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DUANE POWELL
almost immediately. I feel dismissed as being no use to his
ambition. He probably guesses I am an old hippy, a tiny cell of
the social cancer he wishes to wipe away like scum off a glass
slide. I have worked for bosses like him: you don't exist to them
except when useful or perceived a threat
Relate to me, I snarl at Newt in the mirror. Tell me about
the malignancy within. Say it loudly: True Americans must eradi
cate untrue Americans. Tell me that society has to be ethnically
cleansed of persons you call "abnormal Americans," who are
presumably people like me who are to the left of Attila the Hun;
uppity pushy women who frighten the testicles off white males;
non-Christians and "aliens", who are everyone of color no matter
how many centuries their ancestors have lived here, even those
vtfio greeted Columbus and assisted Lewis & Clark.
Convince me I owe my life and labor to a plutocracy that
enriches itself by impoverishing the rest of us, I shout silently at
Neva's mirror face. Inspire me that a "great" America depends
on removing "inferiors and undesirables who must be given the
chance to die of their own weakness" by abolishing every oppor
tunity for life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness.
I think of something a woman suggested to me. Hey
Newt, I smirk at his reflection: What if invitro testing not only
determined a person's sex but also its sexual preference —
would your pro-life homophobic friends propose abortion for
homosexual fetuses?
Newt's reflected mouth moves as relentlessly as a
drumbeating rabbit in a battery commercial."Our goal is simple,"
Newt says. 'To train by April 1996, 200,000 citizens as a model
for replacing the welfare state and reforming government."
I get the chills and gasp at his audacity. Newt is pro
posing to raise a private army election year, a rabble of true
believers recruited to make domestic politics as severe and
confrontational as the Cold War with communist Russia. No
mercy for the "other side" or anyone else who resists the new
Kingfish. Huey Long reincarnate. "Politics and war are remark
ably similar systems," Newt says almost reading my mind. 'We
are a happy bunch of Vikings who don't mind a fight."
Newt’s brand of Americanism makes me think of an old
cartoon poster of Nixon and Agnew who are unshaved cooks in
a gag and barf cafe. Nixon shoves a plate of red, vrfiite and blue
spaghetti with stars for meatballs at the observer. "Shut up and
eat it!" he snarls.
I wander if Newt's loyal corps whom he intimidates into
obedience realize that their narrow and flogging perception of
democracy disrupts the majority they claim to represent. Yet
their claim might be real. That has always been the problem with
majority rule. A majority is easily bullied to bully; laceration of
deep inferiority feelings works almost every time. People react
wth fear and loathing, usually against minorities. The irony is
that it is usually minorities who strive for liberty and justice, just
as it is a minority that craves raw power and will do anything to
get and keep it.
The bartender refills my Red Death. W aste of time
listening to those peckerheads," he says. He looks grimly at
Newt's table. "Maybe being a liberal isn't so popular nowadays,"
he says, "but at least we've got larger alimentary canals than
rednecks and don't keep all that shit bottled up."
Newt explains capitalism to his eagerly capitalistic
listeners. 'The capitalist system gives everyone the opportunity
to move up and achieve," he says. W e should look at it that
everyone has an opportunity to achieve but not necessarily
accomplish equal results." Some become more equal than
others, accumulating more than equal property, wealth and
power, which of course shrinks the equality of the rest Newt
thinks that's the way it should be. Natural selection. Social
Darwnism is a fact, he says. He follows this disingenuous
alliteration to Adam Smith with a gem of doublethink. 'The
engine that pulls the train must continue to be fueled," he says.
He spells it out. Tax breaks for low income people must be
sacrificed for high income tax breaks. "Affluent taxpayers must
receive breaks because they invest money and create jobs for
others," Newt says.
I sneer at Newt's baldfaced image in the mirror. Those
'affluent taxpayers' don't invest in anything except their own
stock portfolios, and they not only don't pay their fair share of
taxes, they gorge on public money which people like Newt call
welfare when distributed among the poor and investment when
extorted by the rich. At the same time Republicans cut off
welfare to unwed teenage mothers and downsized workers, they
initiate special tax breaks to favored corporations that amount to
billions of dollars. They cut the taxes of Big Business and the
rich and spoil them with billions more in subsidies they claim
are essential to the free market, which is regarded as a natural
force. Public services and poverty programs are gutted to make
up the shortfall. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That
is Republican tax policy and the taproot of its counterfeit revol
ution. Newt's "crown jewel."
Maybe Newt and his gang should be allowed to rule
without protest or resistance in the interests of the nation's
new Tories and roll back the hard won laws and principles of
two centuries. Ordinary people might realize what they have to
lose and take back what they've lost, which should sober up the
next couple of generations. But maybe no one wall be inclined to
retrieve rights our forebears knew were essential to liberty and
equality. Maybe Democracy didn't win the Cold War after all.
Old coarse fascism in modem populist disguise has triumphed.
Hothouse capitalism exists best in strictly controlled environ
ments in which social classes are rigidly defined and no one is
allowed to question or reform the arthritic incompetence and
desolation such corrupt and moribund mediocracies usually
foster and perpetuate like fetid molds
You try to confuse us, I say to mirror Newt. You claim
corporate capitalism is free market Americanism. You try to
convince us that Big Business willingly and enthusiastically
competes for sheer love of competition in an unfettered empor
ium of commerce. I laugh harshly at Newt's facile face and drink
a long swallow of Red Death. Tell me you actually think the
ruthless takeover wars that eliminate thousands of jobs are
essential to your almighty free market, I snarl silently. Are you
going to lie and say you don't suspect that corporations are
inherently socialist rather than capitalist and that their bitter
competition to dominate the American economy is w/inner
take all?
Hey Newt! I say, leaning across the bar at the mirror.
This a war between the robbers and the robbed. And you, you
old draftdodger, you're the robber warlord.
A Naturals food# Grocery
ett 1974
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One of the regulars slops against me at the bar. He
looks over at Newt "I know that guy," he says
"Oliver Cromwell."
"Noooo.that TV guy. Donahue."
Newt gets spacy as the drinks flow. He touts a "virtual
world," simulated, distracted from the real world. Instead of cake
as suggested by Marie Antionette, Newt wants the common folk
to feed on sugar frosting. 'We can develop populism in space
and the beginning of citizen involvement by initiating a tourism
program for the American people," he says, and blames the
"welfare state" for "the decision to not move more quickly into
space."
"If you think about the notion that the great challenge of
our lifetime is first to imagine a future that is worth spending our
lives getting to," Newt says, "and then, because of the technol
ogies and capabilities we have today, to get it up to sort of a
virtual state, although that's done in your mind..."
What did he say?
"I find it fascinating that we are not in a new place,"
Newt says. "It's just becoming harder and harder and harder to
avoid the place where we are."
Newt is lost in spacebabble He rants about 'factories
and jobs in space," a "honeymoon on the Moon" and a "host of
high-tech efforts to spread a new electronic gospel."
Moonbeamy. Technoholic. Newt is future drunk.
Technomania in eternal combat with technophobia. He fore
sees intense rivalry in the very near future as a result of over
population and depletion of resources as his grand opportunity.
He is staking out the pennant of the rich and famous as his
very owo mainspring to absolute power
'You're making sure your rich patrons get through the
Millennium by sacrificing the rest of us. All for yourselves and
nothing for anybody else," I mumble aloud to Newt's somewhat
blurred virtual-face in the mirror. 'You and your gang are strip
ping away everything that counts - even clean air, clear water,
the last forests. You're giving everything back to the big polluters
and the rape and pillagers and make it virtually impossible for
preventive litigation or lawsuits for public or personal damages.
You say you’re a futurist but you act as crazy as Watt who said
environmentalism was unnecessary because God was going to
terminate the planet any minute."
A crowd comes in and quickly fills the Top Of The Astor
Rush Limbaugh sits at a table with Pat Robertson and Robert
Dole. Ralph Reed and several Christoliticians take a large table.
Pat Buchanan sits by himself. Tattooed skinheads in cutoff
leathers and swastika emblems maraude in at the bar. A large
group of beergut commandos in military camouflage armed
v4th NRA-approved assault rifles marches in. Mark Hemphill,
who damn near singlehandidly bought this year's Legislature,
surrounds Newt with his Oregon Business Roundtable. Newt
raises his glass in salute "Money is the mother's milk of
politics," the Speaker of the House says cheerfully.
Clamo, Derfler and Tieman lick Newt's shoes while he
sings, "The morning will come when the world will be mine
Tomorrow belongs to m e" I recognize it from Cabaret, an
angelic Nazi boy singing in a beer garden.
Rita squirms through the crowd to Newt's table She
bends to pick up empty glasses and full ashtrays. Tieman laughs
and pinches her fanny. She smacks the tray against his head,
which disappears in an explosion of ashes and shards of glass I
see it all in the bar mirror and rush over to the table, prepared to
say everything on my mind. I splash Red Death in Newt's face
like Jose Ferrer did to Fred MacMurray in Caine Mutiny. 'You
slimy reptile," I say
The Republican majority of the Oregon Legislature
appear from everywhere in the restaurant and bar I am
engulfed. Hands grasp me, lift me off the floor and throw me
through an open window next to the table. As I fall eight floors
from the Top Of The Astor to the street I see anchored oil ships
staining a toxinated river empty of salmon and sea lions; the
city's scalp skinned of trees; smoke pumping into the ozone and
sewage into the river from fully computerized papermills and
aluminum plants wall to wall on the waterfront; vacant shabby or
burnt shells of old houses falling down the hills Downtown is
desolate, boarded up Out of work Astorians fight each other
for scarce food stamps or squat along curbs smoking shit or
drinking piss Wolfpacks of homeless children roam through the
city. Newt's America
I hit the sidewalk and wake up.
Most quotes attributed to Newt Gingrich are from his
owo mouth
I