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cheap grandstanding is not what bothers me.
the way it looks from the outside, the mc-cain base has now been told that the media lies, information is not to be trusted, that there's some Elite out to get them, that competence and education are problems, that something Very Bad is happening to the economy but it's not SO bad that any rethinking of anything is required, that there is no point in debate across party lines but of course the partisanship is a problem, just as there's something Very Bad happening with petroleum the "explanation" for which lay with those pointy-headed environmentalists who prefer protecting tundra and stupid birds to allowing Us to drive our vast metallic transportation environments in exactly the way we always have, and so the solution for which lay in penetrating the ground early and often with as many Manly drills as possible. and we always say those drills are bigger than they are.
strangely, this does add up----to a total rejection of democratic process---of which, like it or not, used to it or not, informed debate is central.
instead, there is a preference for manly men engaging in the manly theater of Being Decisive in a Manly kinda way, of Making Decisions that are symmetrical with the perpetual State of Emergency that makes us all feel so very alive.
and since any trace of hope that mc-cain has of not paying a very considerable price for being the republican who follows george w bush's Decider Act rests on his continuous regeneration of some sense of contact with the base, this cheap theater seems to be about a Pantomime Leadership Style. and since the previous administration didn't do so well with implementation of anything, but managed to hold at least a minimal degree of adherence by appearing to be Manly and Decisive, so it follows that what this theater is about is the Appearance of Decisiveness, of Boldness--and only secondarily is it about anything that might actually happen.
and besides, finding out what actually happened is information and information is bad. the evil press gets in the way. look at what they did to the nice mc-cain campaign's attempts to properly frame palins field trip to the un. she got to sit near kissinger. she learned more by osmosis than most pointy-heads will learn in a lifetime of reading books....
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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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