Stoopid Stuff

Political Realities

I've been thinking about American politics. Nope. It's not the convention that drives this deeper reflection on the state of our Democracy in this foul year of our lord, 2008. I guess, more than anything else, it was the REACTION to the Biden VP choice. They started braying right off that the Obama/Biden ticket was some kind of fringe far-left loony tunes hippie-commie tag team that was going to lead the country off some kind of cliff. The fact that the bush/cheney administration has pretty much monopolized the cliff market these days doesn't seem to occur.

I've arrived at a couple conclusions. While they don't rise to the level of epiphany, they do help me both accept in an adult manner the flaccid, useless outcome of "the most important presidential campaign in history" and put in perspective the incredibly bad decisions that americans keep making that are leading us willingly to our own destruction.

First, America is a nation that collectively lives in terror of losing whatever it has managed to accumulate. It seems that the American people are willing to accept any affront, any imposition of authority, the elimination of any freedom if they can just feel like they will be able to keep their position, and no one on a lower rung of the ladder will be allowed to move up. Those spaces are limited, and not to be shared - especially with people who are "not like us". Americans are like an old man with all his money buried in coffee cans in the back yard. So afraid of all the unprocessed changes around him in society, he cannot bring himself to use that capital to fund a transition to the new realities. Eventually he dies, and the wealth just disappears into the mists of time.

Second, the lessons of the Bush/Cheney administration and their compliant lap-dog congress are there for all to see. Unfettered power in the hands of those with a corporatist and authoritarian agenda is toxic to everyone not already "in the club". It seems that all branches of government and the national media whose income is provided by that government have a vested interest in the status quo. Sure, populist economic programs and a major reduction in military spending, along with reinvestment in infrastructure, health care, education and energy would be very good for 85% of the population. But it would be bad for those who make laws, allocate money and form opinion. And therefore, they are accepted as "bad".

If the American people don't even have the wisdom, insight or courage to vote in a reasonable center - right Democratic government led by a charismatic young man with at least a few vestigial populist instincts, they will have gotten exactly what they deserved. And in the blood, smoke and disease of endless war, deficit spending and unregulated corporations, they will watch the end of it all. Everything they allowed themselves to be convinced they were protecting by sacrificing so much of what it meant to BE an American.

John McCain and the criminal, dishonest power-hungry old white men who represent the Republican Party in 2008 have nothing to offer the American people. And the sad thing is, they don't even feel that they need to pretend they do. The entire Republican campaign is about Barack Obama, an effort to make him a frightening threat to everything we keep trying to hold on to, even as we watch everything change around us. If they win, they will jealously protect the status quo, everyone in their party desperately clinging to one last good run, to live well and die well, with no thought to the economic, diplomatic and environmental death spiral they were responsible for.

It's not hard to see what the policies of today lead to. But if racial, tribal and religious hatred can outweigh national and global survival, then perhaps we, as a culture and as a species don't have any goddam right to survive.

The Drake Equation's last variable is the lifespan of an intelligent species. I think it's an important question - perhaps the most important question. Because if a society, merely by dent of it's inherent intelligence, builds an unsustainable society out of greed and hate, it cannot be expected to last a very long time, and perhaps, ultimately, that is in the best interest of the cosmic neighborhood.

posted by mikey @ 4:10 PM