It is almost 5 AM and inhibitions are loosened, time to fulminate. In 1972 Nixon won handedly over George McGovern, a real war hero, a man, as time has proven, of not inconsiderable integrity. I had grown up with Tricky Dicky during the Fifties, and I was just stunned that this nation put him into office. We are such poor judges of character. A psychopath became President and there are enough learned articles about Nixon to sustain that DSM III diagnosis. Here was Nixon walking beaches fully clothed down to his buttoned cuffs; the always moist upper lip; that deathly pallor; the jerky and robotic movments of his body; the creepy artificiality of how he went about greeting people, the high intelligence suffused with paranoia. Watergate opened his inner sluice gates to defamation of minorities and personalities. And so we projected upon him power and strength, only to be deceived by our own inability to observe. At that time I quite consciously chose to remove myself from the fray. I now look upon the political process as a grotesque public entertainment.
We came upon one asshole after another. Reagan was a marionette, a Pirandello figure, who with props and aides presented himself as presidential; in fact, he was living off a script. We laud this mannequin. Whenever I’m in a urinal and there is a faded rubber mat that says “Say no to drugs,” I give it an extra dousing. Nancy’s manta, who used to be high for extended periods of time. Read her daughter’s books.
And then the Clintons, he dipping his cigar into something other than brandy, Hillary forgiving him (really) and how they are now merged to give us more of Arkansas sleaze. They are both without shame. She is a monstrous enabler. I feel that one day we will read that Chelsea threw herself off a roof. And if she doesn’t she is grossly impacted.
And we as a nation go along, make Hillary a senator of New York. no less; the sophisticates lose their brains over this carpetbagger, this corporate attorney with little of value. Observe her, not her looks, and odd vestments, but through the eyes and flesh and you see and hear a skull clackety-claking its jaws. We have no shame in this country; we don’t understand it nor are we are parented to experience reasonable shame, as an inhibitor of poor actions.
Obama is the next black hope, a riderless horse, fluttering pennants and trite slogans about change. This country doesn’t change. It muddles through. I sense he feels he has air beneath him and he will fly. Perhaps. I saw through JFK’s puffery as well, giving Bobbie Marilyn after he was done with her. And Obama has the endorsement of Ted Kennedy who left a young woman to die in a sunken car but managed to get out and spend a day rehearsing his story. He never apologized to the family. So Obama accepts his endorsement. Oh, Oh, Obama the slide begins.
And a word or two about McCain. Do you observe that his left side seems awkward or arthritic? Do you observe his body language which reminds me of a hungry resident at an assisted living home? I feel he has several illnesses that will be revealed later in the campaign; he is frail heading into deeper fragility. But the ambition to be president is like hot sperm running up a penis.
The best line I have ever heard about Romney’s background as a Mormon was from Twain who said after reading “The Book Of Mormon,” that it was “chloroform in print.” And Huckabee selling his evangelism as politics, thank you Elmer Gantry, as slick as the minister in “There Will Be Blood.”
The more one can step back, the more that one can see the tomfoolery for what it is, the more one gets a sense of despair. It only makes me, not you, dig my heels into the dirt, gather my loved ones about me, do what I have to do if possible, realizing that American optimism is ultimately vomit. It has no credence in reality.
What is America today? Recent pictures of Katrina trailers loaded with formaldehyde and issued to the homeless just underlines the essential rot just beneath the surface. In “Easy Rider,” made 40 years ago, Captain America, Jack Nicholson, sitting around a fire with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, says with a wispy sadness, words to this effect, “You know, this used to be a great country.” And now?
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