Rocky Mountain Madness...Euphoria in Denver

Rocky Mountain Madness…
Euphoria in Denver

"It’s Colorado rocky mountain high, I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high,
Rocky Mountain high…” Rocky Mountain High, John Denver

It was bound to happen, and what a perfect setting for it. The mile-high city of Denver, the Pinnacle of the Eastern Slope, is the perfect pick for the Democratic convocation of the Blue-State Hopeful, the Apostles of hope and change.

The slick Carnival showed up this week en masse, gasping for oxygen and grasping for a hold on promises as weak and insubstantial as Colorado’s ethereally-thin air. In many ways it was the perfect venue to stage the evolving Floor Show of Illusion. Known for its abundance of blue sky, what better place to make so many “blue sky” promises of hope and change, mere bones of esoterically-abstract concepts gnawed bare and tossed out to keep the crowds deluded.

The Denver Pepsi Center has been the site of this spectacle of delusional madness. Thousands of wild and hopeful-for-change freaks took turns screaming into microphones, pledging the delegate votes or yielding their position to “that great state of Illinois, home of Lincoln and the next president, Barack Obama.” Pomposity radiated from the podium and reverberated from convention hall walls. “Magnetizers of the Present,” the current and has-been glitterati and low-level Party Luminaries, “strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage…uttering tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing….”~~ thousands upon thousands of empty words uttered non-stop.

Those of us who grew up in small towns of the South have seen, in microcosm, how this delusional madness plays out. From itinerant carnivals to traveling politicians, they all showed up sooner or later down at the fair grounds and held their seedy convocation of cheap tricks, rides, and presumptuous panaceas. Having shaken the last few coins from the dirt-poor farmers, they shook the dust of town from their shoes at the city limits sign, and moved on down the road to another town, to another shakedown. When the effects of the elixirs had subsided the locals looked at one another with this question, “Were we that stupid?” The answer would be evident next month when the bills came due! But we had a good time.

Tonight, down at Invesco Field, Charles MacKay’s predictions in his book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” written in 1841, will find their fulfillment. With strobe lights flashing multi-colors on his big ivories, The Party Panjandrum, The High Priest of Change will stroll to the podium and stoke the contagion of hysterical frenzy among his 77,000 disciples. He will continue to promise the undeliverable, and from his lips will gush effusively dire omens and divinations of the future. His hollow exhortation will echo throughout the world, cresting in a crescendo that will give human folly and delusion new definitions. Yes, The Dems have their man!

“He climbed the cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below, he saw everything as far as you can see, and they said that he got crazy once and tried to touch the sun, and he lost a friend but kept the memory…”

All good parties must end, and this one will, too. The fireworks and Rock Stars’ Tents will move to another city, but not before the fund-raising count has risen to nearly $1.5 billion. Euphoria will evaporate as well, its descent more slowly that its ascent. The party hangover begins when Visa and American Express bills arrive next month, and hot dogs no longer cost $7 bucks…good thing, because that’s what a lot of folks will remember about this convention. But we had a good time!

And what about the vicarious voyeurs who watched this madness at a distance? Well, the final shakedown for us will be complete when our bills come due, usually every April 15th …don’t worry, you’ll be for sure on the “Preferred Donor List” then!


Bud
August 28, 2008