Why I Support the Re-Election of George W. Bush

In a recent email, revered webmaster and genial left-leaning guru extraordinaire threw out a challenge and practically defied me to write a column in which I would defend Mr. Bush�s candidacy for re-election.

I can visualize him now, exiting the studio after a day long shoot, chauffeured and limoed to a near-by trendy watering hole filled with fellow Hollywood liberals all sitting around drinking fifteen dollar banana martinis, some smoking smuggled fifty dollar Cuba del Castro cigars, most talking excitedly about the triumphant showing at Cannes by their beloved Michael �Fat Load� Moore. This is most definitely not Bush Country.

Take a break from your cocktail, folks, and I will set forth in a single brief sentence why we must allow the President to continue in office.

And I say this even though I do not particularly like the man or his politics.

I say this as one who mistrusts many of his close advisors and his love affair with the Christian Right.

I say this heedful of his reputation abroad and of the venom being spewed by leaders of the Party of the Mythic Jackass: leaders like the booze befuddled Senior Senator from Massachusetts, and the Italian broad heading the House minority claque, Nancy �Mamma get your Guinea Ass Back in the kitchen where it belongs� Pelosi, fellow Italian and disgrace to genuine mafiosi everywhere. Capice?

I say this in light of a recent remark by his presumptive rival, John Kerry, also of the Bay State, a remark he thought made �off the record� in which he wondered out loud whether the President�s bike had lost its training wheels when the poor fellow had a slight accident over the weekend. I don�t recall any Republican remarks about a similar bicycle mishap Mr. Kerry suffered a few short weeks ago.

Before we get to that single, succinct sentence you will have to wade through a few short, but less succinct paragraphs.

We live in an age of political savagery. It wouldn�t be so bad if we had not allowed the selection process to extend to a full four years. As a nation, we could all use a wee bit o� bloodletting during a campaign. The Brits have been doing it for centuries, after all. In a six or eight week campaign a candidate can get away with saying almost anything.

But no. Thanks to the obscene excess of available funds, thanks to a unfeeling Fourth Estate whose sole purpose these days seems be to create controversy for the sake of its precious bottom line, thanks to the utter stupidity of the American People mostly educated in failing �government� schools, the next election begins the day after last one.

And nobody cares. Nobody gives a rat�s ass. Eternal political contests have become a way of life in the Fifty States feeding the egos of narcissistic news junkies and talking heads of TV Land. There are no experts on the 24/7 news channels, only lop sided, opinionated salivating boobs (apologies to Janet Jackson, please).

The controversies stirred by the media do nothing more than cause us to lose sight of what ought to be our national goals, goals that can only be reached through meaningful and sincere dialogue. What is going on in the U.S. these days is little more than a bunch of screaming morons, each caught up in the class warfare that negates meaningful, productive discussion, yelling past one another, but never hearing, noise without comprehension, one way vituperation, negation, an emptiness devoid of communication.

One of the articles I wrote a year or so ago was deleted from its resting place at express page, a kind of repository for more than three hundred and fifty essays, raves, rants, and fiction. I rewrote it at once�it hadn�t been gone more than a few days�.and republished it under a slightly different address. Why was the original deleted? Probably because the title, I HATE REPUBLICANS; I JUST HATE DEMOCRATS A LITTLE MORE offended the sensitivities of some reader who sent a nasty email to the webmaster. Zing�instant censorship�.no warning, no reason, no appeal. Just delete the offending essay. It matters not that more than four thousand people had read it previously. Some reacted with comment or email, but most simply let it slide.

I hate censorship. It only happened once before when I was still in middle school when I wrote a few paragraphs explaining why Jesus was Gay (he surrounded himself with twelve male dudes, he washed the feet of prostitutes instead of doin� what comes naturally, and he obviously had not only an unnatural fixation towards his mamma Mary but also continued to live under her roof long after he should have been out on his own; and, of course, he never married.) I stuck that up on express page in the religion section. It lasted two days and offended dozens. Not bad for a kid who wasn�t quite thirteen.

My loathing of Republicans and Democrats just a little more is forcing me to reconsider the whole political thing. There has to be a better way than the two party system we now �enjoy�. Both parties are corrupt. We have come to a point in the political evolution when we can endure neither our vices nor their remedies. (Those last words are borrowed from Livy, incidentally, who was a Roman Historian of the Republic in the days when the republic was being systematically dismantled by the first Roman Emperor. The Romans had a two party system. Theirs was as corrupt as ours. But it took them over seven hundred years to move from Republic to Imperial rule. We will beat that record, won�t we?

And I do not like the minor parties out there any better. Pat Buchanan single handedly demolished the part of Ross Perot. Nader is a joke, an old man entering the lists one last time out of an obscure sense of duty. The Libertarians define themselves so narrowly that they seem to have lost sight of two centuries of history.

So why does Luke support Bush in election 2004?

It was best articulated by one of the greatest presidents of the last century.

A Democrat, at that. A controversial Democrat who led us through the most trying times in our history.

A democrat who will be paeaned by the party faithful at this summer�s convention, but who would be unelectable in today�s climate.

An aristocratic democrat. A man of breeding, of class, of education.

He gave in one short phrase the reason why Bush is �da man� right now, for all of his apparent faults and weakness.

You see, we are at war. The current conflict is being fought across the entire globe with an enemy that wants nothing more than the destruction of these United States and the death of her people. Or, barring that, their conversion to a straightjacketed religion right out of the early Middle Ages.

FDR had it right when he ran in 1944 on the slogan DON�T CHANGE HORSES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREAM.

Says it all. Bush is a war-time president.

Need a fix? Got to our TABLE OF CONTENTS at http://members.aol.com/luciusson/contents.html and catch up on your reading.

Lots going on in my life right now. Good stuff, mostly. Could do a little better in the getlaid department. Holding down two part time jobs, doing lots of writing.

Ciao For Now

Luke Angelo Macon, Georgia

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Luke Angelo, Cyberbrat Out Of Hell, lives in Macon, GA, where he regularly causes trouble and proves that the pen is far mightier than the Mayor