois, like me, had a well defined loathing for Bush. This was two months after the coup, so it was liberating to speak openly about the foreboding we shared regarding the chaos and damage that were to follow. During the course of our dinner, Lois revealed that her father was a steadfast Republican and always voted the ticket. Lois and her brother were unable to sway James from his political persuasions.

Eighteen months later, things have changed. James is madder than hell and isn't taking it anymore. Friends at the grocery store where he works say that James speaks strongly about the intellectual incompetence of the Smirkster. And he has grave concerns about the direction in which the country is heading. He actively expresses his views in letters to his senators and representatives. In his terms, one would say that James has experienced a political sea change. A man of character couldn't consciously back a fraud for the long term. I find comfort in that.

A month or two after the birthday party, March or April of 2001, I was listening to the Laura Flanders radio show. She was a breath of freedom and rationality when few were publicly questioning anything on the air. (You can hear Laura at http://www.workingassetsradio.com, 10:00 AM PT, M-F.) In a spontaneous moment that spring, Ms. Flanders reached former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Sinclair Stevens on his cell phone. Mr. Stevens was part of the Brian Mulroney government in Canada during the 80s. The conversation was hurried and sporadic, as Stevens was on his way to a meeting somewhere in Canada.

Laura asked Stevens if he, as a conservative, had any concerns about the aggressive stance Bush was taking against treaties and the environment. Stevens said he was quite concerned. During the interview, he said this, which I quickly jotted down as best I could, "Business is efficient, but a true conservative must weigh the impact of this efficiency." Then he added, "We must remember that true conservatism is related to conservation." After the interview, Laura was digesting the conversation and observed that Stevens, a conservative in Canada, would be left of a centrist democrat in the US. She concluded, and I also believed it then and now, the Bush cartel has nothing to do with conservatism but everything to do with radical governance. These "compassionate conservatives" not only lack compassion, they are not conservative. James may not choose the same terms to describe his disenchantment; suffice it say, he smelled some rats and decided to act by voicing his concerns and writing his representatives.

It would be nice to believe there is a classic struggle emerging between good and evil in the nation right now. But while I see the evil, the good is not as discernible. Evil doers are on the move all right, but good doers, like James, are not as clearly seen on the radar. Over 50% of the polled public, apparently, still believe that a preemptive strike against a defenseless nation is a sound idea. Going back to recent essays of mine, this majority favors death over life, which, in my book, automatically excludes them from officially standing in opposition to evil. Of course, there will be some like James who may come to their senses later, but when the blood is already on your hands, does it count?

Ignorance of the law is not a defense. While the Bush cartel has committed itself to being war criminals, terrorists in their own right and in the name of Christ no less, the cartel's supporters, both active and passive, are literally accessories to murder. And because we pay taxes to an administration that regularly violates the nation's Constitution, no one's hands are clean. We can begin to understand the post WWII uncertainty as to how to deal with the complicit German populace. They didn't know; they were only doing their duty. If there are objective historians 50 years from now, it's interesting to speculate about what their analysis of the decline of the American empire will be. If the country emerges from being a dictatorship, what will they attribute this dark period to? Corporate controlled government? Surely. The lack of an opposition party? Yes. Corporate controlled media? Uh huh. An anemic education system? Yep? All encompassing materialism reigning as the preeminent spiritual expression? Yes again. A complete disregard for man's place in the great chain of being? True. Rampant corruption in the private, public, religious sector? Affirmative. An obsession with violence? Qui. A love of death and destruction? Must be so; otherwise, we'd stop.

Still, people like James are sparks of hope. Unlike most of our cowardly chickenhawks, James has known war and understands that it is not the answer for us now. He knows that democracy is preferable to dictatorships. Most of all, he is a living testament for the sanity of loving life over loving death. This is the new line in the sand; are they on the side of life, or against it? We don't need to wait for: the bombing in Iraq to increase; the forests to be decimated in order to "save" them; the air to become more polluted; more people to die for lack of health care; more species to become extinct; etc., etc., etc. to know the answer.

• An open letter to George Walker Bush:: "And now, of course, you are constantly beating the war drum about Iraq, even though that country has not attacked us and was not involved in last September's events, and even though you have offered nothing in the way of any hard evidence that that country poses a serious threat to us."

• New wildfire plan watchdog has unorthodox views believes ecosystems are illusory: "In 'The Illusion of Ecosystem Management,' published in 1999 by the Political Economy Research Center, which says it applies market principles to environmental problems, Fitzsimmons says ecosystems exist only in the human imagination and cannot be delineated. Federal policies, therefore, should not be used to try to manage or restore them, he wrote."

• Bush's Bizarro World: the Dalai Lama is a terrorist: "The only problem with this designation, obviously designed to please the Chinese regime prior to the upcoming October summit in Washington between Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao and President Bush, is that the new 'terrorist group' is a member of the same non-government organization as the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government-in-exile, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), officially recognized by the United Nations as an international human rights organization."

• White House in disarray over Cheney speech: "In a clear sign of disarray at the top of the US administration it has emerged that Mr Cheney may have gone too far in a bellicose address last week in which he dismissed out of hand the usefulness of pushing for weapons inspectors to be allowed back into Iraq. That disarray inside the Bush team was compounded by renewed reports in the US press last night that Colin Powell was planning to leave his job as secretary of state at the end of the president's first term, potentially threatening Mr Bush's re-election chances in 2004 by robbing him of a popular and moderate ally."

• Inarticulate, and proud of it: "Washington rejects the International Criminal Court instead of trying to help shape its development. On the home front, Washington claims emergency martial law exemptions from traditional court procedures. In every case, Washington is avoiding the need to explain its position with the clarity and logic necessary to change minds and win support. Instead of convincing, Washington coerces. And why? Obviously, because Washington apes the style of a president who has no capacity for the use of language as a mode of leadership."

• America attacked for ICC tactics: "The US was accused yesterday of using "strong-arm tactics" on aspiring NATO members to persuade them to sign agreements exempting Americans from trial by the new International Criminal Court."

• Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys?: "TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings. BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings."

• The World This Week: We Are Not the Enemy: "Just pick up any daily newspaper published in the United States. Though the stories all read the same -- a 'popular,' duly-elected president tirelessly pursues terror and malfeasance on the golf courses of Maine and ranches of Texas -- the headlines tell a different tale: 'Bush Rolls Back Rules on Privacy of Medical Data,' 'Bush Gives Public Lands to Loggers,' 'Cheney Spotted in Public: Sees Shadow, Predicts Six More Weeks of Nuclear Winter,' etc."

• Bush threatens to use troops against West Coast dockworkers: "In the name of national security and its open-ended global war, the White House is threatening to use military force to destroy the basic rights of workers to organize and fight for decent wages and conditions."

• ''The lies we are told'': "A long, hard look in the mirror will reveal that we are by far the most violent nation on earth. From the moment of our birth, we are immersed in a culture of violence and the glorification thereof as evident in the amount of violence that is found on TV, in movies, song lyrics, books, video games, etc. We have the highest numbers of rape and murder in the world and incarcerate the greatest percentage of our citizens. We are the largest producer and exporter of weapons of mass destruction and have the world's biggest military budget comprising 36 percent of the total world military spending and gobbling up more than 50 percent of our own national budget, according to the Center for Defense Information."

Our archive of earlier articles by J:

National Entropy

"Bats in the National Belfry," parts 1-4

"Many Moments of Bullshit:
'The decline and fall of a democracy'" (July 22, 2002)

"Bush Family Fascism:
70 Years in the Making" (July 15, 2002)

"Time for a change" (July 8, 2002)

July 1-3, 2002

June 26-28, 2002

June 10-24, 2002