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available soon at _http://danielpwelch.com_ (http://danielpwelch.com/) .
Daniel Patrick Welch describes the horror of watching the debate between
Vice Presidential candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards, and suggests a career
change for the Vice President;
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Phantom of the Opera:
Cheney emerges from his bunker to snarl at John Edwards
By Daniel Patrick Welch
_http://danielpwelch.com/0410poto.htm_ (http://danielpwelch.com/0410poto.htm)
There comes a time in every horror story where the true face of evil must
make itself known. In fact, in every narrative, the revelation of the Man Behind
the Curtain is a poignant moment. In Oz, the wizard is finally shown to be a
tired old man in the corner manipulating machinery to create the impression
of power. When Zod and his cohorts leveled the White House in Superman II, he
saw through the stand-in for the President. “No one who commands so many
could capitulate so quickly.” The real president comes out from a washroom next
to the Oval Office—maybe the one Bill and Monica made famous…who knows?—and
says “I’m the one they’re protecting.”
But what if the man in the corner is the actual Oz? What if the cover story
is the bumbling fool, and when you pull back the curtain the actual
embodiment of evil itself is staring you right in the face? This was the reaction I
had when I saw just a glimpse of Dick Cheney during the Vice Presidential
debate on television. The man breathes fire, as is well known, and is known to
munch on a small child for breakfast each morning.
His propensity for lying needs no help from hidden earpieces; he suffers no
dry drunk anxiety, nor any lack of self-esteem from being misunderestimated
or hated by most of the world. He is not out to please anyone, and has no stock
of frat boy jokes to make reporters smile. He knows he has access to
information most people are not privy to, and assumes he is beyond reproach in
whatever he does. When he declined service in Vietnam, it was not because his
daddy pulled strings to get him in the Texas Air National Guard; and there is
no record, fuzzy or otherwise, of him being too coked-out to fly a plane. He
simply “had other priorities, and when the priority of not going to Vietnam
demanded that he be a father, Lynne was in a family way right quick, and Dick
got his 3A deferment in her first trimester. Thank God for other priorities.
His is the patient, curdled scowl of the PNAC, the human face of the
oiligarchy whose claws are now so tightly clutching to American power.
Burdened by an arrogance even he can barely stand, his annoyance is permanently etched in
the crooked smirk and the Lon Chaney tilt of his head. Poor John Edwards,
whose momma raised him too well, just can’t seem to bring himself to the
awareness that you may have to break the rules when you find yourself face to face
with Satan.
With Haliburton Light Crude coursing through his veins, Dick needn’t break a
sweat even when he’s repeating the same tired lies he’s been pumping for
most of his career. Naturally, he is unruffled when presented with the reality
that nobody in the world buys it—he won’t back down from his absurd
insistence on some sort of link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. In the face of Cheney’
s exasperatingly criminal mind, Edwards is at a loss. When your biggest
asset is your smile, it’s hard to handle an opponent who thinks nothing of
pissing you off.
I waited in vain for Edwards to start channeling Dr. Seuss, and stand up and
reveal to the world the depth of Cheney’s mendacity: “Your heart is full of
unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Griiiiiiiinch!” Alas, it was
not to be. Not just because the format of these so-called debates—although
they are marginally less straitjacketed than the presidential model—makes it
impossible. If there were much to debate between the two major parties, the
Comission on Presidential Debates has pretty much taken care of that. And there
is also the handicap that so much of the imperial mission is common to both
parties; so of course, when Cheney spat out his sideways snarl that Kerry and
Edwards are “not credible on Iraq,” Edwards dutifully responded by repeating
Kerry’s promise that they would “find terrorists wherever they are and kill
them, before they have the chance to do harm.” Yikes.
But most of my disappointment stemmed from the growing realization that
Edwards is neither Theodore Geisel nor Boris Karloff, and expecting him to come
right out and say that Cheney is “a three decker toadstool and sauerkraut
sandwich with arsenic saauuuuuuce” may have been setting my sights too high. For
the most part, Cheney got away with it all—again. And you couldn’t help but
see the outline of the script Bush was supposed to be following the other
night: keep hinting at Saddam/Al Qaeda, keep bluffing about Iraq and
Afghanistan going swimmingly, question your opponent’s patriotism, say he’s
dishonoring the sacrifice of brave Iraqi soldiers, and on and on. So what if your own
staff wrote the speech delivered by CIA stooge Allawi before Congress—throw
that on the fire too, and accuse the other side of being tactless for not
giving him a standing ovation. Cheney rarely bares his teeth on camera, and it is
almost always off the Senate floor when he tells opponents to “Go fuck
yourself.”
True, Cheney is not the entire Bush administration. Nor is any junta, not
even the Bush cartel, capable of pulling all the strings necessary to keep the
Empire humming. Still, ironically for the Bush crowd, cardiac patient-in-chief
Cheney is its heart and soul. Americans got a glimpse inside the undisclosed
location that is the mind of Dick Cheney, and a good whiff of the stench
that hovers above his neocon fantasy view of the world. It should be enough to
make people run for the exits. But then, it should have been enough a long
time ago. Cue organ music….
© 2004 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link
to _danielpwelch.com_ (http://danielpwelch.com/) . Writer, singer, linguist
and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts,
with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run _The Greenhouse
School_ (http://www.greenhouseschool.org/) . Some of his articles have been
broadcast on radio, and translations are available in up to 20 languages. Links
to the website are appreciated at
_danielpwelch.com_ (http://danielpwelch.com/) .
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