As of midnight last night, I had nothing prepared for this show.  It still doesn’t feel like I have anything prepared, even though I’m staring at a page full of words.  I was tired.  I had worked all day until 7 pm, and put everything I had into it.  My wife made lasagna, and I had four, that’s right, four, plates of it and a big glass of red wine.  And then my forty year old body spied the couch and the DVD player, and this show was suddenly a royal pain.  I was wanting my own personal Donald Rumsfeld to fire me at my next thought of preparing for the New Capital Show, just as he threatened to fire the next person who brought up preparation for occupying Iraq after the invasion.
 
I tried to finish watching Frank Capra’s classic 1939 film about political corruption, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  But I kept falling asleep, waking up bleary-eyed every ten minutes and then falling asleep again, the movie came off like some kind of sleep montage.  But it’s a movie you can still understand even as a sleep montage, if only because its themes, for that matter its entire plot, resemble our world today.
 
This week the National Intelligence Estimate says our invasion of Iraq is creating more terrorists.  The President says it’s not.  He says his proposals to torture people are not torture.  His proposals to revoke due process are not revocations of due process.  His supporters in the coal industry say that dirty coal now burns cleanly.  Americans will now be more stable in retirement by eliminating social security.  Health care is best made universal by not making it universal.  Forests are made healthy by cutting them down.  Nations are made democratic by invading them.  World security from nuclear weapons is enhanced by building more US nuclear weapons.  Peace with Islam is enhanced by labeling certain of its members Islamofascists.  The small amount of oil remaining in US reserves is plenty to make an impact on our national energy profile.  Hundreds of billions in expenditures on ill-conceived wars are good expenditures.  Up is down.  Down is up.  Right is wrong.  Wrong is right.
 
And there I sat, unfocused and bloated on the couch, watching James “Jimmy” Stewart, America’s third ranked leading man ever according to the Motion Picture Association (and he really is quite good), stare incredulously, naively, as the entire Senate chamber that he has previously admired, in unison condemns him as a criminal for being a good man.  As being a liar for being truthful.  As being guilty for being innocent.  The denunciation of him is so firm, so unwavering, so monolithic, that all he can do is stare blankly at this alternate reality.  It takes the rest of the movie for him to get over the shock, and get going at the hard work of defeating bad people and winning over weak ones. 
 
In the winter of 1942-43, in the war in Eastern Europe, the German army fought its way into the Russian city of Stalingrad, pushing remnants of the Red Army into a handful of large factories built along the Volga River.  Those remnants were told by Stalin to fight for the factories as if there was no land across the river.  They did, and held on for two months until the rest of the Red Army awoke from its deep slumber.  Little did the Germans suspect then that the high water mark of their dominance had been reached in those dismal, burned out factories deep in the Russian steppe in the dead of winter.  It’s never clear while you’re in the burned out factories.  But it is later.
 
 
Sometimes it takes a while to get going against people who have been secretly planning and perfecting domination for a long time.  Sometimes it takes time for the shock of the incredible, of the unreasonable, of the illogical, and yes, even of the evil, to wear off.  That’s okay.  Take some time.  Jimmy Stewart did.  The Russians did.  But don’t take forever.  After all, election Day is coming.  And even if you don’t think your votes are counted, remember Jimmy Stewart, standing in the Senate chamber promising to continue to filibuster even if they fill the room with telegrams demanding that he stand down and be quiet.  He knew it wasn’t about the paper.
 
Around midnight the credits rolled, and I managed to drag my stuffed, lazy, indifferent self off the couch and into bed, still lacking any preparation for right now.  And then I wrote this.
 
Election Day is coming.  Hold the factories as if there’s no land across the river.  And just maybe we’ll find that the high water mark has passed.   
 
I’m Leo Gold.  This is the New Capital Show.