The Politics of Personal Destruction
By Bob Falk

"The powers that be ain’t the ones that you see." --Vovo Blovo

There’s something very suspicious about the whole impeachment charade. With the plethora of activities by Bill Clinton et al that do raise the specter "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" why the need to fill the media with characters and events more suited to the likes of the Jerry Springer Show than to reasoned political discourse. Lies and deceit are the currency of government. Is the turmoil we’ve been assaulted with over the past few years for real, or is it all merely a distraction. Is the sex and sleaze intended to divert our attention from preparations for profound and unwholesome changes in American life and/or an upcoming war? In the word’s of Fox Mulder’s Deep Throat, "Trust No One."

"A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful." --John Jay Chapman

One of the problems with being an anarchist is that you’ve got to put up with abuse from every political party and faction that believes it has a right to take your money and run your life. I suppose I ought to preface this column with the disclaimer that although this month’s column is critical of the Democrats and some of the organizations that push their buttons, it is by no means an endorsement of the Republicans or their co-conspirators. It’s difficult to understand how anyone who takes a dispassionate view of the ethical morass that is our government cannot question the legitimacy of the entire edifice. A pox on all their houses.
"He who is proud of his country ... will be particularly cautious not to do anything which is calculated to disgrace it." --George Borrow
"What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility . . . a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime." -- Adlai Stevenson

"All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies." --John Arbuthnot

There was a time when the Democratic Party was deserving of a certain amount of respect, but that all ended with 1950’s. The ethical and intellectual qualities of the Democratic presidents we’ve had since Truman don’t rise to the level of Adlai Stevenson, although Kennedy scored high on intellect and Carter on ethics. The tactics of the Democrats and their affiliates on the left since the 1960’s, culminating in their offensive defense of a puerile president who came into office promising the most ethical administration in our nation’s history and delivered it’s most egregious, could be their swan song as a viable political party. Unfortunately, whenever politicians step in shit we all end up wearing the stink.
"All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else." --H. L. Mencken

"When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?" --Mark Twain

"In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one’s party three times a day." --Jean Rostand

The recent condemnation of the politics of personal destruction by the Democrats and their supporters is an amazingly flagrant example of hypocrisy from people who’ve made such vicious use of it for the past 35 years. The hatchet job they did on Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign was obscene. Rather than deal with the issues at hand, the Democrats and their henchmen demonized Goldwater, presenting him as maniacal and bloodthirsty. His assessment of the Viet Nam war, that we either fight to win or get the hell out, was unfavorably misrepresented in the major media. As a result, we ended up with President Johnson, whose policy was to slowly feed our youth into a meatgrinder with no clear strategy of how to deal with the situation. The result was a protracted debacle that cost millions of lives in Southeast Asia. Too many of us fell for it then, too many are falling for it again and again.
"As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality." --Karl Marx
"Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others." -- Doris Lessing
"A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal." --Mohandas K. Gandhi
Among the president’s most zealous supporters have been the self anointed feminists and environmentalists. I have serious doubts that the leadership of either movement are concerned with anything other than advancing their own nefarious political agendas.
Consider the cries of sexual McCarthyism from the National Organization of Harpies, the people who pioneered the tactic. Their minuscule membership does not truly represent women, women’s concerns, or anything having to do with real equality before the law. They raised a hue and cry over the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court over three ridiculous and unsubstantiated charges. That over a period of perhaps ten years he had sexually harassed Anita Hill by having once mentioned a porn actor named Long Dong Silver, had once referred to a pubic hair on a Coke can, and had a Playboy centerfold pinned up in his home. That, they strenuously maintained, made him unfit to be a judge on the nation’s highest court.
Then this herd of hypocritical harridans hounded Bob Packwood from the Senate for being a serial flirt who took "no" for an answer at every instance. These supposedly militant feminists ignore the transgressions Teddy Kennedy and his drinking buddy and partner in the infamous waitress sandwich, Chris Dodd. They consistently give their toadies and pet pols a free ride for rape, murder, blatant serial sexual harassment of the worst kind... Now they’re up there defending a sexual predator who has not shirked at using the nastiest available means to shut women up. Can it be anything but hypocrisy for the same people who gave us such ridiculous extremes of political repression as "lookism" to now come up with the doctrine that the first grope is free?
It’s just as questionable that environmentalists are supporting the bozo who repaid a very big, very secret bribe by issuing an executive order taking the world’s largest deposit of clean burning coal off the market. Have a great big whiff of sulfur dioxide you fools.