It's pretty bad when the best you can hope for in a VP candidate is that he will rip John McCain's face off. Today, that's about as audacious as we dare hope, having nearly lost all hope of seeing real integrity restored to American politics. Sure, we'll cast our vote for Obama-Biden, even if they, themselves, seem to have lost -- if ever they owned -- the integrity and chutzpah, to state, outright, that the emperor and his entire entourage are stark-raving naked. As is, it seems that both Obama and Biden tow the main line, the main line being a veritable sewer pipe full of lies, misinformation and innuendo spit out by Bush-Cheney, then sanctified by the media. And it is this raw sewage that forms the "truths" upon which America's domestic and foreign policy is built. This was most recently evidenced in Biden's statement on the Georgia-Russia conflict, when he said, "The war that began in Georgia is no longer about that country alone. It has become a question of whether and how the West will stand up for the rights of free people throughout the region."
Superman couldn't have said it better himself. No need to extrapolate on the not-so-subtle nuances of the situation -- nuances which, in another time, would have been called by name: the truth.
American politicians, on both sides, have lost their bearings and have taken with them the American people. Our politicians have been reduced -- willingly, it seems, even as they've been bribed and blackmailed, too -- into playing understudies to the real truthsayers on the world stage, reading from a playbook written by swaggering warmongers and disreputable liars & cheats. Biden's assessment of the Russia-Georgia conflict more or less echoed Obama's words, which more or less echoed the words of Condi, Bush and McCain. Nowhere in the dialogue-proper of American politics can we hope to hear the truth: "What in the hell is the U.S. doing in the first place, by funding, arming and prodding Georgia to go to war with South Ossetia and, by extension, Russia?"
With few exceptions, truth has evaporated from our polical landscape to the extent that truth, itself, has become so audacious that it offends the sensibilities to even acknowledge that such audacities could be true. But they are. And to ensure that no one speaks these truths, the Bush Administration has effectively, by design, disgraced truth by relegating it to the minions of the conspiracy theorists.
Last February (sometime after Edwards bowed out, yet months before discovering that Edwards was a liar and a hypocrite)we pinned our hopes onto the Obama campaign to forge a renaissance of truthfulness. Then we watched as, molecule by molecule, it evaporated, sort of like a shallow mud puddle on hot summer pavement. At first, we made concessions on his behalf: "He's doing what he has to do to get elected," we told ourselves. "The media will fry him if he doesn't give the appearance of moderating on this particular position."
But at some point, after staring overlong into that non-descript residual of dust on the pavement, we had to acknowledge the truth that Americans don't really want truth, and especially if it takes more than 5 words to convey that truth. What the American attention span best responds to is a dummied down, black and white, right vs. wrong version of the truth -- something that can be condensed into a sound-byte, emblazed below the talking heads on CNN -- a mantra that be quickly transcribed into email missives: freedom fries, the war on terror, the axis of evil, weapons of mass destruction, Barrack Hussein Obama, evil empire, surge success, I'm proud of my country, g.d. America, stay the course, chickens coming home to roost, pledge of allegiance, flag pin, elitist liberal ....
Our politicians more closely resemble the protaganists in dime store novels than the statesmen who forged, then held together our Constitution and our country for over 200 years. But, apparently, this is what the majority of Americans want in their leaders.
After all, it was "they" who voted Bush into office -- not once, but twice. And it is "they" who know, but simply don't care, that the war in Iraq that has killed upwards of 100,00 innocent Iraq citizens was waged on an elaborately designed facade of lies, so that we could steal Iraq's oil. It is "they" who slather their bumpers in American flags and who rabidly salivate over a one-inch flag pin, yet couldn't care less that our Constitution and Bill of Rights have been decimated. It is "they" who have gladly surrendered our economy, our jobs, our homes, our health, our Constitutional rights, our environment, our children's and our grandchildren's futures over to a band of theives.
It is, therefore, "we" who are out of step with America.
Still.... We haven't entirely abandoned all hope. Our hope, today, is that Joe Biden -- in his infamy for speaking before thinking -- will do the right thing and rip John McCain's face off. You never know. The trend could catch on: it may once again be fashionable for politicians to be so outraged by the b.s. and lies that they will state, outright, for all the world to hear, that the emperor and his entire entourage are stark raving mad. It happened to Nixon in the 1970s. It could happen again.
For this reason, and this reason alone, we are glad to see Biden on the ticket, instead of, say, Jack Reed -- an infinitely more qualified politician, who would never have made the cut with Americans: he's too honest, he's intellectual, he's thoughtful, he's solidly grounded in foreign policy and diplomacy, he's well-respected on Capitol Hill and, besides, it would have been only a matter of time before the media took note of his height, or perhaps they would have sleuthed out that he drinks lemon in his tea, or perhaps he was the best in his class at West Point -- something terribly terrible to entirely disqualify him for the office of vice-presidency.
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