Sorry I've been out of touch for the past few months, chalk it up to the outcome of the presidential election---I had to re-group, and it appears that a little more than half the country is doing likewise. Dubyah is in the White House and acting like he's Roosevelt who whipped the hell out of Alf Landon or Wendell Wilkie, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote. He's been president for a hundred days, but I don't see any appreciable change because of it, nor do I see that anyone has bothered to acknowledge the obvious fact of his presidency. He makes appointments, statements to the press, he even had a little party for himself and his hundred days, though the bi-partisan turnout was underwhelming. Funny, I had thought that when Dubyah sneaked into his elective victory there'd be more of a groundswell. But come to think of it, the country outside the Beltway has made their attitudes known by also ignoring him, but oh-so-politely. By David G. Walley
I used to think it was important to keep informed, keep abreast of the issues, but even the Press, who gleefully yipped around Saxophone Bill's feet seem to have lost their taste for it. They should be all over Dubyah like a cheap suit, but even they've backed off and given him a press holiday worthy of The Great Communicator. Apparently word around the oval office is the people might want to take a breather from all the sexual hub-bub, bub. But if the Press backs off, the end result is that the Public remains not only uninformed but apathetic. What else can I conclude but that the good old Eighties of star wars is coming back around on the political turntable? That the Defense Department is running the White House, doesn't seem to bother anyone, nary a sign of life. That we've gone back a few decades in the State Department to the Devil theory of diplomacy, where the US must have a devil to fight, and now it's China doesn't ring anyone's bells, out here where we're stoned immaculate. Perhaps The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue will revive spirits now that baseball's started, and summer can't be far away.
Sometimes I even feel like I'm Rip Van Winkle, only instead of waking up in the future, I'm back in the Eighties when greed was good, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House -- only it's not even that; more like that phantom Dallas tv season, where at the end of a whole mess of plot development, the season last episode proved to be just a dream, and nothing really happened at all -- were it that simple. In all fairness, I don't know how mo much more sedated I can be. I don't feature having to be arch and cynical and ironic for the next four years because I'm some kind of political activist either, because I can't even get it up for that, though there are people out there who are literally counting the minutes, hours and days until the next election.
I've been out and about for the past few months, wandering like I'm shell-shocked, one of the many of the walking wounded, the dazed and confused brigade. Closer to the mark, I was in denial in fact. Overcoming that, I awoke and have been burrowing deeper and deeper into the soul of American culture to get away from this topiary fact by associating myself with the "other" fifty percent who agree with me. Recently, I have developed the staggering ability of just tuning Shrub out. Whereas Clinton's raspy Arkansas twang, even though sometimes annoying and exasperating, was distinctive, even if I already knew he was a honey-tongued rascal, at least he was entertainment, and he knew how to talk. It's just too frustrating to listen to someone talk who obviously is not comfortable expressing himself in English, or so it seems.
And I've tried to pull myself together and be an adult; I should respect the office and not the man, blah, blah, blah. So I find myself listening to the President of the United States, THE PRESIDENT OF THE FERKIN' UNITED STATES no less, in his State of the Union message, I'm taking very seriously this man who's got his finger on our collective buttons, I'm listening and I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed at the mumbling and the fumbling, and I'm distressed at the idea that if someone at a news conference asks him a question with a compound-complex sentence structure, Dubyah will inquire with that patented moonface pie of a smile, "Would you repeat the last part of that questions, hoss," like he's been woken from his normal Monday morning 8:40 Geology 201 class nap.
I'm embarrassed by all the seemingly obligatory saber rattling that all Republicans Presidents seem to need to do when they assume power, just to show they're tough and aren't going to be pushovers for any pipsqueak country and better watch out, buddy! If nothing else works these days, there's always the ploy of bombing Iraq's No Fly Zone where we can torch off some soon-to-be-expired ordinance against command and control while putting on a show at home. Nothing there 'cept Kurds and no one cares about them these days. To put it further back into the Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush twilight, back to the fifties even, there's always China to deal or misdeal with. Which makes you wonder if even the ones in the State Department who "didn't lose China" ought to realize that the only way to deal with them is to yes them to death, whatever it takes; smile and agree and then proceed to do what you want to until someone catches you.
Obviously the Chinese high command are going to make this pilot a civilian god in the pantheon of State heroes, but in private they've got to be pissed, and for reasons of "face," that mysterious Asian concept, they couldn't possibly admit that the pilot saw "Top Gun" way too many times and just lost it. They also might not want to admit it publicly, but they now realize that if you're going to play with the big dogs, shit's always going to happen, especially if you can't talk the talk, especially if you're a hot shit interceptor jet pilot. In 1962, Gary Francis Powers, an American U-2 spy pilot was shot down over Russia just around the same time that Eisenhower was trying to make nice to Khrushev. Same story, different principles. Meanwhile the media refuses to dig back into their own files and give the incident some kind of perspective. Are they also waking from their naps in Geology 201?
Shouldn't the official news media be embarrassed, if only for themselves and their integrity as journalists and not claques? Wasn't being suckered in by Reagan enough? Maybe they also don't give a good goddamn either, I suppose. Are they just going to continue blithely onward as if nothing has happened, that Reagan's back in the White House and America can still get along on a smile, that all's right at Burning Tree because Ike is on the links? Maybe I am dreaming, and maybe if I pinch myself real hard, we'll be back in December and the Florida tally will have gone the other way. It's worse than when Nixon returned to the White House, except Nixon was a formidable character, whatever else you can say about him. But he's still dead, while Reagan dribbles and George III reigns. I can't say "Wake me when it's over" because there might not be any "it" to it when I do. But something did happen this past November, even if we can't put our collective finger on it. Something imperceptibly changed when the Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court, and Dubyah slid on home. To the Republicans who engineered the coup, this might be the ball game, but to the rest of us who are out beyond the Beltway, this is only the first game of a best of seven series.
(C) 2001 - David G. Walley
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