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Edited on Wed Jul-13-05 01:38 PM by SteppingRazor
For my 1000th post, I have a little story:
It was sometime in 2004, the fall, maybe September, when my belief was strongest in the ability of John Kerry to beat George W. Bush. I was on South Beach, late at night, getting the story on some club opening or another -- I am, after all, a professional journalist covering the all-important sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll beat.
The Gucci kids were all around me. Women doing their best to look like Paris Hilton. Out-whoring the whore. Men in shiny, tight shirts with collars and short sleeves. A trucker cap here and there.
As usual for sojourns to South Beach, I was heavily self-medicated. It is impossible to otherwise deal with the situation. No one here has led what Socrates called "The examined life." Just a lot of plastic and sunglasses at night while waiting in line for the latest facile entertainment-and-alcohol lounge to come down the pipe in the heart of the 21st Century's Fat City.
I already had a good amount of faith in Kerry -- hell, in addition to the loss for the country, I was out $100 when he went down -- but when someone in line loudly said something pro-Bush, and was suddenly shouted down by everyone around me, that's when I was sure we had it made. Even the most vapid, unthinking dimwits in the land had enough sense to see the obvious. That all these Swift Boats and medals and windsurfing vacations were just so much cheap mud -- it was all a slick. A come on. A lie.
I suppose my fatal mistake was in not realizing that, even though even the idiots with no soul knew Bush was a cheap thug in an expensive suit, it wouldn't bring them to vote. They would be too busy sleeping off the hangover the next day, and their counterparts in the Midwest would be too busy going to church or something. Who knows? When you live down here long enough, the rest of the world becomes more and more distant. Do people still go to church? I assume so, from the religio-crazies we have in Congress.
But despite our loss, a loss that may certainly have come even if those Gucci Kids HAD voted, through some conivance of electronic voting, we're all still here, fighting, and clawing, and spitting, and knowing -- not believing -- but knowing that we have the truth on our side.
It's just a damn shame I'm out $100.
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