Shotguns, Freud, and the Fourth November

Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but if you’re anything like me, you probably weren’t all that interested in the recent Republican National Convention. For one thing, it was a little anticlimactic; gee, whom did you think they were gonna nominate? I tried at all costs to avoid the intercontinental ballistic imagery otherwise referred to as “television coverage” of the convention, but was finally sabotaged by the newspaper covers at my favorite Main Street bagel shop. There, strewn about the tables like the shells of so many landmines, were those eagle’s eye shots of our President, taking his stance in front the entire free world, like a debutante at her coming out party. I was at once rubbing the hangover out of my eyes and realizing that I was more than a little creeped out by something in the picture. Sure, sure, any semblance of Georgie is at least a little unnerving, but there was something more. That runway- something like a red carpet leading up to a massive presidential seal, and G-Dubs beaming with smug glory at its tip- was haunting, like big brother himself. It seemed like it had been cobbled together from the remnants of a Star Wars set. Hitler’s propaganda machine couldn’t have done better. Being the hot topic, this same runway resurfaced in an article my Rhetoric professor handed out from the New York Times editorial section. Its author alluded to it in Freudian terms (in case you missed psych 101, just think of how a coked-out Austrian perv would describe an elongated rectangle topped off by a massive circle). Apparently, the boner (not the president) was a deliberate attempt by the Commander-in- Chief’s own media advisor to present him to his eager nation as the physical manifestation of power.Well, if that’s all the PR man wanted to do, it seems to me he could have just left the president to his pretzels, walked into the media spotlight and plopped down a loaded twelve-gauge shotgun at the podium. The firearm and the leader of the free world both possess tremendous “power,” and not unlike the inanimate object, Dubya appears incapable of comprehending the damage and pain that he can (and does) inflict.My dad has a shotgun. I get a little creeped out by that, too, but unlike nearly half the American voting population; he has enough common sense to keep the thing dead-bolted in the basement in a room with no other purpose. From time to time he takes it up to the gravel pit behind his house and blasts it at the rocks and old tires up there; what he doesn’t do is go into a booth every fourth November and cast a vote for it to lead the best nation on the planet to its doom. Come this November, neither should you.