It's Time to Go Underground

The Children's Crusade is over. All the genial, above-board grassroots activism of the past two years has failed utterly in removing the most rotten, corrupt, incompetent presidential administration in American history. We smiled, we met up, we went door-to-door and accomplished exactly nothing except to make the deep disappointment we feel today even more bitter. We made lasting friendships that are now a bond of shared misery.

We lost to a sociopathic pseudo-Christian pseudo-cowboy who pays lip service to the sanctity of frozen blastocysts while gleefully slaughtering dark foreigners guilty only of living over a sea of oil. We lost to a magic lantern show of terrorism that distracted us from the real issues of poverty, intolerance, economic recession, and compromised civil rights. We lost to an incestuous elite that owned the rigged video poker machines on which the votes were cast (and miscast). We lost to masters of innuendo and propaganda both overt and covert, from Fox News to those leafletting car windshields in church and Wal-Mart parking lots. We lost to ignorance, hubris, testosterone, fundamentalism, bigotry, corruption, misperception, indifference, imperfect empathy, and folly.

It is now obvious that our good intentions and honorable actions were not sufficient to counter these forces. Our shining morning faces and our pure hearts were no match for the creeping, poisonous things hiding in undisclosed locations. If we want our country, our government, and our democracy back, we will have to soil our hands and tarnish our souls a little. We will have to learn to fight filthy.

Does the other side distribute circulars at churches describing Kerry and Edwards as cohabiting sodomites? Then we must begin, now, printing up flyers describing Bush as a closet abortionist who sacrificed babies in Satanic rituals in Skull and Bones. If there is a note of verisimilitude in our accusations that appeals to the conspiracy theorist and paranoiac in every American, so much the better. There are TRUE things about Bush and Company that are more scandalous than anything they could make up about the other side. We must get in touch with our inner Karl Rove, and smear all Republican allies of Bush at every level of government--the nastier the implication, the better. We may feel the need to go to confession or to take twenty baths afterward, but I can see no other way of prevailing against evildoers except by turning their own weapons against them.

The other thing we must do is to get control of those infernal voting machines. If they can be rigged for evil, they can be rigged for good. Tech-savvy moles need to infiltrate Diebold and all the other companies now trafficking with Republicans, learn their odd ways and secret handshakes, and destroy the opposition from within.

These methods, and others like them, are not for the fastidious. (I don't even think they are for me, particularly.) But, short of another bloody American Revolution, they are the only ones that will work. If there is a fear that we become too much like our enemies by imitating them, remember that our cause is just. The eggs that we break in making this particular omelet need breaking before our society, our country and perhaps even our planet are irreparably broken.

Cheney, vice-kingpin of the Bush crime family, is proving quite the extortionist. "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again." Ya know, if you don't vote for me and my associate, a bad thing could happen. I'm not sayin' it will, but bad things have a way of happenin' if you don't do what's best for you. That other bad thing that happened--it could happen again. A vote for us is like insurance.

It's a bloody protection racket. The threat implicit in the above statement is: if we vote for Kerry, they will MAKE it happen. And, the near-unthinkable: if they could make it happen again, did they make it happen BEFORE?

I gag to think about it, but the indications are there. Before 9/11, Bush was a zilch; after the disaster, he was suddenly "Churchillian." He needed the image boost, and Americans were willing to give him all sorts of additional power. Suddenly, if you didn't "support your President," you were "with the terrorists." If there are monsters under the bed, you need your daddy, even if he is an alcoholic fuck-up. No wonder he regards America as a "10-year-old child." And HE'S the father? We need to be placed in foster care, pronto.

This is no conspiracy theory: the Bushes are ultra tight with the Saudi government--and people in the Saudi government were cutting checks to the hijackers. (And so we attacked IRAQ. Makes perfect sense to me.) Suddenly, a world-weariness suffuses me, and I yearn for an endless succession of cold malty beverages. Anything to make the hurting stop.

Better do like the man says if ya know what's good for ya.

Bush has more flip-flops than a beachwear distributor. Yesterday he said we can't win the so-called "War or Terror"--and today he asserts we can. Well, which is it? Since trying to scare the shit out of Americans is the major Republican strategy, assuring us that Osama has a nuke aimed directly at our house, this faltering could cost George a few votes. Isn't Bush the ONLY one who can save us from Osama, rampaging wedded gays, and rogue stem-cell researchers? No? Then maybe that French-looking guy with all the Ketchup money might be worth checking out.

Last night, John McCain called Michael Moore "disingenuous." Isn't it disingenuous to pretend to be a moderate and beat the drum for the right-wing-nuttiest president we've ever had? One CANNOT be a moderate and support Bush. It's that simple. There is no longer any such thing as a "moderate Republican." The "moderate Republican" of today is actually a moderate Democrat. Why get suckered into voting for The Little Man Who Wasn't There when you can vote for someone who WAS, Swifty-Boat Judases notwithstanding?

It would be piling it on too excessively for the Republicans to again use the Rooseveltian theme "Happy Days Are Here Again" for their National Convention in September. The Late Gipper could do so, if only to counter the deep clinical depression (and stoic sense of honor) of the Carter years. "Happy Days Are Here Again" was appropriate for that era because everyone was shutting their senses to grim reality and ingesting vast amounts of cocaine. Today it would just seem ironic, in light of our (ostensibly) chemical-and-sex-free administration.

No, the Republicans need to get back to their basic principles. For their new campaign song, I suggest an up-tempo country version of "Strange Fruit," played perhaps by the Charlie Daniels Band to the tune of "Cotton-Eyed Joe."

Ronstock '04 is almost over--only the cleanup remains. The Right Wing necrophiliacs (is there any other kind?) lined up by the tens of thousands to slobber over the shrivelled remains of the man who made us all feel so good about doing bad. Ronnie took us from the Brechtian reality of the Carter years to a fantasyland that Disney would have called
hallucinagenic. The Grover Norquist brigade wants to put the Great Confabulator on the ten dollar bill, chisel his Doodyesque likeness on Mt. Rushmore, and rename the Pentagon after him.

Sure, we should put his picture--on Food Stamps. We should sculpt his face on a mountain of surplus Federal cheese, to be left on the Mall in Washington to be licked by homeless veterans and feral dogs. We should put his name on something synonymous with his policies and philosophy--the Fresh Kills Landfill, Three Mile Island, or Death Valley. We should change the unfortunate expression "senior moment" (which I detest, for obvious reasons) to "pulling a Reagan."

But why build more monuments? The National Debt he spent us into will outlast the Pyramids. The bloodbaths of El Salvador and Beirut will long live in memory--of those who lived. His sensitivity to AIDS patients was monumental, in a negative way. And as sensible for foreign policy? "Arms for Hostages," "Star Wars: the Boondoggle," and (who could forget?) "I've just signed legislation outlawing Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Plus, he made us feel great about driving really big cars again.

Despite all, I am convinced that Reagan believed all the hooey he so winningly spouted. He lived and acted and died in a state of innocence. It's just that from the greatest innocence often emerges the greatest evil. The Old Man is at peace now--I only wish that we were.

P.S. to Sandra Day O'Connor--John Winthrop was NOT a Pilgrim--he was a PURITAN. The Puritans of those days HATED the Pilgrims. The problem with all the Puritans TODAY is that they THINK they're the Pilgrims!

At the risk of turning this into "Laser Surgery Blog," I must add that the laser treatment I have scheduled for Monday is on the eye that ISN'T hemorrhaging. No mistake--apparently, my eye doctor thinks the hemorrhaging will take care of itself, but wishes to correct an anomaly in the "good" eye. Pardon me for not being thrilled.

Life is a never-ending symphony of joy, I'll tell you! God, I've missed Blogger over the past few months, including the delight of having an entire post disappear without a trace. Now that I've had laser surgery in both eyes (and have to go back for more) and have watched my presidential candidate fall ignominiously to our bastard corporate media, I am ready to start pissing and moaning again after my sojourn among my books, my music, and my beer.

I managed to read all the delightful books of Carl Hiaasen before my left eye started hemorrhaging again. I found that I had been writing in a Hiaasenesque style without even trying--and sent his highly selective agent a query letter for my unfortunate doorstop. This may be hubris on my part, but so be it.

I am resigned to voting for Johnny Haircut. He doesn't seem so bad now, especially compared to J. Fred Bush. I'm not going to any Kerry meet-ups or otherwise campaigning for him, but he has my vote--he is the only alternative to four more disastrous years of GWB and cirrhosis of the liver for me. If Bush wins, I shall use my liver to smite Naderites, once it is hard enough.