Cindy Sheehan
Lightning Rods
for release 08-18-05
Washington D.C.
by Lightning Rod
I know a bit about lightning rods. A lightning rod doesn't produce energy, it merely directs energy. It protects the barn from being burned down.
A lightning rod doesn't come into use until there is sufficient static electricity in the clouds to produce a discharge. There is a static charge of anti-war sentiment out there right now and that's why the president's trail bike has rubber tires. The last thing this administration wants is for there to be a focal point for the widespread galvanic charge that is developing in the clouds over America. Over sixty percent of us disapprove of BushCo's handling of the Iraq war.
Cindy Sheehan is a lightning rod and she is pointing the discharge straight to the ground like any good lightning rod would do. The ground in this case happens to be at Gdumb's front door.
You have to wonder what kind of idiots are running the show at BushCo. I thought they were supposed to be politically savvy.
They could have made this whole thing go away a week ago if Gdub had just ridden his trail bike down for a visit with Cindy.
Now it's a festering sore. As it should be.
Our government has settled into a sustained culture of denial and illusion, evasion and stonewalling. If they don't want to talk about Karl Rove's treasonous outing of Valerie Plame, they just tell Scott McClellan to endlessly repeat the line of malarky about not wanting to influence the 'ongoing investigation' by commenting on it . This is of course patent nonsense because they have been commenting on it for two years and only when it became embarrassing to the White House did they clam up.
And if they wish to cling to the illusion that we are having any semblance of success in Iraq, a character like Cindy Sheehan is very inconvenient. They don't even want to admit that she is there, because then they will be forced to confront the reality that we are in a pointless quagmire with respect to Iraq. I'm no military expert. I've read a little Clausewitz but I have no inside information supplied to me by the intelligence services and I have never set foot in Iraq. But even a yokel from Texas could see what was bound to happen in Iraq. There is only one sensible response to invasion by an overwhelming force. You melt into the countryside and harass the enemy to death. It's textbook. These people have been to West Point and they couldn't figure this out?
This sort of military bad judgement is starting to present itself politically as well. As in Iraq, where we have created just what we were trying to prevent, namely a cause and haven for terrorists, the idiots in Camp Georgie have by their obdurance in the Sheehan matter created exactly what they didn't want, namely a focal point for the gathering anti-war sentiment.
So, instead of doing the decent thing and answering a few questions for the mother of a dead soldier, Gdub takes a bike ride and says, "I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy," he said when asked about opting to ride his bike instead of meeting with Sheehan. "And part of my being is to be outside exercising."
So while the president is out playing Lance Armstrong, gas prices soar and mothers mourn the deaths of their sons and daughters and our pitiful puppets in Iraq try to fit into a Halloween costume that says 'democracy' on the tag.
The Poet's Eye sees an imminent conflagration. BushCo may be about to self combust because of it's arrogance and greed and insensitivity to the citizens that it so falsely and grandly claims to serve. Georgie might come back to a harder school when he ends his Summer vacation. The core of protest that is being born in Crawford is destined to move to Washington in the Fall. I know this is a strange thing for a Lightning Rod to say, but Let The Barn Burn Down.
I am an old woman named after my mother
My old man is another child that's grown old
If dreams were lightning thunder was desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago
---John Prine,
click to hear lrod version
