Speak Softly Dear George... Restrained Righteousness and The Union
By MATTHEW BLUE
January 29, 2003

About last night...

I'm not going to go into a lot of specific issues in the killing field of contradictions that is politics. Have no knowledge of what the left hand is doing - all that jazz. When I approach a situation like this - I  have to narrow the iris of the telescope, and bring the focus in, centralize it-and bring it down to one man, one person.

After all in a real sense we are all plastic dominos teetering on the slick surface of someone's wobbly cheap-ass card table. It's up to each of us-to support the air in-between our small slabs of plastic-to fortify that air with passion, with knowledge, and with vigor.

Without the out-reaching of the mind to understand more than statistics, to quote more than polls, to move more than plastic tanks and men across a CNN map
of the middle east. things topple, they tip-and in giving up and giving way the basic common sense of the very essence of what motivates a man-his policies, his procedures, his armies. His armies actions are taken without permission, are ingested without water-swallowed dry and whole, each and every day-the
willingness of ignorance to gladly accept whatever it is given-or arguing the semantics of the language of contracts, laws, votes, polls, and contradictions is
the distracting right hand of the street magician as he draws your attention away from the mechanics of the illusion in his left.

Basically-the collective consciousness can seem and feel like a sea but it's a manipulated sea-monkey glass bowl of a thing, of an environment, of a sea.
It's the back of the comic promises of blonde haired sea princesses, when really-it's just a package of brine shrimp. It's just an illusion-sometimes, an illusion-the binding of a people, with a cause, under one God, under one man. No doubt the backlash of Pearl Harbor bound the populace with a whalebone corset-no
doubt the image of the Twin Towers left so many mental fists lifted in the air. shaking, because there was no fleet, and no flag to punch.

That is partial cause for the shaking in our President's face tonight, and in his words. Restrained. righteousness.

Now is where we get to the ground beef of the subject. I meet George, when he was still a governor in Texas. I was visiting friends. He was giving a speech at a
community college regarding education. Several hecklers shouted out questions, "Why doesn't Texas pay its teachers more then?", "I have to buy my own
supplies for my class, what about my funding?"

He deftly ignored each and every one of them and continued with his speech. That was my first experience with the man. Afterwards in shaking hands-our talk was glib and gloss, and I understand that one must be a performing monkey on the circuit holding up the tin cup for change, and doing the same jig every time-but still, there was a missing letter block at the bottom of the then pre-school pyramid he was building.

The man. Let's talk about the man. Let's talk about his speech. Let's talk about those spaces between his words, the pauses, the smug reflection of his determination applauded and approved. the quick wind up thru our nation's largest problems-and the focus, almost sneering at times discussion of our war, our fight, our cause, our might, our right.

George for most of the length of the formative years of his adult life-has been searching for the proper thickness of glass-to reflect himself-lighthouse strong in this world.

He was a rebellious student, and enjoyed a pleasurable life. He felt lacking for a casing in which he could contain himself-he was looking for direction. He discovered the refractive qualities of God.

Out of the shadows of managing, building businesses, and in nurturing ideas-grand and not so great-he helped himself to the already full kettle of politics,
the table set by his father-his newly sharpened eyes, believing. really truly believing that he could and can help-he filled his bowl full.

I'll skip over a majority of the rest-as the records plays the same on both sides A and B. Politics is that way. It's the worst of the baby beauty pageants with
constant til 4 am practices of your song and dance routine, and the especially leering expose of young /innocent ideas, and noble qualities in the low-cut and
sequined-studded glamour dresses worn for lobbying. Tonight. Let's talk about tonight.

You have to understand, this at heart-is a man, who believes in himself. He believes-as do many others-that God came to him at a time of his life, when he was needed most. God narrowed the shutter inside of his wanderlust-and brought him to this place. The last step overlooking the populace standing
around the palace, not a balcony to wave from. he's much more grounded-he wants to know, and feel how his good affects his charges.

And that's what we are. Couldn't you hear it when he said, "I will ensure that this (meaning the Twin  Towers) will never happen again."

"I will. "

He is insisting that he knows best-and as a leader  that's his right. But this is where he is coming from in his mind.

He was a little king tossed onto a thrown-supposedly the seat still kept warm by the presence of this father-but a new king nonetheless. There were challenges, he fumbled a bit-he seemed so much like the lighting instrument of his youth. a little
unfocused, no real strength, no one visible beam-just this hazy sort of spread, a touch of blue from a gel in a frame, some kind of scene to be set-but without
much purpose. Such is the nature of new kings in court. as he came in on such an undecided boat anyway-when his presidency was given to him, and not won.

9-11. It came. And can you imagine the hours and hours and hours and hours of talk and grief and anger and discovery and the shoveling of justice into the coal
fed engines of his mentality? Really-what would that do to any person? 9-11 closed the shutter and focused his beam even more intensely-he was charged,
electrified, and driven.

One might say-that the blood and pain, the questions and the anger of 9-11 were like little lead and iron chips to be thrown into a new kettle and smelted.. And
George was dipped into that liquid metal, but when he thought he was coming out gold-he was actually encased in a type of pig iron that only comes when your
compass has been broken by restrained righteousness.

No man can make a reasonable decision when he is sleeping with ghosts. It probably would surprise some to know-that he internalizes a lot of this-because, he needs human gasoline in his engine to burn-he has to have a purpose, he's been searching his whole life for purpose, and now. tonight he indicates, we will
rewrite history, we will not leave this problem for other presidents, for other congresses, we will win, we will be victorious.

But look at him-did you see him when he talked? His eyes said so much. He wanted to get to the part where he laid his hand on the hilt of his sword-because that is his focus that is his mantra.

Everything else hangs off of this drive, his drive like Christmas lights in February still tacked to the eve of a house-they are there, they are noticed, but they are never turned on and admired-because their season, their time is over.

There is no other train to get on, but this train. His train. The shaking in his words-the quiver of his lip-his righteousness restrained, a barely veiled hate that guises itself with patriotism, when essentially he's talking about killing.

Didn't you hear it?

He spoke at one point about the number of suspected terrorists that were arrested and detained. and then he added.

He added a bit of Texas midnight needle-plunging with that justified death row echo when he mentioned, in a fierce smug that indicated he probably read very, very detailed reports of just how some terrorists were dispatched from this mortal coil, "Some of them you won't have to worry about. they are never coming back."

And this is the man who says that under God, and under him-we will conquer our enemies. He's just admitted with the kind of small-town after the hunt café coffee talk, of killing those that have killed us.

I suppose that's nice-and well enough for the mechanic   discussing how we outta bomb those bastards back to the Stone Age. but-but.

This man, our George-he could do that. He has that power.

Is it really responsible to let one man so full of sharp and coal-fed emotions to have that kind of control?

Probably not. But too late. It's already here-and this is our train.

Yes policies can be changed. Impassioned consciousness can be raised, and it might be possible for some to see, for some to hear-that it is the man and his
motivation-not necessarily what he says and does, but what he thinks-that is the measuring stick for future floods.

Get your sand bags ready, because he is ready to shape the world with us.

Under God, under a moral umbrella we will be guided and formed. The church and faith will hold hands in a prayer circle inside of our politics-and it reaches
out in missionary strength in billions of dollars for help to other countries-when in our own, people will still die of the same causes. but not in the same numbers. All of that is good, it is a gift of the heart to be generous-however, it is an Indian gift when the umbrella is so stretched that the steel frame pops through the water-proof fabric of promises that can never really be fulfilled, and it is hope groundless.

Tell the pharmaceutical companies to stop charging so goddamn much for drugs for foreign countries. Don't spend a billion dollars. Order the factories, which
produce so many millions of pills to pop out those bad boys as fast as the Coca Cola plant and put a capsule of life extended in the hand of every man, woman, and child who has AIDS, who has diabetes. etc. Lord knows everyone on the earth at one time or the other has drank a Coke, why the fuck should we charge so much money. for LIFE?

The cost for AIDS drugs for Americans might have gone down. but not the added cost of ALL the drugs used to counteract those initial drugs-and keep a body functioning.

That is politics. that is show, that is illusion-a smiling tight black shirt with a buxom assistant, ten white tigers and a glass box with slits for saws. Show
only one side, say the best, paint the world-open the umbrella of the American spirit and the heart-so our righteousness and our prosperity will shade the whole
world.

Inside really. there is a bankruptcy of such purity-because in reality, the wholesomeness of a populace, just doesn't exist. because we are individuals, we are singularly separate and thinking mounds of gray matter. and what we think and do-does matter.

I am left with an uneasiness that I haven't had in  years. Studying him during his speech-I am left with more of an unsettling of the bowels of my political and social morals than I was when I actually had to spend time confined in a small, controlled space with a man who looked right through me, a man who had killed several people-because he thought they fit, and they were asking him for release.

Homeland security wants you. ya know? Do the job of the CIA, be ears and eyes-look and watch out, report and come back with information on your fellow
Americans. which most likely will turn out to be reams of reports on your fellow foreign Americans.

George has purpose now, something that he will never unlock his jaw and let go of. He has been gilded in the suspended and drug out terror of some very
horrible moments, and no ideology, no threat-perceived, and yes he said as long as it is perceived. will be overlooked in the overturning of history.

He is one man, but restrained righteousness is infectious-and when I close my eyes, and let the words really sink in-I can see this loop. a little logical, a little ridiculous, but based on fact.

Out of all the countries that we point out as harboring their weapons of mass destruction. we have the most. And we are the only one to have used a nuclear device to destroy a whole city of human beings.

Whose to say in some other room, in some other time zone-when an early sun is setting and we are just pushing snooze. that someone doesn't say,

"They are to be feared."

They would be right-because restrained righteousness is a big boot to chalk lines drawn on the ground. they are so easily wiped out and walked over.

I would say to him-if I were to meet him again.

"You ignored some very good questions that day in Ft.Worth, but I can understand wanting to get on with your speech. I'm not sorry I met you-but I am sorry you decided to pick up your gun instead of your pen so soon after the funeral, so soon after the mourning-you became America's angry widow, however-you don't lobby people and politicians for change. you come into the
courtroom with a gun under your shirt, and when the prisoner comes in even before he's rendered innocent or guilty-you're going to shoot him. Again and again. There will never be enough repayment for you. There will never be enough because you've molded your purpose in pig iron, a base metal of thought, and no
retrospective rationale will ever be loaded into an empty chamber of your gun."

Sure wish I could impress upon him, that people who only wish you harm-scatter like magpies off of a harvested cornfield. The dispersement may seem to be a
black cloud in the horizon-but for the bulk that you can see-there are hundreds of individuals flying, their own directions. lone wolves, who will never be found-and never be caught.

You can't prevent harm. you can only fortify yourself-and not in neighbor-spying agencies and limited rights for citizens. You fortify yourself with integrity, and that doesn't automatically come out of the bible, or just because you say God and
justice-it's born of action, and all those spaces in-between your words.

Speak softly and breathe dear George. Go into a locked room and scream. Your restrained righteousness is your shaking words and quivering lip. not mine.

Peace to you George, and for any young man or woman, civilian or otherwise that will meet an end because of this inevitable train that's steaming on a one-way
track-if there is talk amongst the literati and the liberals, the hippies and the students that your fight is not honorable. you are honorable, and because you
risk the ultimate, and I do not-you are forever gilded, not gold-but an invisible metal from my heart and from my prayers.

Come back safely.

Please

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