See Change

Read the papers and see that the country has changed.

From the “L.A. Times” a heartening piece about the demise of the “blow-up boxes” governator:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-election10nov10,0,1938532.story?coll=la-home-headlines

James Goldsborough, who left the “San Diego Union-Tribune” over the contents of a column, declares the administration’s war policy a failure by evidence in, “Remember When Presidents Were Welcome?”

“We have,” he writes, “wrecked a nation and been trapped in its civil war,” which is what the scribe calls boiling things down to their essence.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=euLTJbMUKvH&b=312470&ct=1585693

Here’s an article about the Washington D.C.-based “Nation” and its refusal to endorse anymore candidates that don’t call for a clean and unremitting pullout of troops in Iraq:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

In his post-election e-mail, “Reality 2, Bush 0”, Sen. John Kerry claims to have gathered 200,000 signatures (20,000 a day) calling for the permanent withdrawal of 20,000 troops from Iraq by Christmas.

He’s looking for 200,000 more:

http://www.johnkerry.com/action/20000/index.php?source=8007

The “L.A. Times” treated liberals to a lovely pair of filets. The first parroting the general editorial line nationally that the (r)epublicans are sinking:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess10nov10,0,461441.story?coll=la-home-nation

And a second regarding the House of Representatives, hot house and sending source for all the hoo-hah and freedom fries in American governance, quietly dumping their plan to drill in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge (“Oil Drilling in Alaska,” Nov. 1):

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-unprotect10nov10,0,6261945.story?coll=la-home-nation

This is what we call retreating folks.

There is a cleansing and restorative effect to it all. Not in seeing running dogs run, but in a sense that however slowly, vox populi can redress its own mistakes. Mistakes like voting for Schwarzenegger or whooping it up over a war that was unprovoked and a textbook case of instant bad karma.

There is, also, satisfaction in being right; not by virtue of some ingenious foresight, but in abiding by old and tired chestnuts like war is hell, and stale but truthful maxims that you shouldn’t do to someone else (or another country), what you wouldn’t like done to you.

Even in such tremendous and trembling times, these simple guidelines can save us.

The question is how can we advance toward the land of milk and honey, where the earth is cherished and its riches enlighten the life of each living soul, when the thinking, power-wielding forces in our society refuse to accept them?