by Bayard Stockton
11-Sep-04
published by Santa Barbara Independent

How Dare You?
We are not Terrorists . . .We are not The Enemy . . .
We are your Americans, Your Countrymen, and even in politics, we demand civility.

We resent the implication that a vote for John Kerry is a vote to enable terrorism.

We have known for some time this was going to be a nasty, demeaning Presidential campaign. Now, every reasonable person fears it will get worse.

The vicious Swift Boat excesses, the unprincipled speechifying at the Republican Convention, the unctuous ?Who Me?? protestations of Karl Rove . . .None of them do The Grand Old Party proud.



Above it all . . the simpering folksiness of GWB himself, offering visions of an imaginary world which ignores the reality of ours.



Today?s White House ruthlessly undermines the democratic system using tactics adapted from the jungles of Nam: search-and-destroy . . .take-no-prisoners. . .inculcate awe and fear, in the name of patrimonial religion . . .But you Republicans use slash-and-burn against honored and honorable countrymen and women whose sole sin is opposition to your unprincipled foreign and domestic juggernaut.



Who are those people who whipped themselves into such jubilant frenzy in Madison Square Garden (((((((( last week ))))))))?



The tragedy is . . .they were our neighbors, swayed by passions which overrode their common sense, driven to trumpeting excess by skewed calls to patriotism and xenophobic loyalty . . .and, yes, codeword calls upon their religious beliefs, as well.



Sen. Kerry remained above the fray until he and his advisers could stand no more. Then they came out swinging, but still abiding by rules of courtesy. Even Move On and other 527 Democratic support echelons, refuse to sink as low as the Bushites.



We face ruthless, sinister political Black Warfare, pad for, one way or another, by corporate entities which spend other millions to burnish their soft and fuzzy images by advertising and PR. The Militant Right is on a roll lavishly fueled by businesspeople to whom the accumulation of money is more important than life itself.



The consequences they envision for The Republic are deeply unsettling.



In Black Warfare, or clandestine PsyOps, Plausible Deniability is a basic precept.



As in Swift Boat Veterans.



The clandestine Opinion-Weavers have been scheming for months, maybe longer, combing records, shaping innuendos, recruiting unprincipled, deniable henchmen.



They have the power of Government and limitless bucks at our call. ?Too bad,? the cynical cigar-waving, martini-lapping high rollers say. ?Tough apples. I got mine, buddy. You missed out.?



Maybe it?s too late to restore balance to the race. But we plead with you, Republicans of conscience, not to guide this campaign any deeper into a sinkhole of denigration. . .of irreparable bitterness, suspicion, anger.



We should not be demeaned in a manner reminiscent of Medieval Crusaders. . .Many of us, too, are Christians, charitable in view and deed. But our faith is gentle and inclusive, not militant.



Sure, we of The Opposition are not blameless: we have never swallowed GWB?s White House legitimacy, even though it was achieved legally. We have fought The President with derision and cynicism insofar as we were able. You will note that the protests in Manhattan ((((( last week ))))) were by-and-large peaceful, not brutal.



But now, we most sincerely ask that you abandon both the overt, published and televised calumny, and the undercurrent of truly nasty, divisive, curled-lip intimidation . . .



Are you afraid you might lose if you fought straight, above-board, and if you quietened the attack dogs?



We urge you to insist on truth in the official pronouncements of your campaign as well as in the supportive utterances of quiveringly-righteous groups which turn out to have spider-web links to your own councils. Your faýade of denial is not convincing.



Sadly, too few voices of reason are raised in the ferocious heat of the political battle being waged by the controlling element of the Republican Party. Too few voices cry out against the scurrilous Swift Boaters. . .or against other tactics sure to come.



You of The Right condemn all who oppose you . . .for whatever reason . . .as disloyal, subversive allies of Terrorism, and that is monstrous!.



We are under attack in a verbal civil war.



People who disagree with juggernaut politics quite seriously wonder if they are being scrutinized by agencies under your government?s purview.



By the way, whatever happened to humor in politics . . .sardonic, skeptical, but nonetheless, a grasp at laughter?



Then, too, whatever happened to civility? Has it disappeared as a folkway . . .

dead because commerce promotes our predilection for playing hardball? Because of the vicarious thrills provided so unctuously by Hollywood?



Used to be you could expect a civil conversation with a Republican . . .even a Democrat, if you were otherwise disposed . . .sit down, kick back, have a drink . . .mull Politics, Religion . . .even Sex . . .



Now? I truly wonder where my moderate Republican friends have disappeared?



The public prints tell us, monotonously, that we as a nation are hopelessly polarized between Right and Left. We?re not quite a daggers drawn, but I fear we?re pretty close to it.



Covered, thinly, by the cynical simper of the knowing Mr. Bush . . .or, rather, we feel the viciousness of the silky-snarling business titans and the paranoid academic theorists behind him.



We don?t play their game in which, as a rugby coach once advised my young son, you ?go for the goolies.?



The public faces of those who seek to enforce their view on us, are now all-too familiar: Dick Cheney, communicating barely perceptibly from his undisclosed lair; thin-lipped Don Rumsfeld; John Ashcroft, bland-faced leader of the official Sanitation Squadrons; Tom DeLay, retired undertaker, gerrymandering the country to conform to his view of democracy. . .and their legions of slavering henchmen. . .On down the roster of myopic, grasping Pseudo-Intellectuals and Power Mongers.



These are the prosecutors of the barely-defined War on Terror, a catch-all concept that permits The Executive Branch to brook no opposition. . .and which makes one wonder how far we are from the days of the Inquisition.



Theirs is strutting, swaggering machoisme to the nth, distasteful at home, ugly abroad.



There is no gentility in these people. None of that much-bruited ?compassion?. No sense of give-and-take. No openness to discussion.



Moderation has dissolved in a churning sea of paranoia, spite, egomania, grasping acquisition and bad theorizing. If you don?t agree with the appointed leaders, you?re against them, and they?ll let you know it.



Theirs is the mind-set that allows branches of the Federal Government to intimidate not just outspoken opponents, but those whose thoughts are anathema to the Republican arrogators who rule the country.



The Republican Convention was advertised in hill and dale, in town and city, as a panoply of moderation. The GOP was more than careful to show its cheerful, benign happy face . . .and to stash the brass knuckles it uses in legislatures, departments and agencies. Until it exploded and bared its fangs



We moderates wander wistfully in search of people on the other side with whom we can discourse and disagree, gently but firmly. Those who might provide conversational grist do exist . . .we have some here, locally . . .But, they have, for years, been out-maneuvered and overwhelmed by the hardliners..



In short, we yearn for a dignified president of whom we can be proud, who can control his seething underlings, and who can truly represent all that is fine in America, not only to us citizens, but to our friends abroad. . . before it is too late.