I'm mad. Really steaming frothing hopping mad.

This whole weekend has been one of stewing over the latest example of George W. Bush's arrogance and total disregard for the rule of law. He shouldn't have been re-elected. But he was. By the narrowest, razor-thinnest, most tweakable of margins.

Really, the whole wiretapping thing is just one last insult on top of many. He's done worse. Much worse. From the questionable tactics in the 2000 election to the false pretenses he used to send us to war in Iraq to Quaker meeting halls being infiltrated in "Return Of The Son Of COINTELPRO" to not attending a single funeral of a single dead soldier, sailor, pilot or Marine since the start of this fool's errand in Iraq. And don't forget Valerie Plame and the damage that was done to agents still in the field by a childish swipe at a perceived enemy.

I have an unfinished novel in my desk called "Black Decade," about a Christian Theocracy and its rule in a "New America" where girls are only educated until age 16 and in a curriculum of home economics, baby care and barely basic literacy, where "guaranteed employment for men" is the new euphemism for a draft, and the prestige universities cease to be Harvard and Yale and become Bob Jones and Oral Roberts. It is a novel that focuses as much on the resistance that springs up in the ruined cities and untrammeled rural communities of America as it does the nightmare structure of this Orange County that metastasizes and swallows up a whole nation. I shelved it because it was too comparable to a cyberpunked-out take on "The Handmaid's Tale" for my tastes. Now I think I'm going to keep it shelved because it seems almost to be too close to reality for comfort.

Someone gave me a mantra today to repeat when my stomach gets too clenchy and my anger begins to well up to the point where I want to punch something or someone.

That mantra is this: They re-elected Nixon too.

True 'dat. I was acutely aware that Nixon won and McGovern lost in 1972. I was a precocious kid who was developing into a news junkie at a tender age. I was bummed, as was my mom. My dad, on the other hand, was very smirkily happy. Who could have predicted that two years later his heart would have been broken by the revelations of Watergate?

Anyway, when that mantra doesn't work, I think I have a little visualization to think about.



Virginia isn't too far from DC, Dubya. Karma always bats last.