Rolling Stoned: Who Is To Blame For Our Plight?

There are days I wish I could wash my soul; I wish I could yank it out of my skin and toss it into a sink or drop it off at the cleaners. Sometimes it is a conversation that sullies me, or something foolish I've said during a dinner party. Sometimes it is a film or a play or a bit of music; sometimes it is something I've read. But there is no easy place to go to take out the stains, the stains of sin, or the stains of intellectual incontinence. One can only pray, confess, kneel at the altar; receive.

Today, besides the myriad blights that assail me, turning my green leaves brown, there is something political that infects my mind. No doubt there are not a few readers who might find all this rather melodramatic, dismissing my reaction as an undue over-reaction to something rather harmless. But there IS harm in what assails me, because it is utter deception. It is deceit couched not merely as fact, but as a fact smugly presented, a sort of "everybody knows but the stupid" sort of smugness. It is an elitism that is urbane and casual; it is even a casual sin.

Of course, I permit you to laugh when I tell you that the source of my melancholy is none other than Rolling Stone magazine's interview with former United States Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. But I'll take your laughter any day over the prevaricators which are Mr. Gore and Rolling Stone. As Ambrose Bierce once so aptly defined, a prevaricator is "a liar in the caterpillar state."

What can we say of Rolling Stone's very first sentence to Al Gore 3.0? The article begins with this subhead:

The man who won the presidency in 2000 is looser and more outspoken than ever. Is his global-warming movie a warm-up for a third run at the White House?

I ask, where else can one go from here but straight to hell? "The man who won the presidency in 2000." I seriously cannot say that sentence without sounding like an old-time hack muttering obscenities in the break room.

What is amazing about Rolling Stone's opening line is not so much its audacious ignorance of reality. What is amazing is that it did not stop me mid-stride; it's even a bit like blowing out a tendon just getting into the starting blocks. But I sprinted, limping, for sure, to the finish line. I can only tell you that the refreshments offered at the end are cups filled with bitter gall, even bitter gore.

Irrespective of the foolish debate regarding the recount, and re-recount, and the myriad re-re-recounts of the 2000 election tallies in Florida (which have shown repeatedly that Mr. Bush won that state); and irrespective of Mr. Gore's puny and statistically insignificant majority vote from the 2000 national election (both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush took 48% of the votes), let us admit that George W. Bush did not steal an election in 2000. Let us admit frankly, and even with pride, that the democratic process was completely evident in every step of that election. Let us further admit that the Bush v. Gore (2000) decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States made a glorious clamor, and was a rousing example of democracy in action.

Is the Supreme Court a mere club? Is it a simple collection of simple tyrants, an illegal chamber of men and women who have clawed their way through closets, stealing other people's robes? Or is it itself a result of democracy? Did not both Democrats and Republicans elect -- fairly and according to law -- leaders who appointed justices to that court? Did not both Democrats and Republicans elect -- fairly and legally -- senators to approve or disapprove of those appointments? It's too bad, at least for Democrats, that they have not been as successful in electing presidents who will stack the court in their favor; but no one is denying that Democrats have been given fair chance. It's a bit like throwing out a runner in baseball: in close plays the "tie goes to the runner." Why? Because the defense on the diamond needs to demonstrate -- overwhelmingly and with superior skill -- that a runner is decisively out because of the defense's blatant superiority. Make the play at first place too close and the umpire will penalize you for laziness or incompetence. Since the Democratic Party has failed to win enough presidential elections to secure a court that will always decide in the party's favor, the Supreme Court ruled against it for such incompetence. This is not tyranny or theft; it is democracy, loud and clear. The Supreme Court spoke with a voice that was fairly elected and fairly appointed.

Recently, at Yearly Kos 2006, blogger extraordinaire and progressive spokesman Markos Zúniga said, "Republicans failed us because they can't govern. Democrats failed us because they can't get elected." The point is rather telling. For what Mr. Zúniga is actually telling us is that the current state of national and world affairs -- whether poverty or war or torture or global warming -- is all the fault of Democrats: Democrats can't get elected. If they could, THEY would know how to govern; they would restore order to the world.

But since Democrats have failed so miserably to merely get elected these past few years, it is clear that I can blame them for the world's problems. But I should think that Mr. Zúniga's statement is one of the dumber things ever uttered. For it is clear that the only obstacles, apparently, to Democratic hegemony have been things like talk radio, media bias, some portions of the blogosphere, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, the Wall Street Journal and country music fans. One should think that a superior party that is able to govern with superiority could govern itself and its voters around such weak and paltry obstacles. I mean, surely FoxNews is NOT more difficult than let's say, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, or oil prices or a war on terror. Surely Toby Keith and Bill O'Reilly cannot stand in the way of a Party that is expert in governance. Surely Karl Rove is not stronger than the whole mighty machinery that governs the Democratic Party.

What is rather ironic in Mr. Zúniga's remarks is that Republicans at least know how to win. Democrats, by Mr. Zúniga's admission, cannot even do that. Therefore they have not shown us that they know how to govern. Doubly ironic -- if that were possible -- is that Democrats (particularly its progressive wing), love to point out that Republicans are all about getting rich, with their big businesses and big houses taking priority over vital national interests. But one wonders how Republicans can be so adroit at managing big business if they have proven to us that they can't govern. Or are these contradictions something I should ignore?

So, in the end, the reality is this: Al Gore lost the election in 2000, John Kerry lost in 2004, and the Democrats are poised to lose again this year and 2008, all because of incompetence. As a result, we are at war with Iraq, oil is sky high, global warming continues its rampant course over Al Gore's film, and Osama bin Laden still runs loose. All this is the Democrats' fault solely because they do not know how to govern or win.

And if I can not wash my soul clean with that fact, perhaps I could throw a particular Rolling Stone into the laundry, or purify it in a fiery furnace. Of course, that too will contribute to global warming. So I shall lay that Rolling Stone outside and let it decompose, static, not rolling at all, only gathering moss and the mildew that comes with damp intellectual stagnation.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

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