The 21st Century

By
J. Swifty                                                                               Read Spanish Version

The
Manchurian Candidate’s controllers in the Vice President’s office
feared their decades-long plan would fail. After all, Mitt Romney
possessed the face and hair that Republicans find irresistible; that
unctuous approach to voters that had previously proved successful. To
help defeat Romney in the primaries, MC operatives infiltrated
Romney’s camp and leaked damaging stories to the media (Mitt
strapping pet dog to top of car). In addition, the MC team convinced
Romney’s kids and wife they would inherit much less money if Mitt
continued spending his hard inherited loot on a losing effort. Add to
clever dirty tricks the fact that Romney’s Mormonism (precursor to
Scientology) and millions of frightened Christian voters made his
Super Tuesday showing a dreary one. When Mitt dropped out of the
Republican race, the MC’s handlers returned to a platform of tested
patriotic saws to distract citizens.

In
return for endorsing McCain, Romney received a promise of a future
Cabinet post. The deal included Mitt helping to establish patriotism
— fear — as the sole Republican campaign focus. With either Obama
or Clinton as President, Romney predicted, the United States would
“surrender” in Iraq. This would then place the nation at great
risk from the forces of Muslim
terrorism.

“We
are a nation at war,” Romney echoed Bush, and Barack and Hillary
“have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on
terror. They would retreat, declare defeat, and the consequences of
that would be devastating.” The MC’s staff convinced Romney that
since the media and public suffered from amnesia few would remember
McCain’s nasty allusion to Romney’s weakness on that very
subject.

“One
of my opponents wanted to set a date for withdrawal,” McCain had
sneered, referring to Romney, at a campaign rap at Fort Myers,
Florida. “That would have meant disaster.’” McCain then added,
“If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants
to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will
be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would
be dramatically higher.”

The
MC’s handlers wrote Romney’s speech endorsing McCain. Thus,
Romney made the “sacrifice,” quitting the primary race for the
good of the nation. Had he continued campaigning, Romney declared,
“I’d be making it easier for Senator Obama or Clinton to win. In
this time of war, I cannot simply allow my campaign be a part of a
surrender to terror.”

Next,
MC’s controllers turned to distracting voters, for whom terror had
become economic. How to use fear to make them shrug off key economic
facts? On February 6, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that
the total number of paid hours worked in non-agriculture businesses
from September-December 2007 fell at an annual rate of 1.5 percent.
In those four months, as gasoline and health care costs rose, the
average worker’s salary and benefits fell by some 0.3 percent. The
report showed stagnant production growth.

At
a January 24 Republican debate, McCain showed “humility and
honesty” to Tim Russert: “I know a lot less about economics than
I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be
educated.”

“I
have faith,” (great word for religious America) he said on January
16 in South Carolina, “I have confidence (shows optimism) in the
economic future of this country.” When asked about how unemployed
people should deal with their situation, McCain replied: “We’ll
get through it. Our best days are in front of us.” He also
admitted, “I don’t know all the answers.” However, he told
audiences, he would find “the best economic advisers.” That
should satisfy the ignorant hordes, thought those in Cheney’s
office. Keep grinding out clichés for McCain: “Pro-growth,
less spending.” “To avoid recession, stop unchecked spending.”
“Loss of economic strength leads to losing military strength.”

Cheney
chuckled. McCain as a war hero? What act of heroism did he commit? It
didn’t matter. Media stenographers followed press releases and
repeated the “hero” line: a Navy pilot intent on bombing a
light-bulb factory got shot down and withstood six years of
Vietnamese torture. The MC’s managers arranged for a heroic TV
movie on him broadcast on Memorial Day of 2005. One Vietnam vet
watched it and described McCain as “a war criminal stupid
enough to get shot down and
captured. The Vietnamese treated his wounds. He didn’t try to
escape.”

Executives
of a major defense company watched the growing list of POWs, waiting
for the right one. They had already contracted with far-sighted
Vietnamese officials who informed them that they had captured an
ideal candidate for brainwashing and re-programming techniques.

While
treating his broken bones, brain washers implanted a micro chip in
his left jaw (a now encysted bulge, not a benign tumor). The handlers
now hope other former POWs won’t
resort
to
Republican swift boat tactics and smear McCain as they smeared John
Kerry three years earlier. A few veterans groups claimed McCain was a
phony or vowed not to support him. Occasional
bloggers mentioned McCain as a Manchurian Candidate,
but the
VP’s staff knew the media wouldn’t bite at such unappetizing
bait. They now have eight plus months in
which to distract voters
from their immediate and long range interests.

To
meet this challenge, the aging McCain must emerge as a man of action,
not as someone who can’t control his temper — a flaw in the
initial programming chip. Brief uncontrollable tantrums! He screamed
on the Senate floor “shut up,” at Senator Ted Kennedy. He labeled
other Republican senators “assholes,” “shitheads,” “fucking
jerks” — a form of Tourette Syndrome.

Joshua
Holland reported that in 1998 at a Republican fundraiser, McCain
indulged in a bad taste joke about President Clinton’s then teenage
daughter.

“Do
you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her
father.” According to Holland, McCain’s uncontrollable outburst
included a threat against a “prominent Washington attorney, at a
social event, and threatened to beat him up because he represented a
client McCain happened to dislike.” The programmers shivered over
such blips on their radar screen of success, but decided not to
remove and repair the implanted chip. Instead, one programmer
slipped an antidote into McCain’s drink and he “profusely and
tearfully apologized.”

By
mid February, no media source questioned McCain’s mythological
status: honest politician, who doesn’t compromise principles for
popularity. Since he has no real personal feelings he didn’t mind
it when in the 2000 South Carolina primary, the Bush campaign people
spread telephone rumors about McCain’s “sanity” and spousal
abuse. He continues to insist that Bush’s “surge is working.”
(http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/uselection/story.html?id=292828)

The
McCain maverick pose even induced some college students to campaign
for him. But then in February his “honesty” drove many away.
McCain told a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, that the
U.S. military could stay in Iraq for “maybe a hundred years.” The
audience sat stunned. “That would be fine with me,” McCain
assured the crowd. The handlers transmitted an electronic message to
the chip implanted in McCain’s jaw. He quickly explained he meant
troops like those the U.S. has stationed throughout Europe and Japan,
who would not be in harm’s way.

Some
Republican ultra rightists
criticized
McCain,
which his programmers had not anticipated. McCain had supported the
Law of the Sea Treaty, and legalizing status for kids of illegal
immigrants who graduated from high school. After the ultra right lit
into him on these issues and on his campaign finance reform zeal —
McCain Feingold being the centerpiece on campaign financing — they
had him retreat from those positions.

It
didn’t sway Ann Coulter. “McCain is a liberal,” she wrote in
her February 6 anncoulter.com. She chastised McCain for excoriating
“Samuel Alito as too ‘conservative,’ promoted amnesty for 20
million illegal immigrants, abridged citizens’ free speech (in
favor of the media) with McCain-Feingold,” and not least “he
hysterically opposes waterboarding terrorists and wants to shut down
Guantanamo.”

Coulter
explained: McCain “supports the global warming cult, even posturing
with fellow mountebank Arnold Schwarzenegger in front of solar
panels. The only site that would have been more appropriate for
Schwarzenegger in endorsing McCain would have been in front of an
abortion clinic.”

Radio
bombast and confessed drug addict Rush Limbaugh said in early
February he’d rather see Democrats win the White House. “If I
believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain,
I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit … rather than a
Republican causing the debacle.” (Howard Kurtz, Washington
Post,
Feb 5.)

The
handlers would offer Limbaugh a year’s supply of oxycontin to
silence him. Halliburton’s top executives smiled. Their man in
Washington — Dick Cheney — assured them the public would not vote
for a woman or a black man against a patriot who threw fear at them.
With their Manchurian Candidate in the Oval Office, they could make
war for at least another four years — if not 100, or 1,000.

Saul
Landau found this commentary on the street in Miami.