Closet Bigoted Hard Nose Bully

That's what I hear when I hear little w talk about being a compassionate conservative.

I get lunch at a little kiosk on the street next to Pioneer Courthouse. The proprietor of this establishment (No Fish! Go Fish!) is an interesting fellow who got married to his partner during the few months when Multnomah County was issuing same sex marriage licenses. He makes the best soup and these great little fish shaped sandwiches which are great for someone who (like me) practises vegetarianism.

I was talking with him today about the Iraq situation and how Americans do not seem to care that all of Islam gets a bad rap because of terrorism. I told him about a report I saw, done by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, about the Arab reaction to 9/11. One female university student put it so eloquently that I could not help but have a moment of clarity on the subject. She said that America strikes in the Middle East without regard to the lives of the innocent. She said that the terrorists learned to kill from the Americans, and that America should be proud that the terrorists have learned to be just like us.

Could this possibly be true? If you look back at our history, we do have a history of being the hero, but we also have a dark side, where we have acted out of pure bigotry. And our crusade against Islam is another aspect of our bigoted war on the not white anglo-saxon protestant world.

I see little w as a product of the WASP tradition, and what happens when the WASP majority finds its dominance at home slipping away. WASPs no longer make up the majority of Americans. Bush, perhaps unknowingly, is the last gasp of this bigoted tradition lashing out at everything not WASP in the world.

We have a history of bigotry we cannot escape. And after a couple of decades of repression, bigotry is on its way back. It has spent too much time in the closet. In a closet that the gay population has now rejected, a closet that religious minorities have rejected, a closet that racial minorities have rejected, and now the closet bigots are on their way back out of the closet, trying to stuff the rest of the world back in.

What happens on November 2nd will decide much about this new century. In that respect, I must agree with Cheney's stump speech. I disagree, however, with his prognosis, at least his publicly stated one, for a second Bush term. He is a liar, just like little w and millions of others. All they want to do is subjugate the progressive ideals of the other minorities, and keep us from challenging the institutions of the bigots which have failed us for so many years. On November 2nd, here in Oregon, we have the opportunity to reject a gaybashing constitutional amendment, and nationally we have the opportunity to defeat an administration of fear, hate and war.

When you spend those few moments alone with your ballot, choose wisely. Because four years from now, you may not have the opportunity to stop the juggernaut of evil. It will be our own fault, as Americans, if we let it happen again.