Could this Possibly Get any More Boring? — On the Meaningless Coming Presidential Election and the Go-Nowhere Blather that Surrounds It

© 2012 Peter Free

 

05 April 2012

 

 

Can’t blame the public for tuning out

 

Mitt versus Barack in 2012 has almost nothing at stake.  Both men will lead in virtually identical fashion, overwhelmed by the combined inertia that is Government and Plutocracy.

 

Former Governor Romney, who probably does have superior organizational management skills, comes from the economic elite that long-ago captured our democratic institutions with their money.  And President Obama has very obviously bought into precisely the same values, despite his (once inspiring) ability to pretend that he had not.

 

In practice, and often secretly, President Obama has been a more fervent George W. Bush than Bush was.  And candidate Romney consistently pretends to want to be more George W. than Obama’s public, but not secret, persona.  Real world difference equals zero.

 

Effectively, then, there is little to choose between these two men.  Electing either will continue to take the United States on its currently self-destructive, anti-democratic, imperialistic downward spiral.

 

A non-election.  Followed by 4 more years of leadership cowardice and self-serving manipulative lies, no matter which man is elected.  Of course, you would not know this, judging by the volume of superficial pro and con blather that surrounds the build-up to the election.

 

An Iranian observer of American politics noticed the same thing

 

Professor Hamid Dabashi at Columbia University wrote, referring to President Obama’s open microphone moment with Russian President Medvedev:

 

Why does President Obama need "space" for his second term election - what did he do with the "space", indeed the mandate he received after his first election?

 

Why should anyone believe that the careerism that wasted that first term will not continue to spoil the second the term, the new "space" he will be given where to win the next election?

 

That question raises the more compelling issue of the general spectacle of American presidential election - perhaps the grandest political bravura of our time, repeated ad nauseum every four years.

 

Americans (and many others around the world) were counting the seconds that the Bush presidency would finally end and Obama's to start - but to what avail? What did he do differently than Bush?

 

So what is the purpose, or the function, or the use of these American presidential elections?

 

© 2012 Hamid Dabashi, The spectacle of democracy in the US, Al Jazeera (05 April 2012)

 

 

Rather than ritually kill myself, I have taken to finding inspiration in television commercials

 

Like this one:

 

Nike Free, I Would Run To You, Nike Inc. (04 April 2012)

 

There are many more like this.  Concise imagination and short stories, bound up in lyrically flowing excellence.

 

Materialism’s manipulative creativity is not letting us down.

 

 

It is sad, though, when commerce’s often soul-bending “buy-me” art outstrips our political leadership’s non-vision for the future

 

In challenging times, you would think our priorities would go the other way.