By Mark Morford
SFGate

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 he 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.

After all, you cannot keep pumping junk food into the body and expect
it to stay upright and functional. You cannot force so many toxins into
the planet and not expect it to break out in rashes and pimples and
heat waves and violent storms. Eventually, the body recoils. The spirit
shudders and throws off. The disease runs its course and, barring any
permanent scars and mental derangement, the fever breaks.

Look, I shall not argue that this hope, this light is coming from
millions of people finally waking up to the progressive truth. I shall
not be so foolish as to suggest that a grand anti-war pro-sex
pro-intelligence happily spiritual but deeply nonreligious
enlightenment is taking place. I am not so naive, and as I said, there
are three treacherous years left. The reality is less pretty than that.


But there is a hint of a whisper of a possibility of a deeper change,
of the pendulum swinging back, finally, to humanity and love and
something resembling progress, which is more than we've had in five
years, and certainly more than many of us expected, given the alleged
strength of the GOP choke hold.

So thank you, George, for bringing such delicious sips of renewed hope.
Thank you for reminding us all, through such a litany of painful and
nauseating policies and lies, that the universe still repays such abuse
with well-deserved slaps upside your aw-shucks head. You give us hope.
Because as you and your administration careen and implode and sputter
and stutter and fail, well, the world is only the better for it