The American "System" is Just Fine

It seems that anytime an election fails to deliver the desired result, the losing candidate and/or those running in his or her circle, place the blame on our “system.” I was reminded of this in Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in which Post reporter Calvin Wilson interviews filmmaker Frank Popper, director of “Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?” – the story of first-time politician Jeff Smith’s pursuit of the U.S. Congressional seat left empty by retiring long-time Missouri congressman, Dick Gephardt. Popper claims that “…the core issue of the film…is…the system for electing people to public office is broken.”

Having seen the film and having now read the interview with Popper, I will say that his film is well-done and that Popper is certainly a bright enough guy. But I’ve got to admit I’m struggling with the notion that the process by which we govern our country is broken.

What exactly IS the “system?”

In a nutshell, it’s a representative democracy in which, in essence, the people govern themselves. Novel enough.

That government is divided into a sort of three-legged beast that ideally works to keep itself in check….most brilliant.

It’s only when the system is abused – by money or power or distorted facts – that trouble begins. When this happens, either apathy or fear, or both take over. And at this point, the legislative branch ceases to be … well … not so representative.

In Frank Popper’s film, there are two key scenes: First, the scene in which candidate Smith receives the news that he will NOT receive the endorsement of the St. Louis American (the city’s African-American newspaper), despite years of personal commitment by Smith to the city’s African-American community. Second, the scene in which a woman claims that she’d like to vote for Jeff Smith but didn’t think he could win.

And therein lays the primary culprit – Fear.

Fear on the part of voters to risk being associated with a perceived “loser.”

Fear on the part of the media to stick its neck out now and then, instead of always foregoing the risky choice when it comes to endorsements.

Money is the monster that doesn’t necessarily always have to triumph. In the case of Jeff Smith, it’s safe to say that the lost St. Louis American endorsement probably cost him the election against Russ Carnahan. But it sure as hell wasn’t a “broken system.” (In fact, it WAS the system that allowed a rookie like Jeff Smith to have a shot in the first place.)

No – the system is fine. The problem lies in the execution. This can be corrected by eliminating all political advertising, direct mail, etc. – taking money out of the equation.

This leaves only news coverage and all-out hustle by the candidates to get their message across to voters.

Why not? The worst thing that could happen is you become unhappy with the candidate that won and you vote him or her out in two years. Yes, the VOTE is a powerful thing. And the answer to those who stupidly cry for term limits. But that’s another topic for another time.

Justice Rehnquist Checks Out

The paper this past Sunday was dated September 4, 2005 – my 44th birthday.

The headline stated “Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies.”

I couldn’t have asked for a better gift.

Not that things are going to improve much as George W. Bush will surely do everything in his power to load the court even further to the right. But that’s another worry for another day. For the time being, I say good riddance to William Rehnquist, the guy who presided over and championed an impeachment trial that wasted a ton of time and money, not to mention was conducted against the wishes of a considerable majority of Americans.

Good riddance, indeed, to the guy who essentially gave us President George W. Bush when he led the way in stopping the Florida vote count.

Good riddance to the guy who proclaimed states rights over federal power, but only when the cause fit his own ultra-right ideology. In 2003, Rehnquist was dismayed when the majority both preserved affirmative action in college admissions and killed laws criminalizing gay sex. However, in 2004, he had no objections to the federal government detaining terrorism suspects indefinitely while denying them access to courts. Then he turned around and voted against laws created to protect female victims of violent crime and to keep guns out of schools. The guy just couldn’t make up his mind.

On the subject of religion, despite the separation of church and state as decreed by the U.S. Constitution, Rehnquist frequently found a place for God in government, as in 2002 when he wrote the 5-4 decision which permitted parents to use public tax money to send their children to religious schools.

But it was on the topic of race when his concept of white supremacy was truly exemplified. In 1952, Rehnquist composed legal documents that seemed to reflect his resistance to Broad v. Board of Education. And lest one think that the good justice became enlightened along the way, as recent as 1999, Rehnquist directed a gaggle of lawyers and judges in the singing of “Dixie” at a public setting.

Until his death, Rehnquist never did get around to disavowing these despicable acts of racism. And for that alone, we’re better off having him off the Supreme Court – by whatever means necessary.

Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.

"He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom.
'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'"
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

For me, this quote has always been the most memorable in a literary masterpiece full of them. It's a dead-on assessment of what Joseph Conrad's character Kurtz meant to the Russian vagabond who leads Marlow to Kurtz. And of what Hunter S. Thompson has meant to me. With news of Thompson’s recent death by suicide, this passage came to mind immediately.

As best as can be derived from Thompson’s literary canon, Heart of Darkness was one of his favorite among a handful of classics – some mainstream, others not so much so – in which he found inspiration. I discovered Heart of Darkness and Conrad in general, thanks to Thompson. He also led me to a few other literary beauties through the years which proved to be of a more didactic nature than I would have originally suspected. Thompson's introduced me to the likes of Conrad and Nathanael West, and caused me to revisit and derive strange pleasures from authors I’d forgotten since my high school years … Hawthorne, Twain, Coleridge. And it was because of Hunter Thompson that I became acquainted with the one and only Sebastian Dangerfield – the protagonist in J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and one of the most delightfully repugnant characters in all of literature.

Thompson’s reputation for pharmaceutical intake and violent tendencies aside, he was able to do what some decade and a half of formal education could not: Interest me in great literature by great writers. This began in 1989 with my acquisition of The Great Shark Hunt; a book that Thompson himself called “my life's work."

Indeed, it was from within these pages that I was able to truly grasp the man and his work. Shark Hunt covers the true beginning of Thompson's writing life – from the early '60s to the late '70s – and includes the years when Thompson was at the height of his powers as a respected contemporary journalist. Two books came out of this golden age, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Today, it's easy to forget, unless you're a true Hunter Thompson aficionado and not merely a groupie, how great these books were and are, given the reputation he has acquired thanks to the cartoonish treatment he received at the hands of that pig, Gary Trudeau. Thompson openly resented Trudeau and once claimed, in so many words, that if he ever got his hands around Trudeau's neck, he may not let go.

Who can blame him? Trudeau's antics made a joke of Thompson’s literary accomplishments. Fortunately, something happened that began to correct this. In 1998, Thompson released a book called The Proud Highway, a collection of his early letters. In it, we learn of the aspiring young writer who, like Jack Kerouac, one of his heroes, wrote for himself and not for others. In reading these letters, his confidence and conviction absolutely burn.

It was at the end of ’89, after spending the year absorbing The Great Shark Hunt many times over, that I had the chance to attend one of Thompson’s “lectures.” Stepping into the Cabaret Metro that cold night in Chicago was like stepping back in time – specifically the time when Thompson was hanging out with the Hell’s Angels. The place was full of guys of all ages in biker leather; guys who knew the legend but had probably never read the books.

In we walked – me in my Polo tweeds and my date, a tall, radiant blond who seemed to catch more than a few eyes. For two hours, I kept returning to the lobby for beers, wondering if Hunter was ever going to make it. Twice a guy came on stage to announce that he was “in the limo and on the way.” Despite the yelping and howling from the seats, Hunter finally came on stage to a wild explosion of applause. Over the next hour and a half, an extremely disjointed Q&A session ensued, composed mostly of questions about drugs, motorcycles and everything except Thompson’s literary achievements. But about an hour into the evening, a guy in a blue oxford button-down shirt stood up and asked “what is your favorite book?”

Without naming titles, he heralded the genius of Conrad and Twain. Then said that “every damn one of you should read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, but I imagine none of you will.” The next day, I owned it.

I can’t say that Hunter Thompson’s suicide surprised me, shocking and sad as it was. When ripping through The Great Shark Hunt for the first time, I came across an article Thompson had written in 1964 on Ernest Hemingway’s final days. It had been just three years since Hemingway had taken his own life with a shotgun. And if Thompson didn’t exactly rationalize the act, he certainly expressed an empathy towards it; a weird understanding of how a writer – or any creative artist – might reach this point.

Though I’ve thought about this possibility often – even as recently as the week prior to it happening – the anticipation doesn’t ease the pain of knowing that he no longer stalks the planet. But like all of us, I still have his work, and through it, his admonition to be a brighter mind, a more passionate artist and to love life more. What else could a writer ask for?

My kinship with Hunter S. Thompson has enriched my life immensely. As artist Ralph Steadman said upon hearing of his friend’s death, Thompson “enlightened” people. Yes, he did.

To quote Conrad, which Thompson so often did, “I tell you, this man has enlarged my mind.”

The Real Ronald Reagan

He fought hard to cut spending programs created for the needy.

He reduced insurance for workers who had lost jobs to foreign competition he refused to stand up to.

He reduced student aid and food stamps.

He reduced Social Security benefits and the budget for the Civil Rights Commission.

All for the purpose of increasing the defense budget unnecessarily.

He claimed that homeless people might well be “homeless by choice.”

He likened Nazi Stormtroopers to Holocaust victims.

He knowingly and willingly violated the U.S. Constitution.

He gave guns to the enemy.

“He” was no evil dictator from the distant past. No … “he” was the 40th president of the United States. The man who died three days ago on June 5th. The man who was revered by Americans during his presidency and is still seen today as one of the top-rated presidents of all time in most polls.

“He,” of course, is Ronald Reagan.

It may not be fair to pick on Reagan so soon after his death, but the reality is that his mind probably died many years ago – maybe before he was first elected president. But dead or not, it’s come time to put an end to the false personification of Reagan as some weepy-eyed mope of a president. Ronald Reagan was an inherently wicked human being with a boundless insensitivity whose legacy of hatred is unmatched in the history of the republic.

Just two months into his presidency, an assassination attempt on Reagan left his press secretary James Brady severely debilitated from a gun wound to the head. Yet throughout his two terms, Reagan couldn’t find it in himself to sign the Brady Bill into law, clinging desperately – like so many of the gun nuts in this country – to his own perverted idea of the 2nd amendment, not to mention the millions that the NRA and the gun lobby were feeding him. Truly beyond reprehension.

But Ronald Reagan had only just begun.

In 1983, Reagan was solely responsible for the deaths of 241 marines he’d sent to Beirut (against advisors' recommendations) when they were killed in a terrorist bombing. Ah, the ego.

Then there was the amassing of a previously unimaginable national debt in the name of defense against an enemy who was virtually penniless. The federal deficit tripled during Reagan’s time as he sent the economy into a downward spiral for the simple sake of his own elevated self-image. The truth is that it didn’t take the Star Wars program for the USSR to collapse; what it took was a hero from the inside who saw the future. That hero was Mikhail Gorbachev. However, Reagan didn’t see it that way and was willing to bankrupt the country for his own place in history. Soon, however, he would find a different way to find a place in history – Iran Contra.

Let’s be clear about this: Ronald Reagan gave guns to the enemy. Ronald Reagan gave weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini – the same Ayatollah who held 53 Americans hostage for 444 leading up to Reagan’s presidency. Reagan then funneled the money he made from his gun sales to the Ayatollah to a foreign uprising; an act which had been deemed illegal by the U.S. Congress, putting the President in clear violation of the Constitution.

When it came to misdeeds, Ronald Reagan knew no limits.

He first denied the deal with Iran, then turned around and called Oliver North a hero – before and after North’s conviction.

What an imbecile.

By now, it’s public knowledge that secrets and deceit were nothing new to Reagan in the ’80s. In 1947, he refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee – a most public forum. But, in private, according to Reagan’s F.B.I. file, he did, indeed name names, betraying his fellow cohorts and friends.

They called him the Great Communicator, yet in truth, he struggled to utter a complete sentence that wasn’t displayed before him on a teleprompter. No wonder he appealed to the masses – a dumb president for a dumb country, and the absolute fulfillment of H. L. Mencken’s famous prediction that “on some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

It could be said that we’re witnessing round two of this phenomenon, as the current Bush regime inches towards the end of its first – and hopefully, only – term. Like Reagan, Bush and his band of henchmen possess a touch of evil. So much so that I’ve come to liken them to the Third Reich.

It seems to fit nicely:

George W. Bush as Adolph Hitler
Dick Cheney as Albert Speer
Donald Rumsfeld as Heinrich Himmler
Condoleezza Rice as Martin Bormann
Karl Rove as Joseph Goebbels
John Ashcroft as Adolph Eichmann
Colin Powell as Rudolph Hess

Like George W. Bush, Reagan was, through his own dumb luck, able to get away with just about anything during his time as president – due perhaps, as some foolish instructor at Johns Hopkins named Kenneth Lynn claimed, to his “lack of guilt in his personal life” which Lynn called a “breath of fresh air.”

Fresh air, indeed.

The fact is, it’s difficult to fully comprehend the damage Reagan wrought on America in just eight years, as he, at one point or another, turned against virtually every meaningful person or group he encountered and, ultimately, even against the country he so adamantly claimed to love.

Ronald Reagan deserves only to be remembered as the most diabolically treasonous citizen in the history of the United States. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.