Worry About This

Comes news today that a new ABC/Ipsos poll finds 75% of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction. They fault the president, his war, his gas prices and his breath, in order of importance. We contend this is not newsworthy information.

The troubling part of this poll is that 1 in 4 of us think things are GREAT! We want names. And addresses. And someone to put these people out of our misery. At the very least, 75% of us should be able to acknowledge that damn near everything sucks nowadays. Accordingly, at least 75% of us should be able to identify the source of our discontent. And be able to spell his name.

As a white male, we are particularly troubled that 1 out of 3 white men think this is an incredible way to live. "Heading in the right direction" is how they answered the question about the nation's trajectory. We understand now why women and minorities hold the white male in such contempt. We are almost compelled to confront the next two fellow white guys we meet and demand to know which of them is the idiot. Statistically, one of them is probably among the deluded third of our demographic.

There is no reasonable course of action that pertains to the slob in the White House. Time, 18 months, give or take a few days, will take care of him. Then the historians can pick his bones clean, grind them into dust and eliminate the last vestiges of his plague on our house. The market will not correct record profiteering by the oil and gas industry. Only regulation and corruption investigations will purge us of this perversion of capitalism. This war will pass.

What will not pass is the presence among us of those who cannot see with their eyes wide open in broad daylight. If this scandalous, lying, barbaric incompetence is a sign that we are heading in the right direction, no amount of education or cajoling will help them. They are lost.

Hopelessly, dreadfully, dangerously, incurably lost.

We will always endure some level of misfeasance among our leaders. We will always see prices go upward and not downward. We will always be tempted to resolve, perpetuate, renew, or commence conflict in the world with the sword and not the word. Seventy-five percent of us will know when enough is enough. One in four will never get it. For them, up is down. Right is wrong. Fair is foul. Balance is tipped to one side. They corrupt our society, our name, our will, our future, our hope and our place among the peoples of the earth. And they vote. All of them. No one is more militantly wrong than they are. No one is more actively, willfully ignorant. No one is more perverse.

It is too unfortunate that wisdom has fallen into cliche when we say that for evil to triumph, good people simply need do nothing. When we, the 75%, tire of being dragged behind the vehicle by the 25% who have the keys, we will experience change. Until then, the face of this great nation will be that of the twisted, the ignorant and the perverse.

I'm ready to drive, for a change.