Politics is dead. Run for office.
Maybe I should have been glad about not getting tv — it actually allowed me to live in a bubble of sorts — but now I see all the relevant tv news snippets on One good move, and they hurt. For example, this latest gem: a news guy verbally sparring with some ass from the DeadWhiteHouse: the news guy asks a straightforward question, and the DeadWhiteSpokeGuy responds with evasive nonsequitors about how he is not going to “play the blame game.” He never answers the question, of course. (The question was, “does the Shrub …ok: President …still have complete confidence in [Mr. Horsecrap FEMA chief] Brownie?”) Of course it’s infuriating to see this deadwhitejerk try to avoid answering the question, which is straightforward and basic. That’s a given. And of course it’s equally (if not more so) infuriating to see this same deadguy believe, at some level, that he’s succeeding (and to wonder how he can continue to live with himself).
But what’s really really painful is to see the death of politics live and in action — inaction — here, in these tv enactations. Politics has been slaughtered by this administration (if one can call it that). Katrina shows that politics is dead, absolutely dead in America. The country is moribund. There is no politics anymore, it’s all sham, show, and bullshit. Politics is real, for crying out loud: it’s about negotiation, participation, give and take — it’s not about blind and utter control. But this banter or whatever you want to call it is unreal, and illustrates that politics has devolved to the level of fantasy.
This administration — even if not solely responsible, because admittedly this didn’t happen overnight — has shown once and for all that politics is dead. Henceforth it’s either all smoke and mirrors, or plain brute force. No inbetween. Good faith is dead and buried, as is negotiation, strategy, and all nonviolent transfer of power. Dead, politics gone.
As long as dead politics means that nonviolent transfer of power is impossible, the best thing the “average” person (who really doesn’t want more violence) can do now is to become overtly political, even if it’s uncomfortable: to revitalise politics by getting involved in political leadership at every level of government. This state is not going to be revived or revised from the top down. The patient is too far gone for that.
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