The pizza’ll be here in forty-five minutes, they say, which is just about when I’m going to want to eat it. I’m waiting, like a lot of people, to see Barack Obama tonight, and the pizza ought to get here maybe ten minutes before.

I have to time these things because the alternative is to watch much too much garbage on MSNBC, most ‘experts’ as useful as John McCain’s wanger, and although I’m a patriot and will fight for my country, watching political bilge, especially as filtered through a barely humanoid media, is way too nauseating.

Oh, I know, absolutely, the speeches have been super. Michelle’s, I saw. Skipped the Clinton’s for mental health reasons but heard they were excellent. Al Gore, caught a piece, pretty good even if he’s beefing-up nicely.

It’s the between-ads ‘news’ crap, the endless interviews with various party ‘leaders’ or ‘dissenter’ who with the greatest intention in the world manage to sound like they’re reciting their lines.

The convention itself is being held in a giant mall, as though it were a Miss America Pageant or the Oscars. Just as the Republicans do, the convention people run a vast influence-peddling operation which then makes a speaking slot available.

One reason politics and campaigns now seem to have no meaning is that the media will play or say anything, and they’ve got owners and sponsors and who do we think these people are? Hint: you don’t need a mirror, nor do any of your friends.

For me, this about Barack Obama. I want to see him speak. He is an eloquent, charismatic American political leader, and these are both rare and in constant jeopardy. The Kennedys and Dr. King had mortal enemies. Our country still doesn’t want to face the truth of its own history about that.

Forty years ago this week I was in Chicago, Illinois. It was a different town then, even if a Daley is still mayor, and the times were explosive. My candidate had been murdered less than three months previous, and I was a member of his California delegation.

I saw the chaos on the floor, the madness, the cop violence (the larger copy violence was in the park and elsewhere those nights; I saw it on television).

On the fourth night, the night Hubert Humphrey accepted a nomination he’d attained by gunfire, I did not go to the convention. I sat in my room at the LaSalle Hotel and couldn’t bear to watch. In a sense, although one carries on because that is life, I never again really hoped that my country could be recovered.

I think we have a chance. I don’t know what it means or what will happen. But it’s there, that feeling in the air, the electricity of it, the hope.

I turn the sound off most of the way. I’m not saying everyone ought to play it that way but for me it’s the only shot I’ve got make it through convention week.

There are things to see and hear in Denver which might remind one of the central purpose of politics, the higher purpose, which, in stark contrast to the coming rape and pillaging of the innocent due shortly in Minneapolis, is the dedication of one’s life, or a part of it, to public service.

Saw Michelle Obama speak. I don’t want to scare the numbskulls out there but how about her in 2016? If you missed it, perhaps it will be re-run, or be available on Obama’s website. Ought to be.

Then there was this crazy Republican congressman from Iowa who has endorsed Obama, he says, for his children’s sake.

It’s been quite a while since I paid any attention to the national conventions. I’d actually been present at a couple of them a long time ago, and as the eighties took hold I could not bear them any longer. So for me, watching any of this at length is a sort of Rip Van Winkle experience.

For starters, when did the conventions begin to seem like the Oscars? There’s no business being done in public except for the nominations and acceptances, and the pro forma party platform, which nobody ever sees or refers to again. The hall is a game show of immense proportions, maybe one of those Who Wants To Be A Gazillionaire? things.

Michelle Obama. Look, I don’t get it, yet I do get it. Half of America is in a terrible bind because if they let themselves really hear her they will experience the ruination of every twisted racial prejudice they’ve ever harbored. I think she’s that good. You put her in a room with George Corley Wallace and within an hour he’s flirting with her and ready to integrate Alabama. I would bet you anything you want on that.

Reminds me of Joni Mitchell’s line about a “woman of heart and mind.” She is someone I recognize as smarter, wiser, and saner than I am, and knows it, but who won’t let on, and is kind enough not to give me any shit about it. That good.

When I first thought about Obama back in January, I think, I asked an old and dear friend what the deal was. He asked if I’d seen Michelle Obama’s speech at U.C.L.A. It was impossible, he said, for a man who Michelle Obama married to be anything other than thoroughly decent and authentic.

I know now exactly what he was getting at.

Let me tell you something. If I end up disagreeing with Obama on half of his public positions, it will have no affect on my support for his candidacy or his presidency. I haven’t trusted a presidential candidate in forty years (well, McGovern’s a really good man, but not quite tough enough) but I trust this one.

I won’t be watching all of the week’s festivities. I will be skipping anything of the Clintonian variety because: a) I’ve seen enough to last me, and b) I know their game. I will also skip various pols of the garden variety because: a) I know what garden they were grown in, and b) I prefer brussel sprouts when I prepare them myself.

Please feel free to send your remarks to the site. I’ll probably only erase some of them.

Obviously, I need a strategy. Awakening this morning early and switching on MSNBC, the broadcast out of Denver now on the eve of the Democratic Convention, and within minutes I want to punch several broadcasters and a roster of Republican ‘spokespeople’ named Crystal.

Biden is an excellent choice, of course. He’s intelligent, which will contrast nicely with Mitt Romney, the idiot son of a former Michigan governor and said to be McCain’s likely pick. He’s also not Hillary Clinton, about whom more in a minute.

McCain immediately unleashed a couple of “attack” ads. The media, on cue, showed the ads over and over again –– for free –– as a way to ‘balance’ coverage. Also featured: various McCain spokespeople, nearly all of them women, which I’m sure is a coincidence having nothing to do with McCain’s ludicrous appeal to Clinton’s female supporters.

In one ad, the viewer is shown several flattering shots of Hillary Clinton, with the voiceover claiming that having gotten as many votes as Obama (not actually true), Hillary was entitled to be his running mate. This is at once both cynically manipulative and moronic, a perfect combination for McCain, of course.

The McCain talking heads are all named Crystal, or Tiffany, or Daphne or something. Watch them with the sound off some time, and their faces, their expressions, the dead fish shine in their eyes, the hundred-blinks-a-minute, will tell you plenty about America and what we’ve turned into.

The mass media legitimizes a naked McCain pitch for disaffected Clinton supporters by buying into and seeming to legitimize the bizarre notion that the vice presidential nomination is some sort of consolation prize to be awarded, the political silver medal. The premise is crazy. The question is, why doesn’t the media mention that? First, nobody’s saying that McCain has to choose Huckabee, the guy who finished second to him. Second, nobody was saying that twenty years ago when the runner up to Dukakis in delegate votes was Jesse Jackson and Jackson actually won more popular votes.

The mass media, with the repetition of McCain ads at a clip exceeding every hour, and the companion ‘commentary’ offered as discussion of McCain’s “response” to the Biden selection, has gone so far over the edge with this that danger lights out to be firing in our heads. Think about it. For every dollar McCain’s bankers are shelling out to run the ad, they’re getting five bucks worth of free airtime for the same ad. In effect, by uncritical (and presumably lazy) showing of the ad as ‘news’ the mass media are giving the Republican candidate about an 85% discount, while simultaneously validating the ad’s contents. It is in fact a significant monetary campaign contribution and therefore fundamentally contaminates the democratic process

As for the commentators, well, I wouldn’t trust them to predict yesterday’s weather. Would you?

So McCain is claiming that Obama didn’t ‘respect’ Clinton because she was not offered the second spot on the ticket, even as a ‘courtesy.’ Many Clinton backers also feel that way and have expressed it quite emphatically over the summer. One unconvinced Democrat is Susie Buell Tompkins, the Espirit gazillionaire who lives in Bolinas and contributes substantially to ‘liberal’ causes. Tompkins has not hopped joyously aboard the Obama train; mostly she grumbles about Hillary being ignored. As if that were possible.

This dissafection of Clinton voters is disturbing because it is irrational. Anything Clinton has claimed to stand for would be trashed by McCain. Yet, if one believes the polls, one quarter of her supporters plan to vote for McCain and another quarter plan to stay home.

Meanwhile, sandbagged by the Clintons and screwed by the mass media, Obama must find a way to break through. While for much of the last few months, he has led McCain in tracking polls, I doubt that his campaign staff has been deceived because regardless of margin, Obama has never gone higher than 47%. That is the ‘resistence level’ as the Wall Street folks say, and it is less than a majority.

I figure to watch some of this convention. I want to see Obama, and Biden, and the filmed tribute to the Kennedy family. I want to see the nomination. But I don’t know if I can bear to watch much else. All of those intellectual twits being interviewed; having to abide Chris Matthews’ self-important nonsense, and Pat Buchanan, for God’s sake, and the herd of hacks masquerading as journalists, not to mention the views of “the other side” delivered by the aforementioned Crystals and a couple of zombies named Tucker.

I know I should not be this angry. I should try to enjoy the great moment this nomination represents. I should try to stay optimistic. A potentially great President could be elected, if nobody rigs the electronica or shoots him. I only wish I had more faith in the ability of the average voter to see through the bullshit.

How many homes does John McCain own? He didn’t have an answer the first time a journalist posed that question. “I’ll have to ask my staff,” he said. Later, asked again, he said, “At least four.”

Actually, he owns seven, but I guess when you get past four it’s hard to remember.

This is the candidate who wants working people to support him because his opponent is “elitist.”

McCain also says that in order to qualify as “rich” you’ve got to earn more than five million dollars a year. Presumably, only four million will get you into the upper middle-class.

McCain says the economy is “fundamentally sound.” This is the candidate who claims he identifies with “ordinary” Americans.

Faced with the border dispute between Russia and Georgia, McCain took a combative stance supporting Georgia. Could be a coincidence, but one of his campaign managers was a long-time registered lobbyist for Georgia (the nation, not the state). Not any longer, he pointed out. Not mentioned: several hundred thousand dollars received from Georgia by his partner.

This is the candidate who talks tough about lobbyists while surrounding himself with them –– and in at least one case sleeping with them –– and then talks about his “independence.”

This is the candidate who touts his foreign policy “experience” and thinks that Iraq and Pakistan share a common border, and that Czechoslovakia still exists. This is the candidate who wants to keep American troops in Iraq until we “win” but can’t tell the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite without Joe Lieberman whispering in his ear.

He’s a “maverick” who voted to support the George Bush position on legislation 95% of the time.

He’s the honorable candidate who says he doesn’t engage in false charges and smears, then says that Barack Obama would rather lose the war in Iraq than the election at home.

Everyday I see articles about the voters Obama is said to have trouble reaching. These are, if one believes the media, white working-class voters and women who supported Hillary Clinton and are angry about Obama’s nomination.

The Supreme Court is within a single vote of making abortion illegal, and several judges are older than McCain. White working-class families are seeing their savings depleted and their homes endangered by the policies which reward corporations who ship jobs to China or Mexico.

In other words, knock it off. One of these candidates is utterly incompetent, arguably crooked, and prone to angry tirades and over-the-top outbursts. The other is, at least, a sentient being, very intelligent, and well-versed in public policy. It’s a guess whether Obama will be as great as Lincoln, but it does seem possible and, anyway, America needs something approaching that if it is to make it back from the abyss we all know is staring at us.

It’s our country.

(Note: for the past year, I have participated in an informal online forum which shares bad jokes and political dispute. Today, one sent around an op ed from the Business Daily entitled “No Contest,” which argues that McCain wiped the floor with Obama in their recent “debate.” This is my response to that op ed)

No contest, indeed.

For a couple of months now, at least, we on this informal board have batted Obama and McCain back and forth. Meanwhile, similar arguments or, if you want to keep it civil, discussions, have been going on all over America.

Although there is much to support the view that most of the public debates, between the camps, between the parties, and even among the backers of the respective candidates, has been debased by pointless exercises in rhetoric and ridiculous non-issues, we still have a lot to be proud of, as our country does.

We are, as Obama has said, an imperfect union. The great dream of America, liberty and justice for all, remains only partly realized. But in this conversation, this national conversation, beneath the bluster and the bullshit, beneath the name-calling and invective, there is something very special going on. Citizens of the most powerful country in world history are thrashing around trying to make their country better.

We often disagree. On global warming. On the best way to help the economy prosper. On issues of war and peace. On abortion, or the rights of minorities, on health care and the role of government, on education and the future for our children, on immigration, on taxation, on government spying. But regardless of our differences, we are united in what is often an unspoken truth: that human beings are entitled to govern themselves, and that America’s promise remains the best form of government yet discovered.

Now for my response to the Business Daily op ed entitled “No Contest.”

From the op ed:

“The stark differences between the two came through the most on the question of whether there is evil in the world. Obama spoke of evil within America, "in parents who have viciously abused their children." According to the Democrat, we can't really erase evil in the world because "that is God's task." And we have to "have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil."

The most significant point, I think, is Obama’s reminder that we must treat this issue with humility. It’s easy enough to point out examples, as each candidate did. What is harder, and far more important, is recognizing that evil is a human flaw, one which can be found in any society and any culture. It’s more comfortable to point to evils in one’s ‘enemies’. Certainly there are plenty of examples, and Al Qaeda is an obvious one. But a deeper and more helpful examination of the subject –– one which hopes to lessen the evil in the world –– acknowledges that it is a human condition from which we are not immune.

This is also a point I suspect might’ve been made by Martin Luther King, Jr., and that is anything but a ‘shallow’ consideration.

From the op ed:

“Asked to name figures he would rely on for advice, Obama gave the stock answer of family members. McCain pointed to Gen. David Petraeus, Iraq's scourge of the surge; Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who "had his skull fractured" by white racists while protesting for civil rights in the 60s; plus Internet entrepreneur Meg Whitman, the innovative former CEO of eBay.”

They both gave ‘stock answers.’ McCain’s is such an obvious embrace of the politically-expedient it’s painful. Does anyone really buy the reference to John Lewis, the veteran civil rights organizer and close friend to Robert Kennedy, whose advice McCain has never sought in his life? Both candidates were saying that they believed in the Easter Bunny. Can we move on, now?

From the op ed:

When Warren inquired into changes of mind on big issues, Obama fretted about welfare reform; McCain unashamedly said "drilling" — for reasons of national security and economic need.

“Fretted”? “...unashamedly”? One may as well reverse the terms and it would make the same amount of sense. Obama’s answer indicated that he had changed his mind over the years about welfare. McCain’s answer indicated that he knew a hot button ‘issue’ when he saw one. Perhaps he ought to be ashamed, since the change of positions (by Obama, as well, to a lesser degree) by the candidates proves not that they are open-minded but that they can read the polls. There is majority public support for new drilling off the coastlines, for the first time in decades, and the oil companies –– whose staggering profits are not taxed remotely enough to cover the governmental ‘services’ they buy –– are capitalizing on it. It’s just money to them, folks. The fact is that no one believes that the oil we will probably drill for will be available, or have any impact on the energy problem, for at least 18 years.
18 years. Sounds like McCain’s plan for getting our troops back home.

From the op ed:

On taxes, Obama waxed political: "What I'm trying to do is create a sense of balance and fairness in our tax code." McCain showed an understanding of what drives a free economy: "I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. I don't believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth."

The premise here is dangerously false. First, examine the terms used. Why is it “political” for Obama to call for balance and fairness? What does the writer mean, “political”? Is that bad? Why is McCain’s statement not “political”? Anyway, under any definition of the word, taxes are political, and you’d have to be a dunderhead to think otherwise.

Politics is about the distribution of money and power. In a real sense, it’s just like “The Sopranos” only with fewer blunt instruments. People buy influence. Corporate lawyers are in the committee rooms where the tax bills are ‘marked-up.’ That’s simply how it works.

Over the past fifteen years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, the most wealthy among us –– we’re talking here of those with assets of more than one hundred million dollars –– increased their percentage of the nation’s total wealth by a factor greater than fifty percent. This is not about ‘profit’ but about how the pie is divided. And of the nation’s largest corporations, the I.R.S. reports that nearly three-quarters paid NO taxes at all, by running the money through off-shore fronts.

In other words, who is kidding whom?

The only place that tax holidays for the wealthy is “driving” America is into a ditch. And, by the way, how many mortgage bankers are going to prison over fleecing the taxpayers (we pay for the bail-outs)? How many have friends in high places?

Finally, from the op ed:

“To any honest observer, the differences between John McCain and Barack Obama have been evident all along. What we saw last weekend was Obama's shallowness juxtaposed with McCain's depth, the product of his extraordinary life experience.”

Tell me something: what makes a particular ‘observation’ “honest”? Uniformity of agreement?

Actually, I believe that the differences between these men has been evident all along, as well. But I accept the plain honest truth that people of good will can disagree about values. So, while I, too believe that these men are very different, and that one is shallow while the other understands the world’s complexity, it is Obama who impresses me and McCain who worries me.

I do not find McCain’s life experiences to be extraordinary. In fact, with the single exception of his war experience more than thirty years ago, his life to me seems banal and ordinary. I think his judgment on public policy issues has been wrong on several critical matters. As a President, I believe he would be bellicose and lacking in sophistication. He seems to understand the world in very superficial terms. He also exhibits a pattern of ‘misstatements’ which bring into question his actual knowledge of geography, alliances, geopolitics, and history.

Like many people, I had serious reservations about Barack Obama at the beginning. I’ve been politically-active throughout much of my life, starting as a teenager; I’ve worked for members of the Senate and worked with a number of fairly powerful people in the Bay Area and California. Given my background, I at first did not expect to find much substance in a man who seemed to me a relative political newcomer. At only a few years in the Senate, and speaking with the kind of eloquence which can easily seduce the unwary, Obama –– at first –– struck me as someone more slick than serious. But not anymore.

To my ears, Obama strikes a note of thoughtfulness and reason too long absent in national politics. Presidents of both parties have appealed not to people’s hope but to our fears; recent Presidents of both parties have handed over obscene profits to their corporate friends. The country’s in trouble because of the policies of Bill Clinton and both Bushes.

What Barack Obama says to me, beyond the specifics he’s given us on taxes, government priorities, Iraq and Afghanistan, education, and energy, is that the only solutions America will be able to find must come from working together, that ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ are not enemies but people who will have to come together in common purpose and in good faith. I think that is a guiding principle of public policy, and I think it is essential if we are to stand together as one people.

Yes, he’s got most of his elected life in the state legislature and few years in Washington. The same was true of Lincoln, the first great Republican President. He, like Lincoln, realizes that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

As we watch the unfolding drama of this historic campaign, let us ask ourselves which of these men summons the best in us.

Revelations. Lamentations. Numbers. Plenty of Numbers.

The American public in shock, the American media in rapture barely this side of orgasm. This is who we are, evidently, a nation awash in sex-substitutes, gloriously in love with a kind of “morality” which cannot even bear to wink at itself.

John Edwards had sexual relations with a woman not his wife. Guess he’s finished. Now the corporate criminals in the Bush administration can breathe easier, knowing Edwards won’t be Attorney General.

Fortunate timing. Also fortunate timing: the blind-siding of Eliot Spitzer, who as Governor of New York was going after the executives who stole billions in the mortgage scandal.

Yes, I realize. Spitzer was an idiot to do the kind of thing you can get nailed for. So, apparently, was Edwards. Of course, it also depends on whose goat is being sodomized.

John McCain had sex with his current wife, Cindy, while still married to his previous wife –– who at the time was trying to recover from a serious automobile accident. He also had sex with a lobbyist whose clients got favorable treatment from McCain in the Senate. Nobody’s pissing on him. Nor on Rudy Guiliani, though in his case I think pissing would be warranted.

Politics, ladies and gentlemen, has got sex, any kind of sex you’re into, and the kind we ought to worry about some is not the Larry “Wide Stance” Craig variety but the sort where people find themselves compromised.

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that at least half of the married members of congress have at one time or another had it off with someone not their spouse. Maybe half of them are doing so as I write this.

Anyhow, adultery goes on.

I am not a huge fan of adultery, as it happens, but that doesn’t mean I never engaged in it. I’d like to think that I speak for many of us when I say that what John Edwards did and with whom is a matter of interest to his wife, his lover, and himself. Everyone else can butt-out.

Maybe it says something about McCain’s character that he has cheated on his wives, and maybe it says something about Edwards and all the rest of the mammoth list, including what appears to be a heavy bias toward predictably sanctimonious right-wing types. But only when it trespasses on public property (as McCain’s sex with the lobbyist) is it anybody else’s business.

Until we can deal with our obsessive problems with sex, we will have a government of people whose sexual behavior can be used as leverage against them. Wiretapping of public officials has been going on since J. Edgar Hoover, and the tapes have been used to blackmail public servants.

The FBI used wiretaps to try to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Robert Kennedy’s office phones were tapped and electronic surveillance was aimed at his residence at Hickory Hill.

One way to get sexual blackmail out of politics is to stop being mesmerized by these stupid episodes. People are set-up (Gary Hart and Donna Rice) or stumble into it (Edwards, as far as we know), either way they are compromised.

We can do better than this.

Last Wednesday, August 6th, an American hero died in Santa Monica, California. He was 71. They pretty much always tell you the ages in the obits, I suspect in part because older readers find it reassuring when the dead guys are older than us. I never quite understood why my mom read the obits; now I do.

Anthony J. Russo was the hero’s name. And even though the Chronicle printed the story five days late and crabbed it off the AP wire, the piece ran to about fourteen column-inches, which isn’t bad, and might’ve pleased Russo.

Tony Russo was Daniel Ellsberg’s partner in crime. Together they forced into public view the military’s own historical documents on the origins and conduct of the Viet Nam War. They furiously copied and brought to members of the Senate (who refused in some cases to look at them) and, finally, to the press.

The Nixon administration tried to stop them, seeking court injunctions against the New York Times and Washington Post and going after Ellsberg and Russo, whom Nixon called “traitors.” They risked everything, and they did it for their country. They were not seeking lucrative book deals or corporate speaking engagements; they were going to be in deep trouble no matter how it turned out.

But they had to speak.

That’s what heroes are made of.

There’s a terrific film which dramatizes the story, called, simply, “The Pentagon Papers.” It stars James Spader as Ellsberg and Paul Giamatti as Russo. If you were around back then, maybe it’s a good time to bring that tale back; if you’re a young ‘un, it’s time to ignite a little inspiration. When heroes fall, new ones have to rise.

Here’s the scene: two cars on the road in Oceanside, just north of San Diego, in one a woman with her 8-year-old boy, in the other a young husband, who is driving, and his wife. One driver, Rachel Silva, is drunk off her ass, the other, Frank White, is carrying a loaded handgun.

White’s SUV either nicks or narrowly misses Silva’s car; she gets onto his tail. Before the matter is over, White has fired five shots into Silva’s car, wounding both her and her child.

She is booked for felony child endangerment and misdemeanor alcohol and marijuana offenses. This was in March.

White, at first, was not charged at all.

Now, I am not suggesting that someone who drives drunk ought to skate. To the contrary, drunk driving is the cause of about fifty thousand deaths each year. To drive drunk with a child in the car qualifies for endangerment if anything does. Assuming the blood alcohol tests weren’t phonied, Silva needs some time behind bars.

But what about Frank White?

Thing is: Frank’s a cop. And in San Diego County, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis does not prosecute cops. Except for the time the sheriff’s deputy shot his wife, Dumanis had never done it in close to six years in office. And in San Diego over the last six years, plenty of cops had fired weapons in less than wholesome situations.

It took Dumanis more than four months to bring charges against White. She made the announcement at a brief “news conference” at which she refused to answer any questions.

To give you an idea what the prevailing view might be in San Diego County, consider the words of White’s attorney: “We don’t believe that there’s anything to support that our client’s conduct was unreasonable under the circumstances.”

White was charged with a felony count of gross negligent discharge of a firearm and a misdemeanor count of exhibiting a firearm.

I am not making any of this up.

Let’s consider first the smaller issue of whether White’s “conduct was unreasonable under the circumstances.” Translated, that means that if another driver tails you aggressively or otherwise drives erratically, it is reasonable to fire five rounds into that driver’s car.

White claims that he didn’t know the boy was in the car. Could be true. Eight-year-olds are not very tall. Translated, that means that he was only trying to shoot Silva.

The charge itself is a little strange, as well. Translated, it means that firing live rounds might be careless, and that firing them AT someone is VERY careless.

The brain spins.

The larger issue is, of course, what sort of acts by police are condoned now by society. Because if you did what White did, your ass would be looking at hard time, no question about it.

Any bets about whether White will go to jail?

I don’t want to pick on Frank White here. For one thing, he was released on his own recognizance and may have some ammo left.

Look, it’s not just Frank White or a San Diego D.A. with peculiar ideas about law enforcement. In Sonoma County, just north of where I live, there have been an alarming number of shootings, by cops, of unarmed citizens. In many cases, these were psychiatric calls, people acting weird, worried relatives. And while the local powers routinely exonerate the shooters it’s apparent that subduing people by firing bullets into them is not exactly treated as the last resort.

This is occurring all over the country. Also occurring: the rising incidence of death coincident with the use of tasers, a so-called non-lethal weapon. There have been deaths from rubber bullets, as well. Friend of mine, a lawyer in Northern California, mentioned a local killing where the victim was tasered, then wrestled to the ground and suffocated by several cops. His ‘crime’? He’d wandered away from a mental health facility.

I am aware that cops have always killed people and gotten away with it. That’s going to happen in any society because when you give some people lethal weapons and badges there will inevitably be a few who think that the latter grants them immunity in use of the former.

Traditionally, though, this shortcut to justice has been employed in the larger cities, mostly against minorities. Los Angeles was famous for it. But now it’s in the suburbs, now it’s ubiquitous. It’s an American institution, like Wal-Mart. And the question arises: how in the world did this happen?

Over the past forty years, there has been a steady militarization of America, precisely what President Eisenhower, a conservative Republican, warned us about. During this period, popular support for war has been conflated with ‘support for the troops’. Obedience is every citizen’s duty. Patriotism is shown by the wearing –– and cheapening –– of the American flag on one’s clothing.

This sickening state of affairs could never have been sold to the people without active complicity of the mass media, and the simultaneous gutting of public education (and the critical thinking skill which was once its hallmark).

In 1962, America’s secret police presented to John Kennedy a plan called “Operation Northwood”. This plan outlined a series of covert actions designed to provoke public support for various military adventures, including an invasion of Cuba. These were to be “false flag” operations, where violence against American targets would be carried out by U.S. agents and attributed to foreign governments. Kennedy repudiated the plan. But by the end of 1963, he would be dead. “Operation Northwoods”, however, under other names, would continue.

In the present day, as Seymour Hersch reports, the Cheney administration has explored several attempts to create “incidents” in the Gulf which could be used as pretext for attacking Iran. One involved using Navy Seals, posing as Iranians, to draw fire from U.S. naval vessels, in a modern-day variation on the faked Gulf of Tonkin incident which Lyndon Johnson used to sucker the public (and the Senate) in 1965.

I have a friend who dismisses pretty much any discussion of political conspiracy in the sensationally-convenient political murders of the ‘60s, as well as in the signal events of the last forty years. He has it exactly backward: pretty much every high-level political event is born of conspiracy. That’s how politics works. Right now, I’m reading a book by U.C. Professor emeritus Peter Dale Scott, entitled “The Road To 9/11.” In it, Scott describes the history of American policies in the Persian Gulf since the 1950s and their origins in American industrial and commercial (and secret police) ambitions. It’s footnoted up the wazoo.

When the central political realities of a nation are concealed beneath layers of pretense, and the general public is both unaware of the forces shaping policy and uninterested in (or afraid of) finding out, then there is a profound disconnection between the actual use of power and the popular conception of how that power might be opposed.

A powerless population is given substitutes in the form of material goods, violent spectacle, and escalating xenophobia. Seventy years ago, Germans chanted “Sig heil!” Today, Americans chant “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

My anti-conpiratorial friend is not alone in missing the obvious. Millions watch the television series “Mad Men” about the systematic development of the ‘consumer’ by way of psychological manipulation, yet do not realize that an identical ‘psy-ops’ program, using every imaginable technique –– from drug experiments on civilians and prison inmates to control of media sources to false flag military incidents –– has been carried out for more than sixty years by the most powerful business and political groups in the country. While some guys have sold us fast food, garbage beer, and SUVs, other guys have sold us militarism, obedience, fear of ‘enemies’, and collective amnesia.

Rachel Silva and Frank White are not very surprising under the circumstances.