Bushwhacked

Filtering up from a Saturday rally at the Capitol in many small but boisterous groups, the supporters of George W. Bush were apparently too juiced up by their side’s rhetoric about a Gore-led coup d’etat to just go home and sheath their flags, so they marched through downtown, shoving their self-righteous “we won” jeers in everyone’s faces.

Bites hasn’t seen this kind of supercharged nationalistic fervor in these parts since Dubya’s daddy was gearing up to bomb Iraq into submission. Then, as now, the American flag was turned into a symbol of support for a political position, with all other opinions shouted down as un-American.

You might have noticed that Bites has been mostly silent on this whole dueling presidents bit. Past proclamations in this space have already let you know that Bites no longer has a horse in this race, seeing how Ralph Nader stalled at the starting gate. So it’s been mostly with amusement and an appreciation for political intrigue that Bites has watched the show.

But when they start parading past the ice rink with their self-righteous taunts, that’s when things have gone too far and Bites just has to say something. Whipped up by every right-winger from the cartoonish former Sacramentan Rush Limbaugh to the evil Tom DeLay, Bush’s Sacramento area supporters seem to have lost all sense of reason and rationality, and that’s truly a frightening thought given how many of these people own guns.

You look into their eyes as they do their little “defend the Constitution” and “Gore is trying to steal the election” routines, and you can see they actually believe it. Bush, Baker and the boys throw these lines out there for political leverage, but the average yahoo who voted for Bush seems to think this rhetoric is something more serious than grotesque political theater.

Bush and his people still seem bitter that Gore took back his election night concession call. Or, perhaps more to the point, they’re still bitter that Clinton has charmed, lawyered and rock-starred his way through scandal after scandal, even perjurious denials of blow jobs in the Oval Office.

So to them, election night was the Big Tease. Just when they thought they’d get some—WHAM!—deee-nied. Why, it’s Clinton’s presidential seal on Monica’s blue dress all over again. They can just taste how close they are to finally getting these two Democrats (said with a sneer) out of their White House.

Their expectations have been building and building, just waiting for the release of trouncing Clinton’s man-in-waiting. And then, it’s as if Monica stopped what she was doing and started prattling on and on about hanging chads, butterfly ballots and the relative merits of hand counts. Geez, what a mood breaker!

So Bites understands the pent-up frustration that has been making the Bush supporters act like such friggin’ idiots. But, nonetheless, idiots they have been, and it’s about time someone on the sidelines said so.

In comments and e-mails to reporters and supporters, those who turned out for Saturday’s rally in Sacramento cast the event as Bunker Hill all over again, a heroic stand in support of a country under siege by Comuni…, er, um, Democrats.

In an e-mail that Milton John Kleim Jr. sent to the “StopTheRecounts” and other newsgroups, he waxed heroic about being a “witness to a small part of this history-making ‘movement’ in support of our constitutional republic.”

“We were astounded by the huge number of people who came out with relatively no organized effort to persuade them to do so. People are definitely appalled by the attempted overthrow of our system of government by the Gore campaign.”

Hello?!?! Bites isn’t sure which is more ridiculous, the assertion that GOP-organized rallies in major cities across the country were some kind of spontaneous outpouring of indignation, or the equating of recount demands with revolution.

Yet considering that Kleim’s e-mail also included an account of the rally written for the Patriot News Service—that is, “patriot” in the Randy Weaver, Timothy McVeigh sense of the word, not the Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine variety—perhaps Kleim’s revolutionary rhetoric is understandable.

Come to think of it, Florida isn’t that far from Waco. Hmmmm.