Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
As a student of ancient history, I don't fear Bush. What I do fear, based on my reading of imperial Roman politics, is fascism -- a putsch by a disgruntled, declining military against a capricious, crony-ridden, weakly organized government during a severe economic crisis sparked by natural disaster or war. Because of my family's extensive service in World War II, I am particularly sensitive to misuse and abuse of the armed forces -- as has happened in spades under Bill Clinton, who has wastefully deployed the military like a low-level police detail and who may be guilty of war crimes for ordering bombing strikes to distract media attention from Monica Lewinsky.
Some Salon readers complain that I said nothing in my last column about "the kiss" -- Gore's Clintonesque use of his wife as a showy sex doll at the Democratic Convention. Frankly, I found that inappropriate display too vulgar to comment on, especially after the media whipped up sweeping claims about female voters being swayed by it. If women are that stupid, emergency educational intervention is needed at shopping malls across the land. Call out the ambulances.
In fact, I had quite another reading of the kiss. Reports flared up early in the convention about one of Gore's major supporters, rumored to be gay or bisexual, making anti-Clinton remarks. That man, it was alleged to me on good authority five years ago by someone who knows them both, "has always been in love with Al." My first thought was that there would now be some ostentatious heterosexual display by the candidate at the convention. But I certainly didn't expect it to be on the podium on the formal occasion of the acceptance speech -- which I think both Gores degraded by their frat-house smooching.
Gore isn't gay, but his hothouse upbringing by his dominating parents probably produced his prissy, lisping Little Lord Fauntleroy persona, which borders on epicene. Like Hillary Clinton, Gore appears to have a slightly amorphous and wavering gender identity that draws gay admirers, who platonically worship in elite coteries of Byzantine secrecy. It's well established that Gore has a problem relating to average, heterosexual guys, who are leaning toward Bush.
But these are cosmetic matters. More ominous is the common argument that, whatever Gore's faults, Bush must be stopped because he would load the Supreme Court with conservatives. What it all really comes down to, however, is abortion. This kind of Machiavellian reasoning has distorted American politics for 15 years. The U.S. Constitution designed an intricate balance of executive, legislative and judicial powers. Too many liberal Democrats are allowing their fixation on abortion to determine their positions on national politics. A president must confront a host of national and international problems; similarly, the Supreme Court must weigh many more issues that are equally as vital as abortion.
As a libertarian, feminist and member of Planned Parenthood, I am on the record as supporting unconstrained abortion rights, and I applaud last month's long-overdue approval by the FDA of the French abortion pill RU-486, whatever its hazards. But pro-choice activists have turned into fanatics; their rabid rhetoric and bullying inflexibility are harming the greater cause of feminism.
Women's modern liberation requires, in my view, their absolute control over their own bodies. I have argued, from my atheistic perspective, that our reproductive machinery is our property, planted in us by Mother Nature in the womb. In other words, our identities as natural beings precede social citizenship, which we gain at birth. Hence the state has no power to intervene in any decision we make about our bodies.
At the same time, I am honest enough to admit that abortion is murder, a form of extermination of the weak by the strong, too often for expediency or convenience. (My sexual philosophy is detailed in "No Law in the Arena" in "Vamps & Tramps.") While I militantly defend the right of every woman of any age to abort her fetus, I am also very troubled by the obsessive centrality given abortion rights in contemporary feminism. Surely there is a failure of logic and imagination in those Hollywood spokespersons who denounce capital punishment (which I support) while defending abortion, a cold, lethal, invasive, surgical procedure.
If more women are to be elected to high office, including the presidency, women voters must show they have an interest in and command of politics beyond narrow self-interest or emotionalism -- which brings us to Hillary Clinton. The brazen doctoring of news by the liberal press was never clearer than in the aftermath of her first senatorial debate with Rep. Rick Lazio. Anecdotal snippets about respectable ladies turned faint by Lazio's crossing the stage to hand Hillary a simple sheet of paper were trumpeted like the word of Jehovah, then repeated ad nauseam in the Soviet echo chamber of the Northeastern media. No effort whatever was made to seek out contrary views -- such as of those who cheered, whooped and applauded Lazio's amusing, smoothly executed quarterback sneak. He boldly took it to Hillary and punctured her imperial insulation. Lazio's move had a Dadaist prankishness -- challenging the frame of the event -- that was in the rogue spirit of the 1960s Yippies.
If that woman, with her festering resentments, thin achievements, megalomania and anti-democratic abuse of position and power, becomes a senator, the press will have only itself to blame. The canonization of St. Hillary was a long-running show of the 1990s, fostered by the socialite set of spineless liberal journalists. Even today, when she is still too chicken to go on the Sunday talk shows, the press lets her off the hook -- though the Washington Post's scathing Oct. 1 editorial about the Clintons' mercenary treatment of the White House as a motel gives reason for hope.
The level of gullibility is such that major newspapers unskeptically reprinted the claim in a new book about the Clinton presidency that lawyer David Kendall had to break the news to Hillary that the president really did have an affair with Monica Lewinsky. What a load of horse manure! Wasn't it obvious from the start -- simply by the legalistic language Hillary used in her infamous "vast right-wing conspiracy" interview -- that she knew perfectly well the Lewinsky story was or could be true? The Kendall mission, if it ever happened, was clearly a setup to ensure her deniability. If the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces was too timid and overwrought to face his own wife, then national security was at risk, and he should have immediately resigned. And if Hillary, after 25 messy years of her husband's philandering, was that naive, she's as dumb as a post and has no business running for office.
Get Salon in your mailbox!