WHERE IS THE SPONTANEITY TODAY? by John W. Cassell

How long has it been? I mean the last time a political convention really did its job…chose who was to be the party’s nominee for president and vice-president?

Maybe some of you can correct me, but the last I remember anxiously keeping score as the individual state delegations cast their ballots was the Democrat Convention in 1960, where Kennedy beat Johnson. From the history books come much more intense struggles. The 1948 Republican Convention was a hog fight between Governor Dewey and Senator Taft. If I remember right, one of the Reconstruction Era presidents was nominated on something like the 46th ballot. Through it all was good ol’ American politics….dealing, persuading, cajoling…as all the different factions jockeyed for position in a winner take all horse race.

Nothing happens at the Convention any more besides partying, some good Dr. Goebbels scripting and an occasional insignificant fight about the wording of a plank in the party’s platform, or somebody’s credentials to sit in on this fix.

Not only is our politics fixed…everything is fixed…except some sporting events and most jury trials. I don’t know what you think, but I readily become suspicious of a political process, whether we’re talking about a Congressional vote, the State of the Union response, or the tortuous, expensive process by which another government regulation joins the two billion on the record already, that totally lacks spontaneity…ANY spontaneity. All this so-called due process, with its lengthy and involved notice and opportunity to be heard are little more than a FARCE.

What would you call all this “democracy by stage-managed production” with music and drama and lighting all designed to raise mob passion in all the right places…with the decision already made…?

This REEKS of Dr. Goebbels. I don’t care which side of the fence you are on…the devices engineered by the Founders and others to ensure a fair decision after argument by all concerned parties no longer work…they are not allowed to work.

Gone is the American promise typified in the Frank Capra movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, of the young, unschooled but zealous young man turning the tide and changing the apparent outcome because [don’t laugh] his colleagues in the Senate were impressed…yes even persuaded… by his oratory and devotion.

Decision-makers aren’t impressed by debate any more. The decision has been made before all that BS you can watch live on C-span or network television if so inclined.

And mind you in this helpless rant I’m not even going into what goes into designing the music and the hoop-la for these panem et circensis charades that leave you teary-eyed and utterly dedicated to the cause. That would REALLY disgust you.

I won’t trouble you with some of the psychological “preparation” gone through by parties to a high dollar legal dispute nowadays….yet more disgust.

Unfortunately, though, I know these things, and many of you do too. And, yes, I am disgusted. Disgusted and angry.

I’m telling you folks, the faceless corporate overlords aren’t going to all this trouble just to pick a president…just to decide important votes on legislation, or what new restrictions will be clamped on small businesses.

They’ve got bigger fish to fry. Hell in one more generation there will be very few people alive who remember any different. And then they will spring their surprise, which by then will be no surprise at all…

….A world securely in the hands of an elite that will constantly entertain the glitz-hungry masses with lights and song…getting them to jump one way or the other on cue, all the while employing an Orwellian vocabulary where love will be used for hate, peace for war, happiness for misery.

If Americans want their institutions still on the books to mean something…if they truly want to plot their own life’s course, or raise their children in accordance with their beliefs, or just say NO to yet another cessation of power to the “experts”…the people who” know best” what we should eat and drink and pay taxes to support…somebody better start some serious obstruction soon…and, yes, go from there.

John W. Cassell is the author of seven books on life during the American Cultural Revolution of the Late Sixties and Early Seventies, including Crossroads: 1969 and Hell's Quest: 1971 . After retiring from a career in law enforcement he published several opinion editorials in Israel National News and has been a frequent contributor to the Amazon- Connect Author Blog.

For further information on this disturbing subject, see Jack Engelhard’s blog on his website at www.jackengelhard.com and read Linda G. Shelnutt’s Molasses Moon .

he is right it is all biege farce. Now Sarah Palin—that is sponteniety and John McCain deserves credit for bringing her on board and sending all the liberal power brokers in NY, LA, and Washington into disarray :-).

It may already be too late.

I can't tell you how many times I have said to all and sundry, "We have lived through the last of the best."

3 posted on 09/01/2008 2:46:21 PM PDT by RobinOfKingston (Man, that's stupid ... even by congressional standards.)

4 posted on 09/01/2008 2:48:43 PM PDT by johnwcassell (Author of seven novels on life in the American Cultural Revolution [1960's and 70's].)

But those ‘smokey back rooms’ are so..UNDEMOCRATIC!

I miss those floor fights, too. I watched Kennedy/Johnson.

I even got to see & hear a bit of the ‘56 Dem convention, between newscasts & radio coverage.

I miss it; it embodied the brokering & horse trading of politics for all to see, rather than this modern primary vote pandering.

5 posted on 09/01/2008 2:49:50 PM PDT by ApplegateRanch (The Great Obamanation of Desolation, attempting to sit in the Oval Office, where he ought not..)

Gone is the American promise typified in the Frank Capra movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, of the young, unschooled but zealous young man turning the tide and changing the apparent outcome

No, it's not gone. Her name is Sarah Palin and she's being ridiculed as an inexperienced light-weight by people who SAY they are for 'the people' - but when someone rises to prominence outside their ranks, they are smeared and torn down.

I remember a vice-presidential skirmish at the ‘52 Democrat Convention between Kennedy and Kefauver but I guess it was more symbolic than real.

I saw the ‘56 Republican convention too...I kept hearing “California Here I Come”. BOY talk about long gone days...

7 posted on 09/01/2008 4:33:44 PM PDT by johnwcassell (Author of seven novels on life in the American Cultural Revolution [1960's and 70's].)

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