Today is my 58th Birthday. I don't feel that except when I remember all the political devastation I've witnessed over the years. It started innocently enough during the Eisenhower administration, I survived Kennedy (I still remember my parents dread and fear during the Cuban missile crisis) and learned to demonstrate during the Johnson years.
When I turned thirty it got difficult.
I was struck by a trio of disastrous Presidencies.
I made it through Nixon (I ran around the newsroom where I worked on the day he resigned waving the AP copy and whooping loudly), I was diminished as a worker and a consumer through the Reagan years and I marveled at the ineptitude of H.W., but living through dubya is the most difficult of all.
From dubya I get
- lies and lies and lies
- dissembling and more lies
- loss of security at our ports and borders
- loss of freedoms
- torture as policy
- deficits as far as the eye can see
- a weakened military
- a global increase in terrorism
- higher costs for healthcare
- job insecurity and draconian work rules
- destruction of the justice system
- cronies gone wild
- incompetence on a global scale
- and not even a lousy card