Informant38

My grandmother on my mother's side was born in Texas. That has more significance to me now than it used to have.
Bush was born in Connecticut I believe.
When I tuned in late to the debate last night Bush was performing in the rhythms, in the cadence and tone, of what's called "Country" music today. It makes sense - first take over the radio most common people listen to, inundate the airwaves with fake accents and pseudo-hick jargon, then get your sock puppet to sound just like the people on the radio. Not too hard considering the bland, simplistic drivel they've made of what was once the music of the American folk, turned it into a spineless gutless car commercial.
It's a commercial product, it has the same relationship to real country music, and real country people, as it does to some advertising executive's idea of how people talk in the panhandle of Oklahoma, where I also have kin. In fact that "Country" music and its culture exist pretty much right in between those two points. Some abstract place between rural Oklahoma and downtown Manhattan. Call it Nashville.
Bush comes on like Nashville's most famous Boy Scout.
So there's that.
Kerry's got some legitimate nervousness going on, I think. But on every serious point he was a man to Bush's whining-boy.
I just can't shake the doubt, that it's a two-layer fake-out. Because as someone else said recently, either way, unless they rig this one too, this time we did it, this time we elected him, whichever one it is, this time it's us, or more accurately the voting public, who chose the path we're on.
It's a little too pat, the nasty little golum against the valiant truth-speaking hero.
But if I wasn't being paranoid, if I was reading it as it was presented, that's what I saw.
Bush's mind is half-gone, something else is in there.
Kerry's still human.