Cold Comfort

As most of my regular (and even most irregular, if you're paying attention) readers know, I'm not what you'd call a religious person. (I'm one of the "secular friends" referred to in the essay below.) However, when I read this email from a long-time correspondent, I thought it was so heartfelt and sincere, and expressed such real emotion that I wanted to share it with those of you who frequent this space. I realize the link he included with the original message he sent out is a few days old now (I was out of the office and away from the computer the past weekend, busy with All-Star festivities, otherwise I would have posted this sooner), but I don't think it takes anything away from the message.

Take it away, Stevie C., and many thanks for passing this along:

Amazing (or maybe not) how easily irascible I’ve become whenever I subject myself to reading on the latest antics of this complete and utter buffoon and his like minded cronies. The image that keeps generating in my head is GW and company standing on top of the white house with their d**ks in their hands (or squatting for those that don’t have that particular tool…Condi…. Wait, actually maybe she is capable of standing also… sorry, I shouldn’t cheapen this with digression), urinating all over America while guffawing loudly…

Back in 2000, I knew that one day in the future some of my intelligent but misguided GOP friends would see the light and with a heavy sigh say, “Uh… well…”… or not say anything at all…

My biggest beef?

From 2000-2006, of my friends and family who are (were) GW’s supporters, quite a few stood by him with this vehement creepy-blind conviction… never batting an eye as he stated himself to be chosen by God to lead the Country, with God given permissions to do what he felt needed to be done (while often rolling eyes and commenting on the antics of us “crazy leftie libs”… wink wink, elbow nudge, sly smile).

Even though many of you who are my friends are secular, I’m sure you can imagine how pissed off an individual can get when he sits in a church ~ 80% full of happy Stepford-esque smiling Republicans, thinking to himself “I know holding worn leather in your hand feels nice and I’m sure it’s nifty seeing the pretty gold embossing that spells out your name… But have you actually READ that bible in awhile? HELLO?!?!?!?! If you aren’t just the slightest bit scared my fine Christian friend, I’ll be more than happy to share the fear for both of us, ‘cause I sure as hell have enough of it to spare.”

And of course my nature being what it is, I’d let some of that leak out from time to time… as you can imagine, the response was generally “crazy leftie Stevie”… wink wink, elbow nudge, sly smile… Crap, I think a couple of friends tried to pat me on the head, even…

So, why am I spouting off on this today? Well, that day in the future has come… over the last few months, I’ve been collecting the occasional “We’ve given up on this administration, not that we feel we were wrong, but we’re just not sure what to make of things now, not that we feel we were wrong or anything, but this President of ours is confusing us, did we tell you that we aren’t saying we were wrong?

But today I hit “jackpot”. A family member saying to me last evening… “I’m sorry Steve… it looks like maybe what you were saying all this time was right.”

Years ago, when I thought about hearing those words (and I knew I would at some point), I saw myself jumping up on a table and shouting “See I TOLD you so.”

Funny thing is, there’s nothing I want to do less at the moment.