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Back in 2000, i was living in Springfield, Illinois, Land of Lincoln, and after 30 years of dreaming, finally getting paid on a regular basis, as a writer. I hadn’t even learned to type till I was 27. By 1997, I had written in a string of underground 'zines and the occasional college paper for over than seven years and finally broke through to paid publication after ten years of submitting to the fantastic local A&E/Alternative weekly, Illinois Times then edited by Bill Furry . I broke through in features writing as a free lancer. Three years later after numerous features, a couple of cover stories, i was finally publishing the occasional paid political column. And by 2000, I was also a contributing editor for the local glossy tourist/fine home monthly, Springfield Magazine, which was owned by a very conservative person i don't need to name .When the summer of 2000 came around, it was time to write about the election at the same time it was time to write about one of my all time favorite topics the Illinois State Fair. I had become a local specialist one the subject and published in both periodicals, having written at least one published piece on the fairs in each of the last few years. My press credentials that year came from the conservative monthly. And then George W. Bush announced his plans to come to our town the following Sunday and make a whistle-stop stump speech from the back of a train, just like they did in the old days. The ad in the paper said all Americans welcome. It was the talk of the town. So i prepared to meet him that Sunday and wrote this piece which appeared that Thursday:
Stories for the TV Generations: The Real Son of a Bush--700 words--In case anyone doubted the paternity of the 2000 GOP ticket, last week GW Jr. brought in a second true son of a bush, Dick Cheney, to be his running mate. Funny, I remember a George Bush ten years back and he came tagging along with Dick Cheney then too; and they were trying to sell me a war. Yeah, that’s right, back then TV was just getting underway with that miniseries about S&Ls across the country going belly up. Bad investments bringing on a half a trillion dollar bailout, dirty fingers in all the pies, one of the president’s kids (Neil) was getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar up to his clavicle and the next thing we knew they’d changed the channel to Operation Desert Shill. They say reality rules TV these days. The reality is the Republican Convention is ruining my TV this week and all they’re selling me is a re-run. Yep, this week in Philly, the city where the cops wear a brotherly glove, top Repubs, including Spring patch’s highest ranking citizen (happy to talk about anything other than truckers licenses), have gathered to celebrate the new millennium by rolling back the clock to the 1980s. The on-line pundit Jacob Weisberg of Slate recently made the case that Cheney is the ideal GW Jr. running mate and, if the criteria is to demonstrate a clear, though sometimes ghastly, picture of everything liberals voted against Bush Sr. over, then Cheney is indeed the man for the job. What can you say about the kind of guy who gets sent out to find the best man for the job and comes back tugging his own lapel? Well, for one, thanks to Cheney’s Defense Department past, we know he favors supporting a personal arsenal for every citizen. You can also tell he’s more conservative than compassionate in the way that his Right to Life stance does not extend to prisoners of the state or its military. And I for one would love to hear Cheney explain why his vote against the ERA was good for America.Clinton may have scrambled to placate traditionalists, but he sold himself as hip and reform-y. Gore has to make the same sale. The gag is Bush is trying to play down his wild child past to sell himself to conservatives and Gore is trying to play down his current rigidity to pitch himself to the liberals who know he sold out the same causes Clinton did over the last eight years. Back in ‘92 a lot of people saw Clinton as a draft dodging, pot-smoking womanizer. In fact, that's why I voted for him. In this match-up, when it comes to drugs there's not a lot of difference between Bush and Gore, both admit they inhaled. And, both are fiercely committed making sure the federal government vigorously prosecutes anyone else they catch doing it. At least as long as the tobacco and alcohol industry continue sponsoring the "War on 'Drugs.'"The real deal in this election is not drugs, nor sex, but ‘rock ‘n roll,’ baby: War. When it comes to a real blood and guts “shoot an Arab for Oil” kind of war profit bonanza, Cheney is the hands down number one war hawk in the race. In an ironic twist of fate, this round it's the GOP who has to bolster their military image and needs Cheney to balance Bush against Viet-vet Gore. Unlike his war-hero dad, and like Clinton, or rather, more like Quayle, GW somehow managed to avoid the draft. Is watching the Bush Boys pop more balloons than their old man’s thousand points of light really supposed to be entertainment? I know we’re only paid to watch the commercials, but I want my next president to be at least as entertaining as the last one. And if the choice is between sex or violence, I know which one I prefer. Maybe there’s a little Clinton in both candidates after all. With Bush nuzzling Cheney and Gore currently courting that other high ranking Springfieldian, Senator Richard Durbin, it still seems that if we want to know what either of the candidates are really like, we just have to look at their Dick. Yes, i know it's the same lame dick joke that i posted in a poem as a comment on robert braunstein's "Inaction Faction" poem. That’s what made me remember this.Anyway, when Bush came to town that Sunday, i had been working out at the fairgrounds in preparation for the upcoming Opening Day festivities. And i admittedly wrongly went straight from the state fairgrounds to the Bush rally without removing my Springfield Magazine press badge, to protest against carrying a sign that still reads: "Bad Governor = Bad President/ NO MORE BUSH." (It’s above my desk in my current office, though it stayed in storage for years) Continuing on with my wrong-headedness, i did not remove the press badge until, like, the second time i heard someone read it out loud.But the badge was the least of my problems. The crowds there to support Bush far out numbered the crowd there to protest against him. As I approached they were the first ones I saw because they were hovering at the edges of the throng, more than a block away from the train station yard where Bush was to speak. “You don’t want to go in there,” they warned, but I blithely did anyway. The choice has changed my life.
You see, there was a big crowd for Bush and that was all right. I had protested for years and knew a bit about how to endure the typical harassment you get when you go into a group of people and tell them what they don’t want to hear. And there were lots of people there who tisked at my sign with distain. And that was OK, the problem was that in amongst those folks who disagreed with my sentiments were LOTS of hostile hateful people there supporting Bush who felt I needed to be punished for holding beliefs different from their own and that they had the right to do it.
I thought I would go in there hold up my sign, like against some back wall and not block folks, but be seen and maybe affect a few minds. Didn’t happen. I was kicked, stepped on cussed at, had my sign yanked out of my hands more than once, shoved and shoved and shoved. I did my best Gandhi with the stuff, you know, the passive determined martyr public witness thing, but it was tough, straight-up scary. Those people were WAY more hostile and sadistic than I ever realized citizens could be against each other simply for expressing an opposing political view. Not in America.
Worst of all was a cadre of Pro-Bush sign carriers who followed me wherever I went in the area around the train station, hitting and insulting me, tripping me, trying to pick a fight, trying to take my sign, slapping their signs in front of mine and pushing back against me to the point of knocking me over several times and once smashing me against a wall so violently police had to intervene to rescue me. And of course I was the one threatened with arrest.
I survived of course and knew from that day on that Bush was not just the wrong guy for the job, or not even just from the wrong party, or against my basic philosophical beliefs about war and government, but a dangerous incredibly violent man who surrounded himself with people for whom violence, cruelty and disrespect were all acceptable, expected parts of the game. Knowing what I have come to learn of the Bush junta and their Gestapo like crowd control at subsequent events, I now suspect that I was actually being targeted by paid staff on hand to pose as casual Bush supporters and do undercover crowd control. The worst part wasn’t the actions of this crowd of four or five who harassed me, though their actions were far more violent and disrespectful; the worst part was the not so innocent bystanders, the Bush true believers who frequently joined in my tormenting or laughed on the sidelines with glee.
The editor at Illinois Times agreed something should be written about it and even though his paper was already set, ran my article as an inside front page half page letter to the editor, unpaid. Small surprise I was fired from my contributing editor position at the conservative Springfield Magazine the day the piece came out and was IT editor-entitled “Middle-Class Thugs for Bush.”
I will never know, come to think of it, I pray I will never know, the true terror of being a Bush target, not like the Iraqis, the Afghanis, or say the Mexicans, the Nicaraguans, or the Palestinians, the list goes on and on. Around the world Bush is the emblem of America the bully.
But here at home, everyday, that man has that power which he abuses so recklessly re-given to him by supposedly average citizens of such hatred and violence-- the kind of people who attacked me at that rally that day and the kind of people who stood there and laughed, the kind of people who live right here.
--yzur--
