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ABULA RASA

The newly minted president, Barack Obama, has been presented with a blank slate upon which to write the next four years of United States history. It will be fraught with all manner of opportunity to succeed magnificently or fail miserably.

Righteous conservatives who had surrendered their fortunes to a Republican Party that had been co-opted by the right-wing, religious crazies, must take their medicine and go into the desert for the time required for them to recoup the true meaning of conservatism.

Currently, we are undergoing what might be described as a national Chapter Eleven bankruptcy reorganization. That means we will have to slough off eight years of mismanagement chaff and erect a brand-new frame upon which the immediate future of this country may be constructed.

The Republican Party schemed, screamed and cheated so effectively in the 2002 election that they were able to politicize the Supreme Court and usher in what has got to be the most inane individual ever to head a national government! George W. Bush was heir to a government that was in such good shape organizationally and economically that he was relegated to reading books to elementary school children—until all hell broke loose. It was at that point that Dubya was presented with another brand of tabula rasa; however, he squandered the advantages of his clean slate. Instead of marshaling our natural and human resources—along with unprecedented global solidarity—his personal tabula rasa allowed him to fall into the clutches of a klatch of mountebanks whose own tabulae were infested with a dangerous, shared megalomania.

So, here we are, in the weird world of an interregnum where voices are crying out for pre-action on the part of a president elect. Just after unexpectedly having obliterated centuries of social proscription, we find ourselves in this strange netherworld of leaderless lethargy. Rome is burning, Nero is fiddling, and our hose is too short to reach Chief Januarius’ No. 20 hook and ladder unit.

Tabula rase
In Roman talk,
Means, “Nada pasa”
With slate and chalk.

Barack Obama,
Get set to write.
Bring on the drama—
You bought this fight.