Steven Weber: The Devil You Know

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Steven Weber
The Devil You Know
Posted May 1, 2008 | 01:23 PM (EST)




So now she's gotten mean and he's gotten weak. And the disappointment is palpable in both their faces.

Oh, for the heady days months ago when there stood before us a virtually intact, ready-to-go cabinet of intellects, activists, statespersons and progressive Americans, each with passion, zeal and breadth of knowledge about what's been ailing this country and the know-how to fix it. They stood on those stages and raised the level of debate to new heights, far above the swollen-groin and gurgling-gut level nonsense the world had been treated to for two terms of BushCo. (or Fear, Inc.), each one able to hold his or her own, easily more formidable than anything the Repuglicans could bring. And courtesy of W's shenanigans, the Repugs knew their gooses were cooked and had all but slinked away. But they still had the one thing the Demoprats didn't: time and a lot of rope. Because even facing defeat they know that the Dems would trip up just as they are. Damn Repugs. If it weren't for their destroying this country you could almost admire them.

But what does it say about a person who adopts the tactics of sworn enemies in order to win? When that person derides inspiration as weakness? When an optimist-activist-humanist suddenly takes a page from the Lee Atwater/Roger Ailes playbook and does a Max Cleland number on her opponent? Sick. And sad, sad, sad. And, of course, it says they will be president.

But it also tells us about who we are as a people. This sacrosanct process of vetting presidential candidates brings out not the best but the worst, exporting in its grand gesture not he power of the people but the corruption inherent in its current leadership, those smug oligarchs running the country into the ground with their profiteering corporate paradigm and ensuring the Death of a Nation. And within the overlong Hillary and Barack rasslin' match, we see the battle between the opposing components in the modern American psyche personified by the tactics the two candidates have themselves employed.

When electing a leader has become so commercialized and the candidates become so enmeshed in snide trivialities, the democratic process itself becomes a spectacle worthy of a Las Vegas theme-hotel: "Hey There, America!®", a symbol of lazy arrogance, the logical result of years of believing its own press, that it deserved its own greatness when it was in actuality the beneficiary of inspiration, passion and luck, historical lightning in a bottle to be cherished and protected rather than hawked and sold in a no-bid contract. What is winning the presidency if there is nothing to preside over but a flabby, broken economy and the president a formerly principled but now spiritually depleted straw boss?

What do we gain by not recalling history's lessons, by constantly submitting to the warped ethics of materialism and turning a vital democratic ritual into a commercial charade? We risk scenarios even worse than what we are now experiencing, worse than panic runs on stocks, oil and housing. There are already riots for food. Next, water. Later, air. That much is at stake.

But the race continues, degenerating further with each low-brow spat and media indulgence. And the two once potent contenders are now hobbled and distracted, forced into unfavorable positions and forcing the people to choose between the devil we know and the devil we don't.

Great job, everybody! Four more years!


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/the-devil-you-know_b_99651.html