Ravings of an Angry Old Woman

I haven't been reading diaries about The Speech today, so I don't know if I'm being redundant, or just sawing off my own personal limb, but I am filled with such an all consuming anger as to be more than a bit irrational.

I heard a masterful presentation address a renewal of American foreign policy by one of the most sophisticated minds on the international stage.

I also heard the run up.  Mincing, prissy words by small minds, herded together to throw stones at the "other" who refuses to conform to their limited, and limiting, world view.

Then I watched interviews with "regular guys", who clearly had no idea what they had seen or heard at the Tiergarten, yet felt no hesitation in parading their fear and ignorance across the stage with inartful comment.  

Then there were the deliberate lies and misrepresentations, offered by "leaders" such as Heather Wilson, Norm Coleman, and Sam Brownback.  These voices of the modern Republican party who, instead of embracing a vision that offers a return to American leadership in the world, set about to tear down the stature of the "other", reducing him to the least common denominator status that they so gleefully espouse.

Fawning "moderators" accepted every distortion and recasting of courage and pride as arrogance with little or no demur.  Endless fussing about the venue, and the loss of time, and the size of the audience and whether it is appropriate to speak to a German audience as a world leader before you are officially crowned by the Punditocracy.  

Hand wringing pleas of the need to return home and get busy courting the stupid and mindless voters who have no idea what that speech represented.  Voters who think that an aging man with delusions of winning the Vietnam war holds the key to America's future, and just wants to vote for someone with whom they can "have a cup of coffee".

This is personal.

I was the "smart" kid in the class.  I was the scholar, the curious one, the one who read voraciously and wanted to know and understand everything.  I never sought a sinecure, never was content to coast along, just getting by.  I had no use for the maimed, and the crippled who wanted to pull me down to their level through gossip, or innuendo, or outright lies.  I ignored them and went on about my business, and I survived intact.

But this is not a classroom, or a playground.  This is the real world.  This is a moment in which the future of our species may well hang in the balance.  And the smart kid is being hammered by lesser mortals.  He is being whittled down to size.  He is being delivered the death of a thousand cuts by the insiders, clinging to power.  His persona is being "created" by a media structure that drums into the minds of voters his "otherness", his "difference", his dangerous "self-confidence", not shared by the frightened, and confused.  

Russia is flexing her fingers.  Iran wants to arm herself with nuclear weapons.  Terrorists are real and planning Jihad against those with whom they disagree.  The constant, low grade horrors of genocide in Darfur, the starvation in Chad, the raging uprisings against immigrants in South Africa, and the growing desertification around the world, are more immediate and much more dangerous than the bruised egos of the barely adequate.  But these cataclysmic events get short shrift, when the "smart kid" presents such an easy target of scorn, and such a danger to the egos of the herd.

They destroyed Jimmy Carter with their pursed smiles and sly digs.  They elevated Ronald Reagan with their selective mining of his past deeds and current pronouncements, keeping his declining mental faculties from us all.  

Then, they praised G.H.W. Bush until his own lack of understanding broke through and the nation was willing to take a chance on an unknown.  Much to their horror, that unknown turned out to be a misfit on the cocktail circuit and in the salons of Georgetown, so they destroyed him.

They had another go at Bill Clinton when he began campaigning for his wife, Hillary, just to make sure he would never return to the halls of power.  They were completely bamboozled by the fake Cowboy Charm of George Bush, and enchanted when Nixon's old cronies reemerged to grasp power, once again.  They destroyed a brilliant man that they "didn't like much" and subjected us to the past 7 years with studied uncaring for any harm that might result.

They were warned that George Bush was mean, a dry drunk, and not very bright.  Al Gore on the other hand, was an "other", and therefore could not be allowed to show them up for their genuine lack of real sophistication, and failure to demonstrate any skill in understanding this complex world.

Now they mavens of media are at it again.  They are killing Barack Obama with a thousand cuts.  Cuts administered by well chosen words that separate him from the less intelligent, the less assured, the less complex individuals who tremble, as they do, in fear of being exposed as average.  Fear of acknowledging that a leader, in this stew of a time in which we dwell, might require more that a chip on his shoulder, a well rehearsed cant on patriotism, and a claim of heroism.

If they allow this charade to continue, if they insist on presenting lies and truth as "balanced", it they permit the destruction of the one figure in modern American politics with a vision to navigate the shoals of disaster upon which we founder, let the history books note that America was destroyed by a Free Press.  Free of responsibility, free of honor, and free of any judgment that would separate right, from wrong.

If their little game results in the election of John McCain, "Damn them", I say.