Crawling Back

I’ve never been trapped in an abusive relationship, but I’m told that when you finally get up the strength to break away, sometimes the abuser overflows with phony remorse. He buys you flowers: “I’m sorry honey pie! I’ll never do it again. I love you! Please come back. Things will be different this time.”


But more often than not, the abuser just folds his arms and scoffs: “You can’t make it without me. You’re weak. You’ll come crawling back.”

Two years ago, American voters took a big step toward breaking away from our abusers. Granted, the guy we elected president has turned out to be pretty much a wimp. But a wimp is a damn sight better than a bully.

But yesterday we went crawling back.

Here is the republican/tea bagger/ libertarian philosophy of life:

You need something? Buy it. The rules of the game are simple. Everything has a price tag—food, shelter, clothing, health care, you name it. Everything has a price tag. You need it? Buy it. You say you can’t afford it? Get a job. You say you have a job and you still can’t afford it? Get another job. You say you already have 10 jobs? Oh well. You lose. Oh and by the way, we love Jesus.

The republicans didn’t even buy us flowers. They didn’t promise to do a damn thing different. They just scoffed. But we went crawling back.

What’s next? President Palin? What freaks me out most about her is that I could never have made up someone like her. Just when I begin to believe I’m a witty satirist, along comes an actual character like Palin. And I realize that in a thousand years I could never have created such a dark, absurd scenario: A once-proud nation, starving for leadership, desperate to regain its sense of superiority, turns in its hour of need to a dizzy cheerleader.


This is what scares me most today. When human relations become so twisted and tangled that they are beyond parody, it feels like end times lurk near.