2012: THE DAY AFTER

wayne thiebaud

What a good day it has been getting the car upgraded in the morning with new tires, new plugs, new oil. The Catfish has been a pleasure to drive. Immediately after each one of those improvements the car feels better. All three at once made the drive afterward into some kind of heavenly transport, smooth all the way around. I think of the song by Queen, I'm In Love With My Car. I do love my car. 93 Buick Century with the 3300 v-6, an engine classic as the Nova slant-6 that has outlived the car bodies and continues as water pumps in undeveloped parts of the world. This 3300 I'm driving uses little to no oil, maybe half a quart in 3000 miles. My mechanic, Chuck Billings in Glade Valley, keeps it running smoothly. I told him the engine is running just short of perfectly; the occasional miss and the last time I pushed the gas pedal to the floor to pass somebody, it hesitated. I didn't like that. When he took out the plugs, he found the one that was bad. We replaced them all. I like having new plugs and good wires.

The Catfish is now running perfectly again. It felt so good on the road going home, I patted it on the dash and said, "Thank you, my friend." I love driving a car that runs as good as a brand new car, and making no payments. It's so old that replacement parts don't cost a whole lot. With all the clearcoat on the hood, top and trunklid flaked off, a couple of rust places, a couple of little dents, it is a car nobody would steal. I could leave the keys in it and never have a problem, even in Miami. I don't, but could. It's all go and no show. It would make a good car for a smuggler; it's so plain it's invisible. I love its design. It's one of the more beautiful car designs before they all started looking like they were made for wind tunnels---the F15 and the Stealth look. On the drive to Justin's house, on Little Pine Church Road, I see an Oldsmobile of the same period, a classic car body. The owner, like me, can't afford to doll it up with new paint and new trim, but he keeps it well and I have a strong suspicion he appreciates its style same as I appreciate my Buick's body style. It was a beautiful car design when it was new and it is now. I'd really like to lower the Catfish about 4 inches all the way around, but that would not be practical on mountain roads in snow and mud. For that it needs raised about 4 inches. It tells its age, but it doesn't date. It's what might be called a classic design. In my mind's eye I see it flawless and painted a lacquer gunmetal blue, no trim or words on it, just the design itself with chrome grille and red taillight all the way across the back.

Remembering back when I drove the 78 Toyota pickup I named Zen Zero. I called it a Zero because when I bought it the entire interior was stripped down to the metal structure, and a big hole in the seat where I sat required a cushion in it. It reminded me of the Japanese Zeros, the fighter planes of WW2. And I was playing with the O in Zen ink painting too. The driver's door was bad and I replaced it with a red door. The truck was blue. I found a couple of Nissan bucket seats for it that were easy to install, four bolts each. I had a friend at the time, Anna, who drove a Mercedes. One day when I saw her she said, "You still driving that trap?" I said, "I'll race you on the Parkway from Cherry Lane to Laurel Springs at 2 in the morning if you want to see what a trap can do." She could run away from me on an Interstate, but the Parkway's curves don't allow top end. It's like the difference between Talladega and Martinsville in a nascar race. The Toyota pickup had a good center of gravity and ran like a go-cart. Very light weight. On the Parkway the race would be all about maneuvering, and I knew the road a whole lot better than she did. I knew my truck better than she knew her car, too. I didn't say it, however, as a challenge, just using the light humor of exaggeration to say the Zero ran better than it looked. It was then about 12 years old. I loved that truck. Four on the floor and another classic motor, four-cylinder, that outlived the frame and the body.

The news came on the radio just now. Back to hearing about Boner in Congress. I'd hoped against hope the Dems would take the majority in Congress and shut Boner up, expunge his name from the news. McConnell too. But, no good gets done without opposition, so I welcome their opposition. The part I like best about the election results is that it was a sharp stick in the republican eye. Will they go on obstructing? Sure. They've become the New Dixiecrat Party. McConnell is the new Strom Thurmond and Boner the George Wallace. Keepin' the niggers down. Only difference is: the world is watching in the age of hi-tech. The republicans don't care if they're witnessed. After four years of nothing but divisive and disruptive politics, they didn't lose anything by it. Romney lost because he was a non-candidate like McCain. Republicans put Obama in both times by not offering any real opposition, just a couple of hand-puppet parrots. Now Sarah Palin is aghast that "a majority" of Americans would put the nigger in a second time. Donald Trump is calling for revolution. And Bugs Bunny is calling for Daffy Duck to get married in Massachusetts.

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ELECTION FRAUD IN AMERICA

 

Thursday evening I listened to the last 10 minutes of the so-called debate between the VP candidates. They were so boring to listen to that I was about to turn it off when the moderator asked what each one of them would say he had to offer that nobody else could do. Ryan blurted out "Honesty!" I about fell out of the chair laughing. The man who has only lied so far in his campaign lied again. It still makes me laugh to think about him saying honesty. A sentence from Gore Vidal rang in my head. "When Americans cannot recognize stupid, we're out of business." Again, we're out of business. Television has rendered the American people collectively stupid. You say that's a strong word, consider Forrest Gump's mother, "Stupid is as stupid does." It's Ryan's words and actions that tell me he's stupid. That tells me he and Romney have better than a good chance of winning.

An article in the new Harpers (Nov 2012), How To Rig An Election by Victoria Collier is very well researched and told. I'm about half way through it, enchanted to see that someone has finally researched and wrote about voting fraud. Fraud is how the republicans took it in 00, and it's looking like it will take fraud to get Romney-Ryan in. And that's not just possible, it's likely. It's so likely it is unsettling. The republicans brought us to our collective knees with 9/11, 2 wars, a Depression and a get-the-nigger Congress. Racism wins again in America. White Man is desperate now that the voting population is below the half-way mark in numbers. After Emancipation, in the Southern states the black population equaled and outnumbered the white population. White Man prefers racism to Democracy, so the South threw Democracy off except as a nice-sounding word, fear that in a democratic situation the black people outnumber the whites, so White Man felt obliged to keep-the-niggers-down, seeing to it they have minimal to no education, then requiring literacy to vote.

We have it going on nationally now where "coloreds" outnumber whites. White Man is scared again and willing to throw off even the nice-sounding part of Democracy to keep power. White Man will have power or nobody will. Republicans are now the racist party, the party of electoral chicanery that has no bottom to how low Karl Rove can take them with his strategy mind. Rove is Romney's strategist; therefore, I see Romney taking it by some means other this time from "hanging chads." It will be a Rove original, illegal, but that won't matter, because they have the backing of the Supremes if election fraud doesn't quite get it done. Today I'm thinking of not voting at all. It would be a gesture, or non-gesture, of absence of confidence in the American political system. Johnson taught me to stay out of politics, Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice taught me for a certainty that we do not have Democracy in America anymore, even made me doubt we ever had a democracy.

Since the coup of the Kennedy assassination our government has only lied to We the People, taken courses the American people never wanted and us without recourse. Television has made a great smoke-screen of happiness where we need wars to keep the news interesting and products sold. Like Gore Vidal said, we're out of business. We the People have been taken over by multi-national corporate money after a few hundred years of corporate lobbying when We the People have no lobbyists on our behalf. Evidence of police state: the Occupy movement. Even National Public Radio, the "liberal" news outlet is the same as the corporate news, just told in less frenzy and commercials. Corporate news will not allow Occupy demonstrations to be reported in the news. NPR doesn't report it either. BBC America, however, does report the demonstrations. It's like being in Ukraine during Soviet occupation listening to Voice of America, the "freedom" station. Now BBC is the freedom station for Americans. The Occupy people are being labelled subversive, when in fact the republicans are the true subversives. They also know winners write the history books.


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WHITE MAN'S LAST STAND: THE SEQUEL TO THE SEQUEL

          jaap mooy, 1982


Last night I listened to the Democrat convention on a Charlotte radio station, WFAE FM. I wanted to hear Elizabeth Warren and Clinton. The earlier speakers were good. It was heartening listening to Warren, an intelligent, articulate woman; alas, too intelligent to beat her teabag opponent who drives a truck. Seeing her up against ignorance in her election, I have little hope for her. Unless times are changing, which I've not seen enough sign of to be convincing, we're still in the world where idiots rule. Seems kind of odd to be saying that in relation to Obama and Clinton, but they do not rule. Both of their presidencies were rendered powerless by below-the-belt republican chicanery. Yet they are known by the people who are not cement-heads as good and able men. I admired Clinton throughout his presidency and have admired Obama. The repubs who want absolute power for themselves have taken to sedition in both cases to destroy their influence. I've watched it since the Reaganista takeover of our government that over the last 30+ years has by now made us into a Third World country. It's been distressing in my adult life to see the Reagan era as it plays out every day.

Obama is the first "hope" I've seen that the Reagan revolution is shutting down by its own stasis as it has become the Party of Hate, the Party of No, the Party of Obstruction. They offer nothing but Depression. It's all they have to offer. It's all they know how to do. I like the thought of Obama being the beginnings of breaking away from the Reagan revolution because it has finally demonstrated what was known at its beginning, their methods don't work. They are about destroying, lying, taking from the working people, giving to the rich, and killing the poor at home and abroad. It's their solution to the problem of what to do about all the poor people in the world. I have hoped the party would self-destruct under its house of cards made of lies, deception, murder and hate. Then I think of the hymn Farther Along asking why such people prosper. "We'll understand it all by and by." I'm actually somewhat ashamed because this is the behavior of the White Man Party. I'm a white man and these are the people of my race and gender. Do I ever have an identity problem.

Not all white men are cement-heads. I know a lot of white men not listening to Limbaugh, not freaked out over a black president, and not hating Hilary Clinton. I was impressed last night to hear white men talking who were rational and not intimidated by ignorance as the democrats have been ever since the Reagan Junta. I'm especially glad to see the democrats coming away from a quarter century of being intimidated by ignorance. Ignorance is rather intimidating and has been the trump card in Karl Rove's strategies that have worked very well putting W in as governor of Texas and then as president. Rove needs to be charged with sedition just for doing that to us, let alone all that followed. I forget, however, the republican party is not about being a benefit to the American people. That's never a consideration. Since Reagan, the purpose of the republican party has been to bust unions, take from the working people and give to the rich, destroy democracy and the democrat party, and, like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, rule absolutely, meaning militarily. It's police state they're taking us to, systematically, step by step.

I catch myself getting excited hearing Clinton give a speech that is not characterized by lying, and Elizabeth Warren. Hearing intelligent people talk has always entertained me. I remember the Supremes hand-picked for allegiance determined that multi-national corporations can put unlimited money into American political campaigns. The rule of thumb is that money determines the election. The candidate spending the most money wins. It works out that way. Arab oil money and Texas oil money who want to see the American people made into one peasant class of cheap labor. The most money commands the military. They've got us. The corporate world has us. All they need is to get rid of Obama, shut down the democrats. Romney is no candidate and cannot make any better president than W. I doubt he'd be as sinister. When I think it looks like Obama has it, I remind myself that republicans do not need to win elections, and money spent is the key. If a vast amount of money is strategically injected into the White Man coffers in the next weeks, it will determine how the election goes. I don't think it has happened yet, but have an idea after the conventions the money flow will increase greatly.

Nothing is going to be done about the "unfairness" of that decision by the Supremes, because that decision sealed the tomb door shut on democracy. I don't anticipate it rising the third day. Evidently democracy was an Enlightenment ideal that is not practical, doesn't work. The Soviet attempt at communism didn't work either. The kinds of people we have tearing down what little bit of democracy we had left are of the very mind the Constitution was written to protect us from. Bypass the alarm system and walk right in. Throw a little meat to the dog. I can't help but think, however, that it is so refreshing to hear politicians, Clinton and Warren, talking so eloquently and not lying. Haven't heard that in a long time. Of course, the repubs would say they was lying. Lying is the only form of communication the republican dark cabal knows. They would naturally say everybody else is lying. I'm not going to allow pessimism take control. I'd like to think this is the end of the Reagan revolution. I used to think excess had limits, but have learned  during the Reagan era that excess has no limits.

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