(Revamped)
"I have come to debase the coinage"
-- Diogenes the Cynic
"THE NEW POLITICIAN".
Sweeping in a sea change into Washington D.C, in order to "throw the bums out" for good. I read a lot, I thought a lot, and I genuinely figured that I could do it. What kind of public figure would I be? Statesman? Pundit? Comedian? As I saw it, blending politics, entertainment, and the media to the breaking point in a postmodern pastiche of confusion before the revolution of reactionary values. So far in life, it seemed to carry me along to this point. . . . .
And there was Nancy Pelosi, the ever-lame politician trapped in one place like a weak, "baaah'ing" lamb, preceded by an angry black orator she couldn't match. . . . . impotent in her decent-minded futility and a nice, easy target for "the chopping block" of character assassination like a wolf tying a bib around its hairy throat.
For anyone who still wants to believe in the myth of national innocence, I just have to point you to the threatened, nostalgic thinking of Ray Vincent, the AMeRicaN EquiTY MortGage mAn-- This down-home, country-sounding shill touting the accomplishments of the FREE MARKET and all it has done for America. Yes. . . . . the open-hearted gullibility of "Star Wars" prequels, well-made American cars, Microsoft Windows, and general prosperity for all. You can just imagine his stance on military spending: we need to fork out more on our military to preserve our precarious position as world leader of strength.
-- But weıre the only one!!
-- Other countries like Iraq and North Korea are acquiring the technology to pose a threat to the UnIteD StAtes of AMeRicA.
-- Only because weıre selling our weapons systems on the open market!
-- I believe in the free market. . . . .
-- Then why do you support right-wing moralists who take away our freedom?
-- I don't want to talk about that. . . . . would you like a home loan?
There's Ray Vincent's commercial-- he and his family standing by the mail-box in front of his log cabin by the lake, the sun-set behind them, and waving good-bye. . . . . presumably returning to wholesome lives of family values in the American mismara of lunk-headed debt and wife-strangling. And Joshua blew into a horn three times and nothing happened. . . . . and only did the walls of Jerhico fall when he showed him the bill for mortgaged-backed securities and God left this promised land, no longer worth fighting over in a scrub-waste of sage brush and shit-beetles. And the occasional burning bush because some little blond, scuzzy-headed juvenile delinquent was playing with matches and snickering.
Perhaps the times called upon one man. . . . . As I saw the topological map of Washington politics, it was fool-proof! And what was I, looking back, but fool-hardy?
People don't have time for facts, much less nuance,
and there I appeared in conservative Christian pulpits around the country, often
in uniform, in a flea-bitten military outfit I had picked up at a costume shop
like somebody's half-Jewish bullshit artist impersonation of SSgt. Barry Sadler
with an iron-jaw and the resonance of Iran-Contra "Seals of Approval" to fight
the godless and ram the cock of righteousness down the throat of the tinny,
clarinet-voiced dissenters "who didn't go along with the program" and by
all rights, should be washed away like the off-kilter shit-stain of American
discourse with a roaring crowd of "harrumph's".
Undermining the television shoutfests by "diving under the radar" and then again selling myself as "the toughest sheriff" in America who presided over chain-gangs and sized people up with a glance, a squirt of tobacco between his teeth with the slick, dime-store antics of the southern gentleman. Whatever my schtick, it was the long, hard work that is the guts of American politics; door-to-door canvassing, sitting for coffee in living rooms, nighttime speeches before a hundred in a firehouse or a thousand in a high school auditorium; endless traveling, the serious, earnest question-and-answer sessions on whatıs wrong with the country and how to put it right, if not the pork-barrel project thrown in to try making my views seem almost reasonable.
Winona was a reluctant campaigner, but did so
because she loved me. She was passed off as my political "wife"-- partners in
crime even though we had been "living in sin" in a way that "Ray Vincent" would
find eye-popping. The trampoline would unnerve him. Along with the tank of
helium. For they were "living out their inner child" and not
fucking like dogs all night long. "Scrunchels" the cat was their mascot and most
loyal constituent, especially when famine was at hand every morning when he'd
paw at their knee, wanting to be fed.
Though she was "pretty liberal" on the social issues, she put up with all the speeches like throwing blood in the water to stir up the sharks, rays, and glorping bottom-feeders into one boiling stew of black hatred for milquetoast moderation. For instance, there was the tax resistance movement that took the government to task for the failure of either the executive or legislative branch to address the 537 questions about the validity of the federal income tax. That had about as much clout as telling the school bully or even the mafia to give you your lunch money back. . . . . but the difference was, the government at least somewhat provided services. Want to opt out? Remember that "MIGHT IS RIGHT". . . . . and that was the theme of my campaign in a neo-fascistic orgy, an upheaval of maggots and horned, Teutonic helmets driving home the ultimate message of some crazed early 20th century radical named "Ragnar Redbeard".
As he presciently pointed out even back in 1905, propaganda flourishes in democratic societies because governments couldnıt always rely on force to control the population. And here was my "propaganda by deed", Hitler's "Big Lie" in practice, when I stood out on an inky, sweltering August night in southern California and wore some clotted, old leather motorcycle outfit & helmet like Evel Kinevel on steroids, the archetype of American freedom gripping the handlebars and vroom'ing over "the school bus" of textbook civics-- whirling a sarape around my shoulders with that fabled stars n' stripes like Elvis in a cape as grifters sold boot-legged t-shirts of me as the post-Gonzo messiah in glue-stinking Robert Steadman apocalypse.
"My friends",
in the tone of a man resuming his sway-- "let us hang the November criminals, or at least show them what this slice of the electorate is made out of!"Guttural cheers.
"And remember. . . . . don't trust anyone over 30!"
Winona flinched at that last comment, even as the mood was whipsawed by events. . . . . especially when we led out the donkey, nicknamed "Eleanor Roosevelt", and how later that donkey's head was found floating in a ditch. But you know "GREATNESS" is upon you when an Apache helicopter rises from behind some hillside and hangs in a hover, looking at you-- the gibing death raven of the Norse epics with the
"screee" of fate. . . . . The idea of a risk-free revolution was over!********************
I was dubbed by the New York Times Magazine as "America's Most Dangerous Conservative" but the media always likes a circus and I gave them what they wanted, like
Mike Tyson sitting in his "African room" for reporters with the Koran on his knee and coming across as "a great philosopher" even though he'd "sock out yo' momma" with a toothy, gold-flashed grin and eat Joyce Carol Oate's liberal, ultra-conciliatory fetus. . . . . yes, trying to understand "his pafology" and ghetto roar of scraped knuckles on the shining pavement down there in the pouring rain.We made sure that Winona "counterbalanced my ticket" by
embracing only the most uncontroversial causes like teaching children how to read & picking up highway litter. That's what she did on her probation after-all, paying back society through feats of community services for crimes that will not be named here. "Give a hoot for public-spiritedness!" was the spin.Yes, the politician's wife-- smiling, nodding-- why, even holding a conservative bake sake. My guide, my inspiration, my darling. Yet I could not help but crack bad jokes about her running off with the proceeds, but I held up my hand to stop the hoots of knowing laughter.
In
any case, I waged an unconventional guerilla campaign, for starters. With an innovative direct-mail blitz that I designed myself, I knew how to catch people's attention.
It was the old deal of playing to rabble-rousing populism, and throwing a lamb--
left-wing artists, writers, poets and intellectuals, in this case-- to the snarling crowd to be torn to
pieces. Nothing like a good old-fashioned witch-hunt to "dispose of
undesirables". It was "how the game was played" in
this human slaughterhouse as I used the most powerful and cost-effective tool of
the technological age: the 30-second attack ad. There was "the empty-chair
debate", when I tore into Pelosi with "an hour of accountability" and apparently
she hadn't even bothered "to show up". Even though she loudly, nasally declaimed
she would discuss the issues, I made it a point to emphasize that it would only
be in my venue with angry, chair-throwing supporters. When she stood to speak on
the statehouse steps she was pelted with bags of piss and worse. After-all. It
worked fine for Mussolini in fascist Italy. . . . . if not the Castle Donnington
"Monsters of Rock" tour even as "my mortal enemies" churned out
dreary diatribes in liberal journals.
But to turn my wrath on the people who had really sold this country down the river, that was the trick. . . . .
On to victory!
"Is this a great country or what?",
Was I hip, or what?
The first rule of fundraising is that you can't be afraid to ask. . . . . and you got to ask for a specific sum, a large sum, a flattering sum that makes the mark feel like "a big-shot". When he gives you less, you make him feel as if he's gotten "a good deal" and you're all that richer for it.
My main contributor was a flat-faced cowboy who withdrew some of his oil billionaire stock from tobacco companies, airlines, pharmacuticals, and defense contractors while having a fixation on "nuclear explosions" as he gestured with his hands, encapsulating the idea in rapture of nature's eruptions-- probably in sublimination of his own hidden frustrations of oppressed (repressed) authoritarian old age. I was not one to disabuse him of his cosmic fantasy, though "my Winona" was certainly "off limits" as I eyed her behind warily.
The phone rang.
"Hello, you have reached the winter of our discontent", I rocked into the phone with facetious, teeth-baring irony.
It was "the Washington Welcome-Wagon".
To make a long story short,
my "wife" and I were invited to the lobbying switching station run by none other than Haley Babour, "The Kingmaker" of Mississippi. This was where all the special interest deals were brokered, where everyone was wined & dined to participate in the corrupt clearing house of deal-making in politics, definitely on a scale that the founding fathers did not intend. What an elegant dinner spread-- red roast beef, gravy in solid silver tureens, amber liquor in magnificent, knobby bottles amid orchids and patriotic kitsch.
"This is the welcome wagon" Haley explained as we were greeted cordially, all pink jowls and a red tie. There was something warm, giving, and yet mean-spirited about this man if you didn't play the game by his rules. Yet the way he came across, bedecked in this window-dressing of all-American regalia, it was hard not to want yourself to get into the spirit and believe that the better interest of the Republic was being served. This was money, this was prestige, right?
"But at what price?", I had to ask myself.
And then he asked me to lead the prayer over supper.
Winona and I exchanged anxious glances, as we bowed our heads. As I peeked up, everyone-- Haley, the staffers, the secretaries, all looked deadly earnest as they held their eyes shut.
"Uh, Lord? If you're up there and listening, we'd like to thank you for giving this opportunity to give us a chance to do good in the world and bring home this bounty of shared power to the American people--"
There was coughing around the table. This was not going according to script.
"To, uh-- give us a chance to feed the world's hungry, and right the wrongs that have gone on in recent years--"
As I looked up, people were peeking at each other with quizical expressions, as if I had just announced that Winona and I were Martians.
"Uh, anyway-- pass the taters, pass the meat, now that we got everything, God damn-it, let's eat! Amen!"
The table was looking at me with horror, while Haley had a twinkle of wily recognition in his eye.
"Amen to that, I guess" he chuckled.
Needless to say, after that we were not invited to stay.
Winona later had a tougher time among a group of Washington wives, her hands clasped before her, nodding along, tight-lipped, as she tried to mingle at a Republican function yet felt out of place because the WASPy
"Daughters of The American Revolution" was particularly alienating. They were against work tunes & folk songs, mental health programs, all international activities, fluroridation of water, and UNICEF Christmas cards which it claims were "a partner of a broader communist plan to destroy religious beliefs and customs and to transfer Christianity into a 'one world Peace Festival'". What could she say?
Some old women who looked like Barbara Bush, laughing with short, throaty barks, asked her sly questions about her checkered past-- raising their fingers up to their fat pearls to laugh. These hoary old mavens went all the way back to the Nixon years, or even BEFORE, and didn't let "the new kid on the block" forget it. Winona, eyes slightly widened, dressed in her dark coat and little black hat as usual, nodded along-- trying to smile as always-- and attempted to change the subject.
"How are you fine ladies getting along?", I winked.
"Splendid, just splendid," they laughed. "I supposed you found her in the discount bin at Saks Fifth Avenue for slightly damaged goods. Ho, ho!".
With that, I removed the chilled glass of ice tea from the hand of the old bat who said that, stretched out the front of her dress, and dunked the contents between her old, withered tits.
To the bleats of their collective dismay, that would sum up my entire sidling up to the establishment-- socially, literally, intellectually and/or politically.
The skinheads leaned in, exposing network cowardice and demonstrating that even the best and brightest liberals will wither under the heat of a reasonably smart and informed opponent as Mike Wallace shook through my interview for "60 Minutes". And always remember, that one should never answer the question that has been asked of you, but the question one wished they had been asked. Afterwards, I helped myself to a box of my own chocolates, out of a $150,000/year fund of free stationary paid out to Senators and "Esteemed" Representatives such as myself sucking the marrow out of the political corpse of silly women like Nancy Pelosi.
I figured it was all a matter of deferentially introducing a bill, explaining to your fellow congressman the importance at hand with a bit of reverent humor out the side of your mouth, and solemnly voting it through. Patriotism, ties, desks, seals, and 8 AM coffee.
But first I had to ring my "coffee mëister", who shall only be known as "Monica".
"Monica!"
"Yes, Mein Fuhrer?!", she says in exaggerated fanatic tones. A Beverley Hills Jewish Valkerie of an intern until the end.
"I need your services. . . . ."
"I will come crawling!"
"The coffee will be fine"
She gives the classic "Roman salute" and leaves.
Haley Babour entered with a knowing glance, "and meant to talk business". He gave a lecture, he patted his fist in his palm, he brought in an economist buddy who looked like a clone of Alan Greenspan preaching the virtues of supply-side economics. This little turtle raised his hand, pursed his lips-- "it's o.k", in other words-- like a Soviet apparatchik of cracked fundamentalist theory taking a grand, chest-thumping conceit who knew "he had it made" and that "the rest would take care of itself". Here was the system as it stood-- honesty was for suckers; only those who find it in their interest to obey will actually "follow through" while the rest will cheat. Quarreling absolutes add to the squalor as our statesman deal in blood & lies. Cheat, dissemble, preach, and spy-- "ambition makes us whores". Yet you had the indirect verbiage, the white-wash glare of glasses that obscured the language-- uptight bureaucratic hyper-rationalism that defended itself with legalese that neither confirmed nor denied-- a chipped profile of courage until there was nothing there but naked self-interest and the power of the sword and dollar.
You had men like Reaganıs secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who saw no need to protect the environment because Jesus was returning any day. And characters like U.N. Representative John Bolton-- praised by the ultra-rightwing former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman as "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon", the final, apocalyptic battlefield between good and evil prophesied in the Bible. You had Pat Robertson running endless recycled footage of the Gulf War on his "700 Club" program as he jogged out to his helicopter landing pad on the grounds of his mansion on top of a Virginia mountain, flying away when he is needed like a televangelizing egomaniac. Here was the zeitgeist of religious nutcase fascists who rose up in the order because the corporations backed them up, a weird sub-current of repressed sexuality and far-out beliefs and pushing through to be the first ones to bring the gospel to space aliens landing on the White House lawn with Elvis and Big Foot and "Bat Boy found in Cave!". "Nummy graham crackers" of "TV Guide" thinking as the real players swam the tanks like sharks.
I leaned back in my chair, hands crossed over my chest like a serene Republican, mulling over all of this as Haley sat across from me like a curly-haired southern auctioneer in a swallow-tailed coat. Wily, with brass button counterfeits made to look like gold.
I showered him with cashews.
"Get the fuck out of my office!"
He couldn't even pass as a winking 1950's corporate man with a briefcase from a "mental hygiene" film. This man was worse than used toilet paper. And I let him know it.
"You'll never make it, boy! You can't change the game!", he grimaced with a wry chuckle.
"Why, I ought to send you to Timbuktu where denying the patently-obvious is a way of life, away from this country of flag-waving meatheads. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!"
******************
Yes, I pined for the days when political strategists were obscure back-room operators and not national celebrities ripe in infamy. A panel of South American political scientists seeking deeper lessons about democracy took down notes. What I would tell them is that the framers had created a federal governmental apparatus too well insulated from the popular will, too difficult to mobilize for any common purpose, whether confiscatory or constructive for the public good.
I started off on a bad foot with the corrupt establishment, and was an enemy of everybody so far as the profitable, convenient arrangement went "as usual". They vetoed my junior bills, they made fun of my ideas out the side of their mouths, and they upped the thermostat to make things awfully uncomfortable for us. They got a rumor going with the Christian evangelicals that I was the anti-Christ and that Winona was "The Whore of Babylon". Angry phone-calls came in everyday from zealous fruit-cakes, and I constantly had to defend myself for things I never said in front of a press paid to be skeptical. There are times in politics when the facts arenıt as relevant as the perception. As a general rule, elected officials are not profiles in courage.
This, as I received an
outraged letter signed by Abraham Foxman from the ADL. I had a feeling that I
was being tailed by someone, probably the Mossad, for there was an odd clicking
on the phone that would turn into extraterrestrial whoops whenever you muttered
darkly about "the bankers".
Vindictive blacks took to loudly protesting outside of my office with the typical obstreperousness they feel the license to act upon since the nation lost its will, and I wondered if it wasn't time to bring in "an image consultant". There I stood by a
backdrop commissioned from a graffiti artist, as if to plant the subliminal visual cue I had an urban hip-hop following.The niggers weren't buying it. Even they weren't that stupid. . . . .
I suppose, however, that being hated is half the fun. It's the nothing-feeling when you lean up against the barricade, grasping hands, grinning and nodding like an infamous rock n' roll front man-- when politics, entertainment, and media are blurred-- when it is the whirl of potential violence, brown shirts and black Muslims glaring across the barricades at each other. It's the booing mobs and sailing paper and 10,000 people giving you "the raspberry" simultaneously as you flip the middle-finger in the mad, ever-mauling melè.
"That's right, give it them right in the ass! Hit them, hit them harder!"--
a little seven inch imaginary Nixon on my shoulder like the devil doing his imitation of a roundhouse blow and falling over. Afterwards you roll down to a D.C. coffee shop with heavy security run by a white Jordanian who serves the strongest coffee imaginable. You're too macho to ask him to put more milk in it, as Winona and I get up to dance to a wild, caffeinated swing jazz. Like Dick and Pat Nixon, but younger and hipper. We are post '60s wreckage. . . . . the counterculture to the counterculture and the rising flames of a new American order.*****************
"Mr. Speaker. We are the inevitable. We are the culmination of industrial and social wrong, the scourges of a degraded civilization. We leave the eventuality to time and law"
That, or I was just an ultra-right crackpot with a flair for the dramatic. . . . .
This was the end of the legislative session, and both the Democrats and Republicans were taken to using weapons of last resort over the pettiest of issues. Any kind of boundaries or standards of civilized behavior in the political world was crumbling.
We theoretically "fought for the environment", but then it was sold out in a flurry of confusing details and debilitating compromises that made this shredded, dessicated bill hardly even worth it. Midnight struck, and paper started falling-- marking the end of the session.
So many details, so much "lost down the memory hole" as I gathered them to my chest frantically but yet "they were all getting away" as Congress whooped and cheered like schoolboys at the start of summer vacation.
I saw Haley Babour shaking hands and smiling like a southern field rat in a gray suit and shoved him up into a wall; honorable my ass. It is said that creative betrayal is the essence of statesmanship and perhaps I was just being a bit more blunt and direct.
The hall erupted in "Congressional Gibbitude" like howling apes in suits as they pretended to act outraged and made themselves available for finger-wagging interviews. I supposed that I would always present a threat to "the good and decent" of this country and only demonstrated how an outsider doesn't really have a chance.
And then somebody released this picture, and flashed it on "the roll call" screen.
Then out of nowhere, someone flew an airliner into the building and ended the whole damn affair. The lot of us struggled out of the rubble, our suits torn and scorched, and I figured that this gig wasn't for me. Perhaps now we can build a new government, and invest our hopes in the traditionally-religious promise of a better political tomorrow.
Hey, read about the intractability about the political process here
*******************
"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
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