underdogishere

My policy is to not post about politics, but this isn't a political post. It's a historical one, or at least, one noting a historic moment: The beginning of the End of Days. No, it's not the Biblical Apocalypse, but it's an Apocalypse of sorts nonetheless.

As you know, Bush gave a speech the evening before last, trying to sell the public on the idea of escalating the war in Iraq. His proposal flies in the face of what a majority of Americans want, what the Congress (including many Republicans) wants, what most military officers want, what the Iraq Study Group wants, and even perhaps what most Iraqis want. Yesterday I followed the news of the aftermath of his speech, and it seemed that he hadn't changed any minds. On the contrary, the American mood seemed to be one of despair -- that we are being led by someone who is reckless and completely removed from any sense of reality.

But it was yesterday evening, as I was driving home from work, that the true import of this day was revealed to me: At the corner of a major intersection here -- the location of our largest shopping mall -- I saw a crowd of people. People with signs. "What are they doing?" I thought. "What can this be?" And then I read their signs.

It was an anti-war demonstration.

You may be saying, so what? Big deal! Well, it is  a big deal. Because this isn't, like, Berkley, or Vermont. Brevard County, where I live, is very, very conservative, and very Republican. Our Representative is Dave Weldon, one of the most radical, foaming-at-the-mouth, extreme conservative Republicans in Congress. This county voted overwhelming for Bush both chances it got.

The traffic light stopped me at the intersection, and I had time to watch the demonstrators waving their signs. This morning the newspaper said there may have been as many as a hundred of them. The constant traffic in the intersection raised a constant chorus of horn-honks of support. An anti-war demonstration, here , in Brevard County.... It felt... out of sorts. Like this shouldn't be happening. Like something was a little fractured. Like a window had opened a slit and we were looking through space and time to somewhere else. Like we were slip-sliding off the face of the Earth. And then I realized what it was really  like:

It was like the End of Days. It was the ripping apart of social fabric that will signal the beginning of Apocalypse. Now don't get me wrong: Jesus isn't returning. It's not the end of the world. But it's the end of something, in an epic way.

And I say, it can't happen too soon.

Labels: Dubya, Seen