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i dunno, art--sometimes i think you have a basically religious sensibility that has transferred belief in god to belief in the institutional infrastructure particular to the american system...
you almost seem to think that the institutions themselves have some kind of agency, or that they will in and of themselves protect "us" from the consequences of the idiocy of individuals.
i do not understand that.
because i do not believe that institutions can do this, i do not understand your reverence for the american electoral process as process in and of itself.
it seems to me that the process is nothing more than a mechanism that enframes collective choices, however mediated, however empty from the point of view of informed decision. maybe this distinction--if i read you right--explains how you can simultaneously maintain that the content of electoral politics is bullshit through and through--all crap, all spin, all opinion--but not draw damaging conclusions from that about the process of election itself.
for what it is worth, i can agree that electoral politics this time out in particular is entirely bankrupt, but i think that by choosing to go this way the political parties that dominate the present order are choosing to undermine both their own legitimacy and that of the system itself--and that nothing about the fact of elections, and nothing about the configuration of the institutional framework will save us.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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