Although our chosen leader’s behavior with Monica Lewinsky and other young women is reprehensible, the voyeuristic response of the American media causes me more concern.  Having avoided the lurid details of this celebrity scandal, I can not evaluate the President’s or the young lady’s behavior.   I understand she was a consenting adult.  If not, then he should be scorned.  Apparently she wanted the relationship.  If he abused his position, then he should be reprimanded.   But in any case, I am pleased that the general public is disgusted rather than fascinated by the reporting as well as the facts.

        Recently, like vultures at feeding time, a disturbing proportion of the citizens of these Stimulated States -- entrained to the spectacle of a black luminary’s tragic relationship with his blond and murdered wife -- hovered around their TV sets for most of a year.  I assumed that wasn’t the fault of the programmers.  They will show anything which keeps the ratings up.  That resulted from the lack of self-discipline and individual culture.   Avoiding  introspection, study, and tough thinking, we filled our hours and days with garbage.

        This time I hope we refuse to be titillated by a medium which doesn’t care how trashy or irrelevant it’s broadcasts are so long as the sponsors are pleased.  The more zombie-like the audience, the more susceptible to sponsors’ agendas.  Buy our line.  Keep driving the economy which puts our children in the best schools from which, like ourselves, they can leap into leadership of the world safe for those with capital and power.

        I am not attempting to protect or justify the man who is our president.  He admits he misled the public.  But is there anything new or surprising in that?   Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, in the recent past, all misled the public on matters of much graver import.  If Monica Lewinsky was wronged, she should pursue her remedies.  We don’t need to know the details.

        I am disgusted and disappointed because I thought Bill and Hillary Clinton could lead our nation with heart and intelligence.  I still hope they mean well, in general, in regard to social justice, the economy, social security, education, and medical reform.  They are the first team from my generation.  Surely we share a vision of how the world should be.

        But like so many folks, he is apparently sexually overactive and promiscuous.  Probably the power of his office has corrupted whatever personal restraint he might have had.   I don’t know what Hillary’s attitude is.  I assume she is hurt deeply by Bill’s incredibly stupid indiscretions, if nothing else.  I imagine that both of them profoundly regret the difficulty which their daughter must be experiencing.

        If we care about them as people, or our government’s ability to get on with the business of the day, it’s time for us to refuse to support  programming  based on further engorgement on prurient details. Mr. Star and the Congress are capable of evaluating whether there has been an offense justifying impeachment.  My guess is that the elite Democrats would love for the President to step down in favor of his Vice President, but Mr. Clinton will refuse.  The Republicans, on the other hand, would rather not see Mr. Gore as an incumbent as of the next election.  They prefer a crippled Clinton Administration.  But  they may have pushed this partisan hate-fest so far that it is now too late to back away from an all out impeachment effort.  If Gore takes over, the Republicans could be out for years!

        No one who followed the campaign can justifiably believe that Bill Clinton is, in general, innocent of infidelity. His and his wife’s sexual styles may differ radically from those of the vast majority of married couples.  But their sexual mores were of less significance to the majority of voters than their executive abilities and political vision.

        If Mr. Clinton had been honest when confronted with his behavior and had avoided the appearance of abuse of power in his sexual encounters, we would have very little to complain about.  He failed us in that regard and deserves public reprobation.

        Nevertheless, we will do better for ourselves and our descendants by refusing to subscribe to the posture of moral outrage in regard to Mr. Clinton’s sexual behavior.  The present frenzy of attention not only subsidizes a mindless medium which facilitates the further deterioration of our own moral fiber, it deflects us from the desperate need to correct our relationship as a nation to the other nations and our relationships as individuals to other individuals across  the planet who are suffering because we consume goods rather than produce good in our own lives.

        I think that the “one world government” conspiracy is a clever and nefarious hoax designed to deflect us from the real threat.  It’s clear to all of us that government isn’t very effective even on the local let alone state and national levels.  We all herd along in the same general direction, but specific laws don’t mean much.  We pay as few taxes as possible.  We try not to drink and then drive.   Most of us don’t commit robberies or assaults.  The government is such a mess that we’re not going to stand for any more of it.

        The real danger to our self-determination lies in the fact, which is chronic and only momentarily related to the present crisis, that government and law command no moral respect.  We are led by professional politicians rather than citizen statesmen.  That is why we’re not surprised or overly concerned about Clinton’s character.  Celebrity politicians are often philanderers and worse, almost always liars.  We just hope that they are able to keep their private affairs separate from major issues of state.

        Are there conspirators running the show behind the scenes?  Who profits from this state of affairs?  Whose product do we consume while paying by the slow drain of our lives through the mindless cesspool of contemporary consumer fast-fix extractive entertainment culture which benefits the elite robber-barons who live in the detached capstone of the pyramid of Mammon?

        Following the fall of the Iron Curtain behind which the Marxist Antichrist could be relied on to keep the people in these Consumer States in trance to the market place and asleep to the real issues of personal dignity and global responsibility, morbid fixation on our own government and governors becomes the new opiate of choice for the body politic.

        The profiteers have a hidden agenda, a sort of open secret.  So far as I know, Bill and Hillary may be in on it.  Maybe, if told to jump, based on the promise of reward, they ask how high on the way up.  The world financiers have one rule: "Keep the monkey brain chattering while we mine the store"”   Do they lack all scruples?  Well, it’s clear that they don’t care what we think of them so long as we keep buying their product.  I think we’re utterly lost, already, unless we back up in time and claim our birthright: our minds are our own business.

        I hope that is what the public is doing by turning off the TVs or at least changing the channels on which the pundits from Washington and New York are droning on endlessly about Monica, Bill, Hillary, Ken and where, oh, dear, will it all end?

Jay Bremyer,  September 12, 1998