The Weekly Screed

The "V-Word" and Dispassionate Fascism

So here we are, finally, at the opening of the Democratic National Convention. I will probably tune in the ol' telly for a good bit of it, though I expect to be rather ill before it's all over. I swear, if I hear the word "values" one more time -- from either side of the political divide -- I am going to hurl.

"Values" appears to be the big buzz-word going into the final months of the campaign season. I gather from what I've read that some body conducted a poll, asking Americans what matters to them as they contemplate how they'll vote in November, and "values" somehow rose to the top of the list. And so all the candidates are now storming the country side, saying, in effect, "we share your values."

I had my first gag reflex to the "V-word" a week or so ago when heard an excerpt from a speech that John Edwards delivered somewhere in the heartland. One of the his opening remarks was "this race is about values...." And I heard myself thinking, "oh no, not you too!"

I expect to hear Republicans running on about "values." When they do, it's really a code for something even less palatable: straight, white, upper-middle class, Christian ethics. And now here are the Democrats mouthing the same rhetoric, saying to the voters who will decide this election, "hey, we share your values. We're white Christians, too."

Well you know what? I really don't give a rip if my politicians are Christian, Jewish, Pagan, or Zoroastrians, so long as they respect the founding principals of this nation. And central among those principals is a concept that we hardly hear enough about these days, separation of church and state. So, please: Take your Christian values, your Jewish values, your pagan values, and celebrate them in your church, your synagogue, or your stone circle. But leave them behind once you step into the political arena.

Bush Resigns!

Hello again,

I had a dream a couple of nights ago. I dreamt that George Bush resigned. I'm not all that good at remembering dreams, but this one was pretty vivid. In the dream, Bush makes a speech which has the magical quality of being the first time he has actually told the truth since he started running for the office 5 years ago. And he says something like, "I am really tired of doing such a bad job as your President, so I am today announcing my resignation, effective immediately."

Ordinarily, that would be a subject of some rejoicing, except that Bush's resignation would make Dick Cheney president. No wonder I woke up.

It has been tough to keep up my "Weekly Screeds" over the past couple of weeks for a couple of reasons. The main one is that my attention has been drawn elsewhere, again to the book that I'm working on. I am writing about the possibilities for a glorious future, but the story just keeps getting weirder and weirder. The exciting thing is that the weirder it gets, the more drawn into the material I get. I am finding that the only way to come to grips with it is to stay pretty much completely immersed.

By the same token, it's hard to compete with "the regulars" on the commentary circuit. I am beginning to realize that those who are able to come up with interesting and original commentary on America's culture and politics are those who really manage to stay immersed in that cesspool on a continuing basis.

An example of the dedication that punditry requires is demonstrated by Frank Rich of the New York Times , who wins the "Irony of the Week" award for managing to find room for Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Dick Cheney, and the rock star Bono in a single paragraph.

Writing about the release of Clinton's autobiography, Rich observes , "On June 22, the same day that "My Life" hit the shelves with its promise of a fresh slice of Monica, the Senate voted almost unanimously... to increase by more than $240,000 the penalty on broadcasters who trade in "indecency."... The day of this historic vote was also the one on which Vice President Cheney....used a four-letter word to tell Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy what he could do to himself. Mr. Cheney didn't seem to realize he had chosen the very word that had helped spur the Congressional smut crackdown in the first place — the one Bono had used at the Golden Globes last year."

Brilliant. But how can anybody keep up with that kind of commentary unless they're on top of it 24 hours a day?

I had my own thoughts about Clinton's memoir, mostly about his oft quoted rationalization for fooling around with Monica in the Oval Office: "because I could." That seemed to me a rather curious perversion of Lord Acton's famous axiom that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Curious, and relatively harmless, when you consider what some others have done with the same power.