National Nirvana: The End of Politics

November 1998
National Nirvana: The End of Politics
By Bob Coskrey

I think Bill Clinton is getting what he deserves. He’s lied to his family, his friends, his advisors, his cabinet members, the Congress, his lawyers (although maybe he should get points for that), as well as to all of the citizens of this country. And as his lack of moral character becomes more and more obvious, as there is more disgust displayed by the general public, the legislators of both parties are joining in expressing their moral outrage. They are appalled at this ethical deviate’s behavior: philandering, lying, possibly illegal real estate deals, and fund-raising, abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and on and on. This man cannot be trusted by anyone. He’s plainly not fit to serve burgers and friends, much less this nation.

If hypocrisy emitted the odor of five day old decaying fish, we could all be, en masse, barfing into our TV trays. These people, these moralizing morons we call legislators, are all posturing, duplicitous, sleazebags.

Politics, unfortunately, attracts certain kinds of people with distinctive personality traits, just as other vocations do, only politics seems to attract the absolutely worst kinds, specifically, the megalomaniacal, narcissistic, power-hungry, shallow, tauras-defecating, mendacious, but often charming types, who in their worst manifestations are sociopaths like Clinton, who not only misuse their positions and the people they represent, but do so with an air of clinical indifference, even cheerfulness, at times, in our President’s case, because they are bereft of a conscience.

Now please don’t start yelling that you know or are related to this or that person who’s a politician of impeccable motives and goals. I can think of a few people like that myself. It’s easy to—I could list them in 10 seconds. In essence, there are not enough of these nice guys to make a difference.

Some optimistic people say these insidious incumbents are just formerly honest citizens who are corrupted after they dive into the cesspool of politics. This is the al, not the reel, world. Jimmy Stewart is dead and there won’t be any more of Mr. Smith going to Washington—or Columbia, for that matter.

I think these people have a personality disorder, whose symptoms I have already described and the mental health professionals need to make room for it in their manual of diagnoses: Politicopathic Personality Disorder. You usually start noticing these people in high school. They are the one who run for Student Council and Class Officers.

They want total power and control, as well as all the attention. They do anything to achieve power, and even more to maintain it, behavior that expands to more extraordinary, sometimes illegal levels in their adult lives. In fact, there will come a post-scholastic time when these “movers and shakers” will stand at a vast precipice and decide whether to leap into the immediately gratifying world of crime for the long term rewarding vocation of politics, the world of legitimate crime. Some of the more gifted choose both.

And why people can’t see through some of these people totally baffles me. I hate to say it, but some of us must not be too bright—and I’m indulging in self-criticism by saying this, because I’ve voted for some of them myself on occasion.

Just look at the political commercials. They must really think we’re stumbling around with drool-baskets hanging around our necks. They are extremely insulting—even to those of us with drool-buckets.

A Yuppy looking guy in a rolled-up long sleeve white Oxford cloth shirt, with the tie pulled loose, walking down a dock with his son being carried on his shoulders, and holding his daughter’s hand, while his fashionably coiffed wife walks closely beside him, gazing adoringly up at him, and their faithful Black Labrador Retriever, with a red bandana tied around its neck, gallops loyally alongside.

Of course, in these parts, you will hear a God-like voice-over intoning the victory-clenching buzzwords of “Conservative,” “family values,” “Christian,” and “no taxes,” while in other sections of the country the words will differ depending on the majority of the voters’ political inclinations (see “polling” later in this article).

I don’t want to gloss over the importance of the shirt in the commercial being white and being long sleeved and rolled up, since the former denotes purity and the later along with the tie being askew, gives us the undeniable message that this man is at work for his fortunate constituents twenty-four hours a day. But he, just the same, finds time to rush home to be with his beloved family for brief moments. He has no time to change clothes, because like a courageous “Minuteman,” he must be ready to dash back to his undersized office to protect his innocent constituents from the onslaught of all that is evil.

PUH-LEEZE! Why should we believe that these disreputable dirtballs treat their families any differently than they do anyone else? Pure, unadulterated mythology. I will, however, concede that some good may actually result—accidentally—from these ads, since they do, after all, force these politicopaths to spend at least the time it took to pose for the shot, with their families (maybe even an hour at time, if there were multiple takes), before they rushed off to some self-serving, power aggrandizing event, or cigar catalyzed liaison.

Then, of course, there’s the “negative campaigning,” multi-media mudslinging. The conservative’s a “racist,” the liberal played golf with Clinton (they’re more likely to play with O.J. now).

I assume they’re all creeps anyway, so from my perspective, this is wasted air time.

Ideally, we’d like to hear meaningful platforms of plans and ideas, noteworthy accomplishments, but then all this rough-hewn forthrightness is stained with the patina of fakery, so unless we’re addicted to pointless rhetoric, we’re just wasting our time, as well as the airwaves.

Although these Shock-Jerk charlatans of the media love to pontificate electronically, they still, incredibly enough, enjoy going out and “working the crowds,” “pressing the flesh” (Clinton, of course, has evolved beyond most in this latter practice), grasping ever hand in site, while beaming beatifically. They stand outside plants and inside malls shaking hands with total strangers (and destined to remain so post election day), and mouthing insincere compliments and platitudes: “What a beautiful child,” “I will cut your taxes,” “I am for family values,” “I will reduce welfare,” I am pro-choice. Catholic are you? I mean, I’m pro-life, my mistake,” “I’m for the working man,” “I want to put God back into our schools. Oh, you believe in a separation of church and state? Well, so do I. I was speaking figuratively, you know, like putting the fear of God back into the schools, but not religion itself—no sire, strict separation, that’s where I stand. See ya at the polls.”

Again, this is a big waste of time for us voters, not to mention the fact that I’m a little squeamish about actually touching these people’s hands, considering where they’ve been. What they need is just a blanket one-size-fits-all platform. “I am for whatever will get me elected, and once in office I will be for whatever keeps me there. This may or may not benefit you, but I can assure you my opponent feels exactly the same way, so you might as well vote for me since at least, for this ‘brief shining moment,’ I was honest with you.”

God Bless America!

One other thing that these special people do truly astounds me: Kissing babies. But even more amazing is the fact that the babies’ parents let this grisly practice happen. Knowing that most of these libido-lubricated lotharios, like our lecherous leader, are humping and groping anything with a pulse rate, with the only criterion being “to stay within the species,” why would anyone allow their lips to touch those of innocent, healthy children.

It appears that we voters, in cooperating, admiring, even apotheosizing these demented demigods, may actually be enablers who are almost as sick as they are.

With the ascendance of the importance of polling in the political system, the politicopaths simply have one more weapon to add to their arsenal of treachery. Now all anyone will need to assure him or herself victory is access to an accurate polling organization. You simply poll everybody in your voting district, find out what their opinions are about all the issues and then that becomes your can’t-lose platform. Every few months or so, and again at election time, you take your polls again. You’re married to your incumbency, till term limitation do you part.

What’s so fascinating, and at the same time infuriating, about these politicopaths is that, although some of them are clever enough to be convincing and believable, most of them are so very transparently disingenuous and smarmy as for example, our President with his tears-on-command and well rehearsed lip-biting. Closer to home is our Havolinish governor, whom we could very easily picture drawling with a well-oiled smile, “What do I need to do to have your drive this car off the lot today?”

The really bad news is if I’m correct in my theory that these guys do have politicopathic personality disorders, there’s not much that can be changed behaviorally, since personality disorders don’t respond well to treatment.

Therefore, I am making the following recommendation:

Anyone wanting to run for office must have a psychological evaluation. Also, all currently elected office holders will have one. If my theory is correct—and I’m very confident that it is—the following could be done:

A. Appoint independent counsels to investigate all of them (city, county, state, and federal, for the purpose of disclosing everything these people have done that’s immoral or illegal since their 21st birthday). As a result, I predict the following consequences: 1) Mass resignations, withdrawals from races, and no filings for races; 2) All tax lawyers will become multimillionaires and have more business than they can possibly handle; 3) There will be a national blackout caused by dry cleaners working overtime to remove stains from clothing.

B. Get rid of any incumbents who are attorneys and make that profession a disqualification for running for elected office.

(A and B will result in virtually no one left in office.)

C. All elected officials are replaced by computers which can be programmed periodically with local, state and nation polling results and governmental decisions can simply be made based on how the majority of the people feel about the issues. No more costly, boring elections. The entire job of seeing that governments operate can be accomplished by a bunch of computer nerds, who despite being geeky and, socially maladjusted, are for the most part, totally committed (to computers) un-controlling and non-abusing people (I have done research; I saw “Revenge of the Nerds” I, II, and III). Maybe we could appoint someone like Bill Gates as the Chief Computercrat with Al Gore as the Vice Programmer, since he has always bragged about knowing so much about technology, not to mention that he actually behaves like a computer anyway. Never mind. I forgot he’s an attorney.

Gates can do it all himself. Hail to the Geek!