“COUNTRY FIRST?” - GIMME A BREAK, McCAIN!

Ohhhhboy…  It’s been hard for me to get back to blogging about this campaign, so sordid and cynical and depressing as it’s become.  As much of a political junkie as I am, I confess to, only with great pain and discipline, watching a few bits and pieces of the Republican Convention, although I did watch McCain and Palin’s speeches in their entirety.  I did tell you the Palin pick was “brilliant” earlier, didn’t I?  Brilliant, yes, and oh so cynical and low-road-Machiavellian.  A gifted speaker, engaging, attractive, with a great sense of timing and playing to the audience, she “knocked it out of the park” to echo the much-overused political metaphor of the day.  But what did she say in her convention speech, what did she have to offer?  Well, the same old Rove-ian, cunning, adroitly pandering manipulation of the crowd, to spread fear and ignorance and division and “us against them” pseudo-populism.  We are the simple and the good and God-fearing righteous.  And they–well, they’re the elite, the powerful, the strange, the foreign, the monied East Coasters (think Jewish) who do “community organizing” (think urban, think Black) and other horrible things.  Oy oy oy…..

And along comes McCain.  “Change is coming!” he bellows with a twisted grin.  Change?  John McCain?  Would you spare me? What is all this crap about “the maverick” McCain?  Since when - if ever - has John McCain been a “maverick”?  I mean, really.  This bullcrap reputation began as his First defense when caught in the middle of the Keating Five scandal, right?  And for all his blustering about campaign finance reform and earmarks, what has he really done?  And who has benefitted from his 25 or so years in congress?  And, Okay, IF, just if, we can stipulate that he once and again “took a stand” against the powers that be–you know he’s taken a 180 in the last 8 years, giving up any shred of credibility that ever could be given to his so-called “maverick” status as he pursued the presidency with the lustiness of a political sex maniac.  You know that, right? His excoriation of the “agents of intolerance”?  Well, he made nicey-nice with Falwell et al, that assinine, ludicrous, hateful crowd, didn’t he, to win over the Religious Right.  His argument against the use of torture?  He gave up on that, too, you may remember, another of the Bush policies he’s come to support.  His support of a “comprehensive immigration reform” platform?  Changed his mind way over on that one, too, once he saw the right wing’s wrath over his stated position.  He got religion on that soon enough, saying he “heard the people” and they want the fence built and border enforced first, which became his new mantra.  And the talk and talk and talk about the evil lobbyists:  his campaign is almost entirely run, managed and composed of Washington’s lobbying elite, from Charlie Black all the way around.  “We are all Georgians!” he shamelessly intones like the worst of Shakespearean summer theater actors, while his campaign manager, is it?, who’s on the Georgia payroll and has received Millions of dollars from that government.  The hyprocrisy and outright conflict of interests is dazzling.  And on and on and on…..

Maybe what bothers be most about McCain is that I see him as a War -First kind of guy.  It was only days after 9/11 that he began the drumbeat about invading Iraq.  And now, he’s a kind of insane one-man army on the same account, a True Believer fighting the cause that no one with half-a-brain can even see any more.  All bellicose, all bluster, all testosterone, all the time.  That’s not the kind of person I want running my country, I can tell you that.  The guy has, for years now, looked like he’s got a hair-trigger when it comes to Iran as well.  How many countries does he want to invade?  Look, as much as any semblance of the philosophy should have been well-debunked a long, long time ago, he’s a rabid neo-conservative in “moderate” clothing.  What is all this crap about McCain being  “moderate” anyway?  That’s moderate??!!!

Where was John McCain when the Republican party ravaged and stoned Max Cleland, who left most of his body in Viet Nam, when they went after him with their smutty commercial linking Cleland with Osama bin Laden for chrissakes, and attacking his patriotism for Cleland’s opposition to Bush’s ongoing rape of the constitution?  Did McCain loudly or vociferously stand in Cleland’s defense against this trash?  I honestly don’t recall.  But something tells me the record would show his opposition to those tactics to be weak, if existant at all.  I do recall McCain saying In Retrospect that he defended his “friend” John Kerry against the swiftboaters, But I remember At the Time his defense was weak and tepid at best.

I am SO SICK of hearing again and again and again about the heroism of his POW days in Viet Nam.  YES OKAY HE”S A WAR HERO YES YES YES WE ALL GRANT HIM THAT AND WE’VE BEEN GRANTING HIM THAT FOR DECADES. OK! STIPULATED. EVERYONE AGREES.  But now, in this election cycle, in spite of his continued false humility and “reluctance” to talk about those days–not only has every single supporter and commercial and biographer and commentator reiterated the POW STORY time and time and time again, but I have heard McCain go on and on and on and on telling and telling and retelling the story.  Is he more a hero than the thousands, no, millions of others who have lost their lives or limbs or sanity in past wars?  Does his POW story make him the best qualified person to become President of the U.S.?  Should we only elect POWs and other battle-scarred veterans to political office?  What about, what may very well be the Majority of service people who, given voice to their true feelings, may NOT support Bush and his war policies; McCain and his war policies?  What about the myriad Vets Against the Iraq War groups?  What about Jack Murtha–who heroically (no, “maverick”ly) truly Stood Up against the powers that be and said stop this foolishness?

And this “Country First” crap!!! Gimme a break!  I tell you, McCarthyism lives and you can call it the McCain campaign.  I mean, really, aren’t they saying that if they believe the Country comes first, then those who disagree with them believe it comes second, or third?  I think McCain puts it that Obama et. al are “me first, Country second” types, which is just another way of attacking their patriotism.  True patriots don’t wear their love of country on their sleeve or on their lapels, Mr. McCain.  YOU don’t own a monopoly on patriotism, dear Sir.

So now, yes, I am depressed, and despairing, and very very anxious, as I see the polls show “the gap has closed” and we have a “dead even” race, with the excitement and “energy” of the Palin pick and the twisted, Orwellian doublespeak out on the campaign trail of late.  It’s a sad, bleak, dangerous and oh so depressing Alice in Wonderland state of affairs, where black is white and up is down and nothing but nothing makes any sense to any logical person.

I mean, really, you look and listen to Barack Obama and Joe Biden and you have to say, more or less, kind of sort of, these are Good People, smart people, thoughtful guys who, at the very least, are thinking intelligent thoughts about the state of affairs and how to conduct business and how to turn things around from the mess we are in.  And then think about McCain and Palin,and I can practically feel the bile forming in my gut.  Am I wrong to think they’re not very nice people, that they lie, that they pose, that they don’t particularly appear to have compassion for those less fortunate or anything that comes close to a reasonably intelligent world view?  They scare the crap out of me and, what scares me more, is wondering how stupid the American people are, may be, may choose to be again.  How stupid are we?  The fact that at this late stage, after 8 years of Bush and mainly a Republican congress has so worsened and coarsened and pillaged every aspect of our lives and country and heritage and standing in the world–how can anyone possibly even think to vote for these two???

I remember a seminal moment in my life, when I was maybe 12, if that even, and I tearfully came to my parents and asked them why Everyone was so stupid? Granted, I was a strange kid.  When the other boys my age were out playing tag football and Little League, I was reading Jean Paul Sartre and Verlaine’s suicidal poetry. But be that as it may, I did spend a lot of time thinking about the world and our place in it.  I imagine some of my world view came from being a Jewish-American kid, and seeing those old black-and-white newsreel footage clips of the German concentration camps on too many Sundays.  And even before I was a teenager, being sent home from school because President Kennedy was shot.  And then MLK. And then Bobby.  And in college the FBI guys knew me by first name, from my participation in the anti (VIet Nam) war movement then, in upstate New York, and marches on Washington and on an on. . .

Well, I’m meandering and babbling now.  But when I think that John McCain with Sarah Palin in tow could actually be elected and move into the White House after Bush, it’s just a heartbreaking thought that really sickens me to my core.  And makes me very very afraid.

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Zach Newman is a writer and political junkie. His “day job”, though, is as an experienced, reliable and trusted Realtor in the Portland area. He is a longtime member of PABA - Portland’s GLBT Chamber of Commerce. Call Zach at 503.287.8989 or visit his website at: http://www.equitygroup.com/zach.

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