One more thing to blame on Dubya.

So I was thinking today, for whatever reason, that I don't really read "The Boondocks" anymore. The Aaron McGruder cartoon in the newspapers used to be one of my favorites. But I haven't liked it much since college. And I don't think it's me...I think it's Mr. McGruder, but really it's President Bush.

Let me explain.

I have this sense, born of no particular data or expertise, that there has been a progressive trajectory to American history for a while now. Not just the Manifest Destiny, always optimistic, New World crap that's been on this continent since Eruopeans landed; but a serious commitment to political and social progressivism in a variety of forms no matter what.

In 1904 or so (dating from the election of Teddy Roosevelt, the first true progressive president--Bully!) we all got together and said, "Hey, y'know what? From here on out, let's always try to take a step forward and never back. Even if it's just a tiny step, let's just all agree to commit to positive change in some form or another, and at the very worst let's not regress to the bad old days. We're America, we're better than that." The franchise was extended, equal rights for women and minorities (religious, gender, and ethnic) advanced, labor rights recognized, advocacy leaves the local town commitee and finds a seat at the table in DC. We get rid of the Department of War and get Education, HHS, VA, Labor. All kinds of things just keep going forward. And everytime we take a step back, we force things forward even more to make up for it--again 100 years ago we all just got together and decided to be grown-ups about this. Or so it seemed.

Then George W. Bush was appointed to the presidency under dubious circumstances and didn't govern with humble consensus befitting his political position. He just smirked and went ahead turning the nation into [shudder] Texas. We all know the story, I'm not going to recount the list of malfeasances...such a list is far too long for one man.

So back to "The Boondoocks" and Aaron McGruder. Mr. McGruder had a sharp eye for both the visuals and the dialogue of his strip. He made incisive comments about race, economics, and culture in the modern America of suburbs and mixed or single-parent families. Then Bush came. And McGruder and people like him, people who had always just sort of relied on that progressive consensus that ruled across ideologies and political parties (it seemed) were kind of in shock. I mean, it's not so much that we had a Republican president, we usually have in the 20th and so far in the 21st century. It's that these ideas, things that we had settled in the preceeding century, things like the validity of science to explain the world around us or the idea that America is inclusive, even--especially--of those who seem outside the mainstream, well these ideas went out the window. So McGruder started devoting his little bit of public space to Bush bashing and some other stuff. And I just can't read it anymore. Not because I dont' agree. I do, heartily. But because I can't watch smart incisive people flail about in sadness and anger and try to recapture what was lost. It's really my weakness, not McGruder's. And I would probably do the same thing. But ultimately I blame Bush. One, because I just fucking feel like it, the smug asshole. And, two, because it is ultimately his toxic influence on the culture that has tarnished so much. The Left seems shrill at times, like it won't stop Bush bashing, but that's because we are howling in the wilderness trying to get people to see that he isn't just a down home guy who fights terrorists, but a serious departure, even a break, from the progressive tradition of American values that made this country great. And it's so incredibly frustrating that at this point I have begun to understand why people just got to shut down sometimes and go on auto-pilot. I do it too. I know I shouldn't, I know I should suck it up and do something. But this isn't moderating Reaganomics...this is bailing out the Titanic. We have been reduced to defending science. I mean, fuck man, it's science. What the fuck have we become?!

So I don't really read "The Boondocks" anymore, because I can't take the outrage and the sadness, I'm too full of it myself.