The New Yorker is helping restore my sanity with its description of the Bush Administration:
its mania for shovelling cash to the very rich at the expense of families of middling means, its servility to polluters and fossil-fuel extractors, its reckless embrace of fiscal insolvency, its hostility to science, its political alliances with fanatic religious fundamentalisms of every stripe except Islamic (and of that stripe, too, when the subject is family planning or capital punishment), its partisan exploitation of our city’s suffering after the attacks of September 11, 2001, its transubstantiation of the worldwide solidarity that followed those attacks into worldwide anti-Americanism, and its diversion of American blood, treasure, and expertise away from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to a bloody occupation of Iraq that appears to have done nothing to weaken Islamist terrorism and may have done more than a little to strengthen it.
I haven’t heard about any of that at the convention this week. It’s nice to escape from the fear propaganda and be reminded of the truth. Now, is there a way to boil it all down into a Kerry campaign slogan?
At this point, I think “He’s Not Bush” would probably be the most effective idea. Ordinarily, I really hate the idea of voting against someone. I really want to feel like I’m voting FOR someone. There are things about Kerry I like, and things that I’m not so crazy about, but all the nuances of my opinions about him pale in comparison to the utter dread I feel about another term with Bush and his cronies at the helm. Although I think someone who has devoted his entire adult life to public service is pretty good on his own merits, I think it’s acceptable for people to agree that any change in leadership would be better than what we’re subjected to now.