Aquarian Weekly 7/28/04
REALITY CHECK

2004 Campaign
THE MEDIOCRE ELITE ARISE

"The founders of Time Inc. and the C.I.A., as well as several Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors-the men who made the decision to drop the Hiroshima bomb, invade the Bay of Pigs and plunge us into Vietnam, the Tafts, the Bundys, the Buckleys, the Harrimans, the Lovetts-all took part in this initiation ritual of Skull & Bones."
- Ron Rosenbaum, New York Observer 4/23/2001

Since this will have to serve as the official launch of this space's coverage of the 2004 presidential campaign, the second such foray in the life of this particular column, and the third I have more or less "covered" as a "professional journalist", I shall come clean.

I have no dog in this fight.

My preternatural abhorrence of Al Gore four years ago, along with facing down the insane hope that Bill Bradley would get out of New Jersey alive and the boredom-induced fantasy of another Ralph Nader ego-fest had landed me in the untenable position to hound the Bush people to ignominious victory - however slight and torpid the whole fiasco turned out. Despite the relative messes hence, I stand by my efforts to deter the spawn of Medea from ever being elected anything higher than Tennessee dogcatcher and sentencing his miserable shill of a wife to doughnut-gorging oblivion.

And however stupid a dream it remains that someday a man or woman of great vision and integrity would ever have the balls, money or political connections to reach this most feculent arena of executive power, I manage to stumble on unimpeded in the practice of fence-sitting despot.

It is my fate.

Some of us accept it and move on, a kind of Tolstoy recognition that most of what we humans endeavor to achieve is rendered meaningless by the mere effort.

It's comforting. Try it sometime.

However, as resident Loon-in-Residence here at The Desk, I am forever tied to an infuriating exercise called Mining the Truth, whatever level that may be in these times of "my guy is right no matter what the hell the facts may provide". And I am paid by this periodical to disseminate the odd opinion on a weekly basis, so I strive on boats against the current.

Firstly, although I do not believe he will win this thing, I do not despise George W. Bush the way most of his detractors do. This idea perpetuated by The Left that the president is some kind of Machiavellian evil genius is poorly researched. At best, and I believe we've been pretty consistent around here throughout his term, Junior is patently mediocre, his cabinet wildly overrated, and the overall effect of his time at Pennsylvania Avenue minor.

There was a pretty good chance Bush was going to be under-whelming if this country hadn't been attacked nine months into his run, and if I remember correctly no one in the Republican Party tried to sell him as International Affairs Chief anyway. The worst you can say about Captain Shoe-In is he was in over his head. But the GOP needed a relative centrist who wouldn't screw up the sinking Gore ship. These frothing politicos never considered his inability to actual govern; just win a damn general election. Jesus, the power people in his office shook like frightened children a few months after 9/11. Not even they could believe this bumpkin had to make snap decisions for the free world, which is why many of the crazed ones made the calls and now here we are.

But unless this administration is lucky enough to be around when they produce Osama bin Laden (not likely since he's been dead for over three years) dump that albatross Dick Chaney for John McCain (a Right Wing no-no) or have video of the challenger humping farm animals, it's over. So why beleaguer the poor boy. He'll be a footnote like his father and it will be up to your grandchildren's historians to try and figure out how it happened.

As for the Democratic front-runner, I believe he would fair no better at this job. His spotty record in the Senate is nothing to wax poetic about. John Kerry is more or less the Dems version of Bob Dole - It's my turn, dammmit!! His claim to fame over these past few months is that he's more electable than Howard Dean, who managed to scare that screeching son of bitch Chris Matthews half to death, and Matthews worked on the Carter campaign.

I don't know what Kerry stands for; neither do you, and apparently neither does he. A Catholic Pro-Choice, rich-guy, working-class-hero, anti-war candidate who voted for the war? I liked it better when he was a 60s' radical telling everyone he was a war criminal on Meet The Press. You think this Beltway lifer is rescinding the Patriot Act or going after large corporations, or the Pentagon, or fashioning universal Health Care out of a shoestring budget? Good luck, smoky.

Look, before we begin this four-month sprint through two conventions, countless late-night rambling diatribes with insiders and campaign spinners and get all bloody and tired, one thing needs to be put on the record, and I promise not to bring it up again: John Kerry and George Bush are both ranking members of Yale's secret society called Skull & Bones. High finance, white, misogynistic, frat yuppie fuckers of which there are only 800 living members. Skull & Bones is a mysterious ancient club of the North Eastern establishment. The aim of Skull & Bones is to acquire power and pass the benefits to brothers and the like-minded. Dozens of men working for Bush and Kerry belong to this atavistic thing. Look it up. I'm running out of space.

Exclusive club of the elite, privileged and the dangerously ambitious; this is what our framers envisioned for a democracy, but at least those guys had guts.

I often get grief from readers about not revealing my true leanings politically, despite hiding behind this laughable guise of political columnist. So now you know. I hate both these idiots and although I share some measure of ideology and disagreement with both, I also believe it won't mean a hill of beans when the machine takes hold.

You know, the machine that produces candidates for president of the United States from the same damned silver-mouthed melting pot which produced gems like William Howard Taft, who infamously wrote, "I don't remember that I ever was president."

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