An Irrelevant Campaign of 'Just Words'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the US the 'political season' occurs every four years and lasts four years. In four years, many words are said and inversely fewer mean anything. Do the math. The campaigns are but a sop to public delusions that the US is a 'Democracy'.

The US was the creation of Northern commercial interests and remains so today. For those who wield power, the campaigns are a light diversion in which mock debates are held about things that don't matter. When the dust has settled, the power brokers still broker power, the slaves are still lashed to the wheel. Every four years you are thrown a bone to gnaw on until another bone is thrown you four years hence!

John McCain came dangerously close to saying something meaningful when he said we may stay in Iraq for 'ten thousand years'! Just words? Obama said that the decision to invade Iraq was 'the most important foreign-policy decision in a generation' --'just words'! Unless he means that it was a bone-headed, fascist decision that has bankrupted the nation, destroyed the Constitution, enslaved the American and the Iraqi peoples, enriched the rich, and resulted in the murders of over one million Iraqi civilians. Why didn't he say that? Perhaps, that's not what he meant! Perhaps, it's all just words!

Sure the so-called candidates talk about 'Iraq' but in buzzwords, fashionable but meaningless phrases, Pentagonese and 'cute speak'! 'Cute speak' is 'pre-fab', 'lego' language, clauses and phrases assembled on-the-fly: one from column 'A', one from column 'B', one from column 'C'.

I may package this on flash cards and call it "Instant Pundit". You can be assured that you will always come up with something that that will pass for network TV analysis and will mean as much, that is, nothing. Just words!

That Americans actually talk like that proves that almost every child was left behind but managed to get a job regurgitating banalities on TV. It's 'cute speak', it's called 'failing upward'.

Does anyone really know what the candidates positions are? Has anyone bothered to ask Obama if he will rescind the very real harms done by Bush upon the Constitution? Has anyone bothered to pin McCain down on just when and how he intends to rob seniors of Social Security?

How does either candidate feel about the fact that, by decree, habeas corpus has been denied as an essential point of law in the US? It is that real and definable issue less important than the more reported facts that McCain is gray and Obama is dark tan? Or the other non-issues making 'You Tube': McCain said 'cunt' and Obama stole 'just words'! So what? Are they not 'just words'?

Have either McCain or Obama said anything worth stealing, anything about 1) the criminal manner in which we got into Iraq; 2) how we get out; 3) war crimes trials for those who got us there? Past this point, neither candidate has ever really said anything at all. Just words!

That the candidates are speaking in 'code words' may not be their fault entirely. The public has spoken via 'focus groups' and 'studies'. The candidates are just telling you what 'you' have said 'you' want to hear: just words! You want to hear meaningless platitudes, slogans, and claptrap. You WANT to hear bullshit! Keep in mind, however, that it was Albert Speer who said that the Third Reich was erected upon utterly meaningless platitudes --'just words'.

Among the few politicians who dared address real issues with real and meaningful words was John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. It was bad enough that America died on November 22, 1963, it died again on June 5, 1968. It has died daily since. And since that time politicians have feared to use real language to describe real issues in real terms for real people since. It's all just words! Very few --like Sen. Paul Wellstone --did But they, too, are dead.

The darker places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

--Dante Alghieri

The government of the US has become a fraud upon the electorate, a dictatorship which every four years pretends to be a republic. Just words, apparently! No one dares reveal the truth that the 'emperor' is naked. No one dares speak above the level of buzzwords or slogans. Fewer remember what 'truth' sounds like. Critical thinking skills were 'left behind' among the many children left behind in Texas under Bush!

One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected, is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.

—Bertrand Russell, Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind

Even as I write, Bush is trying to justify to the nation his having arrogated unto himself the powers of a dictator. All this was foreseen by our founders and statesmen. Bush thought them 'just words'!

Consider the following warning from the venerable Joseph Story, whose commentaries on the Constitution have guided Supreme Court justices since the Marshall court.

§ 1486. The propriety of admitting the president to be commander in chief, so far as to give orders, and have a general superintendency, was admitted. But it was urged, that it would be dangerous to let him command in person, without any restraint, as he might make a bad use of it. The consent of both houses of Congress ought, therefore, to be required, before he should take the actual command. The answer then given was, that though the president might, there was no necessity that he should, take the command in person; and there was no probability that he would do so, except in extraordinary emergencies, and when he was possessed of superior military talents.

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution

Bush's fallacious refutation of the vernerable Joseph Story is a highly revelatory remark that has been attributed to Bush.

The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!

—George W. Bush

Just words!!'

Now --there is some disagreement about whether or not he said it. It doesn't matter. If he didn't say it, he might s well have! His every action proves that he believes the Constitution to be either 'just a goddamned piece of paper' or --worse --'just words'!

Bush often appropriates the language of the old west without understanding it or its significance. He's not a real cowboy. He's a phony. But --today --it doesn't matter. It's 'just words'.

When he is impeached, Bush may very well barricade himself in the White House, claiming that he is "Commander-in-chief", that he is not subject to a mere order from Congress, that he is not subject to a "goddamned piece of paper"! He might get away with it because 'just words' will have lost the power to motivate 'the people' to the defense of the only republic they ever had, will ever get! Republic! Just a word I suppose. See how insidiously the establishment has defeated you. They robbed you of the power inherent in the ONLY weapon you had against them: just words!

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