The Crawfish Monologue

Butch, the leader of the free world, establishes the political and religious geography, on his ranch in Crawfish, Texas... in the company of a cow.

Soon after assuming the presidency, Butch digests the election and high office.

  OLD HAUNTS  < SCENE SUBTITLES >

  AMERICA UNDER A CATHEDRAL SKY

  TEXAS IS A FRIENDLY PLACE

  SAID AND DONE

  UPPITY IS CHIC AGAIN

  THE STUDENT OF STALIN; LEGACY, LEPRECHAUN, AND FUR PIE

  THE SAN MARCOS FAULT

  [ASIDE]  TRUST BUT VERIFY (SEPPUKU)

His term under way, Butch revels in Washington politics, has a bout of uncertainty over his re-election prospects, then launches into a paean to America, ending with an embrace of Crawfish.

  TWO-STEPPIN’ ALL OVER THIS COUNTRY, WITH A LITTLE COUNTRY PISSIN’

  CALL ME MAESTRO: ON PASSIVE LEADERSHIP

  A COUNTRY GOAT, MERCURY, CLEAN KHAKIS, AND AMERICA’S MAJESTY (YIN AND YANG)

  CRAWFISH IS MA HOME

Butch prays, stumbles on his business past, addresses “Joe Citizen,” throws a spiritual full nelson, reminisces on the politics of colon cancer, and inspires young Republicans.

  OF MAN, GOD, VERBAL JOE-JITSU, AND THE PARTHENON

  [ASIDE]  CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY

  TEXAS ODE: TO JOE CITIZEN ON OFFICE

  SPIRITUAL FULL NELSON

  A MOON SHOT, FREE LUNCH, AND YOUNG PIONEER

  WALDO’S POND

Butch offers 12 rules of power politics: “I could teach Marco Polo a thing or two of government – you know who I mean – Marco Polo lite, since this is a democracy, and I am term limited. (It’s really not so Marcapellian.)”

Butch reflects on leadership and his early mastery, then tosses off his list of rules, with a showstopper and wicked shtick.

  I WAS A PLAYGROUND PRODIGY

  LOINS EQUAL TO THE BEAST

  RESPIRATOR BEFORE ASPIRATIONS

  GET RELIGION AND GET ANGRY

  GRAB ’EM BY THE NUT SACK WITHOUT LEAVING MORAL FINGERPRINTS: CONTROL ENERGY

  DEEP SIX

As an extension of his 11th rule, “Control information,” Butch provides autobiography.

  I AM MA DADDY’S SON

  LUCK HAS ALWAYS BEEN A THING WITH US

  BORKEM WAS NOT LOOKING GOOD

  MA DAD’S S.E.C.

  NOT A CLUB OWNER OR A RIG MONKEY: GOVERNOR OF TEXAS

  THE SMART MAN WHO BOUGHT THE FESTIVALS

  A SKANK FROM ARKANSAS

Butch defines his 12th rule: “Block gun control,” introducing “Little Jesus,” “Big Jesus,” and Stonewall Jackson’s march to the sea.

  LITTLE JESUS

  [ASIDE]  JACKSON’S MARCH TO THE SEA

In Washington, D.C., wearing reading glasses, Butch flips off his detractors and undertakes the utopian seduction of America.

Butch embraces bold leadership, feels the impression of his father’s buttocks, and revels in the din of opposition.

  A REGULAR GUY, BUFF AMERICANA AND A BRONCO

  HANOI TIGER

  ACROSS THE RANKS OF POSTERITY

Butch toys with promises and utopia, imprints the “virgin sands of time” with policy, woos the heartland (the Scarlet L), then gets political with Florida.

  PROMISES COST NOTHING

  VIRGIN SANDS

  THE SCARLET L

  FLORIDA PROMISES

Under the direction of his National Security Council, Butch promises the moon, unveiling the Cosmic Initiative: “We’re not going to just sit here and take whatever the universe brings, not on my watch.”

  THE COSMIC INITIATIVE

  [ASIDE]  KILLER ASTEROIDS

  [ASIDE]  MISSION TO SEDNA

Butch pays back NASA for sticker shock on his dad’s Martian Initiative, swings the Cosmic Yardstick, frees his people from the Cyclops (Hubble), and bests the Chinese Premier.

  THE MAN FROM THE OMB

  COSMIC YARDSTICK

  ULYSSES AND THE CYCLOPS

  MY PREROGATIVES ARE YOUR PREROGATIVES

Butch sells utopia.

  THE SUBSTANCE OF LIFE

  NONETHELESS, WE NEED FEDERAL REVENUES

  DON’T WORRY, WE’VE GOT RESOURCES (HAVE WE GOT RESOURCES!)

  THE VISCERAL PATRIOT

  COULD WILBUR AND ORVILLE HAVE IMAGINED MEN WALKING ON THE MOON?

Back on the ranch in Crawfish, Butch pushes the envelope – featuring the return of the cow in lipstick, and Seguin, small-town speed trap.

Butch assigns homework on “crisis and opportunity,” crosses the footlights, pulls the scab off a national wound, identifies the opposition party as the biggest threat to a hyperpower, and offers his Seguin protocol... all in about 2 minutes.

  CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY

  [ASIDE]  NOT FOR THE TIMID

  [ASIDE]  KABUKI

  [ASIDE]  A 15-MINUTE OPPORTUNITY

  HYPERPOWER AND THE OPPOSITION PARTY

  THE SEGUIN PROTOCOL

After some throw-away shtick, Butch, guardian of democracy, takes the dictatorship of the Prince of Mesopotamia personally, and prays for opportunity.

  BUTCH COUNTRY

  DESERT FUGUE: CASUS BELLI AND THE ALBATROSS

  [ASIDE]  MY OWN ALBATROSS

  [ASIDE]  NIGHTLY OVER HIS SNIFTER

         Crawfish is ma home. Got roots here half-way to the hot zone, to the magma zone – to the time o’ the Great Pyramids.
        Mesquite ’n juniper fire calls the spirit o’ ma ancestors.

         Still have that dream where I swallow the worm.

         I can eat fruit of prickly pear with nothin’ but ma hands and ma teeth – technique... and I do like ta hand ’em ta stray Northeasters. Hnh hnh hnh hnh. Hnh hnh...

Some have said I make a sound like an armadillo.

         Blisters. Brush never quits.

         They can tell me there is a hole in ozone or global warming, but here I don’t see it – I know that maybe it’s not the crisis they make it. Won’t be panicked by scientists – nervous types living in climate-controlled government-subsidized institutions – rogue elements – high priestas. (Damn the Nobel Prize, privatize the Academy! Let them answer to the marketplace, the bottom line, corporate boards – wear those lapels, if they’re good enough.)

         I have perspective on the ranch. My team tells me what I have to do – have a team and proud of it. That’s the person I am – team player – not some imbalanced loner – Humble that way – and that’s best fur America.

         Before I commit the vast resources of this nation, I can touch base with nature here, listen fur a while, smell it, gauge the sunset:  Yup, been there. Nope, there is no panic in Crawfish – good fur America.

         Besides, even if the United States gets as hot as Texas, it won’t trace back ta me. Global warming will be ascribed to industrial inertia, the American way of life spread over fifty years. What a thankless job to drain the economy and my political capital for half a degree. I’ll leave it ta Don Quixote, Ozone Man.

[chewing a weed]

         The good ol’ boy is here ta stay fur awhile, and he hates ta ba played for a sucker. The best argument against global warming is:  “Ah have heard that global warmin’ just may be the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

         You know, if I can joke about it, it mustn’t be that serious – Know what I’m sayin’? The climate is complicated. Give it time – let it play out

[Crawfish, Texas, about the ranch]

         I was a playground prodigy – honed my skills at recess in the West Texas dust. I could spot a geek halfway ’cross the playground – still can – ’though ma field of play is the United States, now... and the world.

         I loves ta draw ’em in an’ cuff ’em on the back o’ the head: manly affection.

         I’m cumf’terbul with people like maself, naturally – sharpen each other’s skills. We were all, in my group, commanding at recess – probably true – blue bloods in boarding school who went on to the wealth-on-wealth clique of yuk-yuk conservatism in the secret society of the exclusive fraternity of the seminal American university. I have fond memories, except for all the geeks walkin’ around. Campus is a geek magnet.

         As a scion of conservatism, it was on campus that I experienced bias on a daily basis at the hands of the teeming liberal intelligentsia in the full bloom of geekdom.

         It wasn’t just the anti-Texas bias of the East Coast, but a culture that took study too seriously, militated against those who refused to suffer academic anxiety, who were too decent and fun-loving at heart to let things like grades and career-striving deform their character. Not who we were – flew the flag on that one.

         Out of a pitiable smallness of character – meanness, if truth be told – they resented the haven of our small-group camaraderie, the nightly high jinks of the brothers (not the brother brothers – you get what ah mean). But I never held it against ’em – not that kind o’ person.

         Suffer the anxiety, it’s your choice.

[Washington, D.C.]

         We are a moral people, confident people, a nation of optimists – a triumph of decency burdened by obligation at our founding to lead in things moral and freedom-loving, and be bold about it, succeed ourselves.

         Nothing triumphs over a triumph like a bold triumph. In a spirit of can-do optimism, a regular guy carrying his family on his back, and his party, and his place in history – so close to the land he can’t help cuttin’ brush on his days off – takes the country in a bold new direction.

         The public crosses its fingers and goes along – forever going west, forever expanding – in the spirit of God’s freedom.

         Folks are on board, or get left behind looking pretty foolish. Critics risk exposure as cynics, pessimists, haters, and secularists; and so they should.

         Be bold, be bold, be bold – nothing undermines boldness like not being bold.

         Boldly propose what no Democrat would – if the vision is right, the logic suffices. And when you think they think you’ve forgotten, that maybe you would just as soon let reckless proposals die, repeat, and they will marvel anew at self-assurance worthy of a commander in chief.

         Go where no Democrat would go – apology optional. The public will be swept away (your buff Americana is their buff Americana – brash buff, bold and buff) – tickled by adventure and a taxless society as they have never known it. But then, no one before was so bold.

         Even knee-jerk Democrats are tickled and amazed into secret admiration (I have it from defectors) – giddy at hyperpower unchained, runaway tax cuts, the bracing lift of dynamic scoring – tickled and amazed into allowing my policies to be written into law.

         The people want to be mounted like a bronco and ridden for bust – that’s the American way.

         Citizens don’t want to think – Founding Fathers did enough o’ that. What are leaders for, if you have to shadow them at the helm, second-guess, divine, redact, redo?

         They are all soundly sleeping in their berths. We may be speeding toward the end of the line, heading full-throttle for shore, but it’s a distant end, a distant shore, only an illusion of danger in the minds of certain hysterical passengers who are better gagged and locked away, lest they ruin the voyage for the rest of us.

         Dissonance as high art is my rosy scenario, and the exhaustive countervailing memorandum leaked by my cabinet right in the midst of my strenuous campaign to bypass the cynical media filter.

         I need a leg ta stand on, a little face-saving in the bank as we reposition ourselves, disengage from some macho high jinks or other (for a little of which all boys can be forgiven), prepare to drop another fiscal dead weight on the House.

         Imperious implacability is Kabuki; the memorandum of gloom, an orchestrated palace snit. The gullibility of man draws theater across the footlights, onto the streets, ranchos, and prairies – They say all the world’s a stage.

         I’m good. I’m extra special. I can parlay, and I can parlay – I can parlay to the term limit – I can parlay ’til the cows come home.