North Star Writers Group - Syndicated Commentary: Opinion, Humor and Features

January 22, 2009

Mission Accomplished

This past Tuesday, at noon Eastern Standard Time, the people of the United States experienced a uniquely American miracle – the peaceful transfer of the reins of power from a sadistic, solipsistic frat boy to an actual adult, and with it, the ending of an eight-year global nightmare. All without a shot being fired.

George W. Bush has skulked back to Dallas and Dick Cheney to his undisclosed location, en route to their reserved permanent lodgings in the annals of infamy, leaving behind a battered, bruised nation starving for positive proof that the black cloud of neoconservatism has well and truly lifted. To the relief of literally billions of the world's citizens, Bush's successor Barack Obama didn't disappoint.

Obama's sober, solid acceptance speech was immediately notable for its proper usage of multisyllabic words, comprehensible and logical concepts, and clear-eyed grasp of the monumental challenges facing his administration and the nation as a whole. More notable, though, were the things Obama didn't say.

No "Axis of Evil." No "9/11." And only the most glancing of references to that most hoary bogeyman of reactionary warmongering rhetoric – “terrorism."

At noon, it wasn't just Bush who slunk off into a terminal sunset. It was the entire mindset of Bushism, and the revolting rhetoric surrounding it. Thanks to the continued functioning of American democracy – against all odds and the Bush Administration's most concerted efforts – America was able to shed the clinging, malignant shell of neoconservative ideology which had suffocated its ideals, muzzled its dissidents and mangled its moral standing in the world for the better part of the last decade.

At long last, too, the wraith of Ronald Reagan finally disappeared into the ether, never to rise again, leaving his sickly-minded sycophants grasping at nothing. With the departure of Bush/Cheney from the national stage, 230 years of presumptive white Anglo-Saxon corporatist hegemony over the office of America's chief executive comes to its inevitable end. By the conclusion of the nearly inevitable eight years of the Obama Administration, the demographics of America will have irrevocably shifted – more African Americans, more Hispanics, more Arab- Americans, more urbanites – and a dwindling supply of the grasping, paranoid white males who have historically provided American conservatism with its muscle. Think about it: Never again will the phrase "trickle-down economics" be mentioned as a plausible policy position on the national stage. Now that's change one can believe in.

Republican dimetrodons such as Rush Limbaugh are already braying their umbrage, pleadingly hoping for Obama's failure, and the likes of John Cornyn and diaper-lover David Vitter are desperately attempting to thwart the administration's progress through whatever peurile means remain at their disposal (e.g. the futile stalling of Hillary Clinton's senate confirmation vote). But, as Bush himself might say, make no mistake: Unfettered Republicanism's end isn't near, it's here.

Thank God.

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