October Surprise--Biting My Nails

[Lightning Rod]

It's the Friday morning before the most important presidential election of my memory, and my memory is long. I've been biting my nails for two or three days now expecting the October Surprise. I don't know whether to anticipate an attack from an internal radical group or whack individual like Tim McVeigh or to expect some spectacular event orchestrated by the fear-meisters in our own government, or if bin Missin will turn up at Guantanamo Bay to turn himself in. Maybe we'll drop a few bunker busters on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Part of the neo-conservative orthodoxy is the concept of the "Big Event." A sinking of the Maine or a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or the Burning of the Reichstag is what you need to galvanize the public into buying the insecurity ticket. Then anything is possible. It's an instant mandate. If you will recall, before 9/11 the Bush administration was on shaky ground when it came to the topic of legitimacy because of the quasi-democratic way in which they assumed power. But after 9/11 they had a mandate. This writer is not prepared to suggest that the fanatics in our own government were responsible for the disasters, but they certainly reaped great benefits from them.

Why do I feel like I'm watching a disaster flick? You know what is going to happen when you walk into the theater. You know the ship is going to sink or the building is going to catch fire or the earthquake or asteroid is going to bring graphic tragedy. But still you are perversely fascinated and your fingers wiggle in the buttered popcorn.

That's the way I feel about this election. I don't know exactly how it's going to turn out but I know there will be fire and explosions, clouds of smoke and women crying. The thrill is in the gory details. You know our democracy is going to fall, you just don't know how.

It's three days till the election. America stands poised to commit the Great Democratic Act. We are going to choose our leaders. I hesitate to mention that our leaders have already been chosen for us. It will either be Bush or Kerry. You will not notice a large difference in the price of gas on November 3, no matter who is 'elected.'

For those that are hopelessly addicted to reality TV, I must reassure you that this series won't be over on November 2. It may run well into the next season. By the time all the provisional ballots are counted and the legions of lawyers have shot their wads and the media-whores have made their predictions, some judge will decide between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.

Still we have no October Surprise, unless you want to count the missing explosives in Iraq or the video of the nut-case Arab-American actor boasting about the streets of America running red with blood. The missing explosives are old news. We knew long ago that the weapons stockpiles had been looted just like the rest of the country because our forces, though superior, were too widely spread. And I don't know what to say about the "Al Quida warning tape" that the White House leaked through Matt Drudge. It has come to a sad state of affairs when we up the terror alert every time some nut like Lyndon LaRouche releases an infomercial. So, these aren't real surprises. A real October Surprise these days needs major body count.

That's why I'm biting my nails.

[e_dog]

what about the newest released bin liden tape?

not big enough for you? not scary enough? that quasi-american dude shaking a fist at the screen prophesying rivers of blood sure scared the hell outa me. although the absurdity in spectacle is enough to give a bit of nervous laughter, too. i know it's halloween, i wonder how many youngsters will be dressed up in scary masks of bush or bin laden. i'm waiting for the day when the 'terrorism experts' and poliytical pundits pore over the tapes of, say, Bush commercials and speeches looking for hidden communicados and signals to his terrorist buddies, decoding the threats and terroristic messages (there is no need for much decodeing, it's pretty blatant) in the propagandic speechs of bush and kerry, who speaks always about how he's gona do a bitter job of hunting down and killing them terrorists. . . .

cycles of violence and vengenance are predictable but damn if they don't sell alotta guns and reconstruction contracts.