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Post Mortem.
Friday, November 8, 1996
We Blinked Again.
 his nation's collective conscience should be in mourning. (Hence the black stripe to the left.) We did it again. We let the same group of dishonest, conniving people re-inhabit the inside of the Washington Beltway for another four years. Tuesday, November 5th, was a day that will languish in national political infamy, as we begin the nightmare ahead for what Clinton's done.
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A
new
national
nightmare
is about
to unfold | |
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Unless you live under a rock, you know that we, as a nation, re-elected William Jefferson Clinton. And not by a landslide, as was predicted. The Bobster made a very respectful showing in the popular vote; the electoral vote well, he was buried very quickly. As a nation, we first blinked in 1992 and Clinton and the liberal Democrats slipped through the honesty barrier and tried to take over Washington, DC. They turned into criminals en masse right before the nation's eyes. Yet the nation looked the other way. I'm appalled at the lack of morals, ethics and resolve that we, as a nation, now seem to have concerning everything. Is the lack of morals and ethics becoming so de rigeur that we all now say, "So what?"
I'm proud to say that I didn't vote for the liberal Clinton either time. I held my nose this time -- as I did in 1992 -- and voted; but I
voted for personal character and integrity, not for the character defects that are so prevalent in liberals. "You can teach an honest man or woman to be a politician, but you can't make a politician into an honest man or woman." (Someone's quote, sorry...)
The reality is that, as a nation, we've f*cked our collective selves, again. Clinton's guise as a Conservative Democrat is over; he will now morph back into what he really is: a liberal of the lowest order. He now has nothing to lose and can
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Our
nation
is in
for a
rough time
ahead. | |
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unveil spending programs that will boggle the human mind. If you think he started-off as a liberal and then changed into a conservative toward the 1996 election, you're right. Wait until you see what he does now, since there's nothing to lose politically after being elected to a second term. He will now have to deal with the way history views his 8-year performance in office.
Many people who voted for him will now realize what they've done: invited wholesale vacillation, overt criminality and blatant ineptitude to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue once again. But it's way too late for recriminations. Four more years of the same old shit. Gosh, what a fun time we have ahead of us.
An Open Letter To President Clinton...
Congratulations upon your re-election. This is a moment for which you have worked all your life, and it is no small accomplishment. It is a moment which cannot be fully-savored, however. For you now face the most important existential decision of your life. Will you now take the risks necessary to make history?
Or will you settle for the safe but very mediocre path of your first term?
We live in momentous times. Information-era change accelerates faster than our minds, hurtling towards a global civilization which must balance legitimate desires for consumption with the survival of the ecosystem. The stakes are that big and they require wrenching, historic changes. Part of your job, therefore, will be to develop lasting strategies and programs that will radically shift resources, as did FDR when he restructured industrial society 60 years ago. You will have to use the presidential "bully pulpit" to the utmost to persuade Americans of the need to shift to a new ethic of information-age resource efficiency and global interconnectedness.
Do you have the courage to risk it -- that is, the willingness to fail in the attempt? You will likely sink in the polls. Advisers will tell you that this is a transition era in which "objective conditions" do not allow for such dramatic change; that in the absence of an overt crisis, people will simply not be moved that far. Are you up to this?
The evidence so far -- your desire to be liked more than respected, your tendency to temporize, your inability to focus, the gaping
absence of moral and ethical beliefs -- is not encouraging. Yet, we sense that you are still a work in progress. Your sharp intelligence, the risks you took (finally) in Haiti and Bosnia, your (way too liberal) gamble on universal health coverage (read socialism) -- all suggest the potential to rise above your limitations. Your re-election frees you from the political constraints that may have boxed you in. You no longer have any excuse to face the moment of truth. But you must move decisively, and move now.
First, you must draw the correct lessons from your earlier mistakes. Some will argue, for example, that the catastrophic failure of your one first-term attempt to make history -- health reform -- argues for incrementalism in your second. I would suggest the opposite. All great historical leaders -- Lincoln, Gandhi, Churchill -- experienced political failures far greater than you have. We remember them precisely because their failures inspired them to even greater accomplishments. The health care reform that your wife drafted and proposed, was founded in socialism and communism, and that's why it and she were rejected. Remember that; when you turn back into a liberal: we hate socialists and communists with a passion. Anything connected with those concepts will never fly here. (And keep Hillarious on a much shorter leash for the next four years, Bill, no matter how much she bitches and whines.)
Second, you must articulate a greater vision than the one you have outlined during this campaign. Balancing the budget, "protecting"
Medicare, education and the environment, putting more police on the street, even moving "a million people from welfare to work" — none of this is the stuff of history. Truly protecting our health — and the health of the earth — requires actions far bolder than mere budget balancing or targeted tax cuts. Where is the clarion call to reform the money-draining middle class entitlements, to avert global warming, or to meet the other great challenges involved in building your much-invoked "bridge to the 21st Century"? Once articulated, you must set about these goals with the same passion and commitment you have shown to getting elected. You must educate us, and take us with you.
In the end, of course, you cannot choose to make history. You can only choose to try. I remember an anti-nuclear activist who was dragged away by police after a long sit-in in front of a nuclear weapons plant in the 70s. How did he feel about his failure to shut down the plant, he was asked? "I may have failed, but I did not fail to try," he responded. We were activists in the 60s and 70s; you were a mere spectator watching from the sidelines.
We are told that you have worked your entire life to be President, tirelessly collecting names and keeping in touch with thousands of people around the country since you were 15. Now you face the most fundamental challenge of all: What has this lifelong effort been for?
With all due respect, Mr. President, I suggest that this is the fundamental question before you on this celebration day of yours. History will forgive you for failing. But it will be remorseless should you fail even to try.
What's Next?.
For those of us who remember Watergate in the early 70s, it was a time of national nightmare and governmental paralysis. Nixon had just won with largest landslide in all political history (until Reagan) in 1972 and a drama of events began to quickly unfold that would stun the nation. The government ceased governing. The lights were on but no one was home. No one was tending to the daily affairs of the government; all were too concerned about what the next Washington Post story would unleash on the unsuspecting public. The Nixon Administration was conducting wholesale damage control, while Congress was preparing for impeachment hearings. It was a scary time; our nation almost collapsed from the ethical morass we were plunged into.
In the coming years, congressional hearings, subpoenas, trials, indictments and jail sentences will be the stuff that headlines are made out of. The liberals and democrats will be in the forefront as the nation and government once again becomes paralyzed and cannot conduct it's daily business.
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Watergate
was nothing compared
to what this
is going to
become. | |
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Terrorist groups from the Third World will readily act against our governmental impotence. Internal, radical militia groups will also proliferate and act with emboldened impunity. President Clinton and Vice President Gore will sequester themselves in The White House and pursue the very same "Rose Garden Strategy" that the late president Nixon did when he was near impeachment; they will be inaccessible to their staffs, the congress and American public. Who will run the country? Whom indeed!
Hillary (aka Hillarious) will be indicted, as will her husband, Slick Willie on a variety of charges. Gore will also come under deep suillegal alienion for his unsavory role in criminal activities. More than 50 aides, staffers and cabinet-level officials will be subpoenaed, tried, indicted, convicted and jailed.
BUT, Slick Willie will pardon each and every one of the criminals, including the currently-jailed Whitewater felons, both McDougals and former Arkansas governor Tucker. And he will pardon himself if, in fact, if he is tried and convicted while a sitting president. Other than Andrew Johnson in the late 1860s and Nixon in the early 1970s, this circus will be considered a rarity by historians.
It's Obvious.
What gives me that kind of insight? Simple. I read the newpapers, op-eds and observe the US Congressional Ethics and Judiciary Committees being set-up to
deal with this emerging situation. I see that the Special Prosecutor is already investigating the Clintons on so many scandals and scams, and that he's way overworked. The US Supreme Court will be ruling on the sex abuse case of Paula Jones v Bill Clinton during his governor-days in Arkansas, sometime in January, 1997. The US Attorney General is now looking into another special prosecutor to handle the plethora of cases about to be added to the pile of felonies
that the liberals have involved themselves in. And as the last two weeks of the campaign drew to a whimpering close, Slick Willie Clinton was runnning around calling for campaign reform, to deflect the overall responsibility from himself and on
to a high-ranking (now very former) official and the DNC (Democratic National Committee). What a terrible, terrible joke it all is.
The campaign had turned so dispiriting that when Joan Rivers proclaimed on Comedy Central that deciding to vote for Bill Clinton or Bob Dole was "like choosing which is your favorite Menendez brother," she sounded more like a political analyst than a comedian. I'm glad it's over. What's coming up could be much, much worse.
Web Demise?
In the last several months, I've been reading about the imminent doom and collapse of the Web, aka the InterNet. Every e-zine from Salon to C|NET, from The Well to The New York Times is carrying sensationalist stories on the imminent demise of the World Wide Web. Any day now. Soon. Hey, does Tim Berners-Lee know about this?
The four Net-doom scenarios — of traffic overload, address shortages, cyberterrorist attacks or a "millennium bug" crippling computers on the eve of the year 2000 — are probably the result of some mutant game-players imagination, although those four scenarios could portent things to come if some kind of positive action isn't taken against their occurrence.
Here's what to do: get Bill Gates to head up a working group of the best Microsoft, Sun, Netscape, Apple personnel and dozens of other companies to develop software that addresses
problems 3 and 4. The first two problems are to have been self-regulating and controllable. But it's turning out much differently than expected. The growth is way beyond phenomenal. Between the enormous brain power of those companies' technical people, every problem could be replaced with a simple upgrade to the existing software. Heck, I'm sure Gates & Co have thought of this one too...
That would take care of the software for about 84% of the world's various Operating Systems (read Windows) users, on PCs and Macs. The big problem would be all the antiquated mainframes that the government uses. IBM, DEC and others would be employed by the government to revamp and replace the existing hardware and software on a gradual basis. It would freak the government employees so bad if it happened quickly, you'd think Clinton just shut the government down again like he did last year, and blamed it on the conservatives.
That would be the ultimate Public Relations coup to the world's on line community. Gosh, I'm absolutely, positively sure that Gates & Co have definitely thought of this one and are poised to do something about it quickly. Right, Bill?
Bad Report Card.
Windows95 continues to elude us; that is the Dial Up Network function to logon to The InterNet still doesn't work. Trumpet Winsock works just fine. But the slick-as-you-please Windows95 doesn't do diddly. It's six weeks since the initial install was done successfully; this DUN configuration has us all baffled. Neither Jeff Horn nor myself have a lot of hair left from pulling-it-out over the inability of excising the Bill Gates Demon from the HD. It's in there.
We've installed and re-installed all kinds of drivers for the modem, but that works fine. Somehow, DUN can't connect with the modem. Duh.
Like I said, Trumpet Winsock works just fine.
I leave you with this quote from the indubitable "Unknown Comic":
You should never watch laws, software, politics or sausage being made . . . you will probably be disgusted by what you see."
J o h nS h e l l e y
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