Hope, Born in the Bone

George W. Bush is traveling in the Middle East ostensibly to move things along in the Israeli Palestinian peace process. He’s obviously worried about the end coming. What will be his legacy?

He actually believes that history will celebrate his stubborn commitment to his wars, and all the clandestine renditions and torture, the shredding of our bill of rights, the disaster of Katrina, the stolen elections – history will prove him right. Mr Bush says history is always evaluating data, that people are still disagreeing even about the legacy of George Washington. Right. The father of our country, the face on our one dollar bill, after whom DC and the State are named, whose face is on Rushmore.

Bush’s only hope is martyrdom – maybe that’s what’s behind this Hail Mary trip – and even that would only quiet the flood of corruption and profiteering revelations a couple of weeks. And the tide of impeachment would definitely rise around President Cheney pretty quickly. Keith Olbermann, the Barak Obama of the news media, (MSNBC) opens every evening’s newscast with a countdown, the number of days left in this desperately retrograde regime.

Many link the Clinton campaign’s tumble in the polls to the fact that Mrs Clinton’s closed, calculating style is simply too reminiscent of the Karl Rove White House. Hillary is reminding people of those Clinton years, the fighting, the legal battles, the right wing echo chamber. This sour taste in the mouth isn’t her fault alone, but it’s really time, after all these years, for something a little less false, less self-serving, more above board and morally uplifting.

Ever since Reagan, (and that’s 30 years ago!!) many of us have felt powerless, living in a country that wasn’t ours. Corruption, militarism, Star Wars stupidity, the Contra debacle, killings in Central America, the whole enchilada. Bush pere covered his implication in all that by ginning up a war against Saddam, and otherwise dissembling for the next 4 years. Then the Clintons, who botched their opportunity the first time round, led us, unwittingly and unwillingly, but nevertheless – into the bitterness of end-game partisanship, which has risen to a loud assault on hope and reason through the younger Bush years.

Here, in the real reason for not having family dynasties, W is always triangulating off his relationship to his father (mother?!), whether it’s with criminal tax cuts, or starting a war to finish what his Dad didn’t. He certainly trumped his Father’s perfidy, yielding in the process a devastating assault on democracy, the environment, and hope. Our way of life, the continuation of life on earth itself, is now on the line. And we're a big part of the problem, not the solution.

Legacy. What a sad, tragic King Lear Mr Bush has become. He’s in the storm, he’s broken nearly everything that matters. But no insight, no repentance, no change to hear in his howlingly empty reassurances as real people are killed, broken, and pulled down by his self-absorption. Does he even recognize how much he was “taken” by the Roves and Cheneys for their own ends, and left hanging when his utility ended.

Can we survive the three hundred seventy seven days.

But it led me to think about legacy. My legacy. Now that Matteo is here, he’s it. I guess.

But he probably won’t care much about the stuff I’ve thought, written, done, the photos I’ve taken, people I’ve loved, the failures I’ve faced, the joys the successes the hopes and fears. So, are our legacies our descendants, and that’s that? I’m Esther and Sterling’s legacy. And my sweet memories of them floating atop the less sanguine ones - that's it for them?

Okay, maybe I need to cast the net a little wider... But then I have to say, I don’t believe that “history” will be kind to people like me. We ruined the environment, we sat quietly by while lobbyists and corporations and their front men gobbled up our American dream, like the henchmen surrounding Mr Hitler took the German culture, discipline and economy and rode it into infamy. (Note, the Chinese leaders and businessmen are doing precisely the same to the Chinese today – a report about a deepening Chinese rage against what is being done to their land and water).

Like I wrote yesterday, how can we love, deeply and desperately, give our lives not just to secure our comfort, our personal safety, but to join with others in a spiritual revolution? That’s why Obama is winning. Can we come back to life after decades of sleeping at the wheel, while corporations and their lobbies have grown like a silent cancer to devastate our body politic? Can we still dance, to a beat of hope, born in our bones?