Mark Morford: "George W. Bush gives me hope."

The latest masterpiece by SF Gate columnist Mark Morford provides another example of why he is one of my favorite columnists.

An excerpt:
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Here's the good news: It really can't get much worse.

We cannot afford any more wars. The environment has been sold to the bone. The national spirit has been beaten like an Alaskan baby seal and the GOP has worked our last nerve, passed through the karmic blood-brain barrier, reached saturation to the point where even moderate Repubs and gobs of intelligent Christians are finally saying, Oh my God, what have we done, and how did it all go so wrong, and how much Prozac and wine and praying to a very disappointed Jesus will it take to fix it?

Which is why I'm here to tell you hope abounds. In fact, George W. Bush gives me hope. He gives me hope because he has led the country into a zone where the only way to go -- morally, spiritually, economically -- is up. Is out. He gives me hope because after it has all appeared so bleak and ugly and lost for so many years, it would now appear that all laws of karmic and poetic and moral justice still hold true. And how reassuring is that?

It is the eternal formula: When all is at its darkest, you cannot help but feel that some sort of transformational upswing must be just around the corner, one that maybe, just maybe contains the seeds of something resembling health and progress and revolution. Darkest before the dawn, baby, and don't you see the sky getting just a little bit lighter?

George W. Bush gives me hope. He gives hope because his narrow and myopic political ideology is right this minute being proved wildly unsound across the board, and his vicious leadership circle is revealing its true bloodstained colors and his party is crumbling at the center due to some of the worst policy decisions you will see in your lifetime.

Simply put, the collapse of BushCo represents the intrinsic unworkability of a war-hungry, thuggish ideology. It is the failure of the bully, the innate defect in any political philosophy that has at its heart dishonesty, and fiscal irresponsibility, and death.

See, Bush has run out of options, of mumbled half-excuses, and many in his own party are abandoning him as they fear huge losses in next year's congressional elections. Bush's nauseating pro-torture policies are appalling even his staunchest pals in Congress, not to mention just about every remaining international ally, and even "mastermind" Karl Rove is on the ropes and there appear to be no genius strategies to help Shrub recover. Yes indeed, hope drips from the boughs like honey.

I know, it ain't over yet. You could easily argue that there are three toxic years left and there are plenty of other countries we can vilify and invade (we'd be bombing Iran right now if we weren't fresh out of both disposable U.S. soldiers and cash reserves) and there will be plenty of opportunities in the next 1,000 days for Bush to suck up to his terrified fundamentalist base and cause even more damage as he hunkers down and pretends to know how to go about the business of running the nation.

But in many ways, it feels as though the most severe damage has been done (yes, Samuel Alito excepted), and there now appears to be a hint of a wisp of a spark of imminent upheaval. Can you smell it?

Do you feel the hope? Not yet? Look closer: It's been over four years now that the GOP has had it all locked down tight, the stranglehold to end all strangleholds, owned Congress and stacked the courts and shut down the media and demonized all voices of dissent and ran the president the way a pimp runs a prostitution ring.

No light escaped. They had masterminded one of the most brutal and mean-spirited and thoroughly effective subjugations of the American idea in 100 years, and it looked as though their power and reach knew no limits. It was astounding: No matter what atrocity or torture or war or violent abuse of nature, they would simply gloat and the media would cower and the people would merely look on, beaten and glazed and tired, and accept it as dark manna.

But now something has shifted. The iron grip is slipping, sooner and more quickly than any of the right's political architects predicted, surely sooner than Rove had strategized, far sooner than the 20-year master plan the GOP had in place.

What happened? Simple: The horrible policies, the lies and the lies on top of the lies (if "we do not torture" doesn't beat "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" as the impeachable BS of the century, we are lost) became just too much. The center could not hold. The atrocities are now paying their moral dividends. The GOP is now reaping what it has sown. Which is another way of saying: The system works.
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