Bush Turns Off TV…Sleeps Through History

Aide : “Will you be watching Obama tonight sir?”

Bush: “ Naw. Think I’ll watch a little football and hit the hay, get a little shut eye. Carl’s people will give me the skinny in the morning"

***


Bill Clinton, it has been said, went to bed each night with stacks of books which he prodigiously poured through late into the night, surrounded (we may presume) by overfilled ashtrays and hazy cigar smoke, half filled cocktail glasses and the snoring future pant suit sales person. George W Bush turns in early, there being 57 channels and nothing on.

Bush was aware of the Democratic convention of course, and no doubt followed it through the filters of his closest circle. He was thus aware that nothing very important was happening. Whatever he could absorb from Fox News while switching channels just before bedtime supplemented and buttressed his impression that just another election cycle was well under control, as usual. The Invesco field thing was a stunt, Obama a silver tongued lightweight. And so it was that History strode boldly across George’s path – again – only to have its chief protagonist and witness go to sleep and miss it, believing Obama was to deliver a speech, and not a new, international era.

The map of History is littered with seminal moments and movements for which great speeches are markers, icons, and stick pins that fix those events in space and time. The greatest orations given by the greatest orators all mark historic turning points and transitions, the memory of a speaker left to popular imagination to mark the event. Winston Churchill and his “Never Surrender” plea to the people of Britain marked a turning point in World War II, and is rightly considered one of the greatest speeches of all time. Delivered to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940 it was a ponderous address, designed to give the people of England a reality check against over confidence, and make a public plea for American assistance. It was a political address delivered to a political crowd in an era at the dawn of mass communication (and its associated dark arts). It is not remembered that way however, and does not hold its place in history for such pedestrian reasons.

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

To history, that was the speech in its entirety, and it has come to symbolize grit, determination, and steadfast resolve. Churchill’s grainy voice, captured on early recording equipment is tired and weak, but his message defiant and strong, a fist held up against the unstoppable swarms of Hitler’s armies. Churchill’s speech is historic by every measure not so much for its content – which was largely forgotten save for the famous last exhortation – but for its tone and timing, its context in an important juncture of history.

Of course, Churchill’s protagonist - Hitler - was no oratorical slouch, and though the causes of WWII are varied and many, chief among them is the success of a strange little Austrian with a gift of persuasion. His oratory, captured by Leni Riefenstahl in the famous Nazi full length presser “Triumph of The Will”, is also a historical marker of epic stature. Hands chopping at the air, eyes lifted skyward in a pose now synonymous with divine intervention, and brute passion pouring from below that famous moustache, Hitler delivered on a scale unequalled in the recorded era – and all in a language perfectly unintelligible to those who remember him now. Clearly the substance of Hitler’s words have been lost in time, while the image itself remains.

In America, the speech which will for all time define both the passion that is Freedom and the summit of oratorical heights is one from living memory, a rare occasion indeed in a world which values quantity of information over quality, speed and brevity over passion. At the dawn of the TV age, amongst a generation reveling in radio, moving pictures, and recorded music from mop topped British lads wielding electrified guitars, living in an emerging world of global communication and travel, a Black pastor from a Southern backwater gave great oration its last stand. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” may just be the finest, most compelling, and certainly for Post WWII America, most electrifying and far reaching speech of all time;

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"”


Kings speech is remembered for this last half, the point at which he abandoned his script and simply “winged it”. It ain’t much on paper to be sure, but it was never intended to live on paper. In fact, it was never intended, like all those before it, to live beyond the practical necessities of the day. But live it did – the right words, delivered by the right guy, at the right time and in the right place. He could give that speech today and be completely shut down by a modern media breathless for the vocal licks of a country hick, mouthed in rote by a shallow girl from Alaska. Great speeches are wholly dependent on the world around them in the present, and the changes that are wrought both because, and in spite of them.

Which brings us to our moment in time, at a place where change is so palpable you can cut it with a knife. The world sits breathlessly on a razors edge, at a time when modern histories sole superpower, wielding an atomic economy and guns to match, struggles to find its place in time. Will it continue to bludgeon its way into forever held memory, or will America instead realize its worth and value to the human species and redirect its prodigious power towards historic greatness? Enter Barack Obama, stage left, Invesco Field.

***

Bush: “I don’t git that guy, don’t understand him. He don’t say much that’s for sure – no substance. Big hat, not cattle heh, heh.”

Aide: “ Correct sir – no need to watch – we got people on it. Good night sir”


***


Is there a place in history for Barack Obama and Invesco Field? I believe so.

Not for the content of the speech itself, or the dramatics of an evening where even the weather stood aside and watched in awe. Obama has reserved his place at the pinion point of History where America decides its fate in the new century ahead. Whatever else may be up for discussion, there is no denying the sea change that is about to engulf the world, about to transform the planet after a recess into the bowls of war, hate, and unbridled, Imperialistic hubris. The American people will, in the end, say Enough!, and pass George Bush and his Neo Con cadres into infamy, and in doing so ignite a new American Revolution that once again triumphs the precepts of that old and ragged American totem – the Constitution of The United States of America.

When future generations look back to set a marker at the point where the balance tipped in favour of all of humanity, where the globe became a co operative enterprise of merging interests and shared challenges, where America resumed its rightful role as that “Citty upon a Hill” – they will set the flag at that moment where Barack Obama won the field, while the handmaiden of the “Ancien Régime” quietly turned off his light and went to sleep.

Don't Screw With The Russians

Plumbing the nuances of a black and white Audy Murphy film, some in the dark recesses of American glory are calling out the Russians. This is a mistake of nuclear proportions. While it makes for a helluva sound bite in the middle of an election cycle, promising a "toe to toe" spins differently over in Moscow (or wherever Vladimir Putin happens to be at the moment), depending on whether it comes from a lame duck administration or one proposing to succeed it. Those folks would do well to consider who they are dealing with and what their motivations might be, prior to racing a commercial to air.



Don’t screw with the Russians.


To the first bureaucrats and statesmen who staffed the front lines of the Cold War, this was a basic principle beyond rhetoric or question. They, after all, were the generation who had kept a wary eye on their World War partner while it absorbed, recovered from, and then beat to a bloody pulp the massive Wermacht invasions of 1943.


Left for dead as Hitler’s Panzers screamed towards Moscow, the mighty Russian bear under its single minded despot (the Georgian coincidentally, Josef Stalin), rallied the Russian heartland and built a grinding war machine from ashes – while simultaneously undergoing an epic invasion second to none in history, and an internal bloodletting of equal historic proportions. Russia had committed every sinew of its being – and veritable oceans of its blood and treasure – towards the single minded, zealously fanatical defense of Mother Russia.
Russia could take a punch, or two, or three, or thirty five, before it methodically beat down its enemies.


Despite the Western rewrite of history that was their due as victors, those who witnessed it eyeball to eyeball understood it was Russia who had won the war in Europe. They understood perfectly that the Russia that emerged from the smoking ruins of the Eastern Front was deeply traumatized by its unacknowledged razor fight, knowing that no nation in modern history had been brutalized on the scale which Russia had. Even with the sizable military, economic, and geopolitical advantage the West enjoyed over Russia in the two decades that followed the end of the War, no sane Western decision maker ever considered taking on the Russians - no matter how desperately they may have wanted to.


But that was then and this is now. Sadly, the folks whose fingers steadied over the buttons throughout the frostiest years of the cold war, and who were witness to the human tragedy that was World War, the hallowed members of that Greatest Generation, have passed into history. Behind them comes a new generation, and in America in particular, one whose own concept of history is known only through Spielberg, O’Reilly, and Halliburton. The button keepers of today bring to their task no understanding of the enemy, no empathy for its history, no insight into its soul - just no respect for their smoldering opponent.


What Americans like John McCain, John Bolton, and others of their geopolitical persuasion don’t consider when they rattle their sabers for a chest thumping with Russia, is the nature of the enemy they are calling out. They have to understand that you don’t measure a Russian by his politics, religion, or access to I Pods, but by the essential character of the Russian National soul. A soul that burns like the tractor factories of Stalingrad, kept hot by the memories of all those ancestors who were human kindling by the chord load in the darkest days of history.
McCain and his ilk have an apocalyptic danger to them unchecked, a danger that rises from imperial hubris and entitlement, from the ominous confluence of ignorance and influence. They are manifestly disrespectful of the Russian soul and, in short, have no fucking idea with whom they are dealing.


Russia will defend herself and her interests. She will not be influenced by or respond to threats or intimidation. Russia will react to any perceived provocation with enough measure to meet its goals – without limit. Russia is patient, and willing to pay any price over any term to ensure its safety. Financial cost, human suffering, body bags, or howling media will not figure in the equation. Russians have been there, done that.


These new Russians have money, resource based influence, and a massive geopolitical advantage. Russia owns Eurasia now and for a generation, with the clock starting when the Americans leave the Middle East. Gazprom is devouring the planets supply and distribution of natural gas, and many stalwart European "Allies" of the American way already depend on Russia for 75% of their supply. Russia sits atop the world’s eighth largest proven oil reserve - 4th if you include the member states of its Near Abroad – and are the worlds second largest oil exporters, behind Saudi Arabia. American military intervention into the laws of supply and demand for Oil has made Russia rich beyond measure, with every American soccer mom filling the van on Saturday morning making them richer still.


The great Caspian Sea oil bonanza – of no value without access to markets – was tapped by Russia in the Nineties, in a deal cut with the Clinton Administration to share the distribution via a communal pipeline that ran through Russia to Europe. In an effort to sever this mutual Eurasian dependence, the Bush Administration established a new Tulsa in Azerbaijan, attached to an exclusive pipeline skirting Iran, passing through Georgia, and dumping out into Turkey. To those who once would care to look, it means something that Russian tank commanders can tap their field glasses on the oil engorged Bush phallis at their will. Russia is parading its armor up and down the dusty roads of Georgia as casually as the evening paper boy in Nebraska, and is CNN friendly just to be more obvious. The mightiest military in history, with a budget greater than all the other nations on the earth combined – including Russia – lays prostrate and powerless before the new Russian determination. Former Soviet protectates and budding nations cower while their suddenly unavailable American cousins squabble over Brittney, Paris, and the evils of being popular.


The Russians will not allow their enemies to surround them, they will push until they have built their "Near Abroad" back into the defensive bulwark it once was and still needs to be. They believe this is their time, and their opportunity. They have absorbed 20 years of punches and are ready to punch back. It would be a foolish America that flippantly steps into the ring with Russia, without preparing to suffer on a scale only to well understood by Russians, but completely unknown to Americans.


As the old ring hands used to say – "Don’t screw with the Russians".