Yesterday I overheard two people waiting in line at Espresso Royale talking about the defeat of Proposal 2. One was saying to the other that he didn’t understand why the religious right felt compelled to discriminate against “those people.”

Well, that’s exactly it. As long as even squishy liberals stand around and talk about gays and lesbians and describe us as “those people,” as though we’re some sort of separate alien caste, discrimination will reign supreme.

I think « this piece by Garry Wills » is one of the best discussions of the state of the Empire I’ve read this week:

‘America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values – critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed “a candid world,” as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush’s supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

‘The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies. Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

‘It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs — as one American general put it, in words that [the Emperor] has not repudiated. [The Emperor] promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences, here and abroad, with real respect.

‘In his victory speech yesterday, [the Emperor] indicated that he would “reach out to the whole nation,” including those who voted for John Kerry. But even if he wanted to be more conciliatory now, the constituency to which he owes his victory is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want on things like judicial appointments. His helpers are also his keepers. The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.’

A hearty amen to that, Professor Wills.

A note:

I’m probably going to be one of the few people left who think Bush remains an illegitimate occupier of the White House.

My personal viewpoint is that he wouldn’t have even been in Tuesday’s election had he not stolen the 2000 election thanks to the Imperial Supreme Court.

And he has never acted presidential; a president leads humbly, rejects hubris, rejects imperial pretensions.

He is a usurper and acts like an emperor, not a democratic president.

Therefore, on this website, George W. Bush will still never be referred to as ‘the president,’ nor will he be in my speech or other writing.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. And Dumbya looks like an emperor, walks like an emperor and he certainly quacks like an emperor.

The only concession I will make is that I won’t call him the Boy Emperor anymore. He’s now grown up and doesn’t need his regency anymore. I hereby acknowledge that he’s calling the shots; it’s ALL his mess, his death and destruction and extremism.

This ‘blog was created in August 2001 to document the excesses of an Imperial administration and yell, ‘Tripe!’ whenever he served it up. I had hoped to be able to make it softer and less snarky during a restoration of the presidency under Kerry. Unfortunately, that’s not a luxury that those of us who oppose the imperialization of the White House can afford. We ALL must yell ‘Tripe!’ and yell it loudly for the next four years.

And with that: George II is the first American Emperor. Heil Bush!

So, what to say or think now?

Remarkably, I’ve settled into a mood of sang-froid or c’est la vie rather than despair or depression. I’m shaking my head at the folly of it all, but pretty much resigned to it.

I can see where this is all headed. I’ve known for a very long time. And it concerns me, greatly.

As for the Canada thing, well, when the Canadian government announces that gay American couples can come to Canada and apply for refugee status and their cases will be individually heard, that brings it all home to me.

‘Move to Canada’ isn’t mere hyperbole or angst or ridiculous over-reaction for me. The next four years could see anti-gay hatred appended to the U.S. Constitution. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that the tyranny of the majority can be total and deadly. I’d rather be part of the group allowed to leave for safer havens than part of the group on the train to Auschwitz.

Again, as I’ve said many times before, Godwin’s Law be damned, if you can’t see the parallels to 1930s Germany here, then A.) I pity you; B.) you’re an idiot who knows nothing of history; and C.) bite me.

Face it folks, it’s 1935 all over again. In 11 states, and potentially the entire empire as a whole, the Nuremberg Laws have just been passed.

Short history lesson: Among other things, the Nuremberg Laws were propagated to ‘protect traditional marriage’ from undesirable, filthy Jews. The first law was titled, ‘The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor’ (sound familiar?). Jews were prohibited from marrying Aryans and vice-versa in order to keep marriage sacred. The second Nuremberg law stripped Jews of their citizenship and was based on America’s Jim Crow segregation laws, promulgated after the Great Compromise of 1877 and which were upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

History is repeating itself. First we had a quasi-legal accession to power; then we had our Reichstag Fire (11-Sep); then we had our Enabling Act (the USA PATRIOT Act) and now we have our Nuremberg Laws (Protecting Traditional Marriage amendments). The next step is the second law: stripping us homos of citizenship.

Our fight from here on will be to keep us from sliding further towards 1939. I see us as being 1935 between the two Nuremberg Laws.

Hysterical hyperbole? The only answer I have to that is … ask the Six Million. Read Victor Klemperer’s diaries. And when you know more about history, get back to me.

I have to say that it’s nice to be in Ann Arbor right now. An overwhelming majority here rejected the Gay Hate Amendment and voted against the Emperor. There’s a great deal of depression and sadness here this week.

And it helps to be around high school kids today. They give hope that the next generation is more tolerant of diversity and differences, less tolerant of fascism.

Kids in my second hour western civilization class this morning were talking about who’s gay and who’s bi and why it didn’t matter. Election results were still the topic of conversation. They are in the majority here.

And they take no crap from anyone. Two boys, who spoke as if they were ‘part of the tribe,’ obviously took no guff from anyone. Another boy, big and football-player looking, looked at them during their conversation and one of the boy — smaller, thin, blond and with braces — let him have it.

That’s a huge, wholesale change in the 22 years since I graduated from high school. We gay members of the class of ‘82 NEVER exposed ourselves in conversation like that, much less challenged the straight jocks to mind their own business and shut up. There would have been blood in the hallways.

So in some ways and places, progress has happened and probably won’t retreat, thank god.

There’s some concern about the draft. One 15-year-old in my third hour class said he wasn’t worried about the draft; he plans to join up voluntarily. He also admits to being a Bush supporter. In three years, he’ll be out of the protective cocoon of Ann Arbor adn his family and doing raids on suspected ‘insurgent’ hideouts in Teheran, Damascus or Baghdad.

But that’s just my opinion, and fear talking.

I guess my bottom line is this: American voters deserve what they are going to get in the next four years. The 20th century’s progress will be rolled back. Gone will be social security, corporate regulation, environmental protection, safe-legal-rare abortions and us homos will be put in our place. There will be great death, disease and war in the mideast. A draft of some form is inevitable as thousands of our troops will die. And a major terrorist attack once again on Imperial soil is now inevitable and unavoidable.

And in 2008, I can simply sit back and say, ‘Told ya so. You Bush voters got what you deserved. You CHOSE this path. You must now reap what you have sown.’

Ironically, when the next attack happens, it will be the Kerry voters in a big city which get hit and suffer. And the Bush voters in the countryside will all scream and want to get all patriotic and send blood and groceries and money to the devastated city. I think that city needs to throw their donations back in their fascist faces; Bush voters brought on the attack, they should have to travel to the target area and clean up the mess.

Not that I’ll be gloating or happy about all this. It will be incredibly sad. I hope my family and friends get through it unscathed. But with all seven of my nephews and nieces being of draftable age during the next four years, I have my doubts. And there’s still the imminent special skills draft, which can take people up to age 44 which could even snare me.

To be honest, if the special skills draft happens and I’m targeted, I’m throwing the gay-homo thing right in their fascist faces. Among other things. I will serve my community in the education realm; I won’t serve the nation which holds me in contempt and has abandoned me by supporting its wars and its imperial administration.

And that’s my childish stamp of the foot for today.

Ambrosia was full of students yesterday morning. One was on his cellphone bemoaning the onslaught of “crazy lunatics,” presumably referring to Tuesday’s election results. A table of grad students at the back was having a grand old time. One guy had a shaved head and a turtleneck, another was lanky and wore black socks with faded sneakers, and the third was a woman wearing blocky dotcom-denizen glasses and a funky perm. They could have easily been regulars at any cafe in the Mission or the Haight.

They were commiserating about Tuesday, too, of course, and they were uproariously ridiculing the Timothy LaHaye-Jerry Jenkins Left Behind series. The woman didn’t know about the series and asked what it was. She was incredulous that it existed. None of them could identify the authors; all they knew was the series title. The three of them had a good laugh about the rapture and those nutso fundies without knowing the first thing about them or their belief system or why they’re not just an outlandish joke dreamt up by Comedy Central.

It’s one thing to castigate the right for not knowing anything about the people they attack and for operating solely on the basis of stereotype, but the left has got to face up to the fact that they are just as guilty of this offense, if not more so. Not just the left, but the media as well, which consistently underestimated and dismissed the religious right throughout this election cycle (ever since the beginning of last year, with the Janet Jackson garment malfunction episode and the wave of same-sex marriages in San Francisco, both episodes which inflamed the religious right), just as they have in election cycles since 1980.

That is one lesson of this election. For folks who pride themselves on tolerance, diversity of opinion, and open-mindedness, those grad students seemed pretty narrow-gauge when it came to understanding why Tuesday happened and why the beliefs that shaped Tuesday are on the rise, not on the decline, in this country. You underestimate the power and the influence of the right at your peril.

That table of self-satisfied grad students guffawing about Ann Arbor being wiped off the face of the earth in the end times didn’t get that memo. They’d be incredulous, no doubt, to know that the hair salon owner in Springfield, OH or the construction firm owner in Ely, NV who’s read everything LaHaye’s written have more of a finger on the pulse of the nation right now than those grad students do in their solipsistic, moldy academic strongholds with their well-worn copies of Derrida and Foucault.