January 7, 1999

I read Carlos Castaneda back in the days when everybody did (although I didn't inhale), and came away with one thing that has served me very well. "When you discover that the path you are on has no Heart," the Brujo (or sorceror) Don Juan tells his disciple, "you must leave it - because it is preparing to destroy you."

I wish Bill Clinton had been one of us as some of my contemporaries are saying. I wish, at least, that he had read Castaneda and taken away that one fine thing. Because -as President and as a man - Clinton has been on a Path With No Heart for a very long time.

It is not a new path for us as a nation. The Path of Heartlessness has made of America a World Class Menace, bombing the helpless in the name of saving them from their bad leaders, subverting even legitimately elected governments, bypassing the protections of our own constitution to stifle dissent at home. Oh yes, we are strong - the strongest nation on earth, but the Path we are on is destroying our democracy. That too has been going on for awhile.

What is new about this Path is the faction that now defends it: "Us."

Yes, the "Us" that once marched, chanting, against LBJ's bombings of foreign civilians has turned our eyes away, from the 5000 children who die each month as a result of the sanctions we have imposed on Iraq, and from the victims of our meaningless bombings there. I have even heard a few old peaceniks charge the President's accusers with such stuff as aiding and comforting the "enemy."

Sometimes I wonder if I was actually one of that "Us." I always wondered. But now I think I've got a handle on it: either Bill Clinton is one of "Us," or I am. This "We" isn't big enough for the two of us.

As candidate for President, Clinton tore himself away from the dizzy pace of hand-shaking, bad chicken dinners, and speechifying to personally oversee the execution of an idiot in Arkansas. That was how he proved that, inspite of a youthful brush with idealism, he was no softy-lefty. There was no Bleeding Heart on his campaign trail!

And then he won. He triumphed over one of the nastiest, nasal-est men ever to hold the office, probably by just smiling and drawling. America had had enough of pitbulls, so we elected Cuyote - the Trickster. And the first thing he did - the very first thing - was to bomb Iraq.

There was no reason to bomb Iraq.

The two men accused of plotting to murder Bush (which provided the "reason" for the attack) were safely awaiting trial in Kuwait. Civilians took the brunt of the bombing, as usual, but this time there was something different, something new: We did it. We Boomers were now Bombers.

And Clinton had proved he was no wuss! He could punish an innocent population with death as easily as he had made a photo-op of executing a moron who saved his dessert for after the execution. And my long-time liberal friends were prepared to overlook it all, because he was one of Us and he would prove it one day, One day soon.

But first he had to prove he really didn't inhale, by upholding and strengthening the "zero tolerance" laws imposed on drug users and dealers - expecially in the ghettos, where most of those incarcerated (though NOT most of those who use drugs) originate. The draconian sentencing went on - possession can get you a stiffer sentence than murder these days; the numbers of our citizens imprisoned for non-violent crimes continued to climb; and prison-building became our Number One Growth Industry.

And then I guess he had to prove that he wasn't some radical populist or tool of the pinko unions, or maybe he just had to pay off some private debts, so he fought with tooth, nail, and pork barrel for NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), completely ignoring the fact that Americans don't want it.

His crowning achievement in public renunciation of the values of compassion some might have suspected him of harboring, was the destruction of the welfare system his "hero" Franklin Roosevelt once instituted to cover the open sores of capitalism, the effects of this brutal legislation to be seen in full force only after Mr. Clinton's second term had run its natural course (which it may yet do).

This one was almost a miracle.

George Bush couldn't have done it - although he'd really have gotten off on it. Reagan couldn't have done it. The American left would have set up a piteous howl of agony that would echo for decades.

Going back in history a bit, Richard Nixon wouldn't have done it. But then, compared to Clinton, Nixon was something of a liberal. Of course, Nixon wasn't one of us. And as for LBJ - that "monster" against whom "we" once marched and hurled names like "baby killer?" There is every reason to believe that - whatever his failings - Johnson loved the poor, and genuinely attempted to pull the teeth of poverty once and for all. And through the compounded miracle of public relations, most people seem to think that Clinton opposed the regressive legislation.

Funny - it was Clinton, in his righteous mode and in his most popular moment, who lectured poor women on "self-control" - he who can now be heard to say, on tape to the irresistible Ms. Lewinsky, that he had been "hoping" this kind of thing wouldn't "happen" when he was in the White House.

Funny - the Laws of Karma didn't die with our lost Aquarian Dreams. The "Zero Tolerance" Clinton was happy to visit upon the ones who inhaled, is now being used to judge his own shabby sins. Bombing Iraq has become too common to create a meaningful diversion. And so the man who coolly enforced and enacted cruel laws on the poor and humiliated young mothers to make a political score, must sit by while his most intimate actions are pitilessy dissected in public.

To those who defend him on the grounds that he is one of "Us" I must protest, at least, my innocence, Just who are "we," if this casual killer, this hypocrite who insults and further oppresses poor women and their children, who comfortably recommends ever harsher laws and jail terms in a nation already dangerously unfree, is one of "Us?" Are we the Peace Movement? Are we those who once dreamed of an egalitarian and loving society? Are we the generation that idolized freedom? Or are we the self-centered hedonists we were once accused of being?

It's hard not to feel sorry for anyone who, having risen so high, must be held up to such ridicule. His tormentors are certainly no better, and often considerably worse, than our poor, weak chief executive. And they are shamelessly using his past as a lukewarm and vacillating opponent of the Vietnam War, as a way once again of tarnishing the Generation that Stopped the War Machine - if only for a day. It cannot be a good time for our President.

But it is the Path he has chosen - and it never had a Heart.


30

---

HOME