hollow man…

Posted on Sunday 31 August 2008


Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H. L. Mencken

In this election, it is the character of the candidate that will matter the most.

That, and pretty much that alone, has been the core campaign message Republican candidate John McCain has been peddling to all and sundry for nearly two years. His devotion to this particular talking point has come to resemble the kind of passionate zeal rarely seen beyond the compound walls of survivalist militia groups; and the slavish dedication he has displayed in tolerating the mindless monotony of such endless repetition is matched only by the muddy mooing of sacred cows along the shores of the Ganges River in India.

There are several very good reasons why McCain would like to keep all debate and discussion in this presidential race right there with him in that slow lane. First and foremost is the simple truth that the man basically has nowhere else to go. His dilemma brings to mind that old maxim trial lawyers have lived and died by since time out of mind: when the law is with you, pound on the law; when the facts are with you, pound on the facts; if neither the facts nor the law are with you, pound on the table. That is John McCain’s entire political reality in a nutshell.

The facts reveal that Mr. McCain has thrown his support behind just about every asinine and idiotic decision made by the single most unpopular and unsuccessful American president there ever was and, God willing, ever will be. The facts reveal that he has boomeranged away from so many policy positions he once espoused, going so far as to denounce a whole sheaf of legislation he had personally authored, because the Republican base despised those issues; but since he needed their support if he ever wanted to have a chance of winning, it was whiplash be damned and the Devil take the hindmost
In this truthout article, William Rivers Pitt clarifies what many of us have been trying to say. My hat is off to him for finding the right words:
  1. "… the man basically has nowhere else to go" McCain really has no platform. He rebutts Obama. He maligns Obama. He defends Bush. But he generates nothing of his own. He claims to be a Maverick who knows Washington is broken, but then he evaporates like cotton candy.
  2. "Mr. McCain has thrown his support behind just about every asinine and idiotic decision made by the single most unpopular and unsuccessful American president there ever was" His slavish support of the Bush Administration undercuts anything else he says. One wonders why he even wants to be President.
  3. "… he has boomeranged away from so many policy positions he once espoused, going so far as to denounce a whole sheaf of legislation he had personally authored, because the Republican base despised those issues" This is the most striking thing to me. He starts off on something of his own, then renounces it in favor of whatever Bush/Cheney are pushing. Even now, when he has an opportunity to think for himself, he doesn’t.
This election seems to come down to Obama or not Obama. Granted, the not Obama forces are strong, but McCain himself is looking more and more like a Hollow Men from T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem – representing more not Obama than anything much of substance:

The Hollow Men
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men…
  1.  
    joyhollywood
    September 1, 2008 | 7:37 AM
     

    In the Washington post today there is an article written by reporter Shailagh Murray A22 about how comfortable Obama and Biden are with each other on the campaign road trips. I once past Senator Biden in a room and thought he was very handsome. He is personable, attractive in person, smart, has years of foreign and domestic experience and knows through experience what it’s like to lose what really matters in life( his first wife and baby daughter in a car accident that severely injured his two sons)and what it feels like to almost die and be very sick and get a second chance when he had double brain anuerisms. It takes courage to get up in the morning with a life altering loss like his. One of my favorite quotes that I once read is “courage is grace under pressure” and I think that fits Senator Biden very well.

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