Hi, I'm mejeffdorchen, and welcome to the Moment of Truth. The one moment in the week of electromagnetic observation that doesn't shield its eyes from the blazing light of unfiltered fact.So I was talking to my lover, whose name is Anaheed, last night, and she was saying how Bill Clinton had said something about how heroic the gay liberation fighters of the Stonewall uprising were. And Anaheed was disturbed that Clinton was saying this, cuz she in fact feels the same way, and why is some politician talking about Stonewall this way, what does it mean that a government official, let alone the president of the United States -- and I was like: It means the same thing it's meant since Clinton began campaigning and would say stuff about universal health care and, I don't know, caring about stuff or something. Clinton is the first president who ever tried to hypnotize the left. And a lot of people fell for it. Not Anaheed or I. Not most of the people we know, even.
But, y'know, all the presidents in my lifetime up to now have tried to appeal to your so-called middle-american white christian family values type of person. The type of population that's like a fabric of doofussy midwestern sheep, a fabric that's frayed around the edges slightly, a fraying that makes up a kind of fringe, a fringe shaggy with loose threads, a fringe of white supremacists. A fabric of infantile, selfish, but mainly docile white people fraying outward toward a narrow fringe of very psychotic neo-nazis.
That was the constituency that Kennedy wanted to win over, but failed. The constituency of every president since then, of Johnson despite his great society, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush. They all courted that spectrum running from regular white to the bleached white of a Klansman's robes. A xenophobic, sexually repressed population whose relationship to the city could at best be compassionate toward the plight of, at worst a desire to nuke, but whether positive or negative, always the relationship of an outside observer examining and diagnosing a sick alien.
Clinton, though, realized that, like a tree fallen into a flowing stream, whose organic cells are gradually replaced by minerals until no tree remains but a new substance in the shape of the old structure, like such a replaced tree corpse, the middle class or rather those who perceived themselves as the middle class now perceived themselves as multi-ethnic rather than white, spiritually open or secular rather than christian, urban or, if suburban, still attached to the city in some personal way -- by having children struggling to be upwardly mobile there, or by visiting there to see art and hear music. They see themselves as sexually sophisticated, or at least open to the idea of sexual sophistication, or at least open to the idea of jokes about failing to achieve sexual sophistication.
Clinton believed that he and his generation made up as politically viable a fabric as the white sheep did, and he was right. The black sheep do indeed make up as viable a political fabric as the white sheep. And little backlashes like the congress of '94 notwithstanding, the black sheep are only going to become more entrenched in the next decade. And like the fabric of white sheep, the black sheep fabric has its fringe. And Clinton believed and may still believe that he must play to the back row, to this fringe -- that part of his message must be for them.
This is the fringe that believes that a little socialism isn't necessarily a bad thing, and its farthest, most frayed threads are the freelove business-as-usual-sabotaging anarchists.
The thing is, I don't think Clinton believes he has to play to this fringe anymore. I think he's come to realize that the fabric of the black sheep doesn't fray out as he'd at first thought. It doesn't fray toward the left, but toward the right. The black sheep fabric weaves itself out toward the progressive white sheep, then to the easy-going white sheep, then into the thick of white sheep fabric proper, and then out to the kkk fringe. The crazy leftists aren't even part of the fabric at all. Even though some of us helped him get elected -- even to a second term, though I'm proud to say I stayed home and masturbated that day. Why go all the way to a voting booth to get jacked?
So now Clinton's job is to court the useless left fringe he first wooed into electoral politics, to woo what few of them are stupid enough to keep hoping he'll be the McGovern we never had, or the Harold Washington who kept his weight just this side of morbid obesity -- but at least to publicly make the left fringe his own, to make sure the white sheep think the left fringe belongs to Clinton, so that while Gore is campaigning and trying to distance himself from Clinton's morality, he can simultaneously distance himself from the dead weight of Clinton's black sheep fringe. Oh, yes, Gore will continue to talk up environmentalism, a black sheep issue, but so what? The Sierra Club is made up of exactly those progressive white sheep I mentioned. They blend rightward toward the easy-going white sheep who think Tipper Gore's censorship of rock lyrics is probably not a bad idea, and they in turn blend toward the even whiter folks who hear Satan's teachings subliminally leaking from the theme song of "Friends".
But remember, all this pandering to these sheep or those sheep is mostly for show. In the end all politicians have the same clients to appease. They just have to get elected first. Then they can jockey around trying to stay popular with whatever bandwagon they hitched their electoral ass to while wheeling and dealing with, and for, the real power -- the corporate owners of the earth.
I remember when Carole Mosely Braun got elected. I was hanging out at work with my union steward and her female domestic partner. And I mentioned that I wasn't so impressed with the first black woman senator, and predicted that it would be business as usual. And these proworker union lesbians were pissed at me -- no it's not business as usual, they said. Well, years later, after Senator Braun made it part of her career choice to cozy up to one of the worst regimes in Africa, a Nigerian government that saw no reason not to kill its own people for the benefit of transnational oil companies -- I hope we've all learned our lesson.
Voting can be an expedient. It can help push an issue this way or that. Reproductive rights are very important. But fundamental change? A black woman senator is still a US Senator. Gays in the military are still soldiers. I was against gays in the military. I think it should be against the law for anyone to be in the military, regardless of sexual orientation.
The problem is the structure. If Krupp and Shell and Henry Ford like the way the Nazis run things, then putting Margaret Thatcher or Barney Frank or Thurgood Marshall into the office of Fuhrer isn't really gonna change much.
But I have to admit, it was nice that someone tried to hypnotize me for once. It was nice that the lies and deceit were directed at least partially toward me. But I'll put my hope back in a politics outside the electoral. I mean, fun's fun, but I'm glad the white sheep are the main market for electoral hypnotism again. They deserve to have their hopes dashed over and over -- they're stupid. They're gullible and, unlike those of us in favor of sharing resources more equitably, those of us who believe in treating the earth and its denizens with a lot more respect than they're currently getting -- unlike us, the white sheep deserve to get screwed time and time again because they are simply wrong.
Have a pleasant next few weeks. This has been mejeffdorchen with The Moment of Truth.
Notice: The copyright on these essays will only be invoked if someone besides Jeff Dorchen tries to make a profit with them or uses them without giving Jeff credit.
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