The American Public Square is filled from one side to the other with major monuments to the really big ideas of this campaign season:
- An economy that needs major retooling.
- A pair of wars waged in part successfully, but also unwisely.
- A health care system and policies that leave far too many without access to the most basic of services.
- An energy future that is bleak and destructive.
- An education system that fails in many of its most basic objectives, and is uneven in its results.
- A foreign policy that is largely reactive and disjointed, leaving us vulnerable and exposed.
- And on and on.
So what do the Republicans offer us? The moral equivalent of a filthy beetlejuice of a peddler who in a small corner of the Public Square lays out his dirty moth-eaten little blanket, and loads on it his pathetic wares: His collection of mostly-used lipstick tubes; a few cheap and cracked mirrors; some forty-year-old firecrackers and roman candles for tawdry effect; a pack of recycled lies; and his large collection of political video pornography.
Over and around this motley collection of trivia the beetlejuice-peddler prances and howls and gestures, all in an attempt to call attention to his pitiable blanket-full of distractions. From time to time the beetlejuice-peddler pitches a smoke bomb or stink bomb in the general direction of the major monuments in the Public Square. But mostly its about his stack of political pornography. That’s the centerpiece of his sad hole-ridden peddler’s blanket.
It’s sad really, until you realize how well-tuned the beetlejuice-peddler’s assortment of doh-dahs and political pornography is to a significant slice of the American consciousness. When considered in this light, the beetlejuice-peddler’s wretched distractions show through their truly ominous and anti-social nature.
Would that the public-nuisance police could just roll up this wretched man’s dirty little blanket and drag him and his junk out of the square. However, it’s up to us, the audience in the American Public Square, to turn our backs on this beetlejuice-peddler’s wares, and focus on the real issues in this campaign.
I hope we are up to the task.