Machine Gun Preacher? Nope, Just Another Limpdick Politician

Current Screening: MACHINE GUN PREACHER starring Gerard Butler playing a badass white trash thug named Sam Childers who finds religion and starts looking for something to believe in other than himself, a mission, a noble goal. It's a true story. His noble goal was half way around the world in Sudan. And that says a lot. For he was nothing but a drug addled hillbilly from from the sticks of Pennsylvania for most of his life till the force of God and the Divine found him. Like most of us he was looking for something beyond himself that he could help with as a way to escape his own personal demons. Nothing better to relieve the worst of what haunts us than aiming our attention outward into the world rather than selfishly obsessing over ourselves all the time. Few people come to realize this in our short lifetimes here on earth. But more and more are, as I predicted back in July 2002 in the very first blog post in these Diaries. "What we need to do is make "giving and helping" cool, and discourage people from NOT giving and helping -- especially those with money or in the public eye -- by making it so uncool to not do so that they will feel compelled to do so, if even just for their own selfish motives. At least that way some more good works will be done in the world."

Looking back, I feel like I was a young and wide eyed idealist when I wrote those words, truly believing that together, those of us that cared, could change the whole world for the better and cure all that ailed it in just a few short years if I only my vision of "making giving and helping a cool trend" came to pass. Every now and then I still feel that way though. Not as young perhaps, but just as wide-eyed curious and intrigued by the possibilities, and definitely just as idealistic as I've ever been. Flash forward ten years and we are neck deep in a veritable trend of giving and helping now that is so hot, hip, cool and fashionable that it almost hurts to partake for those of us who like to believe we're trend bucking rebels because it's turned so mainstream. But that was the goal and we pulled it off. So it's a good thing.


Whether through our own examples or just because that's the way consciousness was heading anyway and I was just pure dumb-lucky enough to pick up on it, what I proposed and predicted happened; that flow has led us to a world where more common everyday folk are picking up and finding ways to reach out and lend a helping hand to the world around them than seemingly ever before in recorded human history. Part of the reason for this is because of civilization itself. The world has become more civilized than it's ever been. More people feel safe and secure than ever before. Anthropologically speaking when people feel safe and secure, when their bellies are full, they are more inclined to be willing to help others. Part of it is also due to the technological advancements made over the last ten years. Even ten years ago, the world wasn't nearly as flat as it is now; far fewer people had the knowledge of how many other nations and people of other nations there were around the world living among them. More importantly we had fewer ways to communicate with those people. That's changed with the flattening of the once world. The Sudan isn't a mysterious foreign land of strange people only glimpsed in a National Geographic magazine once or twice in a lifetime. It's a fourteen hour flight from New York City where a two week vacation can afford you the chance of a lifetime to help hundreds of people have a better life if you do desire.

And with the advent of the Personal Expression Age in the early two-thousands and all that came with it, people from all over the world are now hungrier than ever to express themselves and curious to explore the personal expressions of others. One of the many popular ways of personal expression that we've observed so far in the early stages of this new age is... you guessed it, "helping and giving". In all different shapes and forms, from local to global. One of the many interesting aspects of the trend is that it isn't just the religious who are doing it, as in times past. It's people of all ilk, all philosophies and of all available creeds. The non-religious just as much as the religious. It isn't just celebrities nor is it just the rich. Neither is it just the nappy dreaded granola crowd or hippies as is the usual stereotype. People from all classes and backgrounds are discovering the pure unadulterated joy that can come from pure unadulterated giving back and service to others.

The above is a stark contrast between another growing trend in American society: the cold, uncompassionate and heartless political machines that are seemingly constantly vying for competitive roles of leadership in government and the public sector. This contrast could not be better illustrated than by one of today's biggest headlines in the United States: a private speech by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that he didn't know was being recorded was leaked to the public today. If you're reading this in the future, as many of you are, then this will seem just about as irrelevant and unimportant to you as if the names John McCain, Barry Goldwater or Michael Dukakis were here instead. (Auto Correct isn't even recognizing the words Dukakis or Romney here. As it shouldn't. There's nothing more shady and shadowy in the American eye than a "once also ran". They usually slink back into obscurity as quickly as they bolted out of the blue and into national prominence once they lose a major race.) McCain should be the exception though, and I hope that as you read this, he is, and that you remember him. For he continued long after his bid for president to serve the United States well as a Senator, just as he had as a soldier long before, so his name deserves to be remembered. But this Romney character, long forgotten after November 5th 2012, be it here known for the record of our times, lost the race for U.S. president by a margin as large as McCain when he ran against Barack Obama, and went on to slowly fade away into that harsh sunlight of anonymity, his image and skin burned and charred by the glare of his own ego and eventually rusted like an old tin can from his errant selfishness and greed.

Glory never fades away. It lives on forever through the memories and stories told by those who witnessed it first hand. Love him, hate him or somewhere in between, the man called Barack Obama in our lifetimes was glorious to behold for myriad reasons. The character known as Mitt Romney not so much. Hence his ignominious loss in the year we called 2012. One of the many reasons for this loss was today's leaked speech. This weak man with spine of glass and the charm of a caterpillar was overheard and then taped for posterity announcing to a small group of wealthy potential donors that he believed that "47 to 49% of American voters supported President Barack Obama for no other reason than because they were moochers, victims, freeloaders, a food stamp army dependent on the government who live their lives feeling entitled to handouts from the government and the generosity of others' tax payer money." The irony was glaring. The insult was heard and felt around the world instantaneously. The man known as Romney was never much liked in the United States. Today's revelation just cemented what most in the country already felt intuitively.

The irony that the group that he was speaking to and that he himself represents -- the wealthiest 1 to 5%, large American corporations with no real sense of national loyalty to any country -- are just about the most entitled-feeling cross-section of the American populace was completely lost on the poor man. While attacking nearly 150,000,000 American citizens, or a whopping half of the American populace for being "needy and government dependent", Romney forgot to mention or acknowledge that rich Americans and well to do giant corporations depend on what they call "corporate welfare" and giant gaping tax loopholes so much more than the middle classes of America that they pay anywhere from 50 to 80% less in taxes on their earnings every year. Much to the shock of the country, Romney himself declared that in his tax returns last year he paid around "11%" according to his own estimation. Far less than most of these "needy government dependent freeloaders" he claims "vote for Obama". That was the grand irony of the fool's statements in this particular speech. But worse than that, his statements implied that America's entire middle class "didn't pay taxes, but instead lived off government handouts" and that THAT was the reason why they wanted to vote for Obama.

It was one of the most foolhardy travesties of American politics in recent memory, and with a Republican party that in the last three years has included such quotable notables as Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnel (whose sole mission over the last three years he stated was to make sure President Obama doesn't get re-elected), Eric Cantor, John Boener, G.W. Bush, Sarah Palin... (need i go on? Are you sick yet?) that says a LOT. Foolhardy should be stamped on the hand of every politician who gets sworn into office from the Republican party these days, for as the above list is a sure testament of, there just isn't a better word to describe the primary motivation and message of this ragtag bunch of fools and mental rejects. God only knows how they managed to grab hold of such a once great political party. (Though I've an idea, which will be the main theme of an upcoming entry in days to come. Think "religious extremism" for a clue.)

We mustn't forget that figures such as Lincoln and Eisenhower were once Republicans. So this isn't partisan politics talking. This is just a political party that's publicly imploding from the inside out and isn't recognizable to it's former self. The only people still hanging on to any kind of loyalty to it seem to be either the dumbest and most ignorant among us, the wealthiest (and therefore those who don't really have any loyalty to any party except the one which serves their financial needs best in each moment), or the most religiously extreme, privacy invading and/or racist. Mitt Romney is the perfect straw-man for such a party. Spineless, lacking in character, no apparent real ideas or ideals of his own, and a track record that looks like a sine wave rather than a linear line or trajectory of truisms by a well thought out member of society -- he's reversed or flip flopped on just about every one of his views on any and all the issues that are of any substance, leaving everyone to believe that the only reason he is running for president is because his father wasn't successful in his own bid to become president and his mother wasn't successful in her own bid to become a Senator. It's a twisted Oedipal like tragedy being played out on the American political stage.

An adolescent dream of becoming president of the united states seems to be all the man has left on his bucket list, and so rather than principles, a moral ground or an idealistic urge to help the world or his country compelling him, he seems motivated by nothing but greedy ambition, a sophomoric one at that, adrift in a sea of "wouldn't it be cool if I could become president one day" fantasies that have confused the hell out of the party that selected him -- a party that is quickly starting to turn their anger inward because the rest of the country has turned their attention away from them. It will be interesting to observe how vicious the infighting becomes once again within this rapacious group of lost souls -- just as it did during their primary season -- once they start realizing that they don't have a chance in hell at even coming close to winning even 200 electoral votes in the upcoming election, let alone the 271 needed to win the White House.

Regardless of how inane, immature, insulting, childish and treacherous the republican presidential campaign becomes (and it's been bad since it began), the American media still feels a sense of loyalty to tradition and thus continues to report on it unfortunately. (CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and the worst of them FOX NEWS, still exist at this time -- and it is they who deserve the blunt of most of the blame: for allowing someone of so little substance and character and merit to occupy so much of their valuable airtime. So the American people are being force fed the insanity and lunacy, the bigotry and the antiquated ideas that we've long since let go of along with "the world is flat" and "women don't have a right to vote". In the meantime, luckily, we are also being fed whopping doses of some of the best documentaries and dramatized biopics of some of the greatest people you never knew existed through a variety of media: network, cable, satellite, internet, social media... all around us are heroes, men and women, normal people doing incredible things.

And this perhaps is the greatest disservice that Mitt Romney, the name you won't know when you read this in the future, did for the great country that hopefully we still call the United States of America: he spent hundreds of millions of dollars and wasted thousands of hours of his fellow American's attention and energy doing absolutely nothing good or of merit to make his country nor the world a better place. All because he had nothing better to do with his time and money than decide to go for that popular American teenage dream of becoming president of the united states. Only this time, it wasn't a young idealist with meager beginnings and big ideas like so many before him. It was just a lonely man who once acted like a democrat and then didn't know what he was and so let shadowy figures in darkened hotel ballrooms over early morning breakfasts tell him what he believed. And instead of helping, like the real life person that the movie MACHINE GUN PREACHER was based on, Sam Childers, he just wasted a lot of peoples' time and money. That more than anything else is what is so infuriating about the man they call Romney, a man they say who has been "running for president for over five years now". In a time when much good is being done by so many all around us, even sometimes questionable folk with checkered backgrounds like convicted criminals, there are still people like Mitt Romney who can spend years doing nothing much at all except wasting everyone's time and energy while remaining for all intents and purposes a white collar criminal who "got away with it". And because of his money and the power that that money can buy, no one so far has done anything to stop him.