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Blow by Blow: The Time Capsule

Added: April 26, 2007

I've been asked to contribute to a time capsule that will be opened in the year 2107.

Hmmmmm....

Tricky.

Hard to not make more out of it than it is. Hard to not get mired in grand statements...hard to not try and summarize a brilliant philosophy of life in three pages, so that when the capsule is opened and the words leap off the page, they will cause an immediate chain reaction bringing an end to hunger, cancer and war across the globe.

Hard to not take it too seriously shall we say.

I've been having a huge amount of fun with my family recently, so I am very tempted to just put a picture of my wife in kids in there as just a frozen snapshot of such great days together. Hmmm...that sounds good...I'm going to do that one anyway.

I feel a savage attack of over-earnestness coming on. Should I fight it? Should I give in? Am I really going to take this thing seriously? Please Lord - don't make me do this...

Earnestness leads to the enormous temptation to write something about the Iraq war. I am positive that the last 6 years will go down as some of the most catastrophic of our history. Not because of what the terrorists did however, but because of the insane damage caused by those maniacs in Washington. I'm sure the motivations of W. and his boys will be a source of endless debate for future historians. "Why?" I'm sure will be a very common theme, as they try to divine the reasoning behind actions that have so far shaken the world economy to its foundations, made all of our allies mad, all of our enemies happy and led the entire nation to the brink of oblivion.

With the "old" right, you could always figure out their motivations by following the trail (or "massive pipeline") of money back to whatever international business interest they were protecting with American tax dollars and American blood. This one does not fit the model, however, as it appears that everybody has lost - massive well connected multinational corporations with Congress in their back pocket, teenagers, middle class folks, upper class folks, firemen, the average Joe, the average Moe, bartenders, dogs, cats, Starbucks - I mean everybody. We don't even have the comfort of knowing our leaders are corrupt and diabolical...they just appear stunningly incompetent (and believe me, if I was forced to choose, I'd take diabolical over incompetent any day of the week).

Who knows, there may not be future historians, this may be the turning point that will lead to our downfall. I haven't been very impressed with any of the presidents since Eisenhower, but W. will most certainly go down as the worst president in the last 100 years by far.

The only question is how long it will take to undo the damage...20 years?...50 years?...never? We don't know.

However, future historians will know and that is a strange thought to think about. W. and all his shenanigans will be like reading about Polk for them...ancient history, with whatever repercussions having long played out and been replaced by newer repercussions.

So, needless to say, the message for the time capsule is about the Iraq war. If you are feeling extra sensitive to earnestness today, don't read it (just go to the Onion and laugh your ass off). Otherwise, here it is:

Message from Oregon to the folks of 2107.


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