Clinton Won't Go; What Gridlock?; The Left's Trained Seals; Hemingway's Death
He Won't Go
Undoubtedly, Nostra-damus prophesied the Florida recount. He saw it in a kind of archaic vision. A packed house. No exit. Crepuscular light. At dawn or end of day, both sides sit forever in some evanescent amphitheater, fiercely split over two candidates perma-frozen in a Greco-Roman stranglehold. Neither side adores its champion. Yet here they are in record numbers, cheering hopelessly.
It might help to picture it as a De Chirico dreamscape painting from the early period, with shadows and columns and luminous walls. The audience is us, all corrupted in some nameless way, collectively. Actually, we know the blasphemy?our toleration of Clinton?but we can't say anything because all uttered words turn to "spin." And all the tragedy-comedy masks blend into Clinton-faces. Is he laughing, mocking us or deeply feeling our pain? I would title it, "Will the Clinton Era Never End?"
As I write this, the succession, indeed the Constitution itself, is looking a little wobbly. Even if Bush wins, Clinton's ghost is here to stay. We've failed to expunge our odium, to slay the Al-Bill-Hillary hippogriff. Apparently this bovine spongiform generation would actually reelect Clinton were he to run again. Is everyone wearing brain implants?
I have in fact come up against these Clintonoids, the vacant majority. They've been confused by the media and Monica and the healthy economy. No good telling them about the economy being all Republican, derived from the "peace dividend," the Gingrich Congress and Greenspan. So I find it's best to focus on a clear presidential arena: foreign policy. The well-being of the world. Clinton's exclusive terrain.
How has he done? The Russians now hate us because Clinton backed and financed the perpetuation of corrupt oligarchs under Yeltsin. Gore actually saw and rejected the CIA's report on Yeltsin corruption by scrawling the word "bullshit" on its cover. In the last eight years, we squandered the century's greatest opportunity, given to us by Reagan, to pull Russia westward, fragment its empire and free up its oil-bearing ex-Soviet republics. Thereby, we've also failed to free up the Middle East.
The Middle East: Not Good. Desert Storm coalition in pieces. New generation of rabid anti-American feeling. Israel more than ever isolated. Saddam coming unchained. Even Saudis breaking the embargo. Iraqi children dying in droves. Peace process over. Disaster all around.
The Balkans: Does this need saying? Clinton read one book, Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan, and failed to intervene in Bosnia until too late. Then intervened in Kosovo by bombing a European capital, a first since WWII. Kosovo will be a dangerous, mafia-run U.S. protectorate. Bosnia was a civilized oasis, the world's most secular Muslim population. It's now rife with fundamentalists.
Africa: Where to begin? Genocide upon genocide. Grand response in the form of a Clinton tv tour, with a large retinue of hangers-on, across the continent to apologize for American neglect. Who did the neglecting, if not him? Massive terrorist bombs against U.S. embassies, said embassies having begged repeatedly for better security. Pointless missile strike on aspirin factory in Khartoum. Growing fundamentalism. Resurgence of slavery. AIDS, crime, ebola virus. Chelsea gets to go on safari.
Latin America: Rival Soviet influence ends, and Clinton squanders the windfall. Cocaine fills the vacuum. Amazon jungle dwindles apace. Endless Cuba fiascoes. Oil-rich Venezuela now run by pro-Castro nut. Our strategic neighbor and NAFTA partner Mexico in shreds. Half of Colombia in Marxist guerrilla hands. From Bolivia to the Caribbean, along the cocaine highway, most governments sapped by narcodollars. The rare exception, Chile, with strong Pinochet borders and finances, is undermined by its Blair-Clinton allies.
India-Pakistan-Afghanistan: Outbreak of war in Kashmir. Brink of nuclear exchange. Bin Laden fiascoes. Opium and heroin pouring out of Afghanistan. Fundamentalism infecting all of Central Asia. Military coup d'etat in Pakistan. Clinton cruise missile strike, nominally against bin Laden, actually against Monica madness, fails to hit bin Laden or his cadres. Instead kills numerous Pakistanis, alienates our one-time allies and drives them closer to the Taliban.
East Asia: All of the above is beyond argument. Some see this one as open to interpretation, i.e., Clinton stabilized North Korea and hugged China tighter. Yes, but China and Russia signed a strategic alliance, the first since Stalin. North Korea lost its sponsors and its veteran leader and still builds missiles. And China, not a great democratic model of multiculti ethnic tolerance, acquired our darkest nuclear secrets. Still we're desperate to build their economy. Duh?
Let us pause here for a sane breath. We've covered most of the atlas, and the evidence would seem incontrovertible that the global landmass was not much improved by Clinton. But at a time when most of the world seems to have moved here, we're told that Americans don't care about abroad. Reverse the perspective, then. How did abroad affect us? Overlook the trade imbalance, the narcotics, the recent oil prices, the exotic new viruses, unbridled immigration, the collapse of borders, the end of the nation-state. What it all means if the country becomes a balkanized ethnic mosaic with each group voting only for their own foreign policy, the Clintonoids don't consider.
No, I need cite only one overarching Clinton catastrophe that actually rates as a terminal threat to the Republic: taking election money from the mainland Chinese. This is an act of sedition that most countries reward with execution. We haven't seen its like since the Civil War, when the South received British help. Here is proof that the U.S. is a global state, with foreign interests acting as constituencies?over the heads of actual constituents. Gore served as bagman for the Chinese deal. Yet we're counting absentee ballots in Florida to fend him off. I'm utterly mystified. Perhaps my brain implant fell out.
Dear, oh dear! Barbra (disgusting) Streisand must be in a hell of a bait. Ditto Bianca Jagger, Harvey Weinstein and Rosie O'Donnell. Their boy Gore got gored by half of the voting American population, and the uglies are up in arms.
Why is it the uglier the person?Streisand, old pineapple-face Weinstain, O'Donnell, the simian Jagger?the more left-wing their politics? Once upon a time I used to run into la Jagger. She was a groupie and a climber who managed to land a zonked-out Mick Jagger?himself no beauty?but she was harmless. Having earned a few million from the wrinkly Rolling Stone, she began to take herself extremely seriously. She began by "lobbying" various politicians?Chris Dodd, Robert Torricelli?and has never looked back. Her latest cause is to join a group of concerned citizens who want new elections in Florida to preserve the faith of the people.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. There's a grotesque clown by the name of Bill Maher whose nose looks exactly like a penis, and, I am told, who called George W. horrible names in his unwatchable (for half-wits and morons only) late-night program. It's par for the course. Maher is an envious lowlife trying to curry favor with the Hollywood crowd, whereas George W. is a good man, a brave pilot, a successful businessman and a very good governor. But such is life. The scum also rises, and Maher now enjoys his moment of fame by influencing the idiots who watch him. Not for long, I hope.
Talk about self-promotion and hypocrisy. Liberals are truly amazing. If the results are not to their liking, let's vote until they are. Remember having been warned about an October surprise in this space? Well, as it turned out it was a November surprise. I am convinced that thousands of Republicans did not bother to vote in the western part of Florida (and in the central time zone) after the premature call of the blowdry types like Tom Brokaw gave the state to Gore. The networks were the real scandal of this election. No matter how civic-minded a person is, if they are informed that their vote no longer counts, he or she would be fools to waste the time to cast it. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but in view of the fact that 89 percent of our media heroes cast their vote for the Draft Dodger in 1992, I will let you, dear readers, draw your own conclusion.
In fact it is an outrage. No sooner was the election up for grabs in Florida than the egregious Jesse Jackson was summoned to mount a demonstration. For the tv cameras, of course. This is Juan Peron at his best, the trouble being America is not Argentina circa 1950, but the way things are going I am no longer sure. Where does Jackson get off leading a rally while the votes are being recounted? Where does Warren Christopher get off denouncing voting irregularities? I can understand Jackson. He will do and say anything to get his face on camera and position himself as the man who won the presidency for Gore. But Christopher has always been a decent man, innocuous but fair. I guess he's been away from the limelight too long and, having been recalled, wants one more bite at the cherry.
Mind you, the real fun if George W. wins will be the look on the faces of the trained seals of Hollywood. As everyone who has ever heard an unscripted trained seal speak, it is the apotheosis of inanity, witless drivel and debauched imbecility. Hollywood lefties are extremely flawed and very preachy, a devastating combination. Take, for example, this Baldwin fellow. A lowlifer par excellence, he has threatened to leave the country if Bush becomes dictator. That's as hollow a threat as yours truly threatening to refuse to make love to the divine Juliette Binoche. How truly stupid must a man be to say such things. Imagine, the United States of America without Alec Baldwin. Oy vey!
Then we have Susan Sarandon: alas not someone I would actually kick out of bed, but certainly a lady who should act in films but never open her mouth outside the confines of a studio. Susan is in a quandary. She voted for Nader, and now Nader is as popular with her fellow jerks as Hitler. What a difference a day makes. Nader was Saint Ralph as long as Gore was leading, then suddenly he's Adolf.
This is hardly surprising. Words lost their meaning to Hollywood types long ago. Hyperbole is the norm, and the Big Lie its bible. They endorse reckless government spending, shameless personal conduct, toothless response to crime, and insist on imposing extremist minority views on the majority on the strength of their celebrity. They hold their fellow Americans in utter contempt because, unlike the Hollywood scum, they go to church, love their country and believe homosexuality to be abnormal, rather than the norm. Even my old friend Richard Nixon has suddenly become a good guy. He refused to challenge the 1960 election, clearly stolen by the Kennedy millions.
The fact that the Gore gangsters will drag this out until next year if need be is immaterial to the trained seals. If Gore wins fair and square they will accuse Bush of having tried to steal the presidency. If Bush wins, and they have already delegitimized him, they will spend the next four years trying to discredit him as president. Such are the joys of liberalism, of celebrity and of radical chic. This is the bad news. The good is that by the time the smoke clears, I shall be away in Switzerland, a country that does not take actors seriously, but does allow them to visit now and then.
If nothing else, the election confirmed Ralph Nader's Tweedledee and Tweedledum thesis. The American people were simply unable to tell Al Gore and George W. Bush apart. But deadlock is all to the good. Ideally, the two will continue disputing for months who won the popular vote and the Electoral College vote. With the presidency reduced to a Punch and Judy spectacle before the eyes of the world, the U.S. government will be too embarrassed to bomb anyone, let alone interfere in other countries' elections. Moreover, with Congress deadlocked between the two parties, laws suppressing civil liberties will not pass.
There was good news from Utah, too. Voters there overwhelmingly approved an initiative restricting law enforcement agencies' handling of seized assets. Police departments use forfeiture proceeds to fatten their budgets. Henceforth, in Utah all seized property is to be turned over to the state treasurer's office and property owners will have state-paid attorneys to represent them in their fight to recover their assets.
Washington pundits are predictably lamenting the lack of a "mandate." "We're in for a tremendously difficult period," moans Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. David Broder was also morose. In The Washington Post, he declared: "It was as if two different nations went to vote yesterday?splitting their votes between Republicans and Democrats so evenly that the government of their one country, the most powerful nation in the world, hung in the balance..."
Yet the evidence for this deep divide is as flimsy as the evidence for the "gridlock." According to exit polls, 30 percent of Americans thought that the "top priority for the new president" should be education. By a majority of 58 to 37 percent they preferred Gore to Bush. Twenty-three percent thought the "top priority" should be Social Security. By a majority of 58 to 40 percent they preferred Gore to Bush. Eleven percent thought the "top priority" should be prescription drugs. By a majority of 56 to 39 they preferred Gore to Bush. Only 26 percent thought the "top priority" should be a tax cut. By a majority of 71 to 27 percent they preferred Bush to Gore.
In other words, a majority of Americans like the idea of government solutions?this is, after all, what Gore promised. Yet by a majority of 53 to 43 percent, respondents insisted that they preferred less, rather than more, government.
What Broder and others refer to as "gridlock" was nothing of the sort. In reality it was an era of happy cooperation between Congress and the White House to squander large sums of money on pork-barrel projects and corporate welfare, in the fond belief that the U.S. budget will forever be in surplus.
"Budget surplus," incidentally, is a misnomer. The national debt keeps rising every year. Under the budget resolution approved by Congress in April, total federal nondefense spending was estimated to grow in real terms by $33 billion?or 11 percent?from 1999 to 2001. According to the Cato Institute, the Republican Congress "has violated its own 'spending caps' virtually every year? Comparison of actual spending from 1996 to 2000 with the original expenditure targets set in 1995 reveals that excess spending over the baseline totals $187 billion. Even after the budget caps were renegotiated upward in 1997, Congress still managed to exceed the revised budget cap for the following years by a total of more than $40 billion."
Earlier this year, Congress passed the FY2000 supplemental appropriations package. This was filled with inane projects?all worked out happily with the Clinton administration in the supposedly "gridlocked" Washington?such as the $1.3 billion to fund military operations in Colombia, allegedly to fight drug trafficking. Included also was $2 billion to pay for the U.S. involvement in Kosovo, plus funding for a new building to house the Food and Drug Administration, as well as money for the manned space-flight program.
Just before the election, Washington went crazy, with Congress determined to spend as much as possible in as short a time as possible. Politicians, Democrat and Republican, happily added bridges, dams and highways to the omnibus spending bill. They also like to add so-called "riders," which would absolve businesses from environmental regulation. The Senate Appropriations Committee added $4.4 billion to a House-passed bill funding veterans, housing and environmental programs. Then the House and Senate negotiators added an extra $3 billion to next year's appropriation for the Interior Dept. The two houses added another $2 billion to the annual bill funding water projects and the Dept. of Energy. That pushed it about $800 million over Clinton's request. The Senate bill for veterans, housing and the environment was filled with pork-barrel local development projects. They cost about $121 million. It also included 54 environmental projects that cost $63 million and 17 science research projects that cost $24 million.
Here's to a long and protracted squabble. Perhaps we might then see the dawn of a true "gridlock" era.
The shooting season in Britain is going full blast (perhaps for the last time, as the Labor Party may try to outlaw it), and our Top Drawer swells are winging over for their annual foray in the field. Not all shooting sportsmen are as dense as you might think. Some can read as well as shoot. Our retired academic friend, Prof. Caspar W. Whitney, is a crack shot and, predictably, a Hemingway fan. Across the River and into the Trees, with its marvelous opening duck shoot, is his favorite novel (and other critics' least favorite), and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" his favorite short story.
As a shooting man, he tells us, he is disturbed by the evidence surrounding the incident that ended EH's life in the early morning of July 2, 1961. Mary Hemingway says (How It Was, p. 307) she "heard the sounds of a couple of drawers banging shut." In other words, two shots?and two spent cartridges. But multiple shots in a suicide, says the Professor, are almost impossible. Furthermore, to kill oneself with a shotgun is not the easiest thing to do.
Biographer Michael Reynolds says (Hemingway: The Final Years, p. 358) that EH used his Boss (12-bore sidelock) to do the job. There are pictures of EH with this firearm in his hands shooting ducks near Venice in the period 1948-1950. There are references in the literature to his having acquired the Boss at about this time. It is a fine, custom-made gun. The Boss is a double-barreled, single-trigger weapon that takes two cartridges. The "single" trigger means that the barrels are fired sequentially by two separate pulls on the trigger. Our friend maintains that the first pull would have blown Hemingway's head off and that there could not have been a second pull.
A single-trigger gun, to cognoscenti, is a slight giveaway. Top guns (shooters) use double-triggers. Each barrel has a different choke, i.e., a constriction, which effects the spread of the shot. One wants an "open" barrel for close targets and a closed or "choked" barrel for distant ones (max. 40 yards). A single-trigger gun fires these barrels in a predetermined sequence?open first, closed second, for example, with two separate pulls on the trigger. Why? Imagine that you are shooting over dogs: the bird is flushed, the target is close, you will want the open barrel first. If you miss, or if you want to swing on another bird, which is now putting distance between itself and you, you will want the long or "choked" barrel for the second shot.
Shooting over dogs is known as "rough shooting," and it is not what the Top Drawer boys go for. They prefer (if they can afford it) "driven shooting," in which platoons of servants, "beaters," drive the birds toward the guns, who are normally arranged in a line facing the birds. In this case one's first sight of them is at a distance, so one might like to open up with the long barrel first. With a double-trigger gun, one has the choice. The Professor (who shoots a Purdey) says he is acutely aware that his right barrel, front trigger, is for a close-in shot and his left barrel, rear trigger, is his choked barrel. Instinctively he selects the appropriate trigger for any shot.
EH and Mary had been getting along very poorly for some time before the end. The Professor says he will have to check the literature to find out whether there was any evidence of serious abuse, verbal or physical, in the final days. For a long time Mary said the shooting was an accident. Was the Boss checked for fingerprints? Possible conclusion: she gave him both barrels in the face. In instances of crimes of passion, the perpetrator often discharges multiple shots.