Sick and Tired and Fed Up

I can�t speak for anybody but myself, but this year�s presidential race is already boring the bejesus out of me. It is also pissing me off. The one is as bad as the other.

Your humble correspondent is fast running out of patience with the negative campaigning, the name calling, the outright lying and innuendo. He is angry with politicians whom he sees increasingly as something less than candid, a pack of dishonest jackals, driven by personal agenda that ignores the public good. He is sick of the media and its sensationalist coverage and the simple fact that the fourth estate seems to have a large pack of bitches in the fight, not one of them named truth.

He is angry with Republicans and Democrats alike but sees no relief in sight from the splinter parties spawned by lesser gods. He sees little integrity among our leaders, elected or appointed. He thinks the country is going to hell in a handbag no matter who wins the White House, or congress, or what stripe of polecat gets appointed to the Supreme, or any other, Court.

He distrusts the fickle, celebrity driven voting public, and is beginning to hate the lazy butt band of morons who don�t bother to vote at all or only when the sun shines and the temperature is just right. He despises his own generation, but hates even more those entrusted with their education. What we learn from them about things important can be put in a fly�s navel with room left over for a basketball. Integrity has also fled the teaching profession.

He detests the loudmouths in the entertainment industry, the undereducated, over-opinionated Hollywoodies who, like Babs Streisand, have resonance where their brains ought to be, or the megalomaniacal Martin Sheen confusing his tinseltown set with the real oval office. Then there are the faux literary types like porcine Michael Moore whose esthetic career peaked with ROGER and ME, heading south ever since.

And the bloggers are the least of these our brethren. �Hell, we offer pure liberal (or conservative) opinion. Who needs facts or truth. Blog on, blog on for Jesus, or Senator Kerry, or Howard Dean. Blog on.�

His dissatisfaction begins with the core of power in Washington, DC and extends all the way down to the inadequate choices voters are offered right here in Macon Georgia, Ward 1, Precinct East Macon 4, where he will cast his first vote in three weeks inside a mental health facility which serves as our local polling place. Wonderful irony that; we vote in a booby hatch, a cuckoo�s nest, a treatment center for nut cases.

So like all of us, your humble correspondent checks the calendar and determines that it is now the middle of February, checks it once again to see that the next general election is scheduled for early November, more than eight long, dreary months from now, after which the nation may get a short break unless the results are deadlocked in some contested mess that will let us repeat the Florida Follies of four years past. Eight months of political campaigning is the rough equivalent of an eternity in some particularly nasty hell. Eight months of boredom cum crapola. Eight months of smaller than life actors preening and mincing atop the national stage, marionettes on a string, mostly, or maybe one of those sock puppets speaking and moving with the hand of a Carl Rove or a Terry MacAuliffe crammed up its all-too-compliant ass.

There are no statesmen here. Our national leaders died a generation ago, longer perhaps. They were with us during the Second World War and for a short time afterwards. But they died. Of natural causes, or murdered, or of plain old age. We have not replaced them because we prefer to look upon our heads as flawed versions of ourselves, whose private lives must be eagerly dissected to appease the rampant purulent fantasies that control our pathetic little lives. Got herpes? Nice to know that your Senator has genital warts. Stupidity loves company, doesn�t it?

Politics is no longer an honorable profession practiced by honorable men, driven by honorable ideals. It has become a cesspool, attracting the power-craving, self-serving, vicious kind of misanthrope who would have been a gangster, drug dealer, bootlegger, or made man in another era. And we worship these scumier beings as if they were worthy of a single drop of our attention.

Of course we worship the androgynous Michael Jackson, just as much. And we fall all over ourselves to fawn at the feet of the rich and famous or to follow every detail of a grizzly homicide. We tend to put our politicians on the same plain as we our rock stars, our talent challenged hip hoppers and inept divas, our boy bands, and the buffoons who crave their fifteen minutes of attention on Reality TV.

We have become a nation of me too-ists, of conformity, of endless victimization. We may no longer be worthy to carry on the light of Western Civilization. We may not be strong enough to fight a total war that has been brought to our shores by a pack of fundamentalist Muslims who would happily wipe us out, man, woman, and child.

We may not have much of a future. To have a future we need leaders.

Seen any lately?

TAKE THE BOORTZ CHALLENGE: My favorite (and only regular) talk show host is Neal Boortz, operating out of Atlanta. He�s a libertarian, generally conservative, ex-lawyer, big-mouthed genius who both entertains and enlightens. His web site is http://boortz.com, and is updated each weekday morning. It is worth checking out regularly.

Yours truly has written about Mr. Boortz three times: (1) PHIL DONAHUE: The Host With The Least http://expage.com/luciusson239 (2)NEAL BOORTZ: Libertarian Talk Radio http://expage.com/luciusson247 and (3) NEAL BOORTZ KICKS BILL O�REILLY�S POMPOUS ASS http://expage.com/luciusson259

Neal has issued two challenges to his listeners, and I repeat them for you to see whether any brave souls will pick up the gauntlet in defense of liberalism and either call the show or send the man an email (address and telephone numbers on the web site). To date, Neal has lost not a single encounter with those who would challenge his premises.

The First concerns Fox News. Many, if not most, liberals are convinced that the FNC presents biased news slanted to the right. Boortz invites the public to contact him after listening to Britt Hume�s 6:00 PM program and point out where, when, and how IN THE NEWS SEGMENTS there is any demonstrable bias. Remember, this applies only to the news segments, not to those portions of the hour which are clearly meant to introduce the opinions of pundits. To date nobody has even attempted to make this leap of faith. Call the show toll-free or contact him via email. Interesting letters are likely to be reprinted on his web site. You could become famous.

The Second concerns allegations of lying by the President prior to the outset of Gulf War II. Boortz claims that Mr. Bush never once told a lie. The caller must accept that the definition of �lie� includes the notion that if somebody is not telling the truth, but honestly thinks he is, then it is not lying. Simple enough. Go ahead, prove that the President lied. But beware, go armed with fact, not opinion. Terry MacAuliffe and his ilk know not what fact is. Neal Boortz loves a good argument. He will slice the pompous, the unwary, and the patently stupid to ribbons.

There you have it. Will the brave among the readers of DEMOCRACY MEANS YOU take either Boortz challenge? Go ahead, make my day. Pop has promised to record Neal�s progie each and every day while I am slaving away at school. Will be making the same offer later over at Political Puzzle Dot Org. Got some pretty loud mouths over there. They, too, can put their money where their orifice is.

Please visit my web site. We are adding two or three new episodes every week. This week we feature something called �TRAILER TRASH REDUX: Goin� Home Again�, �EVOLUTION and CREATIONISM IN THE BIBLE BELT, and TEMPER, TEMPER LUKE�s GOT A TEMPER�. All you need to do, good reader, is to click on http://members.aol.com/luciusson/contents.html which is our TABLE OF CONTENTS page, containing more than three hundred essays, rants, raves, fiction, and idiocity where every title is a link, and every link a different story. The latest episodes will be found by scrolling down toward the bottom of the page.

Have a great week.

Ciao,

Luke Angelo
Macon, Georgia
The Buckle Of The Bible Belt

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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