( Cross posted at http://www.minorheresies.com )
I didn’t watch the presidential debate. There is only so much my psyche can take. I have read a few of the after action reports, and it sounds as if I didn’t miss much.
Apparently Mitt Romney “won” on style, which is mostly what these things are about. He wore out his teeth from behind by lying through them continuously ( http://www.nationofchange.org/… ). Obama was professorial and languid. Yawn.
One commentator pointed out that the debates are aimed at the undecided, which means the low-information, low motivation voters who haven’t been paying attention in class, ever. I guess this means the people who are more concerned with the latest celebrity breakup than the future of the nation. It sounds as if the proceeding delivered for them. The outcome of the election may hinge on their casual judgment.
The contest of personalities between Romney and Obama interests me not at all. Their political differences are akin to the differences between a medieval surgeon who wants to bleed you before cutting your leg off and a 19th century surgeon who knows better than to bleed you but wipes his saw on his pants by way of sanitary practice. Obama is a few centuries more advanced than Romney, but neither offering us a sure path to survival. Neither is operating on the basis of state of the art medicine or offering to save the leg.
This makes sense. Both men were chosen through the accumulation of large campaign donations from multi-millionaires. These wealthy donors, in turn, are remoras sucked on to the inhuman corporate sharks that run our society. These corporate sharks have all the foresight and compassion of…sharks. It should not shock us that the candidates have no policies that truly address the realities we face.
In a recent interview, writer and political activist Noam Chomsky was asked how progressives should view the present electoral contest.
Chomsky said “I think they should spend five or ten minutes on it. Seeing if there’s a point in taking part in the carefully orchestrated electoral extravaganza. And my own judgment, for what it’s worth, is, yes, there’s a point to taking a part.” ( http://www.alternet.org/electi… ) The long and short: Vote against Romney/Ryan (for Obama) in a swing state. Vote third party in a non-swing state. Then get on with more important things.
What are those more important things? Primarily, fixing the machine. We don’t like the products, but most people are caught up with hating the present malfunctioning unit. They hope, against all rationality, that the same machine will suddenly produce a perfect model after an endless string of defectives. It’s a factory, not a slot machine. It’s not designed to produce what we need. Quite deliberately the opposite.
The first step in fixing the machine is doing what I am doing right now: Pointing directly at the machine and noting that it is what needs fixing. Education is the starting point. Most of America is caught up in its tribal hatreds.
A suggestion: The next time someone starts talking to you about how much they like candidate A or dislike candidate B, don’t get caught up in that discussion. Talk about the machine. The money filter ( http://www.minorheresies.com/p… ). The Saving American Democracy Amendment ( http://www.minorheresies.com/p… ). Anything other than personality driven horse race politics. The first step towards an answer is getting people to start asking the right questions.