Tri Nguyen

Labor Day weekend. Our first stop was US Bank to give to American Red Cross. I cried for the poor people in New Orleans, as much for the living as for the dead. Reacting to the humanitarian crisis following Katrina, Bush and his coterie of ass hats demonstrated to the world their pure, monstrous taste for incompetence. Reports from the broadcast networks, The Guardian, The Times-Picayune, Andrew Sullivan, all had me absolutely seething. No food, no water, no power, no security: hell, if it’s good enough for Iraqis, it’s good enough for New Orleaneans, ’specially if they’re poor and black. Our Ass-Hat-in-Chief, the Texan Midas, has fucked up the Gulf like everything else he touches, from 9/11, to the run-up to the Iraq War, to its purported reconstruction. For their performance this week, let’s give Michael Brown, FEMA’s head buffoon, and Michael Chertoff, ’sposedly Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a public flaying. Better: put ‘em with Bush on toilet detail in the Louisiana Superdome. The Bush regime’s drip drip dripping of various governmental nonfeasance, misfeasance, and malfeasances is unbearable, like water torture. Last year’s Asian tsunami disaster imbued me with a feeling of horror. This week’s disaster on American soil has me shaking with anger and shame.

The networks just called Ohio for Bush. If the American people end up choosing him again, then I’m sorry, it’s on. I’m talking about Americans of conscience, about me, conducting concerted, memetic warfare against conservatism, proto-fascism, Christian fundamentalism, anti-science, American exceptionalism, smug stupidity and crushing apathy. My children will not grow up in a country owned by anti-democratic motherfuckers.

I’m ashamed that I let others fight this fight and did not step up. That’s changed. You want a radicalizing moment? Here you go.

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Bush, our Infallible Leader, has us all energized to vote. Luna was a permanent resident for a long time, so she couldn’t vote in any presidential elections until this year. She’s a citizen now and intends to can poor G.W. She registered this Summer, signing up at the Columbia City Farmer’s Market. Later on, I received my absentee ballot but not hers. Which was worrisome. So on Saturday we scooted downtown to the Election Office to pick hers up. After work today we worked through the ballot, rollerballs in hand and The Stranger’s 2004 Election Cheat Sheet for guidance. Licking shut an envelope never felt so good.