We’re not gonna protest?

There’s a line near the end of the brilliant PCU (which reminds me: I will at some point do a long-planned breakdown of one of my particularly favorite sub-genres of film, the campus comedy):

“We’re not gonna protest.”

There’s some seriously troubled waters out there -- in Iraq, the Middle East, with nuclear proliferation, global terror, the US deficit, low-wage job growth, the cancellation of Angel and Firefly, take your pick, really -- and those of us who were looking for new leadership are now being asked to sit our backsides down (facing backwards) in the back of the boat, near the buzzing engine and the exhaust, with whatever scavenger birds that happen to be in the neighborhood aiming their posteriors at our exposed and non-suntan lotioned heads as they flutter about in a most menacing and untoward manner.

We’re hanging our heads over the rail in the back of the boat, watching the wake break upon itself again and again. There’s troubled waters down there and tides heading places we dare not guess; we’re feeling disheartened, queasy, and in some cases, goodly hung over, and we’re not sure just what the hell to do about it.

Do we hope for failure these next four long years, so that They (and us, too) will Get What’s Coming to Them? Then They surely will See? Or do we hope with fleeting sanity that policies, attitudes, and ideas we know in our deepest hearts to be flawed will somehow work and all will be rosy and shiny and nice-smelling again? (I call this the It’s-So-Crazy-It-Just-Might-Work theory.)

The answer is: I really don’t know. I don’t know whether, during our long impending sentences in the back of the boat, we should break out the magic markers and the protest signs and the glue and the (safety) scissors and the glitter, or whether we should twiddle our thumbs, learn to whittle (hopefully not our thumbs), and work out in our collective minds whether Joni loved Chachi nearly as much as Chachi loved himself.

It’s late night rant and contemplation time here on the Western Edge of the World Resort Spa & Crappy Ferry. If anyone has an idea, I’d love to hear about it.

Oh, by the way: looks like Condoleezza Rice is going to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State.

Here’s my plan: I’m going to ask the boat’s skipper whether there’s a hot dog vendor anywhere on this bad boy, then I’m going to lay down (under my white-painted wooden bench), take a nap and pretend this all ‘tis a dream.