The Dead Letter Box

by Jim Washburn

Starring John Bolton’s lingering hard-on ...

It’s heartwarming that, a year and a half after my dad’s death, I’m still getting mail for him and about him. “We share your sense of loss at this difficult time,” begins one, going on to offer me a loan while my dad’s estate is in probate. I’ve had several such communications, all dripping with sympathy and usury. Another expressed condolences, the sender going on to say he’d often admired my dad’s property when driving by on Barham Boulevard, and he wanted to know if we’re interested in selling it. I’d like to oblige, but Dad rented one of 1,150 semi-identical Oakwood apartment units there, and it’s not mine to sell, no matter how admirable.

 Then there are the imploring letters from dozens of charities to which he apparently had sent money. Most are critter related: shelters for wild horses, orphaned puppies, sea mammals. One was to help abandoned pack animals in Damascus or something. That’s one of the few that didn’t come with a sheet of adhesive address labels adorned with cute animals. I have a rule of thumb about charities: if they send me stickers, spirit catchers, tote bags, tea bags, longboards, aircraft flotation devices, or other gala crap, I send them nothing, since they’re so frivolous with the money they already have. I doubt the stuff swayed my dad much either. He probably would have been satisfied with a note reading, “We’re not your kids. Send money.” He sure did spread it around.

He gave money to Colonial Williamsburg, why I have no idea. He was into Oscar Peterson and Harry “Sweets” Edison, not the tri-coned doings of plantation owners. I don’t think there were any Washburns in that pack, though I should take a closer look at a genealogy a distant cousin put together, wherein it’s shown that one of my earliest traced forebears was such a son of a bitch that the fictional Sheriff of Nottingham is reputedly based on him, plus a curse was laid upon him and his progeny. The Washburn Curse. That explains a lot.

Another piece of recurring mail is Imprimis, a Publication of Hillsdale College. The college is 165 years old, which would just about make it the Bob Jones University of 1844. Maybe my dad went there in his youth. I can’t figure why else he’d send them money. Hillsdale is a “citadel of conservatism” according to the National Review, while pops was a citadel of liberalism. Back when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, my dad worked on some TV show with him, and liked to claim in his later years that Clinton called him all the time, though I suspect the calls went something like, “Hello, this is Bill Clinton calling to remind you to vote next Tuesday, in one of the most important elections of our ...”

The current issue of Imprimis is devoted entirely to an article by John Bolton, entitled “President Obama’s Foreign Policy: An Assessment,” because who better to assess how well Obama’s digging the nation out of its numerous quagmires than one of the men who put us there? I mean, having John Bolton talk about foreign policy is like getting Yosemite Sam to teach your anger management class.

The gist of his article is “Obama is a stupidhead,” with a subtext of how no one appreciates what a great job he and the Bushies did. Obama, you see, is the first “post-American” president according to Bolton, because Obama rejects the notion of American exceptionalism. Bolton cites a response Obama gave to a European reporter on the matter, where he said he “believes in American exceptionalism in the same way that the British believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

From this Bolton infers that Obama does not believe that we are an exceptional nation, that he regards our policies and goals as no better than anyone else’s, even Sudan’s. Which I don’t think is at all what Obama was saying, and it’s some disingenuous word-wanking on Bolton’s part. Obama’s speeches are saturated with an appreciation of how special, noble and rare the American experiment is. But he rejects exceptionalism in the sense that everyone except Bolton seems to mean it, where a nation or other entity regards itself as so superior or unique that the rules everyone else goes by just don’t apply.

That’s the opposite of the tack Bush/Cheney took, where the presumption was that we are so wonderfully, perfectly American, not to mention Christian, that we can do wholly un-American, un-Christian things—such as torture or warring against a nation that posed no threat to us—because we hold the patents on Americanism and can vary the platform at will. We are so superior and right and pure that we can traipse over to the dark side without fear of taint.

It’s a hell of a way to run a nation, since it’s exactly the same sort of thinking with which religious cult leaders justify raping underage members of their flock. It’s God’s will, baby. It’s one thing to recognize, cherish and defend our greatness; it’s quite another to presume it makes us infallible and justified in projecting our power according to whim, beyond the rule of law or the regard of our fellow man.

Here’s a short history of the United States: 1776: America becomes the shining beacon of hope to the world (OK, unless you’re black, female or Native American, and let’s not blame the Founding Fathers for the exclusions. Few people can leap beyond the assumptions of their era; for example, even Lenny Bruce ridiculed gay people in his time.) We have some brief and awful deviations, but somehow our basic institutions and beliefs remain intact until 2001, when Bolton’s team decides we’re so exceptional that we can throw out everything we stood for and that made us great, and if rest of the world doesn’t like it they can kiss our stinky white ass.

So the fact that Obama’s trying to restore at least some of the fairness, transparancy and rule of law that defined America for 2.33 centuries makes him “post-American” in Bolton’s eyes. He also sees Obama as a “neoisolationist,” because, as best as I can figure it, Obama’s trying to apply the Biblical rule of doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you (except for the Afghan and Pakistani families we’re still bombing into paste with missiles from our drone planes). Oh, and by pulling our troops out of Iraq we’re risking the stability of that vital region, making no mention of how our invasion destabilized and demolished that country; and he’s weakening our defense—despite signing the biggest military budget in our history—by canceling the F-22 fighter (a pork-laden pig which the military doesn’t want) and canceling our (unworkable) missile shield.

Bolton’s article was written well ahead of the Obama Justice Department’s decision to try alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in an actual court of law, which, again, was good enough for the previous two American centuries. To me, that’s a courageous show of faith in our system, and certainly not without risks for Obama. For example, it’s not impossible that a judge will look at all the illegal things the Bush administration did to Mohammed—including waterboarding him so much he should change his name to رجل أكوا (in case you’ve ever wondered what Aquaman looks like in Arabic)—and drop the charges against him. (Worst case scenario: Mohammed is set free in NYC, and a John Carpenter movie ensues.)

I leave for last the most disturbing thing that still arrives addressed to my dad: the Carol Wright catalog. I have no idea who Carol Wright is, but I’m noticing her catalog shows up like magic in senior citizens’ mailboxes.

You want the Bacon Genie? Superior incontinence briefs? Animal print Snuggies? A dog Snuggie? A “nearly miraculous” prayer cross? Carol Wright’s your gal. So I’m flipping through the thing—How risqué: a farting Santa! that exclaims “Was THAT on your list?”—when I come across two separate sections of sex toys. I’m not talking those vibrators that relieve neck tension that just happen to slip into your lap. I mean a “Butterfly Kiss” personal massager, a G-spot stimulator, vibrating cock rings, and a penis pump, not to mention Activ-otc, 24 strawberry-flavored “power strips” that melt in your mouth “to give men a full-fledged erection in mere minutes.” Old people are buying this stuff! Talk about a robust projection of power!

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