The Psychotic in the Parking Lot

Posted on October 22, 2004 in Campaign 2004 Neighborhood

Chance that a Republican president has not won the popular vote: 1 in 6
Chance that a Democratic president has not: 0

Harper’s Index

Until this year, I’d tended to see conservatism as just another point of view on the political spectrum. Conservatives believed that you could solve social problems entirely by the market, that the economy was predictable and cyclical. They wanted the best for us as did the liberals. True, there were a few extremists, but these did not reflect the attitudes of the typical Republican voter.

This year has proved me wrong. First, there was my personal experience of being jackbooted out by a raving cardiologist. Then came the Republican National Convention, that strange affair inside Madison Square Garden which made no real commitments to solving the nation’s problems, but ran as an orgy of Falwellism, cruelty, and blatant destruction of meaning. Luke Mitchell wrote in the November 2004 issue of Harper’s:

In the weeks leading up to the convention, I’d formed an unconscious and somewhat naive conception of it as a theatrical performance in which some kind of story — likely offensive to me, but a story nonetheless — would unfold upon the center stage. Certainly that stage, surrounded as it was by thousands of enthusiastic Republicans and hundreds of cameras and microphones, was where a story ought to have taken place. There was the brightly lit podium, with its odd cruciform moldings; there was the massive video screen, a waving flag one minute, a gospel choir the next; there were the orators themselves, foreheads shining in the bright lights. But no story.

There was, if anything, a resistance to narrative….Before I could process the start of one cheap symbol, the producers were on to the next. Even the biographical video, typically a narrative high point of political conventions — A Place Called Hope, Morning in America — lacked momentum. Indeed, it was composed entirely of still images, panned in the manner of a Kenneth Burns documentary. Setup, climax, resolution — all of the elements of narrative — had become superfluous.

The debates showed us why the Republicans might have resorted to still pictures for their biography. Bush shakes and quivers, he stutters when he is put on the spot. Far from the resolute man of mission, he comes off as a whiny paranoid or, when his backbone starts to fuse, a bully. Before the debates, the Democrats told us that Bush never lost a debate. And then before the rapidfire Reason of John Kerry, he fell apart. The partisan press could only say that he got better as the debates went on — perhaps he took a valium before he went on the second and third times. What Bush did not appear to be was a statesman, a man fit to be making the grave decisions of his life. He could talk about his faith, but not about how he could help people as a human being.

The word leaked out that Bush thought of himself as chosen by God to be president. The last man who claimed that, Benjamin Harrison, also stole an election. The poet W.S. Merwin wrote:

The president of shame has his own flag
the president of lies quotes the voice
of God
as last counted
the president of loyalty recommends
blindness to the blind
oh oh
applause like heels of the hanged
he walks on eyes
until they break
then he rides

Isn’t that what we saw at the Convention and in the debates? The economy goes down down down, millions lose health care, and who knows exactly how many are unemployed? We are told that this candidate is a Christian, but where is the example of Christ? Again Luke Mitchell:

George Bush calls himself a Christian, but I think he lacks the tragic sensibility required to worship a man who would allow himself to be crucified. Bush is a doer. He wants to solve problems, and he seems to believe that at some point all of the problems can be solved, even the problem of sin. Rather than finding redemption in the blood of Christ, he seems to be groping toward some way of redeeming the sin of knowledge, his own and the world’s, all by himself. He sees that you are naked and ashamed, but rather than clothe you he has found the way at last — compassionately, his heart full of love — to pluck out your eye.

It gets worse. Partisan hacks are distributing a documentary called The Passion of George W. Bush. This man who has spent his life serving as a do-nothing member of executive boards, sitting on the ground during his alledged National Guard service, and running a professional baseball team before entering politics now undergoes an apotheosis. In his previous ramblings before the American people, he has declared that he is a prophet. Now he claims to be the equal of God. Yet he controls entrance into his campaign rallies. It is clear that if someone shouts “Crucify the bastard” he will completely fall apart, he will pass on the cup offered in the Garden of Gethsemane. George W. Bush cannot suffer being a martyr and that’s what scares me the most.

After all this, it should be clear that Bush is either insane or possessed by evil. Yet millions still cross themselves at the sight of him, bend their knee, and thank God that he is there to save them from the Godless liberals. Bush, who let the 9-11 terrorists go unobserved for a critical period of months, now tells us that if he is not re-elected, there will be a rise in terrorism. Most of us look to the Middle East when we hear this. With the lifting of the assault rifles ban — a blatant pander to the NRA — I think we angels in America should look homeward. There are more where Timothy McVeigh came from and they are assembling an army.

These people who having seen the convention, the debates, and hearing of the blasphemy being dished out by the lovers of the year 2000 coup are the ones who worry me. Despite every evidence of danger, they proudly plaster Bush/Cheney stickers on their cars.

After my writing group last night, I stopped off at a local store to pick up some craft supplies. The car next to me had a W04 spot sticker dead center in the back window, like a target begging to be sighted and hit. As I walked the aisles, I found myself looking at my fellow customers in a suspicious fashion: which of these people was the psychopath?

My reasoning was this: no one is more dangerous than a paranoid. To vote for Bush instead of Kerry is to become a violent schizophrenic. You have surrendered reality for a miasma of mawkish maunderings. A brush on the shoulder could become a confrontation ending in a gun up the nose of the accidental interloper. These people live somewhere other than America but unfortunately, it has borders with our Land of the Free everywhere and they are arming themselves.

None of this will keep me from voting or doing the necessary work to prevent GWB from continuing to wreck this country in the name of the damage to his centers of reasoning. John Kerry and his supporters need to realize that should the middle regain its rightful power, that there will remain as residue lunatic supporters of George W. Bush who can be counted on to wage cruel war in the name of their twisted messiah. Courageous law enforcement should be enough to check them. Let’s hope, however, that we can trust the military to honor the legitimacy of their true commander in chief.