I’ve been away for several weeks driving around America in a gasoline powered ve-hicle. I’ve seen things.
This I know: While nobody knows how this presidential campaign will play out it is an absolute certainty that like in 1968, the Empire will be shaken to its core.
W. and crew have taken the GOP so far out on a dead limb that they’ve nominated a candidate who they despise. Hillary, having given the okeydoke to “blue collar America” has smashed the LBJ coalition.
Meanwhile that unsinkable ship, the “USS Sole Superpower,” has sunk. A shocked and addled populace drifts on the waves, clinging to its habits and prejudices while sharks circle the wreckage. They face a stark choice: they can swim towards the small island on the horizon (which may not even have any food or water) called “Obama,” or they can stay put and hope to be rescued before the sharks decide to strike.
(Metaphor switch!) Obama, the Mohammed Ali of politics (see? Americans can embrace a Muslim champ) has, against all odds, defeated the hardest hitter around to take the Democratic Title. The Clintons, like George Foreman, foresaw an early knockout, but Obama employed a “rope-a-dope” strategy. He’s taken some thundering shots to the head and body, which is worrisome, and the tireless GOP waits in the wings like Joe Frazier. The ensuing fight won’t be pretty. Furthermore, unlike Ali, Obama didn’t get a knockout. He won on points in a controversial split decision.
Obama will not use the rope-a-dope on McCain. He’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, stick and jab. To win he must fight his fight and bring it.
The greatest obstacle to this would be a Hillary vice-presidency. The Republicans have a warehouse full of ammunition on the Clintons, sitting unused. Obama would be caught flat footed, spending the entire campaign explaining what the Clintons really meant by this or that. You know the drill.
I know for a fact that Republicans are desperately praying (literally) for an Obama-Clinton ticket. For all of their bluster, GOPs know this: Their candidate might win out only if Obama picks Hillary. They know that McCain is no Joe Frazier. No, he is a Scott LeDeaux, a paper tiger with a glass jaw. A Great White Hope, if you will, though even a LeDeaux could land a lucky punch if he catches the Champ flat footed.
So will “blue collar America” ever vote for Obama? (Metaphor switching back!) As we bob on the ocean, surrounded by sharks, something new develops. Amongst the run-of-the-mill sharks, up swims a ravenous 40-foot Great White named “War on Iran!” Maybe, just maybe, America will decide to swim for that island.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
The Liar Next Time
Former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir about his tenure as spokesman for Cheney Inc., What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, puts, at first glance, the final touches on the first chapter of the post-Skull-and-Bones-Bildenberg, etc., conspiracy world. According to early reports of McClellan’s book–in stores Monday–he claims he was but a mouthpiece through which the Bush administration dispensed, on a daily basis, the directives by which all branches of the federal government should proceed. McClellan, heretofore considered a “loyalist,” says Bush governed on a “permanent campaign” premise, predicated primarily on “propaganda.” And, says McClellan, he told nothing but lies. The guidelines for his evasive press conference babble were simply the will and vision of the Cheney-Bush cadre. Thanks for coming forward in such a timely fashion there, Scotty.
A cursory retrospective might suggest that George XLIII, by being such a dweeb, ruined the fun for the monarch-capitalist elite, going so ham-handedly about the diabolical duties of titular commander of the U.S.S. Free World that he gave up the jig. He cracked out of turn, as a David Mamet character once said. George XLIII is a fable character of a boy who inherited kingship but did not possess the capacity for comprehending that the sacred charade was to be performed with dignity and that he should, under all circumstances, remain in character so the masses would have an idol on which to train their focus, a hero to whom they could entrust their dreams. But he got up in front of everybody like some vulgar, gangly teenager toasting his elder sister’s wedding, sporting an unconvincing cockiness while mimicking the ritual, and destroyed all illusions of wisdom and solemnity.
Bill Clinton, given his hillbilly roots, could be given a pass for his theatrical blunders. And reportedly George XLI never even planned for George XLIII to be the ascender; it was supposed to be Jeb or Cletus or whatever they call the purportedly smart one. What makes it all so mythical and Shakespearean is that the drama is drawn from the unscripted eventuality of the ascension of the retarded son. Talk about mainstreaming gone completely awry.
This time, the moral of this fable is not, however, America wins again. Pop philosophy superstar, Slavoj Zizek, for all of his dazzling, convoluted intertwining of infinite academic and cultural references, seems to have made at least one clear political point in all of his writing, and that is that the killing off of Stalinist-brand oppressive communism has, by eliminating that vital counter balance, collaterally taken with it the whole of the liberal democratic movement, including the American “left.” Zizek might have hit on something. Our new “face to the world,” Obama–who has all but ceased participation in the Senate–is merely the perfect stall, should his whole impossible dream thing actually come true, a placeholder while they primp the facade on the next chimera.
What’s my point? There is none. There is no conspiracy. The whole thing is done so above board–and since Bush stripped off the veneer–grotesquely so, we cannot accept that the grand reveal is even true. We suffer mass hysterical blindness because we cannot deal with what we are looking at. They–the profiteers, too many to enumerate–do what they want and we can’t or don’t do shit about it. Bush, by buying oil to bolster our emergency reserve at an extremely critical juncture in a market already strained by Middle East instability, deliberately raised oil prices. A story popped up online at the UK’s The Independent site last Friday: Dr. Mamdouh Salameh, an oil economist who advises both the World Bank (a tool of US hegemony) and the UN, says his study concludes that without the war on Iraq, oil would be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of its present price, or about what it was before the war. Monitoring of the web for even one American news source who linked to the story has come up empty. It is such a forgone conclusion that it is old news nobody wants to countenance.
The Arabs don’t set oil prices anymore than a titty dancer sets the cover charge. I was lapse in my cynical astuteness assuming G43 waged war for long-range control of the oil supply, but the Bush-Saud cartel are reaping such ludicrous immediate gains that you have to marvel at the pathology behind what enables them to psychologically rock themselves to sleep at night while magazine color photo spreads of amputated soldiers and shrapnel-blinded children litter newsstands and coffee tables from here to, literally, Timbuktu.
Francis Fukuyama, a historian and a target of Zizek’s criticism, contends in his book, The End of History, that the modern advance of democracy and the waning of old school communism indicates that all great historical changes are in the past, that there is no turning back from the global permeation of liberal-democratic government. I am with Zizek; Fukuyama probably missed the point. They have rubbed it in our face that they can conduct extreme and protracted evil, motivated only by vanity and greed for power and profit, and with utter impunity. We showed them that they can shut down the farcical democratic process at whim (election 2000) and we will behave as powerlessly as any subjects of a totalitarian dictatorship. We sit idly by as the feeble and anemic Democratic Party has long abandoned its constituency and comfort ourselves that at least “He” will soon be gone. Well, we might not know what the next version of Him looks like but we know who he’ll working for.
Officer Sam
BILLY: Hey Willy! Did you hear about the Superpower who started an oil war and invaded and ruined a whole country?
WILLY: No, Billy! What happened?
BILLY: They left without the oil!
WILLY: Really? Why??
BILLY: Cuz they’re so GOOD!
WILLY: HA HA HA!
The World Cop has become the Bad Lieutenant–a twisted, thieving, lascivious oil-swilling bully. To be sure, Officer Sam has never been a model cop. From his earliest days on the beat he’s lined his pockets, planted evidence, and twisted arms and done killings for the Big Boys. But in the last seven years he’s gone berserk while we–his employers–mostly averted our eyes as he’s strolled across the world spying, looting, and torturing on duty. He has ordered up every shiny gadget and every new weapon–on credit–to the point where the entire world economy is teetering on the brink of ruin.
Traditionally content to shake down Third World “ghetto” communities, he has lately taken to rummaging through our trash, breaking into our houses, bugging our phones and computers, looting our bank accounts, and arresting us without charges whilst smearing and destroying anyone who crosses him. Hiding behind the the flag, the sacrifices of his predecessors, and even the cross, Officer Sam has disgraced the force at a time when the world was most vulnerable, going so far as to deputize one Mr. Private Contractor, who answers only to him.
When he finally brought down the Soviet Mafia by means fair and foul, all hopes turned to the World Cop. Would he make things right with those whose lives were ruined or lost during the long struggle? Nope. Instead, Officer Sam promoted himself to Emperor Sam and wallowed in self-righteousness, ignorance, decadence and greed. Now the jig is almost up. At the very least, Emperor Sam will be demoted back to beat cop. What remains to be seen is what happens after that. Will he be forgiven, fired, or forced to resign? If it is one of the latter, will he wear a suit to work in his new life or will he work the drive-thru window?
Even if Barack or Hillary pull us out of Iraq, this won’t be over by a long shot. The crimes have been committed in plain view, and Sam’s “issues” remain–and his enablers have yet to admit the scope of the problems–his and theirs.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.