Resurrection.
The time has come to say something again, and as Vanessa is taking a sabbatical, I feel the obligation falls upon me to carry on. I have spent a good deal of time this week reading Hunter S. Thompson's Great Shark Hunt, and I find myself strangely angered that McGovern lost the 1972 election to slime like Richard Nixon. Thirty-two years later, five years before I was even born, and I can't seem to shake the vile taste it left in my mouth.
The question remains for me, however, is this sad political morality tale of the past really what gets to me? Is it the fact that Nixon won a landslide victory in 1972 that feels like bamboo shoots shoved beneath my fingernails? Probably not. The heart of this brooding spite lies in the fact as a nation we have learned nothing.
Nothing from McGovern. Nothing from Watergate. Nothing from Iran-Contra. Nothing from Reaganomics. Nothing.
If we had there is no way that George W. Bush would ever have weaseled his way into the Presidency. His ability to do so proves as much. And where is the press who so admirably ripped the rotting carcass of Nixon's administration apart? Well, I hadn't been able to piece that together. If we have such a liberal media in this country it has a odd way of showing itself. So much filth surrounds this current administration that Nixon sometimes seems like the "compassionate Conservative" I keep hearing about, and yet the press remains largely silent.
But the climate of those years was so grim that half the Washington press corps spent more time worrying about having their headphones tapped than they did about risking the wrath of Haldeman, Erlichman and Colson by poking at the weak seams of a Mafia-style administration that began cannibalizing the whole government just as soon as it came into power. Nixon's capos were never subtle; they swaggered into Washington like a conquering army, and the climate of fear they engendered apparently neutralized The New York Times along with all the other pockets of potential resistance. Nixon had to do everything but fall on his own sword before anybody in the Washington socio-political establishment was willing to take him on.
--Hunter S. Thompson The great Shark Hunt
Here it is. Switch the names and the story is nearly identical. Out of some misguided notion that the president is too stupid to understand half of what he does, and cowed by the mantle of sanctity and divine protector he has attempted
to assume following the attacks on September 11th, as well as a fear of being banned from the White Hose for expressing a dissenting opinion the press has remained largely silent. The voices of the screaming mob is often so loud I can only be puzzled that it does not find its way into the airwaves and papers, but this voice of dissent is not the voice that will affect the results of the next election.
It is the uninspired voice of millions of complacent Americans who will direct the events of the next election and their voice is dominated by the mainstream media. George W. Bush is not the half-wit we want him to be. He is every bit as sneaky, slimy and corrupt as Nixon, and more. He may not be a smart man, but he knows how to use this to his best advantage.
I, for one, refuse to believe in this fictional joke know as the liberal media. If it existed at all Bush would have been run out of town like the criminal he is before he ever managed to assume the office. He would have been ripped out like crabgrass and sent back home before he had a chance to ruin the economy, waste the budget surplus, gut our environmental codes, alienate the international community, allow terrorist activity to go on unchecked, and exploit the US military in a poorly planned vendetta in Iraq. But I see nothing.
I refuse to see something like election of 1972 happen again. We have gazed upon the face of evil and if we re-elect it we can only reap what we deserve. Maybe GW's administration will, like Nixon's, sink into the festering quagmire which spawned it, but I'd rather not wait around to find out. Answers? No, like most I don't really have them. I'm throwing my support to the Democratic party, however, not because I like them, but because I find spinelessness and hypocrisy less evil.
And let's face it; the lesser of two evils is actually less evil.
This entry posted by Brian