Hold onto your candles (yeah, and your matches too!)

I had made a resolution, which obviously now turns out to be something rather soft and mushy, that I wouldn’t get dragged into popping off about politics. Making a pledge NOT to talk about politics in the USofA is akin to making a Buddhist-like promise that you’ll never crush another bug. Sometimes events become so irritating and nauseating that they provoke a reactive response.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before GWB emerged from rehab, again. It’s pathetic really, but it is certainly no surprise to see the forces bent on resurrecting his reputation reappearing right after the recent election. These guys just love debasing everything. Would all of this be happening right now if the election tide had been in Obama’s favor? Who knows? But things worked out the way they worked out; the dems were drubbed. SO now we have the distinctly unpleasant salvo of images of the smirking Dubbya being spit out across TV screens around the nation. How is it that he manages to look as though he’s strutting even in still photos? But, there he is, hawking his “autobiography”. With solemn mien, he seems to believe that we will believe in him; that we will revere his words as sagacious and reveal him to a be a stalwart warrior against all of the evils of the world. As Bugs Bunny said once about one of his fellow characters: “What a maroon!”

I am watching all of this unfold on a large screen TV over a bar in a working class neighborhood in Somerville, MA. Mercifully I am on the other side of the room and the sound is muted so I can’t make out all of what is actually being said. Actually, it wouldn’t matter since all of it is pure spectacle anyway and has no more meaning in the larger scheme of things than a Punch and Judy show. Hauntingly, in the split screen CNN images, there is also the hunched and brooding figure of Dick Cheney to the right, and in the center, the dancing image of a rather skeletal Scooter Libby. I thought, hoped fervently actually, that Halloween was over. Oh well, I should have known better, after all we’ve had several days of the orange visage of John Boehner doing his Mr. Pumpkin-head routine for our delight and edification. Maybe this is all just some clever “Day of the Dead” routine. We should be so lucky.

After the brief flurry of light, that lasted no more than a few days immediately after Obama’s election, we are now rushing back to the primeval darkness. BTW:I am not crediting Obama with bringing any real illumination. He’s managed to snuff out just as many tapers as he lit, maybe more. I may be being unduly harsh on him and I am often chided for that by my liberal friends who insist he’s actually done some positive things. My scorn and lack of respect for him emerges from his fundamental failure to live up to even a tiny percentage of his own rhetoric and image. I didn’t expect perfection, but I expected candor, flint and some steel, but we’ve only gotten pandering, waffling, and even outright dissembling. He hasn’t earned our respect. It’s a shame.

So the question must be asked again, as it has been so often in the last couple of decades, and especially after the horror of the Bush administration: How much more of the light can the malignant political dumb show being played out on the national stage manage to suck away? I have the feeling none of our elected zombies and their corporate sponsors will be satisfied until the darkness is complete. Save your matches for a more appropriate time. With luck, either good or bad, we will definitely have need of them, sooner or later.




just as an aside: Having Dubbya out on a book tour reminds me of a comment about the erstwhile fashion plate, Fabio, when his ‘autobiography’ was published: “He ‘writes’, but can he read?”