I haven't spent much time online lately, for a variety of personal reasons that wouldn't be of any interest to anybody, I'm sure. The web thing gets all so tiresome anyway, particularly the blogs with their constant repetition and regurgitation of doom and snark and despair. And that, of course, applies perfectly to this blog, so I know what I'm talking about here. One topic that so many bloggers spout off about -- and one I usually avoid -- is the ridiculous three-ring circus of Presidential politics, and the relative merits of candidates and all that depressing bullshit. It's especially popular among self-declared "democrats" or "liberals" or (my personal favorite, in the irony category) "progressives," desperate to establish iron-clad rhetorical edifices that prove why their choice of Presidential contender is the only one that's legitimate and/or correct, or whatever. They're all entitled to their opinions, since in this ignorant and largely disempowered age, opinion is pretty much all we have. Public opinion plays no authentic role within the political sphere of things, however. Perhaps it never has.Well. Staking out a position over a specific candidate, pro or con, is absurd. "Debating" the qualities of Hillary Clinton or Obama, or any of the others, does nothing but create the illusion that something important is going on. Comparing them is an empty exercise; whatever real differences you might manage to glean are, at best, superficial and unimportant, and they usually revolve around minor tactical questions about how to achieve the basic goals that all members of the corporate-political class are devoted to. It's akin to trying to dig up true distinctions between the Republican and Democratic parties -- fundamentally, there aren't any, not in the areas that matter most. The same applies to individuals within the parties, particularly those running for national office.
What seems to escape most "liberals" or "progressives" is that focusing all attention on their machine-politician of choice completely -- totally, disastrously -- misses the point. Hoisting the flag for a particular Presidential candidate, hollering over each other about Hillary’s war-pimping proclivities or Obama's lack of lapel pins or Kucinich's unelectability, and all the other dreck and drivel of this sort, serves only one purpose: like most media-driven distractions in this era, it helps to obscure the fact that the United States is a democratic republic in name only.
Might as well face up to this particular truth. What do we have to lose, really, in acknowledging a little reality? Very little actually, at this late date. Most would agree that real democratic self-government has a critically important participatory component; if there is no participation, it's a fraud. Of course, this is a reference to all the anonymous chuckleheads out there, the drones and clods and gridlock jockeys -- just ordinary folk trying to live their ordinary lives in the most ordinary ways. When have they -- well, we -- ever truly participated in the ponderous process of governing ourselves? But, one might argue, this nation is organized as a republic, where we elect others to represent us within a governing body. True enough ... in theory. Problem is, we don't even have that anymore, assuming we ever really did. Unitary George and his cringing Congress of Democratic enablers pretty much proves this conclusively.
Democracy in name only. This is where the choreographed fiction of a Presidential election "campaign" rears its ugly, and very empty, head -- in fact, it's the very epitome of the "DINO" dilemma in which we"re all such unsuspecting captives. All candidates for public office, wherever it might be, say certain things during a campaign, tailored to the particular audience to which they're delivered. They pander, in other words. Meanwhile, they solicit and accumulate massive gobs of corporate cash to fund their various drives for power, in return for an encyclopedic collection of quid pro quos. It's a highly-evolved racket, predicated on age-old American traditions of greed and larceny, that has no real connection to the theories or conceptual underpinnings of true representative government, much less participatory democracy. How the hell can anybody who claims to understand the basic problems and dysfunction of US electoral politics -- self-styled "progressives" and "liberals" seem to believe they do -- have any measure of faith in any fully-owned product of such a comprehensively corrupt system, as all the major Presidential candidates clearly are? It's quite a puzzler, to say the least.
Well, long-winded screeds that go nowhere are certainly no answer to anything ... you might think, after all this time, I would've figured that out. Sigh. In any event, to all those Obama mamas and Hillary hipsters out there, as well as any other frothing partisan of some hack machine politician: Give it up already. No single individual, particularly a well-heeled shill crippled by corporate dollars and overwrought ambitions, is likely to have your interests in mind. Slavish devotion to these quasi-personality cults masquerading as Presidential campaigns -- it doesn’t really matter which one -- merely accelerates the process through which the warped neo-con vision of a privatized authoritarian state on the North American continent is being inexorably realized. It hastens the final dissolution of constitutional government, as we understand the term, and its ultimate replacement by a lawless corporate kleptocracy under the ham-fisted rule of telegenic demagogues and charismatic whack-jobs ...
... I wish I knew what the answer was, beyond just spewing such poisonously depressing bile right in the middle of a pleasant Saturday morning. Maybe there isn't an answer; maybe I should just order a beer and say, fuck it already. Maybe I should stop inflicting this incomprehensible brain-dribble on everybody ...
No comments:
Post a Comment