Aaron Cometbus, �Despite Everything: A Cometbus Omnibus�
[Ed Note: I got back from the doctor about the collarbone yesterday and he said it still hasn�t set, which probably means I�m using my arm too much. One of those things that�ll keep it from healing is typing. I guess this would be a good time to get back to fixing the site so it�s in the proper chronological order.
This particular entry stemmed from just after the Presidential election in 2004, obviously. I guess it�s good timing, as Bush�s British Butt Buddy Blair just got re-elected.
Wow. That�s a lot of B�s. Bitchin�.]
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Hooray, huzzah, and joy to us all! The election is finally over! Don�t you all feel better?
Don�t you?
Living in the liberal-centric area that I do, I�m seeing a lot of people with shell-shocked expressions. I know how they feel. I�m a little shell-shocked myself. After two years of minimal contact with people who would even consider of voting for Bush, I now see a country where more than half of the population decided to keep him in.
This is troubling. Are we, as Northern Californians, so out of touch with the rest of the world?
Perhaps. But let�s try and make sense of this fiasco.
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�Marvelous technology is at our disposal, but instead of reaching up to new heights, we�re gonna see how far down we can go, how deep into the muck we can immerse ourselves!�
-Talk Radio
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Let�s take a look at the pundits. From CNN to CBS, every station showed exit polling featuring people who voted for Bush declared �Moral Values� as one of their top priorities for choosing as they did.
I assume from this they mean �Moral Values� to mean �Anti-Abortion.� Of course, nobody wanted to classify it that way, and so we�re left with a vague sense of what is supposed to mean. Does moral values mean playing the schoolyard bully, starting fights with weaker kids? Does it mean pushing others into groupthink, saying you�re either with us or with the terrorists? Does it mean trying to pass the blame when confronted?
Perhaps. But I think, after all that�s happened, all the media coverage of all the things that have gone wrong with this administration, after all the lies, deceit and hyperbole, the one reason why people would decide to keep Bush in power comes from reason, and it�s not �moral values.�
No, it�s because what we�ve learned from this administration is that we never admit that we may have been wrong.
Voting Bush out after all that�s happened would send a signal to the world � we made a mistake, we�re sorry, let�s move past all that and try to fix things.
Americans don�t work that way. We don�t like to admit our own culpability.
I learned this at a very early age. I was only a child when Reagan was against the wall for illegally funding the contra army in Latin America. But I was watching. Oh, I was watching. And so when I saw Oliver North talk glibly about breaking dozens of laws and sanctions to fund his illegal army and an illegal war, I was certain that he would take a fall. What seemed obvious to me, even as a child with no understanding of how the American political process worked, was that I knew that this was a Bad Person.
Bad People in our society are supposed to be punished. This is obvious to a child. What I saw instead, was North being lauded as a hero.
Nobody denied that he had broken laws. Nobody denied that he had stepped over and on our constitution. But he did it for �The good of America.� And what�s good for the Gipper is good for the gawker, to turn a phrase. So he was forgiven, and now he uses his position as a war criminal as a point of pride that brings him credibility.
And why is this? Because being an American means never having to say you�re sorry.
Point of pride? Hardly. It�s more of a fear factor at work, and not the kind that involves eating bugs and playing with traffic. From color-coded alert levels to conveniently timed appearances of Middle Eastern bogeymen, we�ve been conditioned to be afraid. If you watched the pundits, safety from terrorist threats was another high factor showing in exit polls for people who admitted voting for Bush.
Apparently nobody thought of the fact that our actions that have angered the world have made us more concrete targets for that animosity.
It�s appropriate that the book I�m reviewing (or not reviewing) is called Despite Everything. That�s what we�re hearing now. �Despite everything,� people say on the talk shows that followed, �we should be glad that so many people bothered to turn out for the electoral process.�
�Despite the outcome, people should be glad to have the ability to cast their vote in whatever way they saw fit.� And now, we�re supposed to move toward unity. Even Kerry, in his concession speech, talked about healing the division in our nation.
I say fuck that shit. The general public in this country reacts most to fear?
I�ll give you fear.
I don�t like to recycle material, but when California had the successful recall vote against Gray Davis, I said the electoral process had failed. It had failed, I said, because every person who knew what a bad idea this recall was had failed to kill every single person who thought the recall was a good idea. I can repeat this now, because it was a joke when I first said it.
I am not joking now.
I�m tired of debating. I�m tired of trying to reason. I don�t have the money or the resources to meet with every person who lives in the red zones (which, ironically, would be the highest color of national threat). Until now, I�ve been willing to let the media show how bad this administration is, and I think they�ve done a fair job at it.
But you didn�t listen. You reacted off of base instincts. You voted not from points of conscience or knowledge, but out of pride and fear. Now it�s time to pay the fiddler.
So, the people respond to fear, do they? Well, here�s something to fear � a strong offense does not automatically mean a strong defense. Where before we only made people annoyed or jealous, we�ve now made them pissed. And if you think September 11 was a lucky break for those against us, you don�t know how vulnerable we are. Because there are people here that are angrier than others abroad.
Your fear will become apparent when my monkey army and me stands over you with now easily acquired automatic weapons. Your pride will melt away when you realize how you traded an attempt, however measly and mealy-mouthed, to try and make things better, only to make things worse.
A planet where Apes evolved from men? Is it really so surprising?
�Oh, nice way of instilling democracy,� you say, �by executing all of those who disagree with you.� A valid point, if not for one factor � nobody, but nobody could possibly be for Bush if they had been paying any attention at all to what�s happened in the last four years. There is no reason to let this travesty continue.
Those who say, �hey I voted for Kerry,� don�t think you�re safe. You�re not safe because you didn�t instill this fear in others about how much worse our world is going to get. They�ll see it for themselves soon enough, if we don�t get them first. And we�ll be coming after you as well. I�ll bring about a democracy even if I have to do it with an iron fist.
If you aren�t with me, consider this: most people think Bush wasn�t actually elected last time, so does this mean than now that he�s been legitimized, he can run again in 2008?
No, it�s time for people to die. There are too many people breathing perfectly good air that could be mine.
And to those who would be so brazen to ask who I�ve killed, I�d like to quote Oliver North, the man who got me interested in politics in the first place:
�I, respectfully and regretfully, refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me and/or others.�
