Progress

In less than three weeks, this long process will come to an end.

In less than three weeks, we will know what janitor we have hired for the lunacy ahead.

What has emerged in these last weeks is not only the whole sale defection of the electorate for the Senator from Illinois, but the shocking endorsement of the leading lights of the conservative movement-the son of Buckley, the arch-est of conservatives, no less. The rout appears to be on.

Here's the thing; Americans are willing to give any idea a chance, even one that is well past its sell date, and this was true of the anti-intellectual whoredom that conservatism became, is. Like the cool jeans, conservatism became an emptied signifier behind which any fat cat capitalist, neo confederate, end timer or white supremacist could hide, peering around the lapels of St. Reagan, beyond reproach.

What happened as the result of the Reagan revolution reflects not so much on Reagan the man as the Republicans as a party; When the party of Lincoln went South, it absorbed all the evil latent in the aristocratic pipe dreams of the Antebellum, and its vicious re-invention in Jim Crow-ism. All the superstition, all the religious hypocrisy, all the unshakable belief that, someone, this worldview is the mere recognition of natural law. For people who tend to err on the side of Flintstones Theology, this notion of the righteousness of a permanent underclass smacks is social darwinism in its absolute form. Graft this onto the practical need for the poor as a source of cheap labor and...poof. The Grand Old Party reinvents itself as tradition.

At this moment, the Republican went from laissez faire to ideological. Ronald Reagan, as a standard bearer, was a much more pleasant and polite face than the dark horse irrascibility of the movement's conscience, Barry Goldwater, who had no use for the diluting influence of the bible, nor dreams of the South Restored. Reagan, if any of this belongs on his shoulders, recognized the need to build a coalition within the party, which coincided with the rise of the religious (Southern) right, and, needing those votes. Reagan's culpability in this disaster is the unwillingness to condemn the far right elements seeding his party.

Now, as this campaign wanes, we see the strange fruit on very public displays; Death threats, "Barack Osama" signs, dipshits with Curious George dolls (at least the doll is curious), racial slurs from the crowd and coming from the inbred offspring of that iniatial GOP group grope; Sarah Palin, in the role of a quasi retarded Regan to McCain's Lear, spewing the festering contents of the sore that is Old Mean America, the America of the "Natural Order", of Aristocratic Pipe Dreams, the necrotized fruit of bondage and money, the America that fears the future because it exposes its sins to light and reason, sanity and sense.

The lights are on, and now, everybody sees it. It is one thing to, for example, to disagree with Abortion as a Christian, Jew or Muslim; It is quite another to align oneself with the forces of repression, darkness, violence, and hatred in order to do so. In the version of a very Good Book I read, there is nothing about violating some or all of the rest of the Commandments in order to prevent one. There is nothing about ignoring the spirit and intent of the life of Jesus Christ in order to focus on one tiny segment of His Word.

One cannot see this evil and not be appalled. One cannot hear this venom, this slander, and not be outraged.

The other thing about Americans is that, innate in all but the most corrupt of us, is a sense of right and wrong, and the determination to act as an Avenging Angel for righteousness.

That time is, perhaps, finally at hand.