Journalism!
I've never heard Dick Cheney speak before. I was expecting something more along the lines of Zell Miller's paranoid rant, only with that contempt that the big bosses cultivate and use so effectively. But he was all dull and telepromptish. Just reading along and now we're done and see ya.
Miller though, woo-ee, or rather, hooey. Nasty little attack golem. Nassssty. It would throw me toward Kerry except I'm still afraid that's the idea. I'm wondering if these guys aren't actually unprepared to win, that they won't quite know what to do, that their bosses were actually planning on a new shift. It's hard to figure out, everybody's so obviously lying and even when they do speak the truth, they're so full of shit it sounds like lies.
Miller did this little presentation about "soljers". How the press doesn't give us freedom of the press, soldiers do. And especially this one I wrote down, "Poets don't give us free speech, soldiers do." Which if you think about it, you could track it back to the guys who are telling the soldiers what to do, right? Because a good soldier is more like a weapon than a decision-maker - that's the soldier's duty, to do what he's told.
So whoever's telling him, that's who gives us free speech - and that of course is Zell Miller and Dick Cheney. And others.
Miller made mention of the President's belief that God is not indifferent to America.
Pretty safe bet there, though I think what he meant was God is rooting for America against its enemies, which with almost no effort or research at all could be shown to be the very people who are running the government at this time.
The enemies of America are not the enemies of the people who are running the government, the enemies of America are the people who are attacking the ideals and principles of America. Democracy, liberty, those things.
And again, that's the guys who were on TV tonight. They don't believe in an informed public making its own decisions, which is democracy, they believe in coercion and manipulation of opinion, of lying until the law makes you stop, which is not the same as telling the truth.
And forget liberty. That's french now. Liberty is french. And anything french is a target of ridicule and scorn. So there's some enemy behavior right there.
So if God is rooting for America against its enemies, then God's all down on the GOP for being undemocratic and anti-liberty. But the sad truth is God's not on the phone.
Just this other thing, like a float in the Macy's parade, a big smiling hollow mask of cartoon dimension and no substance. Every one of the speakers I saw at the RNC on tv ended his or her speech with "God bless" somebody or something.
What's that mean really? Is it "May God bless America"? As in - please? I don't get the sense these people are asking. They say it with force, like an affirmation, a statement of conviction, but it isn't that either, it's an empty phrase. They don't mean what it says, and they don't mean it as a prayer either. It's where their hypocrisy and greed make it impossible for the spirit to inhabit their words.
To stand before the nation and invoke God and God's blessing at this hour would require a humility and a terror, in the sense of an overwhelming fear, that none of the operators and their molls are capable of, not in either party.
And without that sincere humility it's an empty thing. And that makes it blasphemy, though it's delivered with basically good intentions, and that grin they must learn in some kind of intensive training session.
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Miller said vis. Kerry, I guess it was vis. Kerry, that "where I come from, actions speak louder than words..."
That's really something. He was talking about Kerry's voting record on arms procurement and such, but you know, that military service thing he already started up, the soldiers soldiers soldiers thing, well, Bush's all talk and no walk on that one, and Kerry for whatever else he is or was, did actually put the uniform on and go get shot at.
Cheney's military records are missing too I think.
Mrs. Cheney did the intro, she mentioned that Dick never learned to do the twist, and he never drove back and forth between the two A&W root beer stands in their home town of Caspar, Wyoming. The inference being his mind was on higher things.
Somebody in the crowd had a sign that said "Cheney Rocks". The camera, and I have to say that was the most obviously partisan camera work I've ever seen, the camera cut to the sign holder, one of them, and it was some middle-aged suit with a tan and a full head of thick silver hair.
Cheney really was much less than I was expecting, a placeholder, a parked car with its engine idling. He talked about how the 19 9/11 terrorists were able to do what they did armed only with "knives and boarding passes".
Boarding passes.
Meaning that...well, meaning the ease of getting boarding passes is a sort of weapon. Or more broadly, the ease of travel is a weapon. Or even more broadly, freedom itself is a weapon of the terrorists.
Which is kind of the point with these guys, Cheney and Miller and Bush, and their masters. America is a device, not an ideal. It's something to use to attain and maintain control, for purposes that have nothing to do with freedom or liberty or justice or government of, by, and for the people. Nothing to do with the people at all.
Cheney also quoted Bernard Devoto in the context of Bush, at least I think that's what it was, about Bush being selected to be the President,
"The stars must have danced in the sky". Not a comfortable image. Sort of like mountains dancing only scarier, like the ocean dancing, things you want to stay put, generally.
The anti-Cronkite, Dan Rather, introduced a snippet of a "protester" having gained access to the RNC floor. She was identified as Gael Murphy, and from her attire it's likely she's a member of Code Pink.
I love you Gael Murphy.
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After the main event, which was really just Cheney accepting the nomination for VP of the Republican Party, the Latin Grammies came on.
Incubus and Cafe Tacuba did a number together that was great. The host was that guy from that show and he was great too, he opened in a Mariachi suit of lights.
Ozomatli are always a gas.
Maria Rita won a couple of grammies and she was absolutely inspirational, genuine and real and sweet and humble and her talent in the snippets was formidable.
Santana was there. He gets praised by everyone but Bob Geldof because he's "positive" but the group he flattened La Bamba with points up the sin cojones nature of excessive positivity.
Invoking Richie Valens and then having some Menudo wannabes rework the words to get gold stars from the maestros verdades is evil, worse than selling crack in the long run. Because it fronts off as positive when it isn't.
Using that position to say "Yo no soy (big emphasis here, in case the really dumb kids aren't listening hard enough) marijuano" isn't just weak - it isn't weak at all really, it's spineless but they're winning, those spineless guys, people are doing hard time for selling weed again, and the entire country's school systems are being used to brainwash kids that "drugs" are evil - but it's wrong, and in the long run it serves the devil. Real men would have talked about the epidemic of pharmaceutical doping that kids are subjected to by doctors and therapists.
It was a boys' move.
Not because marijuana is good or bad - because the methods used are leaving these kids wide open to whoever gets the means to program them. They are being trained to listen and obey, and to not think.
Working for the man is working for the man, and the chorus of rationalizations is an opera that never stops.
But I remember Santana talking about how much he loves the USA back when it would have been brave and spiritually clean to speak to the colors of the women and children who were being killed in Iraq and Palestine.
It's the spiritual peace of owning good real estate and never rocking the boat. Of showing up when somebody needs a good cholo.
And maybe getting busted back in the day, and having it covered up.
Work for the man, but you have to take responsibility for what you do, all of it. It isn't a choice between drugs and gangs or churches and schools. There are other choices, harder ones.
For instance, the ones Gael Murphy makes.
To quote Don Olson quoting Wallace Stegner quoting Bernard Devoto in his essay, ''Land: America's History Teacher'' -"One remembers Bernard DeVoto's remark that the only true rugged individualist in the West generally wound up at the end of a rope whose other end was in the hands of the cooperating citizenry."
