The Man

[underpants]

It has become a joke over the years to blame “The Man” the one guy or the personification of the small group of people who supposedly run things around here. We had always talked about “The Man” but we had never even thought about the fact that he was more elusive than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Then we had the public emergence of Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney is “The Man”

Look at him. He is the visual image that you always had of “The Man” before you even knew you had one. David Huddleston’s portrayal of Jeffrey Lebowski in the 1998 film “The Big Lebowski” probably adds to this perception as well. So Cheney comes out and we have “The Man” in the flesh or at least in a suit (like we always pictured him). He walks like “The Man” and talks like him, everything is just like we thought it would be only there is one problem-he really isn’t “The Man”.

Dick Cheney is the conduit through which “The Man” implements his plan. There is another problem too- “The Man” doesn’t know what he is doing. All these years we just assumed that “The Man” was capable and able and had a plan and had a plan to keep you down we leaped over any assessment of his abilities simply because he was “The Man”.

Someone in such a position of power and importance must surely have some ability some innate thing that allowed for them to come to that level of power, no? No apparently not. As we have seen with the rightwing publishing operation and the punditry crowd acceptable enough in appearance to be on the TV it is possible to create the facade of aptitude in a complete void thereof. Now we have it living and breathing among us with its finger on the button of human blood and treasure.

None of this is meant in anyway to give cover to the evil that has been exhibited. That is a byproduct, the tangible consequence for which history will use to judge.

All these years we laughed at the weird hippie uncle or other friend/family member who told us about "The Man". We leapt over any evaluation of the capacity of “The Man” to consider his goals and how we fit in them, if only so as to humor ourselves at the ranting of our clearly disturbed acquaintance. We never asked what they knew about “The Man”’s abilities or talents or facilities if we did now they would probably tell us what they have always known:

Dick Cheney is “The Man”
And
“The Man” is fucked up.

[Lisa]

1. ironic, isn't it!

All this time (well, for the past couple of centuries -- maybe even as far back as the Enlightenment), we'd been assuming that "The Man" was all about logic and science and statistics. As one tiny example of this, for the past few generations, if companies were selling cars or toothpaste or cigarettes, they'd trot out some actor in a white coat to portray that particular facet of "The Man". Corporations, governments -- anybody in authority -- would give us the impression that they were making rock-solid decisions based on all this background information, that the rest of us couldn't understand because we weren't smart enough or privileged enough to have had the training.

And now it turns out that they don't even listen to those experts. If their own scientists contradict them, they just ignore all the evidence and go ahead regardless. As you put it so well, it's "the facade of aptitude" -- not just Stephen Colbert's "truthiness", but one step beyond that, to reveal a hollow shell that can't even keep its shape anymore.

[underpants]

2. Thanks

I don't know if I got that out there in the text but that was what I was trying to point out.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I've always thought of Cheney as the old man; as in Old Man Potter,

but in fact Old Man Potter was at the top of the heap at least in his world, today I'm more inclined to think of Cheney as Old Man Potter's butler.