On the day George W. Bush was sworn in as President of the United States in 2001, tens of thousands of people stood for hours in below-freezing temperatures along the path of the inaugural procession. A remarkably small number were there to cheer on the new president, as the tradition has been for over two hundred years. Instead, most had come to protest what Bush’s election represented: the final, crushing deathblow to the twinkle of hope for a better, brighter future in this country. The death of the democratic process, to pack it tight. They screamed till their lungs bled, crying their resistance to a future of exported interests and status quo corruption. They threw eggs and garbage at Bush’s limousine, even stopping the procession at one point, making sure the man inside knew they were there. They held signs and banners. They held teach-ins and planning workshops. They spoke for a nation on the brink of an abyss of proportions unseen for generations, clawing the crumbling earth to escape the hellish vortex we had just been tricked into (kind of) inviting into our homes. The protesters spoke with the conviction and passion of their predecessors- the thousands who rallied against Nixon’s inauguration in 1973- because the stakes seemed just as high. They were actually much higher, as it turns out, but nobody knew that at the time.

It was a desperate day of mourning in our nation’s history, and nearly a full decade later those blackened clouds still hover menacingly overhead. 

John McCain should recognize some of the faces from that drizzly January morning almost eight years ago. They’re among the growing crowds showing up at his campaign stops these days, already calling bullshit on his entire election plan and demanding answers to the hard-hitting questions the mainstream media is still shying away from, such as why he seems hellbent on contradicting nearly every single political stance he’s ever taken, and plans on building both his foreign and domestic policies with the same hack-job blueprints Bush has used for eight years of legendary failure.

On the flipside, Barack Obama’s drawing numbers of supporters nobody’s seen in decades, with inspired enthusiasm of matching rarity. 70,000 people attended a speech in Oregon earlier this month. The reactions are the same far and wide: He speaks of hope, of change and personal accountability, and it’s convincing. He strikes people as the real deal, and when he refers to “a change we can believe in,” it almost seems like a dare. The entire concept of “too good to be true” doesn’t exist in this country anymore; we’ve been reduced to “anything but these tired old lies.”

As our economy descends on a spastic downward spiral, we’re entrenching ourselves ever deeper in two wildly unpopular, devastatingly expensive wars that have no end in sight. The current administration has so wholly embraced corruption and corporate dominance of the political process that the public is simply too shellshocked and numb to so much as recognize it anymore. And how could we? The art of propaganda in a wartime climate has been honed to a razor-sharp perfection, and we’re too caught up with record-smashing home foreclosures, gas prices, our dying friends and family on foreign sands, tainted tomatoes and a multi-billion dollar distraction entertainment industry to actually do any research and read the figurative label of what we’ve been sold for nearly a decade.

The tidal wave of misinformation and veiled agendas coming in from all sides has grown rampantly since the turn of the century, like a horrible cancer on the fabric of the nation’s collective consciousness. Even without Dick Cheney’s smug “So?” reaction to the fact that more than three quarters of the people disapprove of our presence in Iraq, there’s no mistaking the hideous fact that it’s been at least a full generation since this country’s seen leadership so entirely removed from the interests and welfare of the people.

John McCain doesn’t plan on doing much to change course the Bush administration is on, particularly in Iraq, if he’s elected. In 2007, his voting record was aligned with Bush’s 95% of the time. This year? 100%. He’s courting the Bush faithful, hoping they’ll win this one for him - that hopelessly devoted 25% base that would ride the sinking Bush ship down to the deepest blue depths of inept, warmongering absurdity. It’s a finely distilled pool of nutjobs comprised almost entirely of evangelical right extremists. They lust for the spin, have a fawning weakness for faith-based trap-door logic, and ecstatically embrace whichever candidate will move us closer to a nation of science hating, Bible-thumping Christian global dominators. 

One of McCain’s most passionate goals in his quest for the presidency is to stack the judicial deck to override Roe v. Wade, an historically pivotal trump card that’s kept the evangelicals enthusiastically packing the Republican voting booths for as long as memory serves. McCain’s no stranger to that concept, and he had plans to rely on those votes. But the crazy fucking thing is, the religious right seems on the brink of moving left in droves. They don’t like McCain. He could carry a dead baby around on a coathanger to wave in liberals’ faces, and he’d still be an outcast to these people.

As far as the evangelicals go, being a raving alcoholic with a lust for the white stuff is an entirely forgivable character flaw. What they can’t turn the other cheek to is the idea that a man would return after years of absence from his hopelessly devoted wife and children, cheat on that wife, and eventually abandon her because she was crippled in an accident. After all, a handicapped wife like isn’t exactly political spouse material. Instead, he shacked up with a bird-like little blonde 20 years his junior, who also happens to be deeply rooted in beer money. Now that’s more like it. 

But not to the religious right. They see McCain’s past infidelities and anti-family actions as a direct assault on a cornerstone priority of theirs: family obligation and morality. So much so, that as much as 40 percent of the evangelical Christian base are projected to give their votes to Obama. The idea that it’s best they cut their losses now and look to the future is rapidly gaining popularity. The way they see it, once Obama’s elected, the inevitable, looming recession and Iraq quagmire can be pinned on him, paving the way for a sharper, younger and more pure candidate to lead them back to the promised land.

Furthermore, the tipping point is drawing ever near on the American media’s reluctance to expose Bush and his administration for the corporate whore illusionists they are, and that doesn’t serve the Bush-aligned McCain well at all. After all, what kind of gut reaction do you expect from a nation dizzy with anticipation for fresh blood in the White House, when they hear that the soon-departing President is one of McCain’s most outspoken supporters?

And then there’s Obama. He represents different things to many, but there’s a consensus among most that, whether deservedly or not, he brings a spark of hope that has long been dormant on the shores of American politics. There’s an essence to him, an eager sense of honorable determination that can’t be faked. 

By contrast, the familiar cocky gleam we’ve seen in the eyes of our President that has come for so many millions to represent the loss of hope, the loss of their ability to be represented by those in place to do so, beams from McCain’s eyes like a lighthouse. His intentions are reflections of the poisonous path we’ve been on for nearly a decade, and he doesn’t try to hide it.

I can understand that McCain’s trying to appease the right, realizing that there’s a strict limit to the lefties he can fool into believing he’s the better candidate (due to his views on the war, abortion, health care, domestic spying, education, the drug war, the environment, etc). He walks a fine line between acknowledging his unspinnable Bush connections and the “maverick” image nonsense.

Back in 2000, McCain was a different kind of beast. His eye was much more on the ball, and the massive stumbling blocks of Iraq, 9/11 and suffocating Bush associations were nonexistant. Were the almighty powers of nepotism never to exist, McCain would’ve locked the 2000 Republican nomination, and may have even been president. But there is almost nothing about McCain 2008 that resembles the man we saw then. His policies and intentions have been reduced to slight variations on those of the Bush Administration.

What would that mean for America? Figuratively speaking, it’s as if the prison doors were finally open, only to have the inmates willfully lock themselves back in. 

The real “maverick” in this campaign isn’t the guy running around telling everybody he’s a maverick. It’s the guy who’s inspired growth and populist change throughout his entire career, and continues to do so with a clear message that resonates loudly within a wide and increasing range of communities. Nevermind that Obama’s got six times the amount of money to educate the people and set the record straight on his opponent’s baseless attacks. As a candidate, McCain’s really just a victim of bad timing. The initial gleam of promise his war hero campaign had fizzled pretty quickly, and understandably - he’s pushing a war agenda when our nation’s desperate for peace. 

83 million people sat on their asses rather than voting in 2004, and watched this country get delivered right back into the hands of tyranny it spent four years wallowing in, like a battered wife who’s too bewildered and timid to get her shit together and make sure the fucker never sets foot in her house again. But Obama’s become the face of a new motivation, a new movement, a new kind of hope that this country hasn’t seen in as long as memory serves. He’s captured the imagination of young Americans, who aren’t reliable voters by design but can make a difference when inspired on a large scale. Now, for the first time since Vietnam, they are motivated, and not ’cause P fucking Diddy’s jumping all over MTV telling them to Vote or Die. This time, for the first time in generations, the momentum of support is organic and beginning to expand, and that’s a scary prospect for anybody not on the receiving end.

2004 was a whirlwind of confusion, and the Bush muscle flexed just enough to convince people that change is scary, we don’t want change in wartime. That’s not the case anymore. We want our troops home.

These faces are barely a fifth of the human cost of the first year of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, March 2003 to March 2004. Look closely. They are Americans. They have died for false agendas. 

People are driven by the frustration of what our country has become- the suffocating sense that things keep getting worse, even when it seems that they couldn’t possibly. There’s an understandable sense of trepidation hanging over the election this November, because we can’t fucking remember what it’s like to be told the truth. To believe in or even relate to our leaders on a basic human level. To hope for positive change. This nation was quite literally gang-raped for two full presidential terms, and as a whole we’re heartbroken and angry. We don’t want any more of our brothers and sisters to die for a false cause. We want to feel proud of our country’s position in the world again. We want to feel like our voices will be heard. We need a leader of honest, principled and reasonable character, not a historically tyrannic temper and massively shifting tides of policy and ethics. We need a President who will engage in discourse with our enemies rather than stonewalling communications and threatening nuclear war. We’ve seen what “bring ‘em on” arrogance can- and can’t- do. And we want change.

Obama gives people quite a few reasons to believe that he gives a shit about the ever-shrinking middle, and that he plans on doing something about it. His origins are about as grassroots and of-the-people as they come, between his extensive history as a community organizer, civil rights attorney and teacher of constitutional law. He comes from as culturally varied and economically average a family as a person possibly could, and delivers a progressive message that’s resonating like a thunderclap throughout America. 

It weighs heavily with cash-strapped Americans that he wants to get us out of the Iraq nightmare that’s costing taxpayers over $170 million a day. Like Obama, most of us would rather spend that money on sweeping changes to our threadbare education system (instead of ridiculous, underfunded and hopelessly flawed “no child left behind” programs), investing in a sensible health care plan that we can all participate in. His plans for Social Security reform have a better chance of succeeding than McCain’s, and the average American is drawn to his open-mindedness about global warming, foreign policy and poverty resolutions. They take comfort in his commitments to community leadership and discourse before action. They see promise in his proposed tax incentives for companies to keep jobs in the U.S. instead of outsourcing, as well as his intentions to return to the pay-as-you-go system of spending that enabled Clinton to balance the budget by 1999, rather than the Bush-era borrow and spend tactics that have left our economy teetering on the verge of collapse. 

McCain, on the other hand, is just about as out of touch as Bush- which is to say he has absolutely nothing at all in common with the average American. And he doesn’t care. In an interview on the back of his “Straight Talk Express” campaign bus Monday, he confirmed this point by declaring that he still would’ve voted to authorize the war in Iraq, having had prior knowledge of the fact that there were no WMDs to be found, no ties to al-Qaeda and the hunt for bin Laden has been suspiciously stonewalled by the White House- not to mention the 4,100 Americans who have given their lives to the “cause,” the several hundred thousand Iraqi civilians killed in the name of “freedom” since the war began, or the fact that nearly a full 80% of the United States is utterly against it, despite an unprecedented misinformation campaign and moratorium on images of dead American soldiers (or their caskets, returning home) in the Murdoch mainstream media. Nobody’s going to buy the pretty picture when it’s on fire.

I’ve heard plenty of arguments that, as bad as McCain’s presidency would undoubtedly be for the steadily-declining social and economic stability of this country, we shouldn’t even consider the alternative. Obama isn’t right for the job because he’s not ready, he’s untested, he’s a closet Muslim, etc. But that’s precisely the one-dimentional, head in the sand “better the devil you know…” perspective that won Bush a second term. Granted, Obama’s got a tightrope to walk in trying to recruit the disgruntled right without moving too closely to the middle, simultaneously reaching out to evangelical voters and issuing unequivocal statements of opposition against any constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. It’s a tricky dance to pull off, but he’s doing it, and if he stays the course he’s on now McCain doesn’t stand a chance in November. Especially if he picks the right running-mate.

In an interview last week, McCain was asked a direct question about service-based qualifications for congressional seats. A reporter for ABC News asked the candidate: What is it about their honorable service in Iraq and/or Afghanistan that qualifies them to go to Congress? A visibly angered McCain only responded with a sarcastic “Please,” recoiling in disgust as VP wannabe’s Lieberman and Graham scrambled to his defense with fawning rhtetoric - but veering far and wide from any mention of qualifications. The fact that a presidential nominee loses his cool when asked about anything, much less such a valid question such as this, raises serious doubts as to whether he has the emotional stability or temperament to run this country. And if one thing is certain about McCain, it’s that he’s got a hell of a temper. 

Let’s set aside the fact that McCain was a bomber pilot and not a fighter pilot as he’s claimed. He deserves our respect for his service and POW history, but it serves as absolutely no indicator of his qualifications as Commander in Chief. The goal of McCain’s camp, in reacting with such shocked outrage at the question, was to scare the American media off the scent of bullshit and inconsistencies in his military record. Getting shot down, taken hostage and- according to McCain himself- cutting a deal with the Vietnamese after three days of captivity doesn’t qualify a person to be president of anything, but if you tug enough heartstrings, words like “truth” and “relevance” start to blur around the edges. They become flexible.

He demands unquestioning adulation for his military record, yet he refuses to reveal the entire thing. For that matter, he’s released only 19 pages out of a total 600 from his official military records. John Kerry was forced to reveal his entirely when he ran in 2004, allowing the Republican party to dissect every shot he fired in Vietnam, every swiftboat ride, and soullessly deconstruct a man’s heroic achievements with the fire of a thousand suns. And it worked like a fucking charm.

John McCain lobbied passionately to prevent the North Vietnamese from releasing their records of the POW camps, as well as the debriefing records of all the returning POWs. When the POW/MIA movement was attempting to find missing soldiers after the war, McCain worked to suppress their access to any records about the camps.  What exactly does McCain have to hide? There seems to be a desperation to shift and cloak history. The history the American public deserves to be set straight on.

But in true, post-9/11 neocon-friendly media fashion, the press has cowered away like frightened children from anything even remotely related to respectable journalism on the issue, doing precisely what they’ve done since that tragic September morning almost seven years ago: Appease. Lob the softballs. Ask the kinds of launchpad questions politicians love, without digging for truth, the relevant kind of shit that our grandkids are going to read in their history books.

The guy was shot down on a bombing mission and spent five years at the Hanoi Hilton. It’s an admirable tale of survival, and he deserves whatever medals and honors they pinned on him. But how does that have anything whatsoever to do with the leadership of the world’s most powerful military? Or the leadership of this nation, for that matter? It doesn’t. The association is entirely emotion-based. And it almost worked. His war “heroics” have been a major launching pad for his campaign despite taking place over 40 years ago. That’s also the one topic he’s managed to stay consistent on throughout his campaign. Too bad it’s about to be rendered completely fucking irrelevant.

In a June 11 interview with the Huffington Post, Gen. Wesley Clark had this to say about McCain: “The truth is that, in national security terms, he’s largely untested and untried. He’s never been responsible for policy formulation. He’s never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or (in managing) his own congressional staff. It’s not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is… McCain’s weakness is that he’s always been for the use of force, force and more force. In my experience, the only time to use force is as a last resort. When he talks about throwing Russia out of the G8 and makes ditties about bombing Iran, he betrays a disrespect for the office of the presidency.”

But wait, Obama wasn’t even in the military! What’s the difference? Obama isn’t running on the basis of his national security experience. McCain is. It’s a shame that Obama distanced himself from Clark’s comments, because they’re true, and things threatened to really get interesting for a minute there.

The overwrought mock outrage was palpable from the McCain camp over Gen. Clark’s comments, challenging the idea that McCain’s Vietnam war experience prepared him to lead the world’s largest military. It was considered below the belt, and in a flailing reaction that exposed a little too much of that gnashing desperation his party’s extremes are best known for, McCain called for Clark to be dropped from the Obama campaign altogether.

“I think it’s up to Sen. Obama now not only to repudiate him but to cut him loose,” McCain said. The guy doesn’t want Clark anywhere near his opponent, especially when Obama hasn’t chosen a running mate yet. 

Why? Well, to put it simply, Clark is McCain’s worst fucking nightmare. He was valedictorian of his graduating class at West Point, while McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. Unlike McCain, his accomplishments in the armed forces aren’t limited to crashing four military jets before once more zigging when he should’ve zagged, ending up in enemy captivity for five years. In addition to 34 highly-decorated years in the Army and Department of Defense, Gen. Clark was a Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He’s received dozens of military decorations and several honorary knighthoods throughout his career as well. If the General were to join the Obama ticket, McCain could kiss his war-hero mythology, advantage of military experience and hopes of ever being President goodbye in one hysterically glorious, landslide-inducing swoop.

But titles and decorations are just bullshit, right? What about experience in the real grit of it all? Mr. Swiftboat John Kerry shot somebody in the back and faked his wounds! Right? Those Purple Heart medals don’t mean shit! Right? McCain spent half a decade as a POW and was given preferential treatment because his captors knew his father was a top Lieutenant and they could use him for leverage. He deserves our respect for his devoted service, undoubtedly. But Gen. Clark was in Vietnam too! He just didn’t get caught by the enemy. And despite being shot four times, he kept shouting orders to his troops and firing until they cleared the area. Fast forward a couple decades to Bosnia, where Clark braved sniper fire and grenade attacks to retrieve the bodies of two of his fellow Americans that had been caught in a roadway collapse. 

With Clark involved, there’s not much wind left over for McCain’s sails on the whole “war hero” claim. It’s understandable that Johnnyboy would sleep much better at night with Clark out of the picture. He makes McCain look like a pussy. 

McCain knows he’s in danger, too. That’s why he’s revamping his entire strategy, replacing career lobbyist Rick Davis with Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt as head of day-to-day operations. A lot of Americans have a knee-jerk fascination with the idea of a president who doesn’t take any shit, has a vicious temper and has no trouble being the asshole in the room, and McCain knows it. But his operation needs a lot more work to be wholly digestible to anybody outside the Toby Keith fanclub. We can undoubtedly expect a revamped, man-of-the-people shitkicker image to emerge through August and September. He will appear cool and collected, even fun. He won’t threaten to bomb anybody else. 

McCain’s undoubtedly hoping that the economy will stay afloat at least through summer, so people will vote more on issues of national security which, due to Bush alignments and careful image cultivation, drives votes his way. But image is everything at this emotion-saturated stage, and if America’s broke from the gas prices and the clouds of recession are still visible, voters are going to be much more concerned with domestic issues and economic security than the Iraq nightmare. Those stimulus checks went quick, Mac. You can put all the fucking ribbons you want on your car- I’m much more concerned with feeding my kid.

We could wait a hundred lifetimes for a flawless nominee that perfectly meshes with each and every one of our personal ideals, political philosophies and pet issues. That person is never going to appear. What we have now is a man we can recognize, a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, who wants to change things and bring this country back to the people. He’s inspired a new, organic movement that doesn’t require external power sources and voter-motivation campaigns, because his message resonates with those of us who are sick of being swindled and having our mouths and eyes taped shut. 

Obama’s campaign has evolved in some glorious mutation, erupting into a profoundly massive public movement for a new chapter in our nation’s history. With his progressive track record, his concise, articulate and inspiring delivery and a few recent well-placed actions to back up the talk (it’s solely because of Obama that the DNC will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists), he’s entered the slipstream of collective enthusiasm, and that gives him momentum far beyond what he could’ve cultivated on his own. He’s become a symbol of unity, of hope, of change.

Barack Obama won’t win the election this November. Obama the Movement will. And when he’s sworn into office next January, the ecstatic crowds that line Pennsylvania Avenue will be cheering for so much more than the man.  

It’s not as if the sky is going immediately clear, everybody will get a fat check in the mail and things will all be fine if and when Obama moves into the White House. There’s a hell of a lot of undoing to be done, and it’s going to take a considerable amount of time and collective dedication to the cause to breathe any new life into the decaying husk of the American Dream. Corporate America will fight dirty and to the death to protect their cash cow, and it’s up to the people to hold Obama accountable and make sure he delivers on the promise to bring the words “change” and “hope” out of a coma and into the slipstream of political dialogue of our country once again. The real fight hasn’t even begun yet. 

I leave you with the words of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. Although written in reference to the political climate of an entire generation ago, the words resonate now with a renewed high-frequency poignance that tickles my nausea:

After five and a half years of watching a gang of fascist thugs treating the White House and the whole machinery of the federal government like a conquered empire to be used like the spoils of war for any purpose that served either the needs or whims of the victors, the prospect of some half-bright jock like Gerry Ford running a cautious, caretaker-style government for two or even six years was almost a welcome relief.

After more than ten years of civil war with the White House and all the swine who either lived or worked there, I was ready to give the benefit of the doubt to almost any president who acted half human and had enough sense not to walk around in public wearing a swastika armband.

HST- Fear And Loathing In Limbo: The Scum Also Rises

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 12:34 AM and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can comment, or trackback from your own site. Tags: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, George Bush, John McCain, Wesley Clark