There was an opening statement that you wanted to put in your own words.

ANON

Well, in the beginning of Jim Marrs marvelous book about the Kennedy assassination, that's Marrs like the planet.  He says, "Do not trust this book."  Well that's what I want to tell you about everything I will ever have to tell you.  Do not trust what I say.  Never.  Look it up.  And by looking it up you will run into The Problem.  Where does one look it up?  And how can you trust those sources?  How can you trust any sources?  Is there anyone pure out there?  Now, maybe there is.  I don't know.  Paul Tsongas was the Senator from Massachusetts.  Forgive me if I say he was the good Senator from Massachusetts.  He died of cancer.  He had it once as I had it. He had it twice as I had it but he did not survive, and I couldn't care less that he had cancer or not.  He was a marvelous human being, but I am a poor febrile human being myself, so if someone has had cancer twice there is a certain extra affinity.  My problem was I wanted him to win.   I wanted him to get the Democratic nomination.  And politics is awful because you have to tell other adults "what you said isn't right.  Not right or wrong, it's not the way to have said it.  But he told a story that was so marvelous that it made me not tell him what I knew in my heart would help him because he's the kind of person who has the balls to listen.  This is his story.  This is in Westchester to the Democratic Party.  A guy visits the Grand Canyon.  Nighttime.  And he loses his footing and he falls off, and he doesn't fall off and kill himself, he grabs a branch and holds onto it for dear life.  It's night at the Grand Canyon.  So he screams "Is anybody up there.  Help help."  Nothing.  But he keeps repeating it.  What does he have to lose?  But eventually a big booming voice says "I am the Lord thy God."  Imagine what is going through the head of the man who fell off the Grand Canyon.  And he says, "Help me."  And the voice says, "I will, but you must show faith."  The guy thinks "What the hell?"  Then he says "Anything."  "Let go of the branch."  And then there's a long pause, and the man holding on for dear life says, "Is there anyone else up there."  So don't trust me.  Don't believe what I tell you.  But you're going to run into the same problem as the man who fell off the Grand Canyon.  When you go to check, is there anyone else up there?  By the way I am not god. I just wanted to underline that because.

BLIEDEN

But that story illustrates this opening statement that you want to make, which is....

ANON

Who do you check with?  Where is the pure?  Where is the eternal?  Where is the verity that can be verified?  Where is it?

BLIEDEN

Why was Paul Tsongas' story the wrong story to tell?

ANON

His story was marvelous stories, but Paul's act, cause all of us have an act, and the more conscious we are of our act the better.  Paul's act was self-effacing.  And you can be a lot of things as self-effacing.  A lover.  A friend.  You probably can't be a surgeon, and you certainly cannot be the President.  Lincoln was not self-effacing.  The first George, he was not the brightest man, but the brightest men do not make the best presidents.  The exception is Lincoln.

BLIEDEN

You've said to me what makes a good president.  You said..

ANON

I didn't say it.  I'm quoting one of Roosevelt's Supreme Court justices talking about Franklin Roosevelt.

BLIEDEN

Second rate mind, first rate temperament.

ANON

That's right.  That's right.

BLIEDEN

That's what makes a good president.

ANON

That defines the successful American President.  And he was not being catty about FDR.  And he was not being cruel.  He was just saying the truth.  Second-rate mind.  First rate temperament.  The former government of Texas.

BLIEDEN

Wait a minute now, who are you talking about?

ANON

Governor Richardson. Ann Richards.  Ann Richards.  She said this at the Democratic Convention talking about President Bush 41, she said he's been born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple.  Um...that was a good line.  The biggest assholes are running the show.  Everywhere.  Not just in Hollystupid.  Just think about this when...

BLIEDEN

So you think that the biggest assholes are running the show, but it still makes you angry when people say Bush is Hitler.

ANON

Is Bush George Washington?  No.  Is he the first Republican President, Lincoln?  No.  Henry Kissinger talked to Chou En-Lai when they were making the opening to China.  This is 35 years ago.  And he asked him what do you, meaning the Chinese People's Republic, think about the French revolution.  What is your analysis of the French revolution?  And Chou En-Lai said, "It's too early to say."  And he was not kidding. 

BLIEDEN

How many years after this was that?

ANON

Well the French Revolution is 1789.  And this is 1970's.  So it was a while.

BLIEDEN

I want to throw something out and get your knee-jerk  reaction to it.  I'm going to categorize this as the phenomenon of, or the flap over the domestic wiretapping.

ANON

On the eve of the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt called John Hoover, calls himself J. Edgar and he said, "Warrantless wiretaps.  Go get'em."  There was no FISA court.  There was no FISA law.  There's a lot of things which cannot be accomplished through acts of commendable civility alone. 

BLIEDEN

I can instantly see, and even I myself, not to play like you know the sort of liberal conservative game between the two of us but I could easily see people's hackles being raised instantly by that statement.   As if you're saying yeah.  Like FDR said, "Go get'em."  You are a fiercely private person.  How do you reconcile that idea, the fact that you can't achieve everything through commendable acts of civility with the idea of human rights or not human rights but you know, privacy?  I mean it's an obvious liberal question to ask, but that's where I come from.

ANON

All Americans are liberals because America is the embodiment of the liberal ideal.  My favorite living author on the subject of political thinking is a Frenchman.  Revel.  Jean-Francois Revel.  Lives on an island in the Seine.  And he has.  The title says it all.  The book explains the modern situation.  It's called "Without Marx of Jesus."  Now I know I have infuriated nine tenths of the country who cannot imagine living without one or the other and occasionally there is a person who cannot live without both.  But it is the liberals, that is to say 99 point something percent of the country who are the subject of deadly assault.  Now in a national context, many would argue that just because so and so is a known serial killer doesn't mean the police should invade his privacy. And I know that there are people who feel that way.  I've met these people and have spoken to them seriously.  Should the police have kept an eye on Ted Bundy?  Should they have kept an eye on John Wayne Gacy?  Well if they knew, if they knew, the answer's obvious.  Yes!  If they knew. I'm sure all those little boys who had been raped and strangled and put under the floorboards of his house, I'm sure all those young girls who were picked up by Ted Bundy and strangled and dumped in the woods would have preferred the police, the FBI, whomever to surveil these people.

BLIEDEN

So you think that on some level the flap over the wiretapping is people saying that they don't trust this administration.  You're saying that they want that protection from someone they trust, but they don't trust this guy, so now they're upset about it?

ANON

Well, you know...

BLIEDEN

Because there wasn't a flap over FDR using it.

ANON

Well there's never two opinions.  This is America.  There's fifty thousand opinions, but if Bush is Hitler, you wouldn't want to have Hitler surveilling you.  None of us have a cool sense of reality ever.  But there is a giant bit of commerce that pretends it has nailed reality to the wall and they're called The Press.  They have no idea.  Just no idea but it's a commercial product, and if I were selling a commercial product I would not introduce the blog by saying, "Don't believe me."  I would not raise it at all.  I wouldn't say, "Believe me" or "don't believe me."  I would just say what shit I had to say and people could believe me or not believe me.  But what they're not saying is this.  We only have one thing to sell.  Everybody understands the prostitute only has one thing to sell, but people don't understand the press it's the same thing.  They're pussy is fear.  That's all they have to sell.  Now here's a question.  Now I don't think it's ever been raised, and I pay attention to the media.  I apologize but I do.  What percentage of the Muslims want to kill us.  I asked this question to several very intelligent people. Very different kinds of people and they said...I won't tell you what they said cuz it was just so ridiculous.  I said it doesn't even approach one percent.  It doesn't even approach one percent.  And then ask yourself what percentage of the Germans in America at the time of World War Two wanted to kill us.  It was a very very small number.  When you remove the Scots and the Welsh there were more Germans that Anglos in America.  Of all the Muslims in the world fewer than twenty percent are Arabs.  And of the Arabs I don't think it approaches, nothing near one percent.  How many are in Al Qaeda.  Nothing like a thousand people worldwide.  Probably fewer than 200.  Now there are certain things you cannot..

BLIEDEN

Less than, less than...few...less, less than 200 Al Qaeda members in the world.

ANON

In the world.  But if I were selling fear for my living I would not put that in the lead.  And so I assume, and forgive the pomposity, but I came by it honestly, you've never heard that.

BLIEDEN

Can I tell the airport story?  The thousand dollars story?  Um, I was about to leave for New York and you called me up  and you said that I was very concerned that I was going to die, and you said two things.  You said first of all if you're going to fly, only fly after dark because when they bomb planes, they bomb them in the daytime because that's when they get the news coverage, so only take the red-eye.  And never under no circumstances no matter what should you fly out of LAX because whenever the terrorists pick a target they always try and try again until they hit it.  We learned that with the World Trade Center. They've tried to hit LAX, that's proven.  We stopped them.  We know they'll try again.  It's been about 5 years since September 11th, so we're due.  You told me that story and meanwhile I'm as broke as the next guy.

ANON

Right.

BLIEDEN

Um, which is to say sixty thousand dollars on credit cards, but um, the night before leaving on a trip I paid one thousand dollars...money I really did not have.

ANON

Mhmm.

BLIEDEN

Really did not have to change my flight to fly out of Ontario airport in California instead of out of LAX because what you said, unfortunately made a lot of sense, and it spooked me.  Now I do fly in the day.  And I do fly out of LAX.  Because like a lot of people I think, I just, I just, I can't, well first of all my wife was incensed, not to play her as because she's...you know I mean she's, she's cool with everything, you know...

ANON

She's a normal person in her right mind who rather have not set fire to a thousand dollars.

BLIEDEN

Yeah.  Exactly.  So I think that, you know, it's knowledge like this that I don't know how to process.  This is why...

ANON

It isn't... it isn't knowledge.  Whatever it is, it isn't knowledge.  Um, imagine the problems of the federal government.  Take that little example and have that writ large.  Imagine the problems of them.  Why do you think the president, you know who is, obviously he is not the brightest person in the world, but he's not as some of his critics either.  Um, imagine why they say the best way for you to fight terrorism is for you to go to work. The best way is for you to live your life as you live it normally.  Because what are they gonna say?