Eight Years

I was browsing the posts over at Threat Quality Press when I stumbled across something interesting. My mind flew right out the window when I read the following lines:

"Strange to think: in a very real sense, my entire adult life has been haunted by George W. Bush. It’s a bit hard to remember life before him."

Think about it, up until last week the "Dubya" was a fixture in the White House for eight years. Eight years people! Ye gods! There are celebrities who don't even have careers that long, and yet this diabolical nutjob has sustained as our elected spokesperson and mascot for nearly a decade.

Now I admit, I didn't get involved in my political responsibilities at an appropriate age. In fact I didn't even register to vote until 2004. What can I say, I've stemmed from some serious arrested development. Arrested development may not even describe it, my development was left in some bondage slum, tied to a radiator and left for dead. So I'm only emerging into the world as a barely responsible adult. Still, I remember when the man stepped into office, and I wasn't happy about it. I was just as furious as those of you who voted against him, despite the fact that I didn't ever vote (I live in Utah, it's not like my vote would've hinged on some major tiebreaker or anything.) I expected nothing but bad things from this would-be president.

Still, I had no idea the shit would hit the fan with such epic magnitude, that the rest of us would be stinking of filth long after he was gone. You expected disaster, and you expected casualties, but at the end of these past eight years, I doubt anyone expected the current state of clusterfuck we find ourselves in.

Perhaps I'm biased towards who we currently have in charge, but I just don't see anything that's currently working. There isn't any money, people have no jobs, soldiers are still overseas fighting a war that we supposedly won some five years ago, and everyone's still scared. There are bad science fiction movies from the 80's that have a more hopeful scenario that what we're currently waddling through.

So it boggles my mind seeing the current state of things, and knowing that eight years ago, even my worst nightmares were more optimistic. I look back into my early 20's, the most dramatic, self-obsessed years of my life, and still find a Boogie who was more jovial about the future than I am now. It's a strange thing.

Now I didn't expect great things of George, but nor did I expect things to be this bad. I was honestly kind of hopeful about my government, I was hopeful about a lot of things in fact. And that's not to say that our numero 44 isn't providing some emotional feel goods about a better tomorrow. I'm just laced with a bit of cynicism, much like many of us who have been hardened by the past years. And that cynicism makes for an interesting trip into my own personal past, remembering that fella who, even at his darkest, most long haired metal depressed fury, was still a peppy bastard compared to the older fella who's typing this now.

Or perhaps I just spend too much time using pointless landmarks as a source for remembering the past.