THE US GOVERNMENT
The United States Government is suffering from a split personality that seems to be worsening with each passing decade. On the one hand we have the “Ideal,” the grand democratic experiment envisioned by the Founding Fathers some two hundred years ago, and to which we are desperately clinging, like shipwreck victims floating on debris in the oil-choked ocean. On the other Hyde-like hand we have the “either you’re with us or you’re against us” U.S. Government, the one that will torch your villages and make your elected officials disappear if it doesn’t get preferential trade agreements. Even the cynics among us are pumping the bellows hard to keep that original spark glowing, because we somehow still believe the system can work, despite the most venal, hypocritical set of politicians since the Roman Empire. Let’s just hope George W. remembers what finally happened to Caligula after he went and got his horse elected to the Council.
This disillusionment began, in my opinion, with the crack of a bullet in Dallas in November, 1963. Kennedy was the last Knight in Shining Armor this nation has produced (despite his dalliances with Marilyn,) and his public execution was a shock we still haven’t recovered from. From that moment on, we expected, and got, the absolute worst from our politicians, as though we knew with some dark, Nostradamus-style precognition that Kennedy was our last chance to get it right.
The succession of Presidents following Kennedy does not inspire confidence:
JOHNSON- A failed reformer who just quit.
NIXON – A criminal, racist megalomaniac.
FORD – A bewildered bumbler.
CARTER – A hard luck President with good intentions but zero success.
REAGAN – A selectively forgetful big-business puppet.
BUSH – A deceptive war-mongering oil baron.
CLINTON – A sex fiend with the dubious distinction of being the best President since FDR.
G. W. BUSH – A good-natured artichoke that does what it’s told.
Hardly the stuff of legend, at least in the positive sense, unless you count Clinton getting some in the Oval Office. That was, in a distinctly adolescent male way, legendary.
The lesser politicians of the past few decades haven’t scored any better on the character scorecard:
NEWT GINGRICH – A contract with America? Written by a guy who presents his wife with divorce papers while she’s in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment? Die, you scumbag.
JESSE HELMS – Did anyone else throw a party when he retired? I threw a naked Bachannal that would have made Larry Flynt blanche. Sanctimonious, Bible-thumping hypocrites do not impress me.
JIM TRAFFICANT – I grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, where everyone knew Trafficant was a criminal before he was even elected to Congress. He was notorious as a sheriff. And his hair was just as bad then.
STROM THURMOND – So the former racist had an illegitimate child with a black woman? Why did this surprise anyone? It’s standard operating procedure for dickheads.
JOHN ASHCROFT – This is not Germany in 1935, John. And the whole thing about covering the breast of the statue would have seemed prudish to Queen Victoria, OK? Grow up.
JESSE JACKSON – *SIGH* I don’t know why I expected more from you.
MARTIN SHEEN – Now that’s a President, damn it!
OLLIE NORTH – Not exactly a politician, but he sure acted like one, didn’t he? Lying, scheming, anything for the USA! Braindead fuck.
DICK CHENEY – Halliburton, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Dick Cheney. Rest assured, we’ll be hearing these two names mentioned together a lot in the near future, along with the words “profiteering” and “indictment.”
Why can’t we find a real life Atticus Finch and elect him President? I know many strong, ethical, moral people and they all seem to agree that they would never have anything to do with the cesspool that is politics. That’s the reason we end up electing the dregs of society to positions of power: all the intelligent, scrupulous people refuse to do the things necessary to get elected in this country.
Ain’t that a bitch?