not to belabor the parrallels I feel with the characters of Primary Colors (though I know I am belaboring—but at least I am not dead, as Libby Holden was before her candidate ever reached Election Day), but tonight I gasp incredulous at the theft of my hope via daylight-burglary into my own heart by smug conservatives who think they own this land—and they probably do.  No one champions for me tonight; the thieves own the judges, too.  I feel like Henry Burton. 

Henry Burton, who runs the candidate's campaign in Primary Colors, was played by Adrian Lester.  In the middle of the film, Henry is appalled to hear tampered recordings of a conversation he had with the candidate played by the opposition, to the world.  The adulterated recording sounded like the candidate setting-up a sleazy rendezvous with a woman of ill-repute whom the opposing party produced in person.  For young Henry, the fabrication is breath-takingly untrue, but Libby Holden takes it all in stride, and immediately sets about deconstructing the opposition's deception.  Henry had retained a naive belief that such gross and deliberate misconduct could not, or would not occur in a Presidential election in the United States of America. 

Call me Henry, for I know better now.  Tonight I reconsider the things that lingered in the shadows of my thoughts, lurking dark suspicions I once dismissed as so unlikely to occur, and so outlandish among people of good intent, as to be impossible. 

And that picture of Henry?  That's him on the cusp of reality, at a point in the story when he is verging on abandoning his candidate.  That's me at a turning point.  Henry chooses to overlook his discomfort with certain details of his candidate's personal life, for the sake of something far more precious and bigger than them both; hope. 

 the hope I had for a dull President who was politically progressive, environmentally protective, and socially compassionate has been stolen.  A harsh reality has replaced it.  I am at a loss to articulate that reality right now, without overwhelming cynicism, but like most harsh realizations, it is disappointing.  We now have George Bush running the nation again, along with Dick Cheney, and George Bush's son sitting in the White House.  Even the U.S. Supreme Court has revealed its ideological coloration and partisan devotions. 

The illusion of a just nation was, for a long time, all I needed.  Despite the assassinations, the Civil Rights Movement succeeded and many objectives of Democrats were won.  At the end of those successes Nixon's indiscretions in the Watergate scandal seduced some of us liberals into a comfortable sense of both moral and political superiority, and we nodded off.  The action of the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday, December 12, 2000 is the most accessible example I can give in these few words of one harsh reality which begs a vigorous liberal response today; that court is no longer impartial and, as evidenced by the appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas, seats political favorship on the same bench as scholarly excellence.  Liberals must awaken and come to the fore to rectify that crisis, which will worsen before it gets better. 

Tonight, I despair of the state of this nation, and I have no choice under these circumstances but to find within me and nurture a new hope, to create from my shattered illusion of justice a new vision of my country, and to accept the new task of helping to make it reality. 

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