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No Country for Old Men
Would President John McCain forget who made that 3 a.m. call to the special White House phone? I suspect that his aides would not just let him nod off back to sleep, even if they were intimidated by the prospect of one of his alleged intemperate outbursts, but might our septuagenarian president be less than fully focused?
Most likely he would be, although as someone born in the same year as the senator, I too bristle at suggestions that age has made me less perfect than I once was. But it has. Sadly, those brain cells do go, and "senior moments" of befuddlement are more than a joke. But that shouldn't automatically disqualify one of us still-agile silver foxes from the White House, as few of my contemporaries are likely to turn in a worse performance than the much younger current occupant. However, looking at the top two men in the present administration, the age question does make a compelling case for very carefully evaluating McCain's vice-presidential choice.
That was my point when I raised the age issue on a Los Angeles Times Book Festival panel last Sunday, and my sparring partner, right-wing radio pundit Hugh Hewitt, wanted me instantly voted off the island of constant noise. He compared my "ageist" comment to someone making a racist charge against Barack Obama.
I take his point, as absurd as it first appeared. Absurd because it is obviously true that aging, as opposed to skin color or gender, does have a deleterious effect on one's physical and mental functioning, and to deny this evident biological reality is as nonsensical as denying evolution itself. The species survives when each generation burns out and is replaced by a hopefully superior one, and while it is natural to want to linger on the scene as long as possible, we cannot insist on our personal indispensability to the continuation of the human experience.
Of course Hewitt was not doing anything of the sort, any more than he would genuinely embrace creationism, summarily dismiss fears of global warming or otherwise honestly endorse the tenet of the sort of phony science that right-wing pundits must from time to time condone. They do so for opportunistic reasons, and that is why the significance of McCain's age must be denied by those eager to maintain the GOP's hold on the presidency. They will hold their noses and vote for him despite the sensible positions he has at times had the temerity to advance, impervious to their blackmail. Impervious, that is, until he decided to make a second run for the presidency, leading him to sharply reverse his past principled stances and accommodate torture, tax cuts for the rich, Pat Robertson and other favored fetishes of the Republican base. The right-wing talk show bully boys still don't trust him, but he's the only horse left to ride.
While they continue to loathe him for his fatal flaw of occasionally embracing a moderate thought, they are dependent upon his electoral victory to extend their vastly disproportionate political power. They fully expect McCain to betray key points of their cryogenic agenda; on Sunday, Hewitt condemned most of McCain's Senate performance and in particular his reasonable stance on immigration.
Their hope of retaining influence rests on saddling McCain with a proven rightist as his vice-presidential choice. The hunt is now on for the new Cheney, but such a candidate has to be brought in under the radar because the public is for the first time in modern history keenly aware that the vice president can play an enormously destructive role. That is particularly true if the potential president himself is, actuarially speaking, more likely to kick the bucket. Or, less dramatically, simply underperforms.
Let's not kid any longer. Age is a factor in this race and nowhere is it so important as in McCain's vice-presidential choice. If he picks from the very thin ranks of reasonable Republicans, it will be reassuring to more moderate voters attracted to McCain for his independence of thought as reflected in support of campaign finance reform and his opposition to some outrageously bloated military weapons expenditures that he has on occasion done much to expose. But if he turns to the loony wing for a running mate, we must become very concerned about the ability of a man in his 70s to fully perform in the world's most important office. Is there another Cheney lurking in the wings?
Robert Scheer's new book is "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
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55 Comments so far
Show AllANDY UK: I feel the same way!
MBRUTON: Very interesting posting. Although I think David Icke has a few loose screws, what he does relate about Bilderberg and the global elite's plans dovetails with much that you've here shared. The astrological implications also point towards a very STERN authoritarian elite seeking to control the masses/resources, yet quite a bit (all that the cosmos has to aim at it in retaliation in the form of justice, independent people's movements, weather events) is aimed against this succeeding. I do believe the struggle will last until 2020 A.D. This is not a uniform singular power easy to overthrow, it's a massive system of interlocing powerbrokers who all worship at the altars of Mars (war) and Mammon (gross materialism when THEY already have more than enough, and their fellow citizens are struggling or starving in many instances).
McCain and Clinton simply an extension of the Bush policy of the last seven years and a hope to continue the same policy. The Fox network and these two politicians and power brokers of the Rupert Murdoch style of revisionism move to bring the world to extinction.
Clinton once again show her irresponsible thinking at any price to gain the American nomination to continue to lead the world to oblivion. I read with interest the comments of Americans. I consider myself a humanist and not one that has the USA tattooed to my backside although I gave three years to the military and so have a right to speak. Nationalism, is always based in me-firstism, let the rest of the world be damned mentality. Clinton is the new spokesperson for that idea and has now teamed up with the Fox network and the rabid so-called journalists who have helped diminish the America I once knew and fought to maintain. The way the rest of the world looks at the USA is colored by people like these at the highest levels of power.
The economic system that determines all peoples survival regardless of where they exist, also determines what a country will become, much of it the result of chance. In that regard the USA has been lucky, with well-worn imperialist ideas brought over with the Pilgrims. America has taken this country from the people who were here, the European model, without paying them. Some of us here know the story. The so called, "free market market system", formerly American capitalism, and now globalization into which it has now morphed. the US with its European allies has created the current means of controlling everything for the few. The G 8 has developed ever-greater means to develop these ideas and to take what it wants from the rest of the world and its own population.
The African Americans, the Africans, the Hispanics, Asians and Indians have been the slave classes that have built the white European and American wealth. The historic exploitation of the working classes of America brought from the world into its "melting pot" with the so-called freedoms and democratic ideals built from the blood spilled to form, compared to the European monarchies and divine kingship, so called Democracy unique in the world. The freedoms bought so dearly, were the first "Divine Kingship" of the "Robber Baron" and now, corporate power elitism.
To keep the masses quiet and to build the lives of Americans, consumer ideology supplanted education, the study human purpose, as a goal in itself. The economic forces, which have built their power, care little for human development and survival. They care largely for their continued power as an end in itself and for the few who have the most based on its protection with a huge military force, hence the oil wars in Iraq, this to support an auto centered disposable consumer society.
The expense of privilege in the community of nations may become the death of the globe and its entire people as a result of the American and European economic system, now out of control. Many American economists, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Stiglitz, and others view these historical developments as a threat to global harmony and survival.
American wealth once had an altruistic quality about it. The post-World War II USA, developed the Marshal Plan and cared about the condition of the world. Now the top one percent, those who have taken so much, continue to be supported by the thirty percent of Americans who still believe George Bush, and his myth of global superiority at the expense of the rest of the world. It is clare that to many of Clinton's opinions continue the Bush doctrine, of unilateralism.
We sit on the edge of an environmental and economic disaster. This American system is out of control and the economic meltdown will continue regardless of who occupies the Oval office. The only difference is that Obama is intelligent enough to know that there are fundamental change needed in the way America and the so-called "free world" do business.
Rev Wright, simply addresses continued black slavery in a world of exploitation of all people led by the US and now the power elite in collusion with the government to continue the "American Dream" mentality, represented now by corporate multilateralism and their wealth and power. Corporate elitism cares for itself alone at the expense of all people, the environment, the human experiment, its freedoms, and so called democratic ideals which has become nothing more than an oligarchy.
We should not be too pejorative about Rev Wright who simply rails against the exploitive aspects of the Western mentality and points out the deficiency in the USA of evolved thinking toward the slave classes and the human species. He, having been able to experience directly because of his skin color these abuses is perhaps too angry which limits his effectiveness. His experience in seeing the wreckage of black America and his intelligence, has caused him to take up the defense of the disenfranchised.
America has a history of caring about others, once a genuine American direction, led by people, despite their failings like: The Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and so many others who died for their belief in a better America and a better world, caring about humanity.
The media who carries their continued assault against those, who would in any way, attempt to include different thinking to bear on the so called "American Dream" which has become the world's nightmare must be seen by the masses for what it has become. The media must begin to understand its roll as an objective commentator to the necessary changes that must be made to the USA and the world if humanity is to survive.
The media above all must be changed once again to give democratic exposure to all important ideas. It must present an understanding of the complex thought needed to be brought to bear on global complex issues of survival. A departure from the simplistic superficial treatment ad-nauseam we witness each day which passes for news presented by the Barby-Doll class of newsreader called journalist.
Banjoman signs "your friend " because he is full of bitterness. His posts are entertaining and I hope to see them again in the future. They are not worth responding to, however. They lack intelligence and understanding, and his mind is closed. We need him because he is closer to most Americans than most CD posters. It is important to see what Americans are really like.
mairs - You, among many others, refer to George Bush Jr. as "the recovered alcoholic". Where's the evidence?
Where's the evidence? He has said it himself many times, says Laura saved him. Where have you been?