The young "Donald Rumsfeld" disciple had been "stomped" by an uncooperative world and lay in a broken, teeth-gritting wreck as he hummed "America the Beautiful" and dreamed of John Wayne revenge. However, any kind of opportunity to reassert himself would have got him thrown out the swinging doors again like "Jerry the Jew" and landed out on his pratt once more for all the world to see. At a certain point, even young "Rummy" realized that there was nothing more to be gained from this cycle and "kind of slunk off". Leaving was bad, but if you stayed the world only had the opportunity to laugh in your face. At least this way, you could nurse your wounds in private and ponder "if only". . . . . not a very likely prospect in this sand-blasted world as lizards scampered by.

No glory, no muscularity of combat, no women (-- as if he even knew how to talk to a woman) but the bitterness of defeat as he realized he was nothing but. . . . . a jack-ass. Not a Democratic jack-ass, oh no, but suffering from the ultimate hard-core culture warrior's problem: looking ridiculous. But "giving in" and admitting that "he was wrong"? That would make him look the most absurd of all! His entire gnarled, twisted self-concept was rooted in fighting the moral and social decay of liberalism that made jokers like him obsolete; on the losing end of evolution. As fuddy-duddy as Howdy-Doody and the Indian Chief whose catch-phrase was "Cowabunga!".

But what he did not seem to understand, was that his fellows in the conservative movement were dead serious. Take the neoconservatives. Young authoritarians of the left just switch around and become old authoritarians of the right. . . . . ooze-eyed men who pat their hands on the desk and half-joke that "they were liberals who were mugged by reality". They happened to drift over "to where the power was", either skinny twerps or wheezing fat guys whose problem was that they couldn't get laid in college.

They didn't appreciate those nifty "little things", like album covers and movie posters and comic books and the kind of graphics stenciled on the side of arcade machines. I probably got "my cartoon conception of the universe" from all those space blaster/street fighter games where the solution to the world's problems was FORCE, a fist jammed in your enemy's face like a squashed meat-pie. Use the force, Luke-- and blow 'em all to hell. But instead I'd read a stodgy magazine like "National Review" that was utterly joyless and divorced from my reality and you would want to think "they had an answer".

One day a Republican candidate came knocking on my Mom's door, running in the primary for the state senate. Perhaps all the Eastern art and tschotskies and wind chimes and flowers should have been a tip-off that my mother was not a member of "The New Right". Though I wasn't home, my Mom mentioned that he had stopped by and was "a cruel and ugly man".

That suited my tastes perfectly. . . . . I joined his campaign.

You learn, with the sociology of this country, that Americans don't necessarily vote with their own interest but who they want to be; and we both pictured ourselves "as big players", like we were the ones rubbing elbows with the richest 1% and we were flattered to think their interests were aligned with with ours like the Muhajadeen fighting the Soviets. And there were the Democrats-- the sneaky, bumbling, snail-eyed paper-pushers of government-- who were standing in the way of individualistic "free market" glory. Those New York and Hollywood-funded nabobs, those populist swine-swindlers, those defilers of truth and decency as shrieking, purple-haired lesbians marched through the streets with cardboard signs.

There was a scene in Rocky IV when the U.S.S.R. was hosting the contenders on Russian soil and they gave the home champion the fanciest equipment while Rocky had to train in the Eurasian woods. Stallone was working out in a barn, pulling an old piece of busted farm machinery up in the air with a pulley for strength conditioning and grunting with all of his might. Then he was jogging uphill through the wilderness. . . . . and it subtlety occurred to us, that it would be the poor Russian in Rocky's place while the American would have the top rocketry of sports science.

"Shhhhhhhhh", holding a finger up to your lips. The world needs a hero. We have Rocky. And "The Gipper". And we're going to go out and "win one" for both.

There was his fund-raiser at a far-flung conference room out by the airport with a decor that suggested the moldy freeze-dried bake mix of the 1960's. . . . . a combination between Sara Lee yellow cake mix and Clint Eastwood as the gun-fighter. My candidate stood there ghoulishly in a starched, black suit like "Mr. Evil" as he stumped on why he was the man to take down the perfectly-respectable incumbent. Only in his narrative, she was a monster. . . . . a "soft-on-partial-birth-abortion" witch who must be chased back to her cottage and "smoked out" by the townsfolk.

Yes, it doesn't get any more "back alley" than this. . . . . as knives are drawn and cheap stabs are made in the wrangling for power. So nice and pleasant. . . . . this, as scowling caterers laid out token amounts of baked chicken and greens on the cheap. My company on the left was a sour old grandma who railed on against unions with a strained-lemon grin and on the right it was a singularly glum middle-aged woman of the pro-life Catholic league who inquired to whether or not my soul has been saved, a glum proposition. As I stuttered to come up with a non-offensive answer, she said that I'm "missing out" with great heaviness.

I needed this like I needed a Democrat in office and went home. . . . . absolving myself of grassroots politics this scuzzy and doffing my hat to all "low culture" this gloriously meaty. Because if it's one thing "the hard-core" always lack, it's a sense of humor!