Shuffling to the sound of the Morlocks' dinner bell

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Sun Jun 27 14:53:05 PDT 2004


<http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Jun-27-Sun-2004/opinion/24127406.html>


Sunday, June 27, 2004
Las Vegas Review-Journal

 VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Shuffling to the sound of the Morlocks' dinner bell

In Atlanta over the May 29 weekend, former movie producer, Bette Midler
manager/paramour and Nevada gubernatorial candidate Aaron Russo -- who
entered the Libertarian Party's national convention as the front-runner for
the presidential nomination -- was doing himself no favors on the
convention floor.

 The Libertarian Party has more than its share of dorks and dweebs, who
given the chance will corner you and seek a debate on the most arcane
details of anything from private space exploration to the Federal Reserve.

 I can understand Russo's reluctance to waste too much time on this stuff
(though in fact, the Federal Reserve seems to have become one of his own
favorite topics, of late). But eyewitnesses report Russo's response was to
call such gadflies "idiots," sometimes throwing in a few extra modifiers
which I can't print in a family newspaper.

 On the floor, Russo "had a style that some delegates from the South and
Midwest fretted would not sell back home -- brash New York ethnic,"
comments Brian Doherty of Reason magazine
(<http://www.reason.com/links/links060304.shtml>). Doherty observed Russo
"throwing around the word `baby,' cracking jokes, grabbing floating
balloons and nuzzling them, then mock-complaining that one of his vocal
opponents would probably call that sexual harassment ... segueing from a
mention of orgasms to introducing his wife."

 If this is the degree of delicacy with which Aaron treated the 808 voting
delegates at the very convention whose nomination he sought, who can guess
what level of gravitas and aplomb he might bring to a set of tense
diplomatic negotiations with, say, Jacques Chirac?

 I've met Aaron Russo. I believe he's sincerely concerned about the
direction this country is headed. But when Aaron ran for governor of Nevada
a few years back, he did so from a rented house with rented furniture. On
the weekends he commuted back to visit his immediate family in Southern
California -- in a fancy car with Vermont license plates.

 Even in a state where native-born residents are a rarity, Aaron Russo gave
carpetbaggers a bad name.

 The majority of the LP's delegates in Atlanta concluded Aaron Russo might
inject some money and some drama, but that he was a loose cannon.

 "The delegates voted for the man who was the most like them, who presented
in the most professional way the modal opinions and views and style of a
Libertarian Party activist -- quiet, intense, no deviation from the
catechism, more concerned with eternal ideological and philosophical
verities than the political events of the day," summarizes Doherty.

 Michael Badnarik is no table-pounder. But the political maneuverings that
landed Badnarik the LP nomination -- a tense, edge-of-your-seat process
conducted in the light of day -- produced the best candidate. Michael
Badnarik won the nomination, on the issues, because he won the candidates'
debate.

 How close was it? On the first ballot, the delegates split Russo 258,
Michael Badnarik 256, and 246 for syndicated radio host Gary Nolan.

 Then it started to get interesting.

 Properly covered and explained, it could have made great live television
-- but of course no network but C-SPAN will cover such real political
drama, any more. Too much chance the voting public might get exposed to
some radical new common-sense ideas.

 Come November, I with perhaps 1 or 2 percent of the populace will cast my
lonely vote for Michael Badnarik, an articulate, reasonable, personable
freedom fighter of modest means, who lacks any discernible pathological
need or expectation for brass bands, snapping flashbulbs or public
adulation.

 I will vote for a candidate who -- if he had his way -- would end the
insane war on drugs; end the income tax; restore my God-given and
constitutionally guaranteed firearms rights; protect the rights of all
Americans to medical privacy; end the noxious daily trampling of our Bill
of Rights in the nation's airports; pull us out of the deadly, illegal and
unconstitutional war in Iraq; and put the U.S. military back to work
tracking down the real culprits of Sept. 11.

 "At which point, if we can find them, you think it would be OK to just
kill them?" I asked the candidate last week.

 "Sure," Badnarik said.

 Sounds about right to me.

 I will cast that vote on Nov. 2, and get my ass whupped (politically
speaking), and go to bed proud and justified.

 In contrast, 95 percent of you (if you bother going to the polls at all --
and who can blame you for your increasing sense of mortification? You must
start to feel like the Eloi, shuffling in to the sound of the Morlocks'
dinner bell in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine") will vote for a lying
politician who you know to be a lying politician -- one of two
interchangeable Skull & Bonesmen without any discernible political
principles, who (no matter which wins) will proceed to raise your taxes,
take away more of your freedoms, and continue frittering away whatever
remains of America's reputation for decency by continuing the violent
military occupation of scores of foreign countries that have never attacked
nor declared war upon us. All this in hopes of temporarily propping up the
bottom lines of sundry well-heeled banks, oil companies and federally
subsidized engineering and construction firms.

 All because you don't want to "throw away your vote" -- and register your
disapproval with that state of affairs -- by voting for a guy who would
make you feel decent and clean.

 Because he's going to lose.

 So, I don't get it: Let's say you flip a coin and manage to pick the winner.

 What do you win?

 Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal
and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl
Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us.

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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