John McCain: The Beginning of the End

In 2004, war heroes as we know them were persona-non-grata, as far as presidential candidates go. John Kerry was shunned like a member of the Viet Cong he so valiantly battled and George W. Bush, an alcoholic coke freak gone AWOL, was re-elected. But this year - 2008 - war heroes are once again in vogue, as John McCain steams ahead toward the Republican nomination. And now that we officially have a presidential race, it's time we set a couple of things straight. First of all, John McCain may be a “war hero,” insomuch as he suited up; that act alone would make every American who has EVER worn a uniform a war hero. Which is fine, but I wouldn’t quite deem just any veteran, past or present, as qualified for leading the country. And John McCain is “just any veteran” and nothing more. His examples of leadership both in the field of battle and in Washington are negligible. And as for being a thought-leading “maverick” … that’s a joke.

It’s no secret that in the past eight years he has gone with the Bush crowd 95% of the time. And before that, he prided himself on bi-partisanship – which is basically how Congress was run before the age of Reagan, when McCain came on board.

But more than anything else, John McCain is a phony. That smirk of his – always delivered immediately after a grim-faced McCain has delivered more bad news about the country or an opponent – is starting to piss me off after all these years. We’ve all seen it: At the conclusion of a statement, he’ll freeze, look around quickly for the camera with the red light on, and flash that pained, fake smile. However, I don’t think he’s going to being smiling too much in the coming months of Campaign 2008 – now he has Barack Obama to contend with and things are about to get a lot more serious.

McCain has criticized Obama as the nominee of “pundits and party elders,” ignoring the uprising the guy has generated, not to mention the rightly won delegates. He has claimed to be better qualified to lead a nation at war due to Obama lack of military service, which is a joke, considering McCain’s allegiance to Bush. Recently, McCain has asked how Obama could possibly know what is going on in Iraq since he hasn’t been there lately. Well, hell, I haven’t been to Iraq at all, but I sure as fuck don’t think I need to visit the damn place to understand how bitched up things are thanks to George W. Bush and the support of John McCain.

A few months ago, McCain claimed that this war could go on for another 100 years. Realizing the stupidity of that statement, just a few weeks ago he said he’d be able to end the war in four years time; over his first term.

My question is, if you know what it takes to bring these kids home, why not do it NOW? What are you waiting for? What have you BEEN waiting for?

It’s as if McCain is in a vacuum – vowing to continuing Bush policies in Iraq and at home, essentially giving us that third Bush term we’ve all been dreading, ignoring what American voters screamed in 2006: GET US OUT OF IRAQ!

Iraq. Jesus. A place we should have NEVER descended upon, and wouldn’t have if Dick Cheney hadn’t felt the need to pad his already plentiful bank account. Liberate the Iraqi people? I don’t give one good goddam fuck about the Iraqi people … do you? That rationale is about as insane as the argument used by Bush the First in 1991 – a war to “liberate the people of Kuwait?” Anyone who doesn’t know now – and didn’t know then – that the Persian Gulf War was about oil and money is a moron. And lest anyone think I’ve some sort of peacenik, my post-9/11 plan would have taken care of a couple of problems: On September 12, 2001, the carpet bombing would have commenced – Iraq, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan … wiped off the goddam map. The U.S. military moves in to surround Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, combining them to create the 51st state and WE own the world’s oil.

And we’d be paying about 25¢ a gallon for gas.

But things didn’t work out that way. And now this “war” goes on and on, though there have been signs of McCain backtracking on his heretofore support of Bush.

On the night of Obama’s clinching primary victories, McCain disavowed Bush in a mean and nasty way, while gushing over Hillary in a pathetic roundabout plea to her supporters; the same Hillary he’s spent years trashing.

Once a phony, always a phony.

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.”