Things Used To Be So Much Fun

When I started Blogging, Bill Clinton was president and I rarely wrote about political issues.
It was a great time to write funny, playful Blogs about life and the world in general.
In looking over my archives, I see my level of political vituperance has grown in direct proportion to the Bush level of incompetence.
Times used to be so simple before Bush.
Back then, I was making a lot more money, gas cost less than a buck a gallon, we weren't at war, and I was traveling all over North America at a moment's notice because air travel used to be so convenient.
Now we have to dread the details of flying. We have to schedule hours of extra time to be searched, questioned and sequestered the from non-ticketed before we even get to the gate.
Now we have to watch what we say in public.
We have to make sure our e-mail and IM's are not too controversial.
Mail takes longer to send and receive.
We have to watch every dollar we make and spend.
We have to budget for trips that will require extra gasoline.
We have to pitch in and help family and friends who are unemployed.
We have to worry about more angry people from more foreign lands invading us, bombing us or otherwise trying to destroy us.
We have to decipher miles of complicated laws and rules to find affordable prescriptions for our elders.
We have to worry again about a woman's right to choose.
We have to wonder why the arts are no longer important to our nation.
We queers have to worry that our rights may be eroded to the point of having no rights at all.
We have to worry about dirty air and polluted water.
We have to worry about big corporations swallowing up smaller businesses and dictating their terms to us as employees and consumers.
We have to worry about our younger friends and family possibly getting drafted.
We have to let people in Africa die of AIDS because our government no longer helps them.
We have to listen to racist and inflammatory speech our Fundamental Christian government hurls toward non-Christians.
We have to tolerate aggressive right-wingers who've been emboldened by the President's lead.
We have to watch our constitution be ignored or even worse, tampered with.
We have to see the damage caused by a GOP dominated legislative and executive branch, and we have no redress at the Supreme Court level.
We have to tolerate sweetheart deals that allow for a vice president's company to make billions of dollars on an illegal war, and watch them make even more billions repairing the damage still being caused by that war.
We have to listen to draft dodger in the Oval Office challenge the military record of his much decorated veteran opponent.
We have to hear the word liberal used as a synonym for un-American, communist, unpatriotic or things otherwise unsavory.
We have to let vital medical progress like stem cell research die because the right-wing Christians who rule Bush think it's sinful.
We have to watch efforts to provide all American children with a quality education be abandoned.
We have to watch millions of families suffer without adequate access to basic health care.
We've had to witness a systematic collapse of our nation's infrastructure, our economy and our global position as leaders in freedom and democracy.
We've allowed ourselves to become citizens of a country that is no longer respected and no longer great.
America has become a dreary reflection of its president and his administration.

Damn. I can't wait for this phoenix of a country to dump Bush and rise again.
Then we can all get back to writing funny, more carefree, all American Blogs.