kunstler | Flying at higher platitudes in the thin upper air of his own mind
last week, Republican candidate Mitt Romney remarked apropos of airplane
travel: "[T]he windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that.
It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous."
It turned out that Mitt meant the remark as a gag. But it sheds some light
on the hazard of trying to be funny by saying the opposite of what you
mean, and also on the essential character of Mr. Romney who, to put it
as plainly and directly as possible, is the sort of person commonly
described as "an asshole." Hence, the thought that must be flashing
through many people's minds these days when Romney's off-kilter,
square-jawed, grinning visage floats over the nearest flat-screen: Who would vote for that asshole...?
Being given to more baroque taxonomy, myself, I would be satisfied in
calling Mr. Romney an empty vessel in a vacant room in an abandoned
property in a forsaken land, and leave it at that.
It happens that his opponent, Mr. Obama, is a genial fellow with whom almost anyone might like to have a beer. Despite his winning smile, though, the president has managed to cripple due process of law, make war on the nation's own citizens, let Wall Street criminals run amok, and sell out the electoral process to a corrupt corporate oligarchy. I wouldn't vote for him again if he water-boarded me in a Jacuzzi full of Schorschbräu's Schorschbock 57 beer ($275 a bottle). But he's welcome to come over to my house and watch the baseball playoffs if he brings his own six-pack and a bag of Cheetos.
And so it goes on the
backstretch of the emptiest election contest in memory. The nation
simply can't contend with the existential problems it faces and doesn't
want to hear about them. As far as I can tell, nobody is paying
attention to the campaigns, not even the reporters, certainly not the
bloggers, who have their eyes on the riots and other kinetic unravelings
related to the money crisis in Europe. Here, where anything goes and
nothing matters, everybody just goes through the motions of electoral
politics. It all has the odor of a ritual that nobody remembers the
original purpose of - namely, to govern, i.e. to manage society's
collective affairs. These days, nobody believes that our affairs are
manageable, and their perception is probably correct, especially when it
comes to paying for it all, since accounting fraud is now the basis of
all financial operations.
But I don't mean to just deplore the situation. It is what it is, and we are at a certain
juncture of history because of the choices we have made, and we'll have
to see how the consequences roll out. Here's how I see some of them.
