“Tales I Tell Myself” Vol.17
The State of the Union
Wednesday 2nd March 2022
“The State of the Union”
A conversation with the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald
“For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal”.
John F Kennedy
It was closing in on 2am here in the UK when my Political Editor, that beautiful vista of a beautiful lady that for time and age has long since become immaterial, screeched that the “old dodderers” were entering the chamber for the State of the Union and I excitedly finished brewing our teas, collected a pack of chocolate biscuits and was safely in place by the time we caught our first glimpse of Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris behind the podium. I nuzzled in behind my Editor, lovingly cradling her ageless body as I snuggled into the nape of her neck with gentle reassuring kisses as our “Both Sides of The Aisle” Superheroes made their grand entrance.
I do love a good State of the Union address!
I am a veteran of many as I’ve always followed US politics rather more closely than the dreadful vaudevillian show of grandiose Commonwealth pomposity that passes for politics in the UK. I’m not naïve enough to suggest that US politics is any more democratic than here, we’re all aware by now that there’s just one Orwellian “Party” throughout the world. You’re a “Global Citizen” or quite frankly, you’re not. Not welcome or wanted too, but that’s a dangerous tangent to traverse and probably best left to another day and for writers far more eloquent than me.
With our teas growing colder as the passion of our late night political discourse on the sofa growing hotter and ever more intense with every passing kiss on the neck and cheeky stroke on the inside of a thigh or groin, I’m sure I became a little unhinged and high on the spectacular puppet show on the telescreen before us. Our passions were running high for sure, but I’m sure the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald was creeping through the fabric of our Matrix multiverse consciousness, smiling at me as well as the ghostly (ghastly? Political Editor) spectacle in the chamber of secrets on the telescreen. Every time Nancy Pelosi raised the gavel I now imagined her clubbing Kamala Harris violently with her wooden object before running through the remainder of the great and the good of US politics akin to “Leather Face” in the Netflix reimagined “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” film. Locking the doors to the chamber, Nancy was re-enacting the bus scene from the recent abomination of a horror film but which is as equally and spectacularly and utterly bloody dreadful as its 1970’s original. I may still be imagining it but the mind’s eye saw Nancy laying waste to one member of congress after the other but sexual passions between the Editor and I were now at a fevered pitch, Lee Harvey Oswald’s ghost was now solid and not a mere apparition of a fevered, oversexed mind, and, well…….
Nancy Pelosi appeared to malfunction!
Now of course President Biden called Ukrainians “Iranians”. Of course he did. Pete Buttigieg looked like a little lost puppy didn’t he? No-one to talk to then an explosion of unbridled joy when the President passed him on the way to the podium. It was a beautiful sight to see. As was Mitt Romney looking like he’d rather be anywhere else but where he was, same too for the Republican member who actually confirmed as much on Twitter. To my limey eyes the chamber didn’t appear full to capacity. Were there some abstainers? Did it fill up after I stopped watching and after the President had declared his current war preferences? There also seemed to be very little televisual coverage of Democrats. Was that my lying eyes or perfectly in keeping with my dastardly lying thoughts, a One Party structure of a right wing purveyor of war being the leader of a left leaning supposed democratic party of peace?
And of course President Biden stumbled and bumbled his way through his speech. He’s in cognitive decline and has been for some time and for at least as long as his party (His? Political Editor) has rather horribly it has to be said, thrust him into the position of President and if only to rid the world of the game show host who embarrassed the Clinton political establishment. History will be kind to Joe Biden because history is written today with no regard whatsoever to what happened yesterday or as faraway and long ago as 1972. History is being kind to him right now as history needs him, the kind of history written by the kind of people who need him to be the kindly old face to their continuing public face of managed decline. Boris Johnson here in the UK is the buffoon like face for the very same reason and how so few see this says so very much. But Joe was on fighting form midway through his speech when talking about the many dangers faced by soldiers in Afghanistan and “breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits”.
It’s at this juncture that Nancy Pelosi malfunctioned.
Mrs Pelosi doesn’t cheer but slowly rises to her feet in support of her President and all the while, amid a disconcerting smile, she rubs her hands together akin to a squirrel clutching a prized nut. She doesn’t clap but rather rub and it’s just the most gloriously hilarious piece of cinema I’ve watched in years and yet more evidence, if more evidence were indeed needed, that we live in a constructed Matrix of utter absurdity.
And sometimes the Matrix glitches or malfunctions, and this is a hysterically funny example of such.
I carried a sleeping Political Editor to bed amid her soft calls of “android” or perhaps it was “paranoid” and perhaps it was nothing more than an overactive dream state imagination or the coming down from a sexually charged high. She was soundly asleep as soon as I kissed her goodnight and upon descending the stairs a familiar smiling figure was waiting for me beside the fireplace, and with a half bottle of vodka in one hand and two small tumbler glasses in the other. We embraced like friends, Lee and I, two lifelong friends and two dramatic patsies in the plays of our own lives.
I noticed he’d changed the telescreen channel. “American Propaganda” he muttered with a smile. This he demonstrated, pointing at the telescreen and the Youtube video we were now about to watch, this is more to my liking. And like the lifetime friends we are, Lee and I watched this interview, this highly prescient and recently released interview, and we reminisced on the days of missile crises, Castro and Cuba, revolutionaries, revolutions and the money men who revolutionise the revolts. The installation of puppets, denouncements of “Regimes”, and of cold wars, hot wars, proxy wars. Any wars.
“There’s always a war” we chorused in unison.
And when all else fails, there’s always a magic bullet and a patsy and sometimes, the twain do indeed meet.
I’d noticed that my glass was empty and when I turned to Lee for a top up I saw that he’d gone. This wasn’t unusual as despite our deep friendship Lee often leaves without saying goodbye. The bond between Lee and I is as strong as ever and we had no need to discuss further the mountain range of further evidence that Oliver Stone supplies in his latest opus on the assassination of the Camelot King in 1963. It always tickles Lee that Stone’s original behemoth expose’ film “JFK” in 1991 remains my favourite film of all time. We always have a laugh at that. Lee constantly states that Gary Oldman’s portrayal of him was painfully accurate and especially so when he’s depicted nowhere feasibly near the scene of the American crime of the century.
That tickles my friend too.
There’s magic in the air, there always has been, but this is Matrix magic now and not a historical bullet conjured from American magic long ago when the King of Camelot faced down the Red Menace and their weapons of nuclear war with sobering thoughts on mortality, children and shared values. History is kind to its creators. I just worry that those strange actors and actresses caught full square in its constant 24 hour glare: every quote, every intention, every slipped word, every threat to a nuclear armed and ready foe…..I worry that they truly believe in their own magic tricks.
And that there won’t be much of a history to write about in the cold of a nuclear winter.
“The State of the Union” can be found rambling along in its own merry way between pages of 340 and 345 of my late March 2024 self-published book “Tales I Tell Myself”.
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.