The Hague, Netherlands.  As I've been traveling, people who don't know my politics sometimes ask me how I'm going to vote in the November presidential election.  I guess Europeans make assumptions about Americans, or rather, maybe they are careful to give us a little space to be whatever we need to be.

In response, I have said to people a number of times that I plan to register Republican and vote for Bush, and not only that, to endorse Bush in my columns and Web page.

Why?  I think he's the best man for the job.  I am only being partly facetious in saying this.  It will make a fun little media stunt, a bit of living parody.

However, I actually feel it's important that Bush be in the White House for the next four years (likely fewer) so that when the web of lies and crimes finally falls apart, he and his people are standing there holding the bag.  If there is going to be any kind of national healing that comes in the wake of everything we've witnessed since the stolen election of 2000, the highly convenient September 11th "intelligence failures," and the resulting fraudulent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the resolution needs to happen in a visible way in which the people who are actually responsible are the ones held accountable.

Essentially, if Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others clear out of Washington and head back to their posh corporate jobs and million-acre ranches, they got away with it.

We will lose an opportunity to bring the karma of what has happened to some kind of closure.  We will lose an opportunity to take responsibility for allowing them to do what they did.  We will lose an opportunity to face the effects of our mistakes and disinterest in politics and of our compulsion to believe lies.  And those people who have ardently supported Bush and Cheney and their policies will lose an opportunity to watch - and feel - what happens when the lid is pulled off their scam.  I have every faith that there will be reckoning, but only if Bush takes office again.

I say all this knowing that it's entirely likely that Bush will be inaugurated on January 20, if there is indeed an inauguration.  I don't think how people vote actually matters.  There are so many mechanisms in place to manipulate the election that I think it's naïve to expect things to work out in any kind of fair way, such as whoever gets the most votes or wins the most electoral delegates wins.  That one has already been shot down, but I think that we are, as a country, still in deep denial about that.

Looking at the situation both as political analyst and astrologer, I see little chance of John Kerry being sworn in as president.  What I do see are a lot of doe-eyed, excited, dedicated people who want Kerry to win, who know that he is at least human, and who have put their faith in the healing of America into one basket of eggs: the election.  The nice thing about the Kerry-Edwards ticket is that it's so viable, they have their act together, and they appear to be fairly decent guys as politicians go.  So when they don't take office, it will be all the more obvious what is happening.

I also see a lot of sensible, intelligent people who are so repulsed by the whole political process that they want to keep their hands clean of it.  I used to be one; I have refused to vote since 1992, when I worked for an organization that taught me how judicial elections in New York State are entirely rigged.

One of my favorite writers these days, William Rivers Pitt of truthout.org, has been addressing this issue.  He knows that anyone with a shred of intelligence is likely to be repulsed by both the current situation and the whole political system.  Everyone knows that Kerry is not perfect, that he has lots of the same kinds of corporate interests we despise in Bush, and so on.  Basically what Pitt has been saying is that we need to set aside all the little or big things we don't like about Kerry or his running mate, John Edwards, or politics in general.  We need to set aside our cynicism and just win this one, and worry about being good later.

There is so much at stake: all those Supreme Court judges about to retire; Iraq needing to be handled effectively; the world in such dire straits; the reputation of America so badly strained.  We need someone who can work with other countries and help steer the world through the perils of terrorism and the potential for nuclear terrorism.  We need a president who can actually do his job.  We need a president who is not an embarrassment.

But more than we need these things, we need no illusions about the world.  And I think that the illusions we live with are still too well-packaged to see through.  One is the utterly false notion that the United States is a democracy rather than an oligarchy (government by the rich and privileged for their own purposes), a theocracy (government by religious leaders under religious values), or a fascist state.  Under Bush, the United States seems to have elements of all these things, and to be some kind of demented monarchy.  There appears to be just one branch of government, the executive branch, as well as rule by fiat.

I'm afraid that if Kerry wins we're going to fall asleep and dream that we live in a free country.  Then, with a somewhat sensible (or at least human) person in a position to make decisions, the war in Iraq will be escalated, ostensibly as a means of getting out.  Halliburton and Carlyle Group, Bechtel and Unocal will still make the profits, but a Democrat will get the blame.  If the economy tanks, Kerry will be blamed.  If there is more terrorism as a result of the insane Bush administration policies of the past four years, Kerry will get the blame.  And it is always possible for rival factions of lunatics to totally disrupt the process of governing the country with special prosecutors, intern scandals, and so on.  It's easy to mess up something and hard to set it right.

I say keep the Republicans busy.  Leave them in power.  Let the ample distractions, struggles, and disasters of the modern world sit on their shoulders.  Let them reap what they have sown.  And for all those voters who casually let the whole stolen election crisis slide four years ago, let's see the results of our apathy and stupidity for what they are.  We don't, as a nation, deserve to be set free of the Neocon Nemesis so easily.  We have too much to discuss with our neighbors.  We have too much to find out about what's being done to our country.  We have too much to discover about who these people really are.

There is a truly positive side to having Bush in office.  The widespread interest in politics, peace, and justice that have suddenly sprung up has all been very refreshing, and we have to thank Bush & Co.  for that.  With Bush and Cheney "re-elected," I think that our resolve is only going to get stronger; it will have more time to take hold.  The movement is only getting underway.

We desperately need the obvious illegitimacy of the Bush administration to rail against.  We need to know that every time he makes a move, we had nothing to say about it.  We need to know we live in a country that is of, by, and for the corporations.  We need to never forget that our country has been ripped off - otherwise we're never going to get it back.