I’m cross posting this from DailyKos since almost all of us know and love Raybin. He commented on this here.
Dear Raybin,
I know you wrote your GBCW diary, but I hope you’re lurking out there some where. If not I’ll email you the link. Also, check your email for an invitation from me. It’s the email that doesn’t invite you to buy porn or viagra or invest in the chance to earn millions.
Tonight I gave the girls a bath like I always do on Sunday nights while Ms. Carnacki’s at work at the salt mine earning us a few extra bucks to salt away.
When I got the youngest out of the tub, she grabbed her older sister’s panties. I picked her up and carried her to the bed and grabbed a fresh diaper to put on her. She shook her head and reached down to put the panties on. She’s 20 months old (or something like that, by the third child you stop keeping track) and she’s been doing pretty well on the potty of late so I thought, “What the hell? I’ll put the panties on her.” I grabbed a clean pair and put them on her and let her run around as I got the other two into their nightgowns. Then as they ran off to join their baby sister, I began to pick up the flotsam and jetsam that collects along the shore of the bathtub.
Then I heard a scream.
Loud piercing little girl scream: “EWWWW!!! That’s gross. Dad come quick!”
I ran afraid of another popcorn kernel up the nose incident and Ms. Carnacki not home to deal with it.
Instead it was a — how should I put this — potty accident.
I’ve dealt with potty accidents a lot over the past seven years. I’ve dealt with some pretty disgusting and gross stuff out in the world too. I don’t want to go into detail or my history with decomposed bodies, but it takes a lot to gross me out.
This grossed me out.
My first thought was I needed a U.S. Army biohazard team in those suits worn for Condition 4 outbreaks. It was a grab-the-kids-put-them-in-the-car-and-torch-the-house-behind-me kind of potty accident.
I didn’t though. I evacuated the room, took the contaminated victim to the tub for a thorough washdown, put her in the clean room with the others, removed the hazardous material, scrubbed the floors (note the plural), took off my contaminated clothes and threw them in the washer, removed the debris to the trash barrels outside (fortunately in the country no one can see you in your boxers carrying the trash out), and showered.
And somewhere doing all that I thought, “This is just like George W. Bush’s administration.”
The voters took a chance on him being potty trained and he made a mess of it. He’s made a shit-storm mess of it. And so did the GOP and Democratic appeasers in Congress made a mess of it.
And at some point the adults are going to have to come in and clean their mess up. (People at Blogs for Bush Apologists dance in the mess and smear it all over themselves so obviously they’re not going to be the people to clean up the mess.)
It’s going to be people like us. And yes, people like you.
Because we’re the adults.
But we can do it.
It’s been done before.
You’re a history student. You know that better than most. Look at the messes that have been cleaned up: Slavery? The Civil War and Reconstruction? The Great Depression? The rise of fascism? The racist effort to stop the Civil Rights movement? Vietnam?
Yes things look horrible right now. Things are horrible right now.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. Thousands of our soldiers and sailors and airmen are dead or maimed for life. Osama bin Laden remains free. The budget deficit has gotten us to the point of economic collapse. The environment is a mess. Endangered species are at more risk than ever. The economic is frightening. I could go on and on.
But we’ve been here before. How many people died on both sides during the Vietnam War? Europe and the rest of the globe opposed the war.
How could the Vietnamese ever forgive us? But they did. They seek relations with us. Countries around the globe regained trust in us after Vietnam. We’ll restore that trust again (although I’m sure Karen Hughes is making the job even harder).
I pray the Iraqis will one day forgive us too for this unjust and illegal war.
I hope the adults will be able to clean up this mess created by Bush and Delay and Frist and their brethren soon. The prosecutors are only just beginning. But we’ll get this mess cleaned up.