Disillusionment

My friend is a professor at an Ivy League university. He regularly sends out e-mails on political and economic matters. Below are a few representative excerpts:

September, 2006: The United States is a country filled with profligate spendthrift Americans self-indulgently pushing themselves ever deeper into debt on falling real incomes to satisfy their desire to live for today. The day of reckoning will come for a country led by an incompetent moron and his incompetent, brain-dead, ethically-challenged minions.

May, 2006: Bush is a vile, despicable, completely incompetent want-to-be dictator deserving of no respect and utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities. He is a disgrace to humanity, an enemy of democracy, and an embarrassment to the American people.

March, 2006: The U.S. keeps sinking into the gutter, led by an incompetent, duplicitous, delusional President and his administration of grossly incompetent, idealogical (sic) hacks. This country is completely delusional as people try to convince themselves how great things are.

My friend--whom I really do like on a personal basis--has never called the current holder of the office "the President", much less "my President", because he believes the election was stolen in 2000 and again in 2004. My friend must have been applauding when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said at the United Nations that President Bush was "the devil" and acted "as if he owned the world". He must have cheered when Chavez "told reporters that Bush is not a legitimate president because he 'stole the elections.'"

But imagine the disappointment that my friend must have felt when Rep. Charles Rangel, an outspoken opponent of Bush, said to Chavez: "You don't come into my country; you don't come into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president." [emphasis added] It took six years for some Democrats, but better late than never. For my friend, however, I suppose it'll be never. © 2006 Stephen Yuen