Bill Clinton is a man who has spent a lot of his life getting his dick sucked, and last night was no exception. If Reagan was the clear winner in the preliminary republican debates, Bill Clinton was the clear winner tonight. A few years back I predicted that the Clinton years would be a period of golden nostalgia for the democratic party the way republicans seem to remember the Reagan years as sheer perfection and the man as a “great communicator”.
My opinion of Reagan as being at best a brain-dead stooge and at worst a meticulously evil baboon whose remains should be unearthed, ground into bone-meal, fed to onco-mice, who, after being dissected could be pureed and shot out of a super-soaker into a flaming sack of turtle shit while his soul could lie with the corpses of every man, woman, and child who died in the name of the arms trade or withered away from AIDS for his political gains or misguided religious notions has been covered before. Im not a fan, and the Norquists and Limbaughs of the world who breathe revisionism and want him on our currency have a personal invitation from me to spend eternity in the hell of intellectual honesty. Ill wait for nature to take its course before I have a suggestion on what to do with their corpses. Thats really neither here nor there.
Clinton, certainly was a master of the game of politics, arguably the greatest of his generation, and one of the best American politicians of the century. That doesnt mean he did shit for anyone except for his own legacy, which was tremendous. The man was the young Elvis, manicured and effectively advertised as a danger to the status quo. Junichiro Koizumi enjoyed a tenure as the Japanese prime minister just by copying Clinton’s hairstyle. His semen launched careers and created jobs. He could pass fiscally conservative bills with speeches that made the baby-boomers get misty-eyed that all that self-entitled hippy bullshit was somehow not a complete failure and not an exersize in generational hedonism retrenching the consumerism they were pretending to rebel against and in part putting us in the regressive political mess that has overshadowed my entire life. Moreover, his political acumen was so transcendent he grew from the outcast trailer-trash stepchild into Bill Fucking Clinton. He is a modern-day embodiment of the American Dream. He is white trash that made it in a way that would be almost impossible to top, and anything that will would be a science fiction novel in our present day. He proved that sweetest of American lies: that you can grow up to be anything you want, even the president.
But again I stress: he was a great politician, not a great philanthropist, or even utilitarian(-ist?). The thing Bill Clinton did the best was convince people that Bill Clinton was great and nearly a decade later you can see our future martyrs invoking his name as a catchetism, a prayer for his divine charisma that will join nations, end poverty and let us all live a few months longer.
Anyone but bush, right? Worked for that horse-faced jackass John Kerry in the last election.
My take on the candidates:
Hillary Clinton: Fuck you. Go away you annoying carpet-bagger bitch and shut the fuck up. Hillary Clinton being elected would be the worst possible outcome, unless Jeb Bush runs and wins. It is unfortunate that in this day and age, the only way a woman has a shot at being president is because of who she’s married to.
Pop Quiz: Who was Thatcher’s husband?
Exactly. Hillary is riding on the coattails of a master, and is no doubt getting the best coaching imaginable. From a progressive standpoint, it seems like it would be a good thing to have a woman as a president, but this is hardly the case. Electing Hillary Clinton would retrench us back into the same bullshit that has been going on for more than 20 years: a fake dichotomy of two rich families who probably play golf together once a year somehow supposing to represent any of our interests which they dont.
In this case voting for her would not be a step forward in any sense other than creating an historical footnote and a $100 jeopardy question. It would be a reaffirmation of the spinelessness of the American people and willing subjugation to a modern oligarchy.
She did get a good one-liner on Cheney. Ill give her that.
Barack Obama: A great icon, but a middling politician.
People who have heard my opinions on him before seem to think I am preoccupied with his ties to the corn industry, which is partly a joke on my behalf, but still valid. He has been described as a “reformist, not a revolutionary”, which I think is giving him too much credit. He is an unerring compromiser, particularly to his home states interests. Particularly corn. His energy policies revolve around corn ethanol, which is neither cheap nor green. His reformations are “compromises” between parties, universally. Just because there are two sides to an argument doesnt mean there is a necessity for compromise or even handed sharing. Thats the kind of bullshit that is getting pseudo-science and creationism taught in the public schools of our backwater shit-kicking inbred states, which deserve to be called that if a majority of their population votes for willful ignorance out of fear.
From a progressive standpoint, it would be remarkable if a biracial man with the middle name “Hussein” and a last name that sounds like Osama were to get elected. But all he has to offer is his race and some feel good speeches. His politics are lackluster and he squanders his considerable charms for low-rent corporate compromise. If Obama were elected he would become the ultimate strawman for aggressive right-wing punditry as his compromises and shameless corporate ties will leave him hamstringed immediately and will become little more than a caricature for the spineless failure of the “liberal elite” and guarantee a near-term victory for the republicans. Think Carter, but trading charisma for ethics.
John Edwards: Howdy-Doody lookin motherfucker.
(actually I do like Edwards, but he ran last time, and his merits and discredits have been discussed to death. If Gore doesnt enter the race to sweep at the last minute, I really hope Edwards beats out Clinton and Obama, as much as I would like a black president, as much as I would like a female president — these two dont do it).
Joe Biden: Ive liked Joe Biden for a long time now, he’s direct, not afraid to sound pissed off and not afraid to say whats on his mind no matter what spin will be put on it. Biden was the only member of congress to have a child in the military and led some very thorough questioning during the Abu Ghraib issue. Unfortunately, if he ever gets any traction the other crabs in the bucket will pull him down and the media will exaggerate one of his “mis-steps” and he will be relegated to a one-line late-night punchline.
Biden, and his roommate Dick Derbin are two of the few respectable people left in the senate.
And his point about ending runaway campaign spending by mandating only public funding was dead-on.
Dennis Kucinich: I love Dennis Kucinich.
I unfortunately heard some of the CNN commentary, between Huffington and some douchebag, who made a crack about him being insane.
Huffington (who I also have a particular fondness for) said: The only thing insane about Kucinich is the fact that no one listens to him.
In fact I am in a toss-up as to whether I should contribute money to his campaign or adopt a goat for a needy family in Maryland:
(
http://www.gardenharvest.org/adoptagoat0904.htm — yes, I am completely serious )
Bill Richardson: Hillary did a great job making him into the diminutive candidate on Clintons jock. He seemed very concerned with letting us know he was a governor and not just a Friend of Bill. His standout point was on the shabby state of education, a minimum wage for teachers and how that policy alone was effective in improving education standards. Teachers should make more money than they do, and the decline of public education and the rise of attitudes of self-entitlement is one of the root-causes of the degradation of this nation, whose full effects will only bear out as our generation gets older.
Chris Dodd: Another fat white guy talking head. Dont care, no chance. However, he does have good grassroots communication and has been effective in keeping touch with his base. Which I like, and has been sorely missing from any liberal/progressive standpoint until the last election (Which Howard Dean capitalized on). Contrast that with the conservative movement which co-opted the republican party between Goldwater and W, mostly through pre-internet spam (Karl Rove’s specialty, besides fraud).
Mike Gravel:
A surprising candidate. Like Ron Paul, he managed to get into the debates through grassroots efforts petitioning the media. Unlike Ron Paul, he has hit the nail on the head that the issue is corruption and lobbying. He is loud and uncharismatic, which means he has no shot at being president, but I like most of what I have heard from him. His main points seem to be based around corporate corruption in government, however he seems to think that the line-item veto would somehow ease that situation. That would really just add to the insanity. Maybe an “article” or “section” or “rider” veto. Not a line.
In my mind here are the long-term issues:
0) Stopping the war
1) Public Education
2) Poverty
3) Health Care
None of these will be addressed without severely curtailing corporate interests in government, which I think Biden, Kucinich and Gravel were all trying to address. In fact 1-3 are all pretty close to the same thing, basic human rights and the opportunities that we should all have given our relative wealth, but are unsolvable because the money is made in preventing it from happening universally.
Dont be fooled by the lip-service of the republicans or libertarians preaching “small government”. This government is not a bad thing by definition.
This government, in its purest ideal form was designed to be an institution of the people to protect us from the instruments of tyranny, which in the most classical sense is despotism, monarchy or dictatorships, regardless if they were based in facism or socialism.
Any right wing advocate of “small government” is endorsing it for the pure reason of corporate deregulation, not as an increase in personal liberties. Every policy they pass is personally intrusive or gives a pass to a larger institution.
Chomsky argued that the three tyrannies of the 20th century were Bolshevism, Fascism, and the rise of the Corporation. This is the tyranny that we are living in now, we are all frogs in slowly boiling water.
We dont need small government to be free. We need a real government to protect us as individuals from the corporations who have bought their way into every facet of “government” and have free reign over our own decisions. We have policy makers rallying religious bases to consolidate power by decrying other nations that do the exact same thing.
The only way for this to change is for us to fundamentally change.
I voted for John Kerry out of fear, and I truly regret that.
Dont vote out of fear.
Dont vote for the lesser of two evils. Dont vote for the same bullshit in a prettier package.
Dont vote for someone who misrepresents you, for fear of wasting your vote.
Wasting your vote is buying into the same system thinking that it will change.
Wasting your vote is voting for someone because you think they have a better chance of winning.
Wasting your vote is trying to be on the winning team of a bunch of people who dont know you, your friends, your family, or anyone from your neighborhood, or your friends friends. Who dont share your interests, your point of view, and couldnt give a shit if you live or die.
Dont rally behind the Democrats just because they arent Republicans. Dont vote for someone because you are afraid a republican might win. Breaking your convictions and compromising personal principles because of fear is how people wake up living in tyranny.
A tyranny by the people.
Of the people.