Hunter S. Thompson observed just before the 1972 election that the US is a nation of 220 million used-car salesman with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms at all about killing anyone in the world who makes us feel uncomfortable.
WARNING:
This rant is rated MA - Mature Audiences only.
Adult language.
Images of violence.
McCain and Palin are selling a hustle, a con, a lie of fearful comfort in jingoistic prejudice, of ignoring the real, massive crises hanging from frayed strings just over our heads, and inventing fictional crises -- Liberal elites teaching kindergartners to give blow jobs! the Pax Americana collapsing in South Ossetia! the superwealthy crushed under the burden of the oppressive tax code!! -- so that all of us can have the satisfaction of solving something, even if what we "solved" wasn't a problem in the first place and the solution is bullshit.
In fact, the fictionality of the problem makes it that much easier to solve. Since it was conjured out of nothing, all you need to make it disappear is hot air and bile.
If voters want to treat the government as a form of escapism, that's their right. High Priest John Roberts could cut the beating hearts out of the heaving chests of Gitmo prisoners on top of the Capitol, and toss the bloody organs down the steps to the cheering Congressmen below. Maybe that'll appease Queztalcoatl and insure victory in Iran or Iraq or Georgia or North Korea or Venezuela or San Francisco or New York. In any case, it couldn't hurt, and it'll get great ratings on Fox.
But ritual sacrifice and fiction and bullshit have never yet conquered reality, and all the snake oil in the world can't cure the diseases that are rotting our country away from the inside.
We can lie, lie, lie to ourselves to keep smiling and marching and drilling and killing.
We can flip bad paper onto the government's straining balance sheet to keep the collection agency from flying in tomorrow from Beijing or Tokyo or Brussels or Berlin, slapping a big EVICTED! notice on our front door, and auctioning our country off at 10 cents to the (worthless) dollar to curious families from Helsinki or Madrid who are enjoying their guaranteed 6-weeks of vacation by touring our decaying cities and aging national monuments, offering Euros to desperate shopkeepers who rejoice in receiving money that's worth something.
We can blame the fags or the illegal aliens or the Liberal Media or the feminazis or the traitorous peaceniks or the Dirty Fucking Hippies.
We can hold a "Fuck You, Global Warming!!" party where we flatten the rest of West Virginia, pile all the coal up on the old campus of bankrupt Antioch College, mix it with a few million barrels of Alaskan crude, and set it alight with a Zippo that has a skull and crossbones on one side and the Stars and Bars on the other, just to show the atmosphere that it has no idea who it's fucking with this time.
But none of that will change the facts. And the fact is that we've fucked it up. But good. This amazing country, with so much wealth, and so much beauty, and so many weird and disturbing and startling dreams...we've fucked it up, and we can all see it rotting away. We know that even if we face up to the ecological crisis, and the economic crisis, and the health care crisis, and the energy crisis, and the food crisis, and the Iraq crisis, and the financial crisis, and the media crisis, and the political crisis, and god knows how many other crises that are hanging over our heads...chances are we're done for, despite our best efforts.
The Empire is collapsing. Nero and Caligula have thrown their parties. Heavy manners are on the way, with Tasers and strip-searches and preventative detention and stress positions and waterboarding. For all of us. And before long, the Dark Ages will come.
And many of us are angry, furious, apoplectic with rage, and we'll sign on with anyone seeking the reins of power who seems to be angry, too -- even if their anger is directed at a phantom, or at a victim rather than a perpetrator.
Because at least we'll get a vicarious thrill from watching someone smashing the target of their rage.
Even if their rage is a cheap political trick to win votes.
Even if the target they're going to smash is us.