Dead Man Walking – that’s what a lot of us are calling ourselves as we walk around after Bush’s re-election. It’s an apt term – something prisoners say to death row inmates walking toward their execution.

Apt because a lot of us will die – literally and figuratively. Some in Iraq – and probably Iran or North Korea – given Bush’s no-diplomacy, read-my-lips and look-at-my-gun pre-emptive strike policy.

And certainly dreams are going to die – for gay men and women in the military who thought “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would end soon. And for the rest of us who got voted Enemy of the State in 11 state constitutions. If you don't think we're in trouble, consider what Bush did to our foreign policy in his first administration without a mandate and then think about what he’ll do with the one he just got.

Consider what Bush did to taxes in his first administration without a sizeable Republican margin in Congress and then think about what he’ll do with the Congress he has now.

Consider what Bush did to gay civil rights in his first administration without appointing Supreme Court justices and think about what he’ll do with the ones he’ll appoint in his second term.

We’re in trouble. And there isn’t so much as a speed bump to slow up the careening Bush Bus. The Democrats are now so impotent, a massive dose of political Viagra couldn’t make them rise to the occasion. The only thing they’re going to be voted into is the endangered species list.

Bush’s re-election feels like a new and improved version of the Dark Ages. The havoc his administration’s played so far has an eerie similarity to what happened thousands of years ago. When Rome fell in 5 A.D., the only institution left standing was the Christian church, which plunged the West into economic chaos, religious intolerance and disease. Trade routes shut down, isolating cities and sowing suspicion everywhere. Sound familiar?

Christianity became hostile to everything that came before it. Greek and Roman works, traditions and practices were banned, burned and bayoneted. Like Bush, when Christianity came in the door, freedom flew out the window.

Starting with Alexander the Great’s experiment with religious and racial diversity in 323 B.C. through the peace and prosperity of Augustus Caesar’s “Pax Romana,” the world had enjoyed an unprecedented level of religious open-mindedness and racial and sexual tolerance. But the Church plucked all of that from the world’s menu. Suddenly, the only thing you could order was Church on a bed of Church with a side of Church. Contact with the East diminished as the Christian world collapsed into itself, ushering in the Dark Ages.

For over a thousand years the world was cut off from itself, thanks to the ancient Bushes, Rumsfelds, Ashcrofts, Falwells and Dobsons.

Oddly enough, the world came out of its coma after Christians invaded the Middle East in a charming door-to-door land-grab called the Crusades. Basically, Christians wanted Muslims out of Jerusalem so they charged Arabs with amassing weapons of mass destruction and launched pre-emptive strikes. Sound familiar?

For the next 200 years, Egypt and other Arab countries fought the Christians off (the Crusades ended mostly as stalemates). During and after the Crusades, trade routes opened up and suddenly the world got a sneak peak at the glory of Greek and Roman culture.

The re-discovery exploded into an intellectual and artistic excitement and ushered in one of the most creative, prosperous, artistic epochs in history—the Renaissance.

Bush’s re-election seems a harbinger of history about to repeat itself. The country is collapsing into itself, becoming more and more isolated from a world that sees us as aggressors rather than victims. The “faith-based presidency” is a monument to religious intolerance, and the attempt to change the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage smacks of Middle Ages sexual oppression. And of course, the “Crusade” we’re waging in Iraq is an age-old movie the History Channel should put in rotation.

Let’s just hope that the new and improved version of the Dark Ages won’t last a thousand years like the last one did. It’d be a pity for America to wait that long to re-discover its own glory.