I’ve mentioned a couple of times over the last few days that I’ve been doing some routine maintenance on the archives here at Coffee Muses. That little bit of digital housekeeping has meant spending a good stretch of my mornings living twenty years in the rearview mirror—back in the sticky, uneasy summer of 2006.
We were midway through George W.’s second term, three years deep into a disastrous war of choice, and six years into an administration that many of us naively believed represented the absolute high-water mark of federal incompetence.
Boy, did we have another think coming.
Sifting through those old entries leaves me with a heavy, unsettling sense of déjà vu. Nearly every grievance, observation, and concern I tapped out on the keyboard back then still applies today—only now it feels like it demands to be screamed in ALL CAPS. Reading the archived news links, the commentary, and the general, simmering frustration over whatever nonsense the Bush administration was shoveling out of Washington back in ’06… it looks less like a resolved chapter and more like an opening act for the circus of Trump 2.0.
We endured eight years of “the Shrub,” caught our breath during an eight-year reprieve under Obama, and then weathered the chaotic turbulence of Trump 1—at least, those of us who made it through. Biden came in and managed to steady the listing ship of state for a while, but that only held until the absolute fiasco of these last eighteen months hit us full force.
Back in September of 2006, John Scalzi published an essay titled On Moral Cowardice that struck a deep chord with me. Coming across it again yesterday morning, with coffee in hand, I felt that familiar, rare stirring of pride and reverence—that specific tightness in the throat that only happens when someone strings words together so cleanly and courageously that truth simply rings off the page.
Here is the passage that stopped me in my tracks:
I’m proud to be an American, but I’m tired of being ashamed of my government. I’m tired of having to count the seconds until this bilious waste of a president is shoved out the door in January of 2009. I’m tired of hoping that some members of the president’s political party might actually put principle over political expedience, particularly when it concerns the Constitution. And I’m tired of waiting for the opposing party to actually grow a goddamned spine and become an opposing party. I’m tired of wondering why the people we elect to lead us don’t seem to actually understand what it means to be American, and to be moral, and to do what it right for us. And I’m tired of having to look so hard for genuine leadership as opposed to the sham idiot version we have now. I feel like Diogenes, and I’m coming up short.
I’m tired of being led by moral cowards. I want better for myself, and for my country.
Now, I’ve never been someone who leaves comments on other people’s blogs very often. But back then, Scalzi’s words lit enough of a fire under me that I felt compelled to toss my own two cents into the ring. You can still find what I wrote tucked into my archives from September 29, 2006.
Reading those words two decades later, I find myself reaching for the same old weary refrain: this too shall pass… or at least, I desperately hope it will.
Every single morning, whatever lingering faith I have left in our institutions takes another direct hit. The fabric holding this grand American experiment together isn’t just wearing thin—the threads are actively fraying under the strain. The man currently occupying the White House—which belongs to the people, let’s not forget—acts as though he is the law unto himself, elevated above every rule, precedent, and constitutional guardrail ever established.
He doesn’t appear constrained by even the most basic tenets of human decency or morality. In fact, on many mornings over my first cup of coffee, I find myself wondering if he possesses any at all. Looking at the daily mountain of evidence, I can’t find a single trace of a moral code that our nation’s founders—flawed, imperfect men though they were—would even remotely recognize.
And just to be clear, the image at the top of this page I created to illustrate one of those 2006 posts. I thought it highly relevant for the day. It seems to fit.
