Las Vegas II: Hope

I realize now how close I have been to despair these past few months, Bush, sitting by on the sidelines and watching your march from post re-election triumphalism (remember your gloating about all that political capital and how you planned to spend it?) to virtual powerlessness. Where's that capital now, and what have you bought with it? Or how have you invested it in America's future? When your people have to pretending that gay marriage and flag-burning are the major issues of the day, you've come to a pretty pathetic pass. Sof far as anyone can tell, no one has burned a flag for the past thirty years.

Okay, a pretty depressing spectacle, this march, as I think you'd have to agree if you possessed some last, small shred of honesty. But what I've discovered here in Las Vegas is reason to hope. About a thousand people here, many of them young and filled with bnoth energy and determination--and quite a number of older, if not necessarily wiser. Every one of them knows that something has gone dreadfully wrong with the direction of their country, and is dedicated to doing whatever it takes to set it right.

The arrival of Barbara Boxer was a stirring spectacle. Her reception--a prolonged standing ovation--was overwhelming even to its recipient. As one of the last remaining liberals in a country where your people have turned that wonderful concept into a dirty word, she has earned that ovation, in my view. And she spoke with eloquent simplicity not about the distasters of your years in office but about the work ahead. In answer to a question about impeachment--and there's strong sentiment in favor of that action here--she was quick to point out that there are more important things to do in the next two years than embroil ourselves in an attack on what she described as an already "dangerously incompetent" White House.

No point in undeermining our weakened position in the world still further, Bush. We'll likely be living with you for another two years and, what?, six months or so. And you with us, increasingly restive folks down here on the ground of the real world. The hope is that you and your fellow travelers have laid the seeds of your own decline and eventual destruction, and that there are willing hands to take over the reins.

These good people here at the Las Vegas conferencehave poeculiar power. Each one of us reaches dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of others through the power of the blogosphere. In not a few cases, millions. Your bloggers on the right have one terrible disadvantage: their offense is turning into defense and they deal increasinly in lies and calumny. These people here are grounded in reality: they recognize and speak the truth.