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Monday, August 22, 2005

Peaceniks and The Public Transportation System

The newsmedia is on board the steadily-thumping anti-war tram conducted by Cindy Sheehan and her political handlers.

Tram, because I’m not sure this “movement” deserves the locomotive appellation often given to strong and forthright endeavors. Cindy’s circus, after all, is a relatively new conjuring that has little originality to it.

It re-invents an old bag of tricks: different bag, same tricks. Its followers are often frighteningly witless, in the image of the tram’s conspiracy-mongering conductor. The movement is slow: nothing, it seems, has been accomplished except the sullying of what was a pastorally sparse patch of Texas land.

It carries passengers not from one end of the country to another, but a tiny, eminently walkable distance. In this case, those inclined to pay a degree of attention to the boondoggle are firmly seated at the left wing, inclined to support the impeachment of the Republican president merely on the basis of his purportedly ape-like countenance. The tram just brings them from one town (“crazy”) to the next town (“violently crazy”).

And like any monorail company worth its stereotypical salt, this one has a stable of fast-talking salesmen pitching the panacea of a public transportation system to whoever will listen. They’ll tell you that the monorail will put your town on the map. That the future is the monorail, that everyone will soon be on board a monorail.

But any tram which owes its existence to fast-talking puffery and gentle flogging from soulless swindlers was probably not worth the investment. If the people need a train, the demand should be obvious.

And so it is with Cindy Sheehan’s simulacrum of a movement. It needs to be blown and puffed and flogged every day on every facet of the mass media in order to even convince people that it is a legitimate movement.

But it is a farce, and the worst part is that these political masterminds, of the Trippi stripe, have bought their own pamphlets hook, line, and sinker. They are sure that if the public could only understand how much like a monkey George Bush looks, they’d recognize his incompetence. They are sure that if the public could only realize that one of the reasons for going to war has fallen through, they would make the conclusion that the country must therefore surrender to its enemies and withdraw. They are sure that if the country would only listen to Cindy Sheehan, it’d obey her, because she is sad and sadness makes a person a better war strategist. They are sure that if only the nation would open its eyes, it’d see the vile Jewish power grab being conducted before them, and the broad and deep Zionist conspiracy that it represents.

It all sounds a bit off, in the way a mentally deficient child appears a bit off, but you often resist saying so because, regardless, what a darling she is; how sad you are for her. Yet all of those things, in a slicker vernacular, have been uttered at that makeshift camp in Crawford, Texas.

It is time for those wild-eyed assertions to be identified for what they are.

Posted on August 22, 2005 07:55 AM. Permalink