Independent

Thanks for Dick Cheney

Joel S. Hirschhorn

When someone in high elected office shows the nation how vulnerable our Constitution is, we should be thankful for the wakeup call. Like many ruthless dictators, evil kings, and monster generals, Dick Cheney is the leading practitioner of the ends-justify-the-means mentality, where only his vision of the desired ends counts. And if this means disregarding and disobeying the Constitution, torturing prisoners, killing thousands of American soldiers, disrespecting Congress, destroying our environment, embracing the invasion of illegal immigrants, increasing out national debt, and disregarding the will of the vast majority of Americans, so be it. Serving corporate interests rather than serving the people is Cheney’s brand of patriotism.

Cheney’s self-righteous ego is bigger than George W. Bush’s, and what makes Cheney more striking is that he is enormously smarter and more competent than Bush, his token boss. He is so dangerous and frightening that no impeachment of Bush effort ever stood a chance. Not as long as “President Cheney” enters your consciousness. Cheney became Bush’s shield.

When reality hits the fan we use the-lessons-learned approach to stay sane. With his finger-in-the-eye disdain for what anybody else (or history) thinks of him, Cheney offers a far better lesson learned benefit than the stumbles and fumbles of Bush-the-smirker. Bush is a joke. Cheney is a monster.

As I read through political blogs, so many times I come across fellow supporters who, like me, left their youthful dreams of America back in that kitchen pantry in '68...

Since then, I have never witnessed anything like the excitement Senator Obama is generating across the country, across generations.

Do we dare to dream again? Will they take this away from us as well? Back in the 60s, media didn't ruin candidates with dis-information, distortions; the sophisticated manipulation of consciousness and opinion by means of neurolinguistic programing was beyond our capacity to even conceptualize.

I was 16 when the world as I knew it ended at 6:15 am on June 6, 1968. I had fallen asleep on the east coast before the results of the California Primary were announced. My clock radio woke me; it was the tone of the words that signalled a catastrophe well before the nature of the news; heavy, hushed, shocked and anguished sorrow. I rushed to my mother's room. "Mom, they shot him." I was crying.

For years I wondered who 'they' was? Now I know. We all know. "They" are now so everpresent, so omnipotent they have accomplished much more than assassinating presidents; they have staged wildly successful 'false flag' ops, dismantled and shipped our economy overseas, bankrupted our schools, shredded our constitution, stolen elections, blatantly engaged in the overthrow of governments to accomplish nothing short of ruling the world. The list goes on.

At least Lawrence O'Donnell had the stones the other day to tell everyone watching MSNBC that none of the blabbing-head cable-snooze readers and insta-pundits, himself included, had actually gone there and done that.

As O'Donnell pointed out, virtually no one now holding forth about how the Army should have done this and the Defense Department should have done that and we never should have gone into Iraq (well, *duh*) and yadda yadda yadda have ever found their gratuitously-pontificating selves in the line of fire.

Vietnam, Gulf War 1.0, even friggin' Granada -- they ain't been there and they for damn sure ain't done that.

Nance Confer and I are playing with a new learning-is-the-universe type blog we've dubbed "Cocking a Snook!" for reasons you can discern and snicker at if you like, when you visit. Here's the kind of thing starting to show up there; comments and eyeballs welcome, especially from Kitchen regulars. (Waving to Liza, sea, Lorraine and the guys --)

If culture changes like the Internet can actually change individual brains, those changes will in turn change institutions, or obsolesce the ones it can't --this morning I heard NPR guests discussing the extreme need for institutional change by Congress, the Supreme Court, etc. see if you can check it out on a podcast!) As our population hits 300 million this month, each Senator represents 3 million of us. How well represented does that make you feel as an individual?

No WONDER government institutions are foundering and as individuals, we'lre mad as hell, not gonna take it any more. Mucho maladaptations that won't be helped just by changing the color scheme of the decor from red to blue, or back again . . .

And when I say institutional change, I mean overhaul if not revolution.

A friend and internets-colleague of mine has been live-blogging from the Campaign for America's Future panel on the future of progressive politics this afternoon. She posted this comment on another blog and asked that I weigh in -- so I did, and what follows her quoted remark is my response. Make of that what you will.


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"Otter -- I am hoping you will weigh in on what I am sharing here -- this is a challenging talk to listen to -- Sperling is talking about being comfortable in a think tank, and Washington's self interests and tendency to operate as if the rest of the country is also trying to get their kids into private schools..."

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I wouldn't know anything about "being comfortable in a think tank," and I can't really think of anyone I know that does either. It is a topic that is 99.9 percent irrelevant to virtually everyone else in the country except those who either participate in or interact with people in think tanks. Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn whether they're comfortable in there or not.

More of us give a damn about the private-versus-public schools issue, of course. But most of us don't have the financial wherewithal for that even to be a question, much less a choice. And for every year that goes by under the current affirmative-action-for-the-top-one-percent government mentality, less and less of us can even consider private school -- or any other kind of beyond-basics education -- as an option.

Do the common people out here in flyover country recognize, disparage, and deeply distrust both the conservatives and the non-conservatives who are so steeped in inside-the-beltway thinking that they can no more comprehend what it feels like to be Joe and Jane Voter than they can comprehend what it feels like to live on Mars?

Yeah. We do. You can bet our tiny little last remaining untaxed unspent unbankrupted dollars we do. I mean, *we* can bet our tiny litle last remaining dollars on it. We have to. And we have to bet them every day. We don't have any other choice. They're all we have left.

The Shrubyites' patently-fake non-populist "populism" is only a tiny degree removed from the professional-Democrats' bogus noblesse-oblige popularism. It's all smoke and mirrors either way, and everybody out here already knows that.

As far as Joe and Jane are concerned, it's crap. It's all crap. And our crap is only marginally better than their crap -- if that. People out here in the real world don't trust professional Democrats any more than they trust professional Republicans, which is a mighty low standard to live down to in the first place.

I'm lucky in some ways, in that I'm a relatively well-connected and well-educated, well-informed guy. But I'm also a guy who's spent the last couple of years living in what most people would consider a blue-collar industrial backwater. Well, guess what? A surprisingly high percentage of the locals here *do* read above a third-grade level, they *do* pay attention to what's happening beyond the end of their own noses, and they *do* know a lot more than I once would have assumed about what's going on in Washington and New York and Seattle and San Francisco.

But you know what? They also believe that far and away the largest part of any and all information and opinion they receive from all those think tanks and those pundits and those high-paid op-ed writers out there is basically worthless bullcrap. They figure that all the blahblahblah has nothing to do with what they know and think and feel out here on the ground, and that the people spouting it couldn't possibly care less about them.

That's what they think, that's what they feel, and that's what they believe. That's what they tell me, every day. And you know what? I've pretty much run out of ways to keep trying to convince them that they're provincial and shortsighted and unaware and wrong about those things. Why?

Because, by now, I don't think that they are anymore.

Okay, so maybe this ain't exactly news, but it still counts as views... including a jpeg reproduction of that controversial Entertainment Weekly cover, which you can view for yourself along with the rest of the outspoken interview on EW's site at: http://tinyurl.com/7lgb4

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On March 10, 2003, the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines stepped onto a London stage and announced, "We're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." All hell promptly broke loose. A month later, she and bandmates Martie Maguire and Emily Robison finally addressed the controversy for the first time, posing naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and candidly discussing the firestorm Maines' comment sparked.

Now the group is prepping its first album since The Incident, and they're promising it will be a big departure from past work. Produced by Rick Rubin, it's shaping up to be an old-fashioned rock album, reminiscent of '70s rock bands like the Eagles (the still-untitled disc is due in stores this April).

One highlight is sure to be "Not Ready to Make Nice," which directly addresses the fallout from the big Bush bash. When EW called Maines for an exclusive preview, she -— not shockingly -— had plenty to say.

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