In the simply thrilling Bright Eyes number, ” At the Bottom of Everything,” singer/songwriter, Conor Oberst merrilly declares that the “the whole world’s waking up.” I’d love to agree with ya Conor, man, but the cynical side of me must toss you off the cloud your floating on bud. Don’t get me wrong, musically/artistically, this piece and the entire album will go down in the annals of exceptional entertainment. On an entirely different level, I completely disagree with the aformentioned assumption. Clearly, Oberst is referring to Americans waking up to the sad state of their country under George W. Bush and his hawkish policies. I agree, that within the past few years, we’ve seen an extremely rare political play. Finally, people were pointing fingers at the “bad guy,” as they rightfully should have. There was an entire mood of Anti-Bush! Even my grandparents, fairly moderate-conservative people viewed their comander in chief as a bumbling fool. With this new repudiation of Bush it became extremely palpable for a young, charming, eloquent, black man to rise to the top of an old, now foolish, white man’s empire. But, that’s an entirely different story. As much as I hated everything Bush represnted, I know he’s merely a puppet in a grand scheme of century after century of carnage. If you look closely, the wave of Anti-Bush actually painted the man as a sympathetic character. They say the War in Iraq was a mistake… no my friends it was and is a blatant CRIME against humanity: Ma$$ Murder, as any serious political commentator would inform you. Imagine, if the history books noted Ted Bundy’s and John Wayne Gacy’s crimes as mistakes. That would be an obscenity and neither Bush nor any other public figure should be treated any diffrently. The average American, who may have detested Bush, I seriously doubt will mention these basic flaws in their criticisms. Sure, now citizens and politicians alike are “against” the War in Iraq, but are they truly opposed to all American foreign policy, sadly most aren’t. So, did the world really wake up? Nahh, their (american) dreams turned into nightmares and they hopped out of bed to do some sleep walking. It is the job of the radical (the minority) to snap the conformed (the majority) into reality… by any means necessary.

Chris