It has already started—the hagiography of Barack Obama. I’m channel surfing and stop for a moment on MSNBC (the media equivalent of driving through a bad neighborhood), and there he is, looking presidential and sounding providential. Aesthetically backlit while patriotic strains worthy of a James Horner soundtrack lift to an appropriate crescendo, our 44th President muses over the future of the country, the challengers before this troubled nation and his vision for solving them in the next four years. And suddenly I realize that this isn’t a commercial. It is propaganda posing as broadcast reporting a campaign promotion (in its entirety) and trying to slip it in through the crack of peripheral public awareness as being the God’s truth about what this beleaguered young genius is trying to do for this nation.
Trust me, this is only the beginning. We will be bombarded by Obama media moments such as this all the way up to and through November 6, 2012. And sadly, it’s all going to work according to plan, because all the Republican Party has been able to come up with is a slate of also-rans, all of whom apparently believe that the world was created 6000 years ago, and most of whom never quite grasped the fact that, when it comes to basic social issues, they just don’t understand the core independent voter and never will. What’s more, that generational majority, the Baby Boomer, no longer holds the whip hand in this second decade of New Millennium politics. That, I predict, will come from their offspring, Generation Y, who have adopted a value system all their own, one that few of us have truly come to grasp, and yet one that will provide the tipping point in the next presidential election.
I also continue this troubling prophecy with a Requiem for Mitt Romney.
I say that, even though Senator Rick Santorum, Romney’s only viable competition for the nomination, just withdrew from the race. Out of funds and facing diminishing numbers in both Pennsylvania and Texas, Santorum threw in the towel…and yet did so without once mentioning Romney by name or endorsing a candidate.
This should have been the defining moment in the Romney campaign strategy and the anticipated tipping point that will lock down the Republican nomination for Mitt. Instead, what we were left with was a kind of deafening silence that this is the “default choice” of the Republican Party, and as such leaves him in the company of other tepid ghosts of campaigns past such as Bob Dole, John McCain, and the irrepressible Walter Mondale.
I also get that the Republican establishment is locking arms behind Romney at this very moment…along with the fact that he seems on the surface to have survived the ABM (Anybody But Mitt) movement in play only a couple of months ago. But facts can be troubling things…and misleading. William Faulkner once observed that, “Facts and the truth have very little to do with each other.” It is finally to the truth we must turn at the end of all illusions. And the truth is that Romney has paid too dear a price for it, because now his political integrity is so compromised that Obama will eat his lunch in November.
The Truth is that I was in a room with Mitt Romney at the Peninsula Hotel in 2006 during what was billed as a “Breakfast for Billionaires,” (I wrangled an invitation.) to introduce them to then Presidential hopeful Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Having had some experience in dealing inside political campaigns and candidates (including writing and directing Ross Perot’s political documentaries during his 1992 Presidential run and NAFTA after that), I knew enough to look for substance over style. And though he perhaps lacked the “junk Charisma” of a Jimmy Carter, the smarmy charm of a Bill Clinton or even the likeable frat rat bravado of a George W. Bush, I knew that Mitt Romney was a real man who had accomplished measurable feats of skill in the American business marketplace.
He was a proven winner. He had turned many companies around, plucked others from bankruptcy and resurrected them, and had helped take a small capital management company and turn it into a substantial one. Along the way, he had built jobs and corporations, had balanced the State Budget in Massachusetts, and he had taken over a corrupt, scandal-ridden 2000 Winter Olympic with a $1 Billion dollars in unaccounted for funds and turned it into a $1.5 Billion winner and a shining example of good old Yankee ingenuity and business enterprise. He was his own person, so it seemed. And he was, above all else, pragmatic and results-oriented—a man who went to deduction rather than dogma to guide his decisions.
The next five hours in a private dining area that held about 14 people, proved all that I had heard about this remarkable man to be correct. I was struck by his steely intelligence and by the quick, certain grasp he had of every issue. (He even put up with my pre-Freeman Dyson [conversion] stance on climate change and added his own creative alternatives.) So, here was a man who was not only proving to be a visionary but also both facile and fast on his feet. With very little effort and a very real, accessible persona, he closed me and everyone else at that very pricey breakfast.
Then a sadly predictable thing happened on the way to the 2008 campaign. He got “handled” by political strategists. In a desperate attempt to appeal to the Religious Right, who still held the party hostage, he pulled out more flip-flops than a wet bar in Maui in July. (He was right to take the original positions he held. The polls showed it. All he had to do was shut up, hold his ground, and stand for something—anything—that would have passed for reason and accountability, both qualities that now seem inimical to modern American politics. )
Unfortunately, those same Romney “handlers” not only stepped-in again but also doubled down on their shift-to-the-right strategy for 2012, and then some. Romney not only turned his back on every centrist belief he seemingly ever held, he also committed the unforgivable sin of breaking Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: “Never speak ill of your fellow Republicans, even if you are running against them.” Not only did he let his PACs break the commandment, he allowed them to dominate the message coming from his camp in a spate of some of the worst political trash talking and personal attacks in recent history, ones that irreparably damaged any opportunity for rapprochement with either Santorum or the perennially irascible Newt Gingrich.
All I can say is that it’s a shame Mitt that you had to take that course. In a nation and a party where people are yearning for the truth from someone (anyone!) who would stand for what they believe in and not back down to suit the expedient morality of the mob, all you had to do was say: “This is who I am. This is what I believe.” And stick to your convictions. Instead, you continued to repackage yourself by sliding just to the right of Vlad Tepes on the political spectrum—until no one knows who in God’s name you actually are. I realize—we all do—that this has been a calculated move, one that relies on the cynical belief that the American voters collectively suffer from both a short attention span and a selective memory that will fade into the jaded assumption that, “Everybody does it, so what the hell.” The truth is that these echoes of equivocation will all remain with just enough disaffected voters to take you down next November.
That’s what the Democrats have been gearing up for all along, and you have played right into their hands. These attack strategies that the electronic posse driven by political hacks from the left will be expanded, amplified and played back into the public consciousness as surely as autumn leaves will fall about the same time your numbers do in November.
I realize at this point, that it sounds as if I’m making a political endorsement of Obama, when nothing could be farther from the truth. In my opinion, he is a borderline demagogue in the purest sense of the word—someone who uses class-warfare as his bully pulpit and has no qualms whatsoever about splitting this nation right down the middle as long as it gets him four more years…no matter what the cost to his legacy.
What I do have to acknowledge is the fact that Barack Obama, who has a failed record in so many areas as a President, has what amounts to a spotless record as a candidate. He runs. He wins. He shoots. He scores. And, as such, he has few equals in American political history. Bottom line: Barack Hussein Obama is a magnificent professional political campaigner and one of modern American politics’ canniest packagers of his own personal charisma.
This troubling piece of data has to be compounded by the fact that Obama’s first term of office, although a resounding mediocrity, has managed to be just successful enough to leverage the average American voter into giving him a second chance. Meanwhile, he has held onto just enough aristocratic Gen X insouciance to convince his target market that he’s still the best man to fulfill his promise to effect “change.” He has also borrowed enough Clintonesque pragmatism to slowly phase away from being a high-profile bagman for the Reid/Pelosi agenda to have repackaged himself as a situational populist. (That’s the illusion he’s doling out to the Global Community in bits and bites, and they’re buying every bit of it.)
Along the way to losing the congress, he has managed to hold his own in the court of public opinion by creating a textbook study in class warfare that has been so effective that it is Obama, not any grass-roots flurry, who should be given credit for the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. In truth, the 99% (who turned out to be more like the 30%) had their entire initiative orchestrated and driven to the task by Generation Y. And more than 70% of them determined that it was corporate corruption and not government incompetence that had led to our financial meltdown.
Of course Obama openly shared their frustration, played to it, and capitalized upon it, and managed to appear to be “One of us.”
Therein lies Obama’s greatest strength—his chameleon-like, affability. It is that glorious intangible shared by only four other men in the last 60 years—Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy and Eisenhower—any one of whom could be elected tomorrow were they alive to run. (Clinton still is, of course, but is prohibited by the 21st Amendment from doing so.)
Let’s forget ideology for just a moment, or the fact that Obama is a statist in the purest sense of the word, one who clearly intends to slap the Government brand onto everything that happens in our lives. Forget as well that he is a past master at laying the blame off on everyone and anyone else wearing red-state banners and selling it to the public at large. Even forget that he has proved to be just as much of a hawk as George W. Bush ever was, or that his cabinet has been every bit as morally conflicted, character-flawed and at odds with one another as the one “W” put together. We might even forget the fact that he is a proven moral relativist when it comes to international politics and will throw every ally we have under the bus if it suits his agenda. Barack Obama has an entire landing page of carefully effected intangibles that have nothing to do with substance and everything to do with style. And as anyone can tell you: In the beau monde of modern American politics, style will trump substance out of the gate just about every time.
Unfortunately most of young America relies upon that “style” criterion to make its decisions. And in terms of hip, cool, youthful image, Barack Obama is still the overwhelming choice as recruitment poster marine to present America to the world.
A troubling truth about the voting public in 2012 is that it will average 44 years of age. That is the new political “sweet spot” when it comes to demographic and psychographic appeal. And when you take into account that is averaging out against 75 million Baby Boomers and another 30 million Depression babies (in an age range of from 55 to senility), the swing voter in 2012 is going to be much younger.
What this amounts to is the fact that nearly 52% of all voters in 2012 will be under 40 (Gen X or Gen Y) and about 33% of our total voting public will be 18-32 years of age (officially Gen Y). And though some political pundits have referred to Generation Y as the “Stupidest Generation in History,” nothing could be farther from the truth. The truth is that Gen Y, more than any other demographic in history, marches to the beat of its own drummer. It trusts few other sources outside its own peer group. It is imbued with a reckless sense of social bravado that stems from a lifetime of quantum sensory input and a kind of mental multitasking that is almost staggering in its facility.
Every generation considers itself more evolved than the ones that have come before it, but Gen Y carries that sense of superiority to a new level of arrogance that almost seems justified. Remember, this is a generation that proudly embraces its own hubris. Being constantly referred to as the “Me” Generation is not as much of an insult as it is a simple truth. They are utterly self-absorbed because they are convinced that their megabyte memories and gigabyte access to information grant them an entitlement to excellence that no other generation, before or since, has enjoyed.
They are not as much uninformed (or underinformed) as they are inbred to the point of being Narcissistic in the information they are willing to give and receive. Mainstream media, still the primary information food source for previous generations, has long since lost its credibility to Gen Y. They bond to the demigods of introspective technology. They prefer their own internal blogs, message boards and social networks to build consensus and self-reference to make what they believe to be independent decisions. Gen Y has credibility inside itself, while those other generations must pass their litmus test before they can gain entry into the “club.” They brand things quickly and immediately, if not viscerally, decide what is cool and what is not.
iPhones are Cool; Blackberries are not. iPads are Cool; Thinkpads are not. Monster is Cool; Sobe is not. H&M is Cool; Puma is not. Obama is Cool; Romney is not…and never will be.
Coolness is, of course, an oversimplification. And yet it is not that far off the mark. It is the starting point of a set of standards that Gen Y seems to set for all its choices. And its choices, once made as a unit, seem to remain unshakable.
In a recent bestselling business book on branding called How Cool Brands Stay Hot, marketing mavens Joeri Van Den Bergh and Mattias Bherer offered a five-point benchmark that defines the standards by which Gen Y evaluates everything. It is called C.R.U.S.H. CRUSH is an acronym for Coolness (We get it); Realness (Is it credible? Is it the real deal?); Uniqueness (Is it exceptional, and does it make them feel exceptional?); Self-application (Does it mirror how they see themselves? How does it apply to the Law of Me.); Happiness (This of course, includes pride and joy).
So it is against these criteria that Gen Y gauges Obama and continues to find him not only credible but also clearly preferable to anyone the Republicans can put up against him. Little or none of it, mind you, will be based on administrative substance, statesmanship, or professional competence, while virtually all of it will be based upon whether or not the commoditized Obama still makes sense as the Face of America.
Coolness. Obama is a Harvard educated, hip, young Gen X superstud with the verbal facility of a Churchill crossed with Jesse Jackson, a boatload of swagger that stops just short of arrogance, a hot young fashionista wife, and a penchant for picking “March Madness” finalists in late February. He is charming, charismatic and, above all else, approachable. He stands proudly outside the “Old White Guys” club and nudges everyone under 40 in the ribs with a well-coded semantic subtext that tells two entire generations that, “Together we pulled it off.” If racism and sexism are on their way out in our society, they have been replaced by ageism and classism, and this man knows how to play both of them like a concert piano.
Romney, on the other hand, is the antithesis of “cool,” wears funny underwear and belongs to a religion that the Religious Right generally finds so abhorrent that many evangelical Christian sects have already promised to sit on their votes rather than permit a Mormon to become the first officer of the land. What’s more, he comes off looking and sounding like Ward Cleaver. And young America can’t even remember who that guy was, and wouldn’t much like him if they did.
Realness. This comes off most often during Obama’s speeches. He says the right thing at just the right time. He keeps it brief. He keeps it “real.” And he talks to his target markets in a way it can immediately grasp and understand. His speeches come in a kind of Twitter-text shorthand that Gen Y immediately gets, understands and can relate to. He is a snapshot, soundbite public presence who quickly conveys his command of a situation, knowing almost presciently when to get off the stage.
Romney simply epitomizes everything that Gen Y distrusts about both politicians and the newly abhorrent Rich. Usually, when he speaks he sounds like a canned corporate presentation and barks out such a stream of political homilies that virtually everything he says is lost even on the Baby Boomers he is trying so hard to woo. (Romney insiders say that he’ll get tougher and more “real” when the time comes. But he’d better start now if he’s going to change anyone’s perception of him.)
Uniqueness. In every sense of the word, Barack Obama is a perfectly packaged political hybrid. Even though he is of mixed race, Obama has never marketed himself that way. He is America’s “first black President” who is only too aware of the political capital that label affords him both at home and abroad. Anyone who was around in 2008 has to admit that Obama’s election as first officer of the land brought a healing calm over America that had been missing for over a generation. We had at last shed the image of a racist, imperialist nation in the court of world opinion. And though it had nothing to do with realpolitik or how the world is run, it had everything to do with Perception—which Obama knew then, and we have since come to learn, is Reality. Add to that the fact that our 44th is a Nobel Laureate for reasons even he finds embarrassing, and you have a fraction of the cult of adulation that both Gen X and Gen Y have formed around this man.
Mitt Romney is already believed by some of his own constituents to belong to a cult, which is not exactly the kind of counterculture sentiment that tends to slip political candidates through the membrane of social acceptance. At best, he is just another rich establishment whale who has more money and backroom leverage than any real contact with the average American voter—even among those in his own party who believe they have settled…yet again.
Self-application. By any criteria, Obama is a superstar. In this star-struck era of personal entitlement, anyone who spends five minutes with a celebrity believes himself or herself to be a celebrity as well. Obama is personable, approachable and possesses that intimate kind of charm that he parlays into a kind of “fireside chat” reminiscent of that other undeniable crowd pleaser Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He knows what buttons of social conscience to push, how quickly to push them and how not to outstay his welcome.
By now, we’ve seen enough of Romney to know that the “public Mitt” comes off as wooden, unapproachable, and out-of-touch with the average American. And even though he is handsome and can be seen proudly posing in the midst of a family portrait that is straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, this isn’t Rockwell’s America any more.
Happiness. This more defines the spectrum of emotion that a branded candidate creates rather than the narrow context of the candidate. In this case, it is one of a rock star as president. One needs merely harken back to the Chris Matthew’s description of “chills up my spine,” and the fainting in the aisles at Obama rallies to gauge the depth and scope of this mass hypnosis that Obama the Candidate engenders. I remember standing at the checkout at my health food store in Malibu and listening while two twenty-something women confessed to bursting into tears of gratitude at Barack Obama’s inauguration speech.
“He’s just so magical,” warbled the first, sporting an Obama T-Shirt. “I couldn’t hold back the tears.”
“He’s messianic!” rhapsodized the other.
“He’s a politician,” I interjected. “And a gash rookie at that. So don’t make him into something he’s not. He was born inside the Beltway.”
“I suppose you’re a Republican,” the woman in the T-shirt scowled.
I suppose I am. I’m also a political realist and knew, even then, what everyone seems to have forgotten—that when it comes to presidential elections emotions will always run high. That requires a candidate who can inspire devotion, and dull candidates always fall short when the final votes come in. In truth the political boneyards are stacked three deep when it comes to nice professional also-rans who failed to capture the imagination of the average American voter.
Even if they hadn’t been handed the target rich opposition of just another white guy the Republicans have tossed as a burnt offering onto the pyre of political potential, the Obama camp has a string of other options available. And rest assured, they’ll use them all next fall. By mid-October 2012, gas prices at the pump will drop just below $3, unemployment will dip below 8% for the first time in four years, and the stock market will stay above the 13,000 threshold in perpetuity. And even though partisan pressure has prevented Kathryn Bigelow’s film, Zero Dark Thirty, from being released until December, movie trailers will be spread like jam across the airwaves a couple of weeks in advance of November 6—all of them praising the downfall of Bin Laden and Barack Obama’s deft hand at the helm.
It will have no basis in reality, mind you. But our Generations X and Y have long since lost the ability to discern reality, while they remain very good at manufacturing their own.
Failing all these carefully orchestrated steps at softening all resistance while convincing a highly susceptible base that they’ve broken through critical mass, they’ll simply bombard the media with a war chest that is three times Romney’s budget, playing until time and times are done all his equivocations…while the canons of the prophetic and profound Obama will echo to throngs in thrall.
I can hear the violins tuning up already…just as the houselights dim.

It finally struck me the other day that it’s time to pull the plug on Political Correctness, primarily because PC no longer represents an option in our society. It has become a law. I’ve always cherished the icons of irreverence, so I admit to some bias here. But what has alarmed me utterly in recent days is that I now accept PC along with everyone else, despite the fact that it has at last revealed itself as the ultimate expression of social hypocrisy. And the most radical aspect to it is that it now employs a blatant double standard that no one from either the philosophical Right or the Left seems to have the courage to oppose.

Oppose it we must, however, because it now presents a danger as insidious and pernicious as any disease can be, especially since it is now being used as leverage to influence the outcome of both political elections and law enforcement in what now must be understood to be a kind of Cultural Terrorism that is being used with very little permissible recourse.

This came to a head in the last couple of weeks by a string of events threading through our recent political races where, admittedly, emotions can get a little out of balance.

The most visible and most controversial came when California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman saw her entire campaign trashed because she had hired and then fired an illegal alien. (Excuse me, “undocumented worker.”) Whitman, the Republican “robo-candidate” whose bid for office was already in trouble despite her spending the media equivalent of the GNP of Upper Volta, saw her ratings in the polls drop a good six points over what has come to be known as the “Nicky Diaz Incident.” For those of you who have been somewhere on the dark side of the moon for the last few weeks, Nicky Diaz (Santillan) is the nanny who blew the whistle on Whitman for firing her (as she was supposed to) when Meg found out that she had forged her documentation, lied about her citizenship, and used a stolen Social Security number—all felonies.

Diaz, apparently as cunning as she is clever, immediately hired attorney Gloria Allred, better known as the Al Sharpton of women’s rights, who lost no time in making as much political hay out of this contretemps as was humanly possible. Allred, as only she can do, opportunistically trotted her client around to every radio and television talk show on Planet Earth, depicting her as the victim of a cruel, cynical overlord and having the audacity to compare Diaz’s initiatives in outing Whitman to those of civil rights activist icon Rosa Parks. Let us not belabor the obvious: no one bought it for a moment. But Allred could have cared less. The damage had been done. Her client was now famous. Whitman’s political aspirations had suffered a fatal salvo. And Gloria was one more annoying time at the center of every headline in America. Mission accomplished—even though, as usual, the first casualty was Truth.

Unfortunately neither Allred nor any of Diaz’s other legal counsel apprised the woman of the fact that her very public admissions would more than likely get her deported. Now, apparently, deportation proceedings have begun against Mrs. Diaz, and Gloria Allred, of course, is nowhere to be found.

Upon the heels of this, two other episodes quickly popped up that were both blatant and yet somehow accepted as a regular part of American discourse, the dirty debridement of “business as usual.”

The first came quickly on the heels of the Nicky Diaz incident with what has now become known in California politics as “Whoregate,” so called because someone on Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign committee used that epithet to describe opponent Meg Whitman for cutting a deal with the Police and Firefighters associations of California in return for their endorsement. Meg tried to feign some outrage, but the insult came from the political Left, and whatever aberrations are committed by the left are given a far wider berth than ones launched from the right. Besides, Conservatives don’t do political outrage very well, mainly because they are constitutionally more tolerant of it (every pun intended). So, the incident, with an appropriate apology, more or less blew over. Besides, Whitman was already dead meat in the wake of the Nicky Diaz debacle, and everybody on the inside track of politics knew it.

The second manufactured farrago came last week when National Public Radio (NPR) fired news analyst and commentator, Juan Williams for what they viewed to be objectionable behavior. Williams, a black (Okay, African American! Okay, Person of Color! Okay, “melanin advantaged!” Whatever!) journalist and contributor to everyone from The Washington Post to CBS made the very human and honest personal observation, given the run we’ve had with radical Jihad in the last decade, that seeing people in Muslim garb getting onto an airplane made him nervous.

No stranger to the minefield that all broadcast has become, Williams framed his observation with all the proper politically correct filagree he felt would make it more acceptable. He prefaced his statement by observing that most Muslims were moderate law-abiding people who were decent citizens of the global community, blah, blah blah. Unfortunately, none of this was good enough. NPR fired him. And for that mortal wound, he probably lost about $1.75 for his weekly guest appearances, because anyone who’s ever worked with them knows that National Public Radio views it as their divine right to pay next to nothing for the privilege of being able to bore people to death on “All Things Considered.”

PBS and National Public Radio’s reasoning was the fact that Juan Williams’ untoward statement was not consistent with the “balanced” perspectives that this government vehicle felt appropriately represented their characteristic “objectivity.” The real subtext of all this was that Williams, an erstwhile liberal and one-time civil rights activist, had been logging-in way too many guest slots on FOX News shows such as “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Sean Hannity.” So, let’s face it, guilt by association is the ultimate condemnation. And Williams apparently had the recent epiphany that few news organizations could tolerate, the most significant of which was calling Political Correctness for what it was: a pathway by which you can, “lose all contact with reality.”

Respectfully, I differ with Mr. Williams’ viewpoint, because I personally feel that PC has created an alternate reality that the political left is using with ruthless impunity to get their point across by any means necessary. And, in so doing, they apply a vicious double standard that, they have realized, the American public no longer has the ability to see for what it is.

To be sure, as I believe we all have a spiritual core that drives us, with resonance, to do the right thing, I also believe that respect for all things and all creature companions and all my fellow human beings on this tiny planet earth is essential, not only to our daily contact but also to our survival as a species. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, by all means! Kindness, by all means! Consideration, by all means! But let us also hold fast to something else called perspective. Mindful of all this and the new “consideration” that is the passe montagne of today’s society, there is still imp of denial that occasionally crawls up into my head and dogs me with the question: “Aren’t we all taking everything a little too seriously?”

At this point, I admit to being a social contradiction. I’m a vegetarian who supports the NRA. I’m an environmentalist to the bone who also believes that, by releasing restrictions on oil companies while demanding 110% reclamation, we will in fact aid our environment and lessen our dependency on foreign oil. I’m a proponent of solar power and geothermal power who believes in “greening” our energy sources while not wasting our time on ethanol, which actually takes more energy to produce than it puts out. I’m a former Marine who would no longer kill a fly without his permission, but would like to see every radical Jihadist immediately sent to the Heaven, the 72 virgins, and the ridiculous mythology of orgiastic eternity for which he so apparently longs; the sooner the better. I don’t own a gun but relish the fact that I can buy one any time I decide to do so. And I’m comforted by the fact there are some wonderful eccentrics down in Texas packing heat daily in public because they know that an armed militia is the best safeguard against tyranny and that the crime rate always seems to drop in states whenever criminals are uncertain that the people they’re trying to stick up might be ready to blow them into Utopia rather than be terrorized by some scumbag trying to rob them.
I’m a traditionalist who believes gays should be allowed to marry in a civil ceremony if that’s what they want to do, not only because they actually have a better track-record of long term life partnerships than “straights,” but also because they have the right to be as miserable as everyone else. I just believe it should be an issue for the individual states to decide, because what goes over in California, just won’t play in Montana. And that “states right” should be respected.
I’m a conservative who prizes both political satirists Bill Maher and Dennis Miller with equal degrees of admiration, because they are in fact two sides of the same coin. Even though they are ostensibly at opposite ends of the political spectrum, they share a love of country and an understanding that an informed electorate is the only hope we have of continuing to protect the democracy we all share…and they know, as Aristotle before them, that humor is the best way to beard authority, any authority—government or otherwise—that has fallen into the lair of inevitable self-importance. All governments do, of course, but in a true republic they are not allowed to, because our laughter, our ability to satirize, and yes—even our ability to ridicule when necessary—are the great levelers. That is why the very act of being “politically incorrect” is a cry in the darkness, a declaration of freedom so prized and so significant that it must be protected under all circumstances—even at the risk of ticking someone off.

It’s called freedom of choice, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech—all rights protected by the Constitution of the United States; all rights that are being slowly chipped away from the foundation of what we hold dear because it suits someone’s political agenda to remove them from our fragile realm of options piece by tiny piece. Trivial though it may seem, this is where it all begins, because it is an attempt to mediocritize America by creating false equalities that—though they sound good in theory—in fact will take away every freedom we have in all the insidious ways we’ve been somehow numbed into accepting with little or no challenge.

Let us be entirely clear about this. There is an insidious new set of statutes out there—unwritten and yet enforced—that require everyone, especially those in public service and media, to be without flaw of any kind. If they are not, they are going to be video taped, digi-phoned, cam-corded, MP3’d, Youtubed or Twittered to death, and every nuance of their inappropriate behavior will be blasted out to the world by the electronic posse that is now lying in wait—everywhere! This is especially true if you are famous. Because, if you are, everyone around you is willing to sell you and their mothers out for $100 K and a cover article in US.

On the one hand, we get to watch film and television that is gross, tasteless, over-the-top and juvenile as long as it is largely fictional and not on the networks. On the one hand, we have become entirely tasteless and subliterate as a society. On the other, we have become overly sensitive morally priggish, personally paranoid and relentlessly punitive in areas where our rather warped perception of politically correct behavior is involved.

It all depends upon the target. If you are a white male—preferably rich, politically conservative, older and in some position of power—you are a target of unfettered ridicule—for everything! Large institutions and corporations, politicians, the military and, of course, governments are absolutely fair game. If you’re anyone else—women, ethnic minorities (who are now majorities), youth, special interest groups, street-gangs, coyotes, drug dealers, militias, environmental groups, the ACLU, the NAACP, NOW, and any religion except Christianity—you not only have rights, you have super rights. You often have a right to flout the law, the Constitution of the United States, and all the previous rules of social decorum.

I get it that much of this, in purely metaphysical terms, is the equal and opposite liberal reaction to the First Amendment restrictions on free speech that came in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s—The Hays Office, the McCarthy Era, and cold war paranoia that had us spying on one another and essentially succumbing to what amounted to an intellectual reign of terror. It was a reign, I also have to observe, that was fed-upon by the press who initially and ultimately revealed themselves to be the prostitutes to scandal that they really are. Our national media did not then, nor does it now, worship any god but Sensation and the minions of novelty that accompany it.

I also acknowledge that Political Correctness as we now know it was born of protest against the parochial restrictions of the forties and fifties. It virtually exploded during the protest ridden years of the Vietnam War when America was experiencing its own cultural revolution. After all, we had undergone decades of fat old men in smoke filled rooms making cabalistic decisions for us and force-feeding us such media pabulum as Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best and that godawful Death Valley Days.
Soon enough, we were in the age of Midnight Cowboy, HAIR, Five Easy Pieces and full frontal nudity. By then, we were burning flags, bearing our breasts and screaming obscenities from every stage that would have us. For the first time in history, we had a war (Vietnam) that everyone hated, and freedoms of expression—unfettered verbal, musical, cultural and physical expressions of freedom—were at an all time high. But, just as the labor unions that rose up to defend our workers against the sweat shops, child labor, and virtual serfdom in the early 1900s ultimately became more corrupt than the institutions they brought to yield, so the battering and bruising that the First Amendment took in the first 60 years of the Twentieth Century were due for a predictable overcorrection.
In the early 1970s a strange phenomenon crept into our modern vernacular—an insidious but relentless restriction on speech and personal expression started coming: not from the right, but from the radical left, the Liberal Establishment. Starting with NOW (The National Organization for Women) Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer et al., it continued with the rapid defeminization of American women, the neutering of the English language to eliminate any references to gender and an overall aversion to traditional female roles in society.

It continued, full force with Gloria Steinhem and a monthly Magazine for women called MS. All of it specialized in creating a world without men and a language—the only language in the world—where any reference to feminine gender was considered insulting and demeaning. Women quit wearing make-up, stopped shaving their legs, started French kissing in public, (very temporarily) ceased paying attention to fashion and generally turned themselves into a band of mysandrial dykes in an attempt to rob the world of their beautiful sensuality, perfect plumage and erotic fashion sense that were the main reasons most men could tolerate them in the first place.
For a while in the 1970s, this epidemic of social outrage on the part of American women was the object of admiration until it started hitting the Western world in the pocket book. And, since sexual commoditization of women is, in all its forms, about a half-trillion dollar industry much of which included corporations and network marketing companies headed by women executives, women soon grew hard-pressed to re-evaluate their position. And, as all decisions ultimately become economic decisions, by the early 1980s most women got a dose of social reality and went back to being sexy, sexually liberated and bullishly feminine. Women realized that Playboy still paid more for putting a woman on a cover than any other magazine in history. And soon ELLE, Vanity Fair and Victoria’s Secret took the place of Ms. Magazine and the dowagers of NOW.

To be sure, women still managed to stick around and enforce their politically correct agendas long enough to make sure that we desexed our language and continued to project the international mythology of the underprivileged American Woman to the rest of the world.

I’m delighted to see that American women are getting all the power and recognition they deserve. What galls me is the hypocrisy they apply to their status while they ignore the plight of Muslim women all over the world and apply a vicious double standard when it comes to American politics.

Nothing underscored this more than the events of the early 1990s during the confirmation hearings of now Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas. Thomas, who committed the unforgivable sin of being a politically conservative black man, was, prior to his confirmation hit by charges of “sexual impropriety” by a former co-worker named Anita Hill. Suportecd by a number of (unnamed) women’s groups, Ms. Hill pops up to decry the sexual harassment of nominee Thomas for once having asked her out for dinner, and for mentioning an unsavory hair particle in a sandwich he was eating. Meanwhile we endured a decade of Governor and (later) President Bill Clinton’s (alleged) sexual peccadilloes, including numerous affairs, one alluded to pregnancy, exposing himself to one woman, groping another, and raping a third in a hotel room. None of this was met with a peep from NOW or any other woman’s organization, while all of them vociferously protested Thomas’s nomination to Supreme Court Justice “on moral grounds.”

The myth over the alluded to suppression of the American woman seemed to reach the ultimate expression of manipulation in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary when candidate Hillary Clinton came out with the absurdly self-pitying social babble that, “We have at last broken through the ‘glass ceiling’ that has held women back from seeking the highest office of this land!” In doing so, Mrs. Clinton chose to overlook the fact that there have been 38 women heads of state all over the world since 1997, and there were no less than eight female presidents or prime ministers at the time she made her unsuccessful bid, including the nations of Ireland, Chile, Iceland, Ukraine, Argentina and India.

Of course, women led the way for PC; they usually do for all such bold political movements. And one must applaud their courage for fighting the good fight. What offends me is the unevenness of it and the fact that they only apply it when it suits them to do so—with little sense of justice, logic or accountability.

The critical offshoot of PC has come with the fact that, what women started and eventually shed because it was economically inconvenient, soon came to be picked up by every other special interest, ethnic group, labor union, world religion and political flotsam in the world. Soon enough we had to watch everything we said, however unintended, because it was upsetting someone somewhere.

Homosexuals insisted upon being referred to as “gay.” And of course that was a good thing, because they’ve historically had a pretty rough time of it. So they should be called whatever they want to be called. Coloreds had to be called “Negroes.” Negroes then had to be called “black.” Blacks then had to be called “African American.” (Technically inaccurate, but whatever works for them.) African Americans then had to be called “People of Color.” And People of Color soon expressed their preference to be called “coloreds.” (What?) And if any one reading this knows a single person in America who celebrates Kwansaa, please let me know.

Orientals eventually decided that term, “Oriental,” was an ethnic slur. So that epithet, without any particular explanation, had to be changed to “Asian.” (But I’m still allowed to shop for an Oriental rug, and I don’t quite know why.) Mexicans suddenly had to be referred to as “Hispanics.” And soon enough Hispanics had to be referred to as “Latinos…” Except for the fact that many Mexicans now want to be referred to as “Mexican,” so they won’t be confused with other Latinos. Hmmm…

All this has become self-evident and just the tip of the iceberg. Suddenly, somewhere along the way, everyone has grown visibly thin skins. Fat people now have to be referred to as “weight disadvantaged,” when what the really need to do is stop eating so much. And women who used to be a size 14 dress size are now shopping for a size 8, because—even though we are the fattest nation in the world and 62% of all Americans are overweight—we didn’t want “weight challenged” women to feel bad about themselves, so we just decided to enable them to lie about their dress sizes. So, we now have women running around in a size 0 or a 2 because some woman who should be wearing a party tent can tell some store clerk that she’s a 12.

Of course, the blind are now “sight challenged.” The deaf are now “sound restricted.” And mutes are “alternative communications specific.” And I’m all for making people feel good about themselves. What I am against is having it legislated into a kind of level playing field mediocrity that blurs the edges of both common sense and human dignity. And it is being legislated at every level in the area where we are most vulnerable and most entirely formed—our educational institutions.

This has particularly come to be true in our colleges and universities where violations of political correctness are attacked with swift and aggressive prosecution—especially when it comes to expressions of religion, political preference or sexual orientation. What we don’t get and never will is that educational institutions, despite the political protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, have become political fiefdoms with their own sets of rules. Each of them has its own peculiarities and often none of them have anything to do with logic or the law.

It has also filtered over into every aspect of society. So much so that we are now told that up is down, right is wrong, and the rights established in our Constitution are antiquated and in constant need of “adjustment” because they don’t fit the needs of today’s society. And if I’ve learned anything about political sentiments through the years it is that conservatives (usually Republicans) will, over time, embrace adjustments to our social mores, provided we are allowed to keep the tenets of our Constitution in place as a sane point of reference. Liberals (usually Democrats) generally believe that the Constitution is an antiquated document established by a bunch of old guard aristocrats who were totally out of touch with the needs of their own times, much less those of a modern society. So, they’re generally ready to sell it down the river for any number of expedient adjustments that need to be made, all in the name of contemporizing our National Character. Trust me, at this point they are getting their way. And they are more than occasionally doing it outside the law. Because now, the law has been eroded by the insidious subtext of Political Correctness.
Not long ago, we had the family of a burglar who was shot to death while breaking into a house and attacking its residents sue the people whose house was broken into for three million dollars in damages…and collecting! In a recent radio broadcast, the unwed teenage mother of an infant she had abandoned in a dumpster was recognized for her “outstanding citizenship” because she had second thoughts and called the authorities to tell them the exact location where she had dumped her newborn child. Of course, there is the case of the two INS agents, Ramos and Campeon, imprisoned for two years on the testimony of a known Mexican drug dealer and known coyote for having used extreme force on this known felon (who is still at large). In fact, they ordered the fleeing criminal to stop, and shot him when he didn’t, as they were trained to do. But law enforcement officers no longer allowed to do its job without the specter of Political Correctness hanging over their heads.

We now have national immigration laws on the books that, due to the absurd manipulations of NAFTA and the bastardization of our borders, have not been enforced in years. And when attempts are made by our individual states (Arizona) to enforce our national laws, our National Government in the person of the U.S. Attorney General files an injunction to stop the state law from enactment (of the national law). Meanwhile, we have the mayors of two of America’s largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and San Francisco, declare their boroughs to be “Sanctuary Cities,” when sanctuary cities have already been declared unconstitutional by rulings in the Higher Courts. This flouts the Constitution and flies in the face of all administrative integrity. More than that, it plants the seeds of anarchy because popular opinion and political agenda have now come to override enforcement of the laws of the land. So now, gangs are allowed to terrorize our neighborhoods, our cities, and our borders, and we do nothing because it might offend some ethnic group who has no legal right to be here in the first place.

We no longer enforce our laws, but we now have state, local and national governments that are trying to legislate every aspect of personal freedom. Recently, New York Mayor Michael Blooomberg wanted to require all New York schools from offering any foods with trans-fatty acids, and to require that colas and soft drinks be eliminated from acceptable purchases for all people on food stamps. In the City of Calabasas, California (just over the hill from Malibu), there is now a city ordinance that makes smoking anywhere in public (even outdoors!) a crime punishable by a ticket and fine.

To be sure there is an Iron Law of Power that says (in effect): “For every degree dependence on government, there will be a proportionate loss of individual freedom.” So, if you are on food stamps and you are in the public school system you have already committed yourself to play by someone else’s rules. Understanding that, New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg is well within his rights to enforce these mandates, however well-intended though ill placed they might be. There is also no question that there are absolutely stupid laws on the books in every community in America, and there have been for decades if not centuries. They are seldom enforced, but in today’s litigious, über-activist society, political correctness is dictating that they be acted upon regularly, if not daily.

It is also part and parcel of Political Correctness, as it is the first act of the demagogue, to label all forms of protest against liberal initiatives as extreme. So we have, in recent months, had Political Tea Parties in America—which have offered peaceful, intelligent, political protest from a what is largely an older, middle-class, middle American moderate class of people—labeled as a radical right lunatic fringe version of facism, extremism, racial hatred and referred to more often than not as “Hitlerian.” This conjuration of Storm Troopers bullying, beating and terrorizing innocent people has been picked up my the national media when, in truth, not one Tea Party Rally over the last few months has resulted in a single instance of violence or even the threat of violence.

In fact, these depictions are a lie. (Some have even been Adobe photoshopped to create false images.) And yet they are accepted as the truth, mainly because mainstream America has been brainwashed to accept such media slander with little more than a grumble of protest that this is “liberal media” business as usual. It’s time the Right stood up for itself.
At this very specific moment in time, we still have both the right to do this. In fact, we not only have the opportunity but also the moral obligation to stop this business as usual and do so where it counts; in the voting booth. Because it is only in a free society, by electing officials who will return us to some semblance of perspective, that we can once again hope to return to reason and balance in our society. Fortunately, our fate is still in our hands. But at this point it is a cup of water that is slowly evaporating.

I finally realized the other day that we are slowly but surely descending into rather bizarre utopian absurdity of a rather camp film called Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. It this cautionary tale, a hard-core hitman named Simon Phoenix is brought back from a cryo-freeze chamber into the sanitized new 21st century society of “New Angeles.” In this ersatz brave new world, we have all become genetically and socially programmed to be gentle, politically correct, simple-minded, asexual, vegan lotus-eaters who are living what seems on the surface of it to be the flawless, violence free, electronics driven lifestyle, devoid of individual freedoms but offensive to no one. The challenge seems to come from a renegade band of social outcasts who live beneath the city and create havoc by openly expressing themselves in choosing an offensive but free unsanitized alternate lifestyle.

Our hitman, Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes, is secretly contracted by the Governor of New Angeles to take out a radical activist named Edgar Friendly, who has committed the cardinal sin of insisting upon preserving his individual liberties and leading spontaneous civil protests in defense of them. When the time-traveling cryo-cop, John Spartan (played by Stallone) finally stumbles upon the rebel leader to warn him, Friendly explains his position:

“You see, according to Cocteau’s plan, I’m the enemy, ’cause I like to think; I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I’m the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?” I WANT high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy Magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I’ve SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It’s a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing, “I’m an Oscar Meyer Wiener.”

Yes, Edgar. We get your outcries for freedom: It’s called the First Amendment. And since this is The United States of America, you may still enjoy the right to exercise it. Just be aware, however, that there are a lot of well-meaning people hard at work to try and take it away from you. And they’re building their case daily—and building, and building…

Ultimately, it may be that the last laugh is with Sarah Palin after all. Time, and the shifting sands of politics, will tell.

I confess to beginning this rant as the poster boy for a diminished attention span; not mine, our Nation’s. The truth is so many bad things are happening with such vicious simultaneity that we can’t stop long enough to focus. And that is a conspiracy of its own.

This Blog was originally going to be a denunciation of the financial skullduggery surrounding Goldman Sachs scandal, the complicity of the SEC and the government’s failure to do anything demonstrative to solve this financial paradox as a symptom of the social cancer in our system. But that dropped from the public radar before I could address it…and along with it the fact that practically no one among this Hit Parade of billionaire felons will ever be charged, much less prosecuted.

After that I quickly found my energies diverted to the oil spill in our Gulf Coast and the fact that we even let shady oil companies like British Petroleum (with the worst safety record in oil-industry history) drill anywhere near our shores; but that oozed its way into our acceptance with the ease of a smoker’s cough, and along with it the hidden negotiation that the oil lobbies leveraged with our Congress and the MMS (Minerals Management Service) to drop their safety requirements so they could deep-drill on the cheap and save a couple of million dollars a rig.

Then of course there is the nasty government of Arizona and the fact that they have had the temerity to enforce immigration laws that our own INS already has on the books but has been too thoroughly gutted to pursue aggressively for fear of upsetting the Liberal Left and their backdoor promises to the Latino community to vote for amnesty when the issue finally comes to critical mass somewhere around 2020.
Two days later, I get to listen to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder denounce the Arizona Immigration Statute, only to admit to a Senate oversight committee that he hadn’t even read the twelve page document but was relying instead, “on the word-of-mouth opinions of others,” to form his decision. (And this is the first lawyer of the land?) Meanwhile, Mexican drug lords from El Paso to San Diego run cocaine and illegal aliens up through our borders, murder Arizona ranchers, and set up gangs in our “Sanctuary Cities” to extend their limitless trafficking, while we—as a member of the most gossip-driven, detail deprived people on this planet—protest a law we haven’t even had the discipline to examine.

Suddenly I realize that I am bombarded daily by outrages in legion and am left practically powerless to do anything. So I am left to share my frustration on convenient outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (as in “fritter”) which is just the kind of mind-candy devised to keep us from thinking and, more important, acting on our sense of national outrage. We do that because, at the core of our National Character, we as a people have become too fat and comfortable to want to do anything about upsetting the status-quo; except to complain vociferously but briefly over the sizzle of our charcoal grills and the back of our Barcaloungers.

A little complaint is tolerated, even applauded by the powers that be, because in reality those in power have long since come to realize that nothing changes, that all they need to do is tweak the mechanism and it will continue to function. They do so because they are members of “The Club,” and we are not. And they do so with the implicit understanding that we will put up with the corruption, because “We The People of the United States of America, in order to establish a more perfect Union…” have become unwitting accomplices to the sleaze. And as long as we are provided with enough creature comforts—enough SUVs, iPhones, Club Med vacations, credit card balance-transfers and flat screen TV’s—we’ll basically go along with any piece of crap they hand out to us. (That is what they believe, and we are daily proving them right.)

We look to our Press to be the arbiters of truth when we already know that the Fifth Estate sold out decades ago. Instead of reporting the news, they chose instead to become the news. They became addicted to sensation because, “If it bleeds it leads.” And somewhere in the process they grew intoxicated with their ability to shape public opinion rather than to respect it. It began in the 1960 Presidential Elections with the early reporting of a Kennedy victory long before the polls had closed on the West Coast, and it became progressively worse over the years, until it simply became acceptable to tell half-truths about anyone in the world of public affairs they chose not to like. (Of course, “half a truth” is also half a lie, but that little detail has somehow gotten lost in the clamor for ratings and the simple need to survive.) In the last twenty years alone the press has fallen so far out of integrity with itself that it has become the realization of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbel’s admonition to, “Think of the Press as an instrument upon which Government can play.”

Now our news has become spin. Our minds are corrupted by ridiculous scenarios such as Tiger Woods’ mistresses and Sandra Bullock’s domestic strife and who the next casualty will be on “Dancing with the Stars.” Meantime, practically no one can tell you who the new President of Chile is, who just won the race for Prime Minister of the U.K. or who drafted the Declaration of Independence. Now, I find myself agreeing with such improbable allies as Bill Maher on the left and Shawn Hannity on the right who both have separately arrived at the same conclusion that the average American is now too lazy, ignorant and undereducated to make an informed decision about anything that happens to them. The bottom line is that we, who so influence the path of the world, are no longer citizens of the world. And because we are no longer a part of it, we no longer understand it. (We just want to be fed, comforted and cared for.)

Suddenly, I am bombarded by mainstream Liberals from the Left, 44% of whom now believe Socialism is the preferred form of government, and Conservative activists who are still under the influence of the Religious Right, thumping their the Bible Belt status quo, God and Colonel Bullmoose mantra and savaging anyone who steps one-inch away from the party line.
I have heard right wing talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh trumpet the fact that the average American is “Conservative” in his or her political beliefs, while I get polls from Keith Obermann and the propaganda minions from MSNBC who are somehow managing to manipulate statistics by using only their own listener base to show that more people now believe that “Big Government” is, after all, the answer to our dilemma.
Now, after having spent most of my life as a Conservative Republican, I have come to realize that I am no such thing. I am (that dreaded term) “A Moderate.” And I’m going continue this jeremiad standing on the one platform I have come to realize is a great Categorical Truth: The majority of Americans are neither Conservative nor Liberal. The majority of Americans are reasonable, moderate people who are being made to feel guilty for their moderation and common sense by the radical vocal minorities from both sides. And to be a moderate is accept the fact that we will constantly be assailed by both the extreme right and extreme left for being tepid, indecisive, ineffective and (that most damning of descriptions) “weak.” It is even more disturbing to realize that most of the time they are correct in their opinions of us. Because most people in “the radical middle” don’t have enough motivation to get their hands dirty…because we are too comfortable.

For one to find oneself somewhere in the middle is to be considered spineless and lacking in motivation. Rather than being proud of ourselves for trying to weigh each issue and its merits and letting reason prevail, we are denounced for being indifferent to the true cause of Liberalism or Conservatism because somewhere along the line we fell off the ideological train.

The penalty for this kind of independent thinking is to be reviled, denounced and otherwise manipulated by the far Right and the far Left. It is the moderates who are the very people vilified by talk-show host Mark Levin for being the problem and the cause for the “Big Tent” strategy that he is convinced will destroy the Republican Party once and for all. Of course, the Democrats and liberal strategists are way too opportunistic to spill out such ideological vitriol, because they’re convinced that if they just play it cool, lay low and disguise themselves as “compassionate conservatives,” enough moderates will take the hook at the right time to tip the balance for them.

The last Presidential election proved them to be dead right, because it wasn’t “the brothers” who got Barak Obama the Presidency in 2008. It wasn’t the Latino vote. It wasn’t even the generally naïve, hopelessly uninformed “Gen Y” vote that tipped the balance. It was the middle-of-the-road, middle-aged white American who felt betrayed by the Wizards of Wall Street, and the corrupt corporate fat cats and America’s battered image abroad and their 401Ks that had become 201Ks and the “re-fi” adjustable rate mortgages that had tripled overnight to collapse them into foreclosure. So betrayed and desperate were they that they were willing to try anything that would “change” the game for them—even if it meant abandoning logic for anything resembling hope.

So, as if on cue, up jumped the perfectly packaged, politically groomed faux populist who possessed the youth, swagger and personal charisma that star-struck media-manipulated middle class Americans held in their faint recollections of a Camelot that never really existed. His name was Barak Obama, and he was the Golden Child. He was Rock-star hot, lean, mean, articulate and the most dazzling political figure since John F. Kennedy. And to make matters even better for his handlers he was a person of color. That meant any white mainstream American voting for him could not only wash away generations of guilt, but also appear both progressive and visionary with one quick flip of the switch in their sleek new chad-free electronic voting booths.

To top off his perfectly orchestrated political strategy, this slender, glamorous grass-roots (black but not too black) Midwestern “community organizer” turned Junior Senator followed the oldest advertising trick in the world and used a strategy called Salience.

By definition, salience entails repeating the same obvious point of desire and pounding over and over again until it sinks into the otherwise numb American mindset, there to remain as a triggering point until the purchase is made; and purchase we did. What we all bought, hook-line and sinker from this street-smart, politically savvy party operative was a single word he kept repeating over and over: “Change!”

“Change!” The effect was downright Pavlovian. And the word, change, gathered every form of perception into its warm semantic embrace. Those who chose could superimpose upon it a number of other buzz words, and did. Hope, progress, repair, integrity, a new broom, a return to Camelot—all these sugar-plum fairy thoughts danced around in the mindset of a battered electorate who, especially in the last three months of the Bush Administration and the financial debacle that came with it, probably would have voted for The Bride of Chucky just to get out of where they were.

So Change it had to be. And so the electorate—driven by the road weary cryptically angry moderate middle class—said “yes” to change, and got exactly what it asked for.

As usual, however, middle-of-the-road, middle-class, reasonable Americans were too lazy and too caught up in the glamour, glitz and charisma of their new celebrity superstar Senator to read the fine print; the one that said More Big Government than they ever dreamt could take place in a two year span.

In truth, Barak Hussein Obama has done exactly what he said he would do and has brought Social Contract Socialism into our lives more than any president since Franklin Roosevelt primarily because he believed that was the reason we voted him into office. (It’s called a Mandate. And we gave it to him.)

Unfortunately, rather than have an original thought in his head, he became a pitchman for the Liberal agenda that was already in place.

Now, we’ve had our national wake-up call. The Tea Parties are in motion, and Middle America is being disabused by the minions of MSNBC, Congressional leaders and the Obama Administration itself into believing that this is some radical right wing pocket movement, filled with violent outbursts by the lunatic fringe.

Not so. Just from the feedback I have been getting, this Tea Party movement is as much from the outraged middle-class, Middle American as any movement in recent history. I’m delighted to see that the fire has reignited.

In beholding this new phenomenon, I pay tribute to William Bennett for inspiring what amounts to the counterpoint for the thrust of this article. Bennett penned a novella-sized non-fiction book called The Death of Outrage in 1996, expressing his dismay over the cavalier handling of President Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes, resultant perjury and deafening silence from the liberal left. As was often the case, Bennett (Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration) was precise, articulate and given to devoting too much of his prodigious intellect to address too small a theme. Then again, that was back in the day when Conservative Republicans had a brain and a sense of direction.

Now I note hopefully that our social sense of Outrage has returned to a broader stage, but it is also my hope that it needs to be carefully understood and even more carefully directed; some of it toward ourselves and our personal complicity in this national political scam that has been going on for decades.

At last, I feel free to express a sense of outrage that enables me once again to return to the American character. By the same token it is imperative that I express it with equal force in all directions, including an arrow fired inward.

I’m outraged above all else to realize that “We the People…” in our desperation for change have elected a President of the United States who would rather play president than be president; a political rookie who has managed to surround himself with a staff of political activists who are the most paranoid and vindictive than any administration since (Dare I say it?) Nixon. In so doing, he is rapidly taking on a political strategy that has all the earmarks of a demagogue.
In fact, he is the only President who openly attacks not only the media but also a specific Network (FOX News in this case) for daring to question his glorious initiatives. He is the only President who, in a State of the Union address, openly rebukes the Supreme Court for a decision that he found not to his liking. He is the only President who denounces a State like Arizona for enacting and enforcing an immigration law that is virtually word-for-word that of the U.S. Government. (And yet he too admits that he hasn’t really read it.)

I’m outraged that we have a President who almost weekly bitch slaps Israel, our only ally in the Middle East, while he sits in silence for an entire day and accepts rebukes against America from Noriega, Hugo Chavez and some of the worst dictators in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

I’m outraged that our President shows up one week after being in office with a trillion dollar stimulus package that is Chapter and Verse a continuation of the Carte Blanche bailout issued by a Congress that has admittedly never read it. Six months later, we are presented with another life-changing document—also admittedly unexamined by the majority of legislators entrusted with its comment—to completely reshape our national Health Care in ways that will benefit only 15 million people who are not covered.

The cost of doing this entails stripping Medicare benefits by $500 billion in the next five years, an enactment symbolized by a recent 21% cut in co-pay for senior citizens (the people who really need it) that has already taken place. And why isn’t anyone asking the question that has been so carefully swept off into a corner as to appear conspiratorial: Why are all the major pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies so silent about this? Once again the issue is academic—because Big Pharma and the Insurance Majors have already cut deals with the government to guarantee that their trillion dollar franchises will be the first ones not only to be covered but also to be augmented. We’re already being gouged by rampant insurance fees and increased prescription costs so that when government does set up its health care program, we’ll be ready to embrace it just to stop the pain. “We the People…” are being set up.

I’m also infuriated that AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup just to name a few commit felonies amounting to tens of billions of dollars, and we apparently have no laws among the thousands on the books to prosecute them for what is some of the most blatant conflict of interest in this country’s financial history. I’m appalled that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former Treasury Secretaries Ron Paulson, Robert Ruben and Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Craig Blankfein are all part of the same revolving door that swings between Wall Street, the FED, and the Department of Treasury.

I’m appalled that the same revolving door swings between the FDA, the AMA and the Pharmaceutical companies that have manipulated the public into becoming a “prescription drug” addicted nation, and has built our so-called Health Care Reform around this corrupt, persecutorial cadre against any kind of “wellness approach to our health.”

I’m flabbergasted that we have nominated a woman like Elena Kagen to serve on the Supreme Court when it is a fact that she used to be a bagman for Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and other chemical and genetic engineering giants who control 80% of the world’s food supply. (And yet she must adjudicate their appeals.)

I’m depressed that Conservatives no longer even know how to spell “conserve.” And that apparently none of them are committed to the conservation of our planet’s vital resources. I’m offended that I’m labeled a “tree hugger” because I believe we should be custodians of our environment and actually be responsible to the animals and plants over which we have dominion.

I’m also tired of having my intelligence insulted and my pocket-book picked by the alarmists and junk scientists who “cook the books” in reports about global warming and “greenhouse gases” (AKA CO2), when any fool with a basic education in physics knows that CO2 is plant food and a natural part of a cycle of life called photosynthesis.

I’m appalled that the best the Republicans can come up with is a Spokesperson for the Conservative agenda who was Governor of a state with a population the size of Long Beach for whopping two years before she bailed on the job, who hunts wolves from helicopters, and who apparently can’t find North Korea on a map without a personal tutor.

I’m hopelessly chagrined that the best the Republicans in California could come up with was to nominate a woman like Carly Fiorina to run against Senator Barbara Boxer—Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard who ran its stock value into the ground, fired 200,000 people after the merger with Compaq, had the phone lines of her board members bugged, and then sued HP after they fired her for, “sexual discrimination.” (Boxer’s camp must be dancing in the streets.)

Finally and somewhat fatalistically, I’m personally gutted by the realization that Government of the United States of America has proven itself to be impotent against corporate corruption. In fact, it has become part of it, owned by it, and obligated to it. In our doing so, it has helped to spawn the worst kind of false economy: Capitalism without a moral compass. And Capitalism conducted without integrity becomes the Cannibal unchained, one that will ultimately devour us all.

Most of all I turn my outrage inward and acknowledge that for the most part, “We the People…” are getting exactly the government we have bargained for. That’s because, in a social contract set generations ago, we became the collective end-users of cheap money, cheap food, cheap fuel and broad-spectrum pharmaceutical drugs that have more side-effects than a nuclear waste dump, and will kill us indirectly if not directly by stealing our quality of life. We got it because we demanded it, and we demanded it with little or no sense of responsibility for the havoc it would reap later on.

So here we are: a society whose modern economy is entirely based upon consumption and whose only hope for continuance is to get us to consume even more; and consume, we do.

We eat genetically engineered foods from strip-mined soil so laden with pesticides, chemical fertilizers and runoffs from animal slaughter that we are daily poisoning ourselves even by consuming them. The amount of cattle, sheep, swine and poultry we slaughter for our weekly consumption could feed half of Africa for a year, and yet our demand to keep it cheap has set our factory farms in motion with a killing machine that creates drug-dosed, hormone infused, manure stained, cancer-ridden, gut-rotted animals that are so abused and tortured there is nowhere for them to put the by-products of their abuse except into us every time we bite into their color-dyed, formaldehyde injected, nitrite soaked carcasses.

We are now both source and ultimate victims in an ecological chain of events so corrupted that, according to a series of EWG studies, every pregnant woman in the developing world can now expect to transfer more than 200 chemical toxins through her umbilical cord to her unborn fetus. (And we wonder why birth defects are up nearly 500% in the last twenty years alone.)

In fact, we have all become an integral part of a society that has grown, in whole or in part, to become a bunch of greedy, morbidly obese, morally corrupted, technologically pampered, self-entitled, narcissistic, sub-literate pop idol clones addicted to special effects movies, text message vocabularies and a culture of C-List celebrities who would sell out their mothers for six figure article in Us Weekly and a photo op with Angelina Jolie.

That same mentality, trust me, pours down in spades when it comes to our personal and national finances. Because we’ve taken a stance in that Mephisto Waltz of “buy now pay later.” We are in fact the most fatalistic society in the history of the world. I say that in the sense that, in the subtext of the conspicuous consumption we all embrace to keep us going, none of us believes this is going to last forever; or even for much longer. All our network marketing mantras of “win-win” scenarios notwithstanding, we remain a zero-sum society and we know—we just know—the bill is going to come due. We just didn’t think it would come to pass so quickly.

In the words of the immortal Pogo Possum: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” No words, however satirical, could be more accurate. And no democratic society has ever lost its moral compass more completely than we.

We have come to the end of our rope. We are out of time. The Devil has come to collect his Due. And we are the ones who are going to have to pay up.

Nothing brought this more to a point of Critical Mass than a headline that appeared on the front page of Pravda on May 12 announcing, “America’s abandonment of Capitalist principles and rapid descent into Marxism.” (Their turn of phrase, not mine.)
Since this came from the National Newspaper of the former late great Soviet Union (1918-1989), they should know. And they, more than any, should recognize the symptoms. Sadly, we as a nation do not. We are in fact in denial, when what we should really do is wake up.

The final blow came when the author of the article penned a new term to describe the American people: sheeple.

The fact is that is exactly what we have become: a nation of sheep…and cattle…and hogs. If you doubt that for a moment look around. As the consummate metaphor for what we’ve become, the United States of America is now the fattest nation in the history of the world. Nearly 62% of us are now officially overweight. Nearly 30% of us, including 30 million of our children, are by all medical standards morbidly obese. As such we are prime candidates for a laundry list of diseased from heart disease to type 2 diabetes. And our answer is not to lose weight, but to run to the drug companies to balance us out when we do. We are overweight, financially overextended, and addicted to consumption.

We—like the poor abused, corn-addicted feedlot animals we pen up for fattening—are now too tranquilized to take any demonstrative action. And too many of us don’t even have enough initiative to show up at the voting booth and express our outrage by actually doing something about it.

The underlying issue, when you get to the core of it, is that we no longer have faith in our system of government because we feel that we have been too often betrayed by it—by our office holders, by our elected officials, and by their “vetted” appointees.

The one redeeming factor—and our only remaining hope—lies in the fact that we still live in a republic. And in a republic, people get exactly the government they deserve. The question is what do you think you deserve…and did you read this far down to even care to be challenged?

I ask that question, because I’m relatively convinced that 90% of the people who started reading this are too intellectually lazy, ADD plagued, or sub-literate to wade down this far to finish something that might have an original thought or two.

That leaves 10% of you who have cared enough to come this far in search of some kind of answer. It also leaves me with a conclusion—an extrapolation if you like—that in every situation, there exists a small but sagacious group of people who are trying to do things the right way. Whether it is industry, politics, the environment, agriculture, health and wellness, athletics, or international finance, there are about 10% of the people involved who operate with a sense of integrity and a dedication to the future. Whether its organic farming or manufacturers such as New Balance and Apple who have managed to make a profit while keeping jobs in this country, we need to cultivate relationships with our own conscience and with people who feel as we do. My objective here is to single out these individuals and organizations and cultivate a network of people who truly want to make a difference.

At this point, I also confess to being incredibly weary of people who rant and rave while failing all the while to offer any viable solutions. So, I offer this information center as a weekly forum to deal with a broad range of issues, and to offer specific solutions for all the things that concern us. It is my opinion that if enough of us do that, we can and will make a difference…as we should.

In so doing, I welcome your input, your recommendations, and your connections to people and groups who are trying to make this world a better place. (It’s okay to unload as well, but bring some answers to the problems when you do.)

I also realize that, having said this, I’m going to scare some of you off, because this kind of exercise takes work. You have to dig deeply and become an active part of something. It is also my conviction that enough of you will want to do this…about 10%. And with that “mustard seed” contingent we can start to shake things up. And we can build a power base with a network of people willing to make a difference.

I’ll volunteer the first topic that underscores the subtext of our collective frustration: Why, more than ever, this country is ready for a viable Third Political Party. And why it is not only feasible but also essential that we have one if for no other reason than to challenge our current political power structure to reconsider their relationship with the American people. (And right now, 90% of you are thinking, “That’s a lot of work!” So is Democracy. Thanks for making my point for me.)

Meet me here in about a week. I’ll let you know when I’m up.

And thanks for making a difference.

- Robert Joseph Ahola

The man who might have been the greatest white heavyweight since Rocky Marciano was never actually a champion. He was also a near genius who ended up becoming the poster boy for pugilistic dementia. A powerful family saga of love, death and redemption and scathing portrait of the underbelly of world class boxing, this is the biography of Irish Jerry Quarry all the fighting Quarry brothers, and a powerful loving, tragic family saga.

Running time: 118 minutes (Now in Development)

- Scheduled for Production in 2010
* Running Time 115 Minutes

- Running time 92 minutes
* Written and Produced in 2007

4 M 3F. 90 Minutes. (2009)

** Being Published in 2009