By Sean Penn
It's been an odd week. For me, a particularly odd week. But that's another story. So, wait a minute. Iran DOESN'T have nuclear weapon capability??? So, who are we gonna bomb? I want to bomb somebody! Didn't Senator Clinton just vote in essence to give President Bush the power to bomb Iran? If he had done it last week, would that have made her right? I mean, if she knew then what she knows now? Or am I getting that backward? Golly, I'm confused. And what about President Bush? This week, Vladimir Putin, the man Mr. Bush said he "Looked into the eyes of and found to be very straightforward and trustworthy." So much so, he was "able to get a sense of his soul." Well that soulful fella has just successfully coalesced the most dangerous power base in Russia since the Cold War amid rumors that include allegations he ordered the assassinations of journalists and imprisonment of noted proponents of freedom (Oops).
Meanwhile, our President's great enemy in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, that "totalitarian," "authoritarian," "dictator," that "mad man run amok," somehow was unsuccessful in his bid for the constitutional reforms that would have allowed him to be repeatedly re-elected for life...Hmmm? Odd week, you know? Really. What happened to Chavez's "strong-arming?" His "electoral corruption?" His alleged "gagging of the press?" How in the hell could he have lost? I'm sorry, did I miss something? How is it that this "Commie bastard" with 80% of his citizens having elected him in the first place was unable to prevail? Could it be that we've been lied to about him? I mean, Pat Robertson's not a liar, is he? His god wouldn't let that happen, would he? And god-forbid, our god would let the right-wing pundits, left-wing corporates, or our own administration send us a bill of goods!? Is it possible, I mean I know it's silly, but is it just a little bit possible that President Chavez is in fact a defender of his people's Constitution? That, that's how his referendum could fail? And that that's why he accepted it with such grace? A constitution which I have read several times. Quite a beautiful document, not dissimilar to our own. You might give it a read. Oh, I forgot -- he's a "drug runner."
Let me share something with you. Late one night in Caracas, I met with a couple of fellas, mercenaries I think you call them. Goddamit, I keep doing that. I mean "contractors." They were Brits, their specialty: drug interdiction. These two were no great fans of Chavez. They called him "radical" and expected him to fall to an assassin's bullet within the year. Like him or not, he had the cash to win their acceptance of his employ. And working alongside the Venezuelan military, these two, based in Caracas, had played the mountainous and jungled border between Columbia and Venezuela. A zone rife with paramilitaries, FARC guerillas, and mer...scratch that, contractors. What I was told that evening in Caracas by these piano wire puppeteers was that they had never worked for a government whose investment in drug interdiction was so genuine. "Yeah," said one of the Brits, "I gotta give the bastard Chavez that."
But I was talking about the Constitution. Most importantly, our own. And what an odd week it has been. Our culture is engrained with a tradition that blurs the line between what is right, what is just and what is constitutional, with what is a scam. That tradition is the cult of personality. What can TV sell, what kind of crap will we buy. And at what point are we buying and selling our rights, our pride, our flag, our children, and succumbing to meaningless slogans that are ultimately pure titles for un-Americanism. How do we know what's American and what is not? Because John Wayne tells us so? Because Sean Penn tells us so? Susan Sarandon? Bill O'Reilly? Michael Moore? Senator Bull? Or Senator Shit? Ann "my bowel expenditure" Coulter? No. It's our Constitution. We don't use it just to win. We depend on it because it's the only "us" worth being. And because it's our children's inheritance from our shared forefathers and the traditions that really do speak best of our country.
Tags: Dennis Elizabeth Kucinich Sean Penn Presidential Candidates Election Candidate Political President
