'W' IS TO WRONG AS 'F' IS TO FUCKED

I know I said I would avoid writing about national politics this election cycle, but I can�t help myself right now. Just this once, please. OK�maybe twice. Don�t push your luck, boy.

It�s just another case of late adolescent neurotic angst, a need for instant gratification. All teens, as you oldsters know, wallow in sex and �hooking up�, drugs and alcohol, the usual litany of sins of the younger generation. We�re apathetic as hell except where our personal hedonism is concerned, and we can be ensnared by any cool sounding cause or ism that can take us beyond the dreary, pedantic world of home and school, sports and scouts, church and self-discipline.

This is why our generation can bring out thousands of its fellows to protest a political convention or an economic summit. We don�t give a rat�s ass about any causes, not really. We just want to get away from home for a few days, mingle with others of our kind, yell, scream obscenities, fly a frequent finger, perform like Pavlov�s dogs at the sight of a TV camera crew, party, and pat ourselves on the back because we aren�t like the old bastards we despise. Causes are OK. Nobody wants to kill cute little animals or keep children from learning to read and write. We want our grandmothers to be able to have affordable prescription drugs even though they are sitting on megabucks in annuities that support a home in the Hamptons and another in Palm Beach. Grandma is cool, especially when she slips us five hundred so we can attend the next socially-acceptable protest rally. Some grandmas encourage our lewd, licentious, and self-centered life style hoping to share a a little of it with us thus recapturing a bit of their own long gone youth. Vicariously, of course, the old lady�s heart won�t stand a single hit of crystal meth.

Not that any of us needs her money. We all have our own credit cards, bottomless pits of ready cash to purchase the necessities of teen life, all supported by daddy�s unending generosity. Real handy for making bail and getting cash out of an ATM.

Some of us need to satisfy all kinds of purulent urges. Me, I�m a news junky. (Don�t read anything kinky into that, Jose, I�m talking about regular working hours, mostly. Besides my social life is none of anybody�s &%#$*&^%^% business. Fill in the &---^%.)

Not really, news per se is boring. That�s why I can�t stand the interminable stream of idiotic comments found on typical B�Log sites. But interpreting that news, trying to analyze it for truth and importance, making an effort to understand it as some subsequent historian might is what keeps my cranial canoe afloat.

Republican convention has come and gone. Good timing. President�s stats are on the rise thanks to a major miscalculation on the part of the John Kerry campaign staff. Kerry keeps harping on his Viet Nam record, over and over. The dope made too much of a thing about his four months� service �over there�.

His deafening silence on the subject of his own senatorial record shows that his campaign is in some kind of free-fall. There is panic in the man�s eyes matched only by the terror seen on the faces of the desperate DNC.

Bring out the ex- Clinton big guns�how about Professor Begala and Cue-ball Carville? That won�t work either. The spinsters of L�Affaire Lewinsky now belong to the ages, to a past generation of operatives. But it is good to see the old fellows on the stump, even if it be a rotting stump. Senior citizens are cute when they pretend to be relevant.

Didn�t Kerrymeister think that there might be somebody around to dispute the �facts� of his time in SouthEast Asia? Didn�t he anticipate the chinks in his biographical armor? What a sap. Makes you think that some really dumb ass is running his campaign. You, know, somebody as stupid and ineffectual as, say, Terry MacAuliffe who would have been canned after the losses of 2000 and 2004 if it were not for the interference of the Clinton clan, Hillary and Billary.

Of course MacAuliffe really does work for the Clintons who don�t want to see Kerry elected anyway. The whole story about the 2004 version of the Party of the Mythic Jackass is as convoluted as most conspiracy theories. In Washington Politics nothing is as it seems. Long ago it was decided that a �democracy� is best governed by autocrats and that an electorate of the ignorant will best ensure the continuance of the good old status quo.

The GOP convention? Nah, I didn�t watch it. Except Zell Miller�s speech, of course, and that on tape delay since I had to work. Zell is my political hero. But you already knew that. Knew it if you read any of my stuff. Or watched me lose my mind when I met him at a book signing last year.

Ian Kleinfeld�s anti-Miller buttons and bows will only serve to enhance his reputation among the Georgia faithful. If you haven�t done it yet, go ahead and read A NATIONAL PARTY NO MORE with its telling title THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE. Lame-brained liberals assume that the soon to be ex senator from the Peach State is looking for a cabinet appointment in the Second Bush Administration. Nothing is further from the truth�.all he wants is to return to his home in the North Georgia Mountains, read, write, listen to great music, and converse with the many good folk he has asked to share his front porch. Seek not the ulterior motive where there is none, oh ye vapid, East Coast libs. There is life beyond your shameless brand of polarized politics.

But I have complete transcripts of all the speeches�.Giuliani, Arnold, Cheney, the President, Mrs. President.

Kerry or Bush? Bush. Without enthusiasm. But a whole heap better than the gaunt ghost from the Bay State.

Neal Boortz thinks that Dems all over the country have decided that they should have voted for John Edwards during the primaries. Of course they can�t admit it now, but Stone Face just ain�t running a savvy campaign. They might win with Edwards and they know it. Kerry is just frittering his chances away by dwelling on a thirty-five year old war that people don�t care much about anyway.

The personality challenged Kerry will never be able to shake off his arrogant, wealthy, privileged fa�ade. Kennedy and Roosevelt could, of course. As men of wealth and breeding, they nevertheless had a common touch; poor John has the touch of a sex-starved cobra.

Besides, why should we care about �Nam? That was then�.this is now�.We got our own Iraq business all to ourselves.

Who would have thought that moveon.org really meant, �move over, John Kerry.� Sorry, John, but the original Great Stone face just crumbled into Franconia Notch deep in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Bad vibes.

Sick of the claims and counter claims of the swift boat crowd? So is Mr. Kerry.

Some think it�s all a matter of what they call �American�s Defining Moment. Old farts think that took place during the years we got our ass kicked in SouthEast Asia. Even older farts say it was the Second World War.

Both wrong. The conflict that made America pretty much what she is today was the Civil War. But what is proving our metal right now and well into the foreseeable future is the War on Terror. �Nam was a side show pretty much as tragic, as stupid, as ill considered, and as militarily incompetent as it was.

History is the inevitable teacher of truth. Contemporary fact and opinion lie to us more often than not.

Do I really mean side show? Yes. In the national psyche as well as the national conscience, the war in �Nam helped create a dizzy generation of protest minded lefty sphincters, but the originals are nearing senility now and are far more concerned with their looks and longevity than with mounting any challenge to Wall Street.

And so back to my generation of protester, copy cats of the aging baby boomers, swarming like cockroaches around political conventions, G-8 meetings, corporate stockholder confabs, seem to be a combination of spoiled brat, Berkinstock shod wannabes or old timey Reds who refuse to acknowledge that Humpty Dumpty made the wall fall down more than a decade ago and that �Red� China boasts what may be the most dynamic economy in the world thanks to a healthy infusion of good old corporate greed. Throw in a short-sighted gaggle who would return us to a pre-industrial society all in the name of �environment� and a group of animal lovers convinced a hoppy toad is more important than the life of a human being and you have the modern protest movement, reduced to terms that even the most myopic among them can understand.

Let�s hear it for Zell Miller.

Luke Angelo Macon, GA

Luciusson@yahoo.com

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Luke Angelo, Cyberbrat Out Of Hell, lives in Macon, GA, where he regularly causes trouble and proves that the pen is far mightier than the Mayor