Darkest before the dawn...

There's the well-established idea that in order to grow, we must break out of our comfort zone, experience the bewildering clusterf*ck of the unknown, flounder, and eventually master our new surroundings. It's a primal experience. When our experiential puddle stagnates, the waters of the real become a rocking basin of stormy waterspouts, tsunamis, gales and monsoons. Eventually, when all settles our puddle has become a pond, maybe after the next torrent it will be a lake, maybe a sea or eventually an ocean.

The point is that we can never grow until we test ourselves beyond our current level of mastery. It's the hero's journey. It's the arc of every epic drama, every life well-lived. It's the Universe's way of giving us the chance to build something better, with our own hands.

It is because of my firm belief in this principle that I was so delighted to see this article. In it, the author puts forth the assertion that George W. Bush has helped America more than we would ever know, through kicking our puddle into one of the greatest shitstorms we've ever seen.

Maybe he's exactly what we needed. Maybe Bush's brand of frighteningly inept politicking has been just the right kind of sociocultural emetic to induce a true purge of our congested system, just the thing to finally snap us out of our lethargy. Hell, sometimes you gotta go deep into the darkness to realize just how much you need the light.

So thank you, George, for exemplifying and embodying everything that's wrong with the neocon agenda, for serving as the final death knell of the failed conservative movement, of a once-noble Republican Party that's run out of ideas and has turned bitter and nasty and paranoid.

The Universe moves in cycles. Light is nothing without a darkness to illuminate. It's the Yin and Yang spinning in the alchemical egg of existence.....