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next morning: well, my basic perspective on this from a bit of a distance is that i think the debate was in the main done with enough seriousness and decorum that the theater of it was, strangely, kinda reassuring in the sense that it has been a remarkably shitty couple weeks for the existing system in the united states at nearly every level.
as a human being not roachboy exactly i am always split between the ways the social world make sense to me analytically and politically and the ways in which it makes sense to me as i go to the store or sit on the bench behind my apartment and look at the salt marsh...at the first level, i see ideologies and limitations that follow from them that--particularly the past few weeks--make people whom i do not really doubt are as human beings complicated and well-meaning and reasonably intelligent---do and enact stupid-to-vicious things and avoid the consequences by pretending that the world is otherwise. at the second level, i live here too, in the everyday world, and sometimes find myself at that level a bit freaked out by the effects of seeing the world analytically. i think alot of folk who work out of a more radical political position find themselves in this kind of position from time to time, and in the past the dream of revolution coming from a movement that corresponded more or less with an alternate possible world was a therapeutic one to have. but these days there is no such movement, not even the possibility of one. so the analytic dimension can collapse onto everyday life in an unpleasant way. i have found the way the campaign for the next president to have been playing out, particularly on television, to be distressing in this regard because it generates the appearance of trivia and stupidity and one-dimensional thinking and seems to work on the assumption that you and i want trivia and stupidity and one-dimensional thinking. the american political system spins itself to itself as a joke, and in a period of large-scale mutation it can appear to in fact be a joke, and this is not good--because no matter what i might think desirable as an alternative arrangement, i, like everyone, lives in this one, and there's a sense in which the process of mutation we are living through can come to be like that hyperbolic doubt which causes you to not be sure that the floor beneath your feet will continue to exist moment to moment because, in the end, you cannot be sure that it will.
so this morning, i think the debate was a good bit of theater for situational reasons--it was not a joke--and it could have been--and both candidates handled themselves well--in a context shaped by the fact that few in the bigger political order have been handling themselves or the situations they are facing well. it was good to see signs of intelligent life in a context shaped by reactive life.
i am not a fan of biden, not an enthusiastic supporter of obama--but i think it obvious that both are intelligent and articulate and--more importantly--are able to use their intelligence in an adaptive manner, to remain relatively clear in a shifting situation.
i do not see that from either mc-cain or palin.
but this debate could have been a farce, and that would have been an unfortunate bit of theater at an unfortunate time. it wasn't a farce---rather it gave mediated access to broader intellectual and policy differences and provided 90 minutes of space for actual discussion. that was quickly covered over by the idiocy of television commentary.
i think it's time we all turned off the tv for everything but reality shows, cartoons and sporting events.
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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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