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After the Future

Playing the Game

I don't know about y'all, but I'm finding the campaign unbearably depressing, and I'm finding it very difficult to stay interested.  The McCain campaign's just-say-anything m.o. was predictable in its…

I don't know about y'all, but I'm finding the campaign unbearably depressing, and I'm finding it very difficult to stay interested.  The McCain campaign's just-say-anything m.o. was predictable in its cynicism and is predictably taken seriously by much of the MSM while Obama's not giving us much to work with.  He has decided to play a defensive game on the corrupted terms that apparently he thinks it must be played. 

It looks like the
dynamics governing the general election will lock into a pattern similar
to the Dem primaries: The GOP, as Hillary did, will play on the discomfort most people
feel when it comes something "different", and Obama will bend over
backwards  to appear not "too" different, and that's how the American
people will make their decision about who their next president will be: on who they feel more comfortable with.

You'd think that the American people would catch on by now, but if all most Main Streeters know about the candidates is filtered through the lens of Gibson, Stephanopoulos, Couric and the dozens of other careerists who aspire to their positions, what hope have we that idiocy shall not have the last word? They define the rules of the game because they and their bosses determine what gets talked about on Main Street.

I've given up any hope that Obama will go on the offensive with the goal to
proactively subvert the game as it's currently played.  It looks like he's going
to sit on his lead, play conservatively, and hope that gets it done. I've believed along that this election is Obama's to lose, and that kind of reactive strategy just might lose it for him. Yes, of course, it makes a difference that Obama be elected and not McCain, but it won't be that much of a difference if he can't change the fundamentals of the way the game is played.

The whole system just seems broken beyond repair. Politics is like professional wrestiling or the NBA. What sane person can takes such corrupted entertainments seriously?

Comments

3 responses

  1. Valerius Avatar
    Valerius

    Jack,
    You often speak of our political system as almost broken beyond repair. Yet when, if ever, was our political system significantly any different from the way it is now? Politicians are self-serving opportunists and must be dragged along. The process has always been slow and ugly. Partisanship is a mark of American politics. I think you long for a time in the past when things were better, but it seems to me that you have a nostalgia for a past that never was.

    Reply
  2. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    Valerius–
    I see progress from the Robber Baron era through the Progressive era, the New Deal, and Civil Rights era. There was always an element of ugliness, but there was always a sense of moving forward. We’ve really regressed since 1980. The distribution of wealth, to use one crude measure, has regressed to what it was in the top-heavy 1920s.
    In the seventies, there was bi-partisan agreement that Nixon had overstepped his bounds, and people across the board were outraged. Nixon is small potatoes compared with what these thugs are doing, and their is no check from congress on what they are doing, even with the Dems in a the majority. And the media are far more complicit with the interests of elite power than they were before 1980.
    I think that another key that makes things different now is the lack of any cohesive counterbalance to elite power. Labor used to proved that, but it’s anemic now. Some other equally potent grass-roots political organizations have to emerge if the system is to work again in a balanced way.

    Reply
  3. Matt Zemek Avatar
    Matt Zemek

    Jack,
    It’s hard to take baseball and football seriously as well…. and don’t forget cycling and many other Olympic sports, which will involve plenty of blood doping and drug violations.
    Seriously, I’m not paying any attention to the campaign beyond reading headlines of papers (I’m not reading stories at all). Each day’s headline makes me want to puke more than the previous one.
    I have to keep reminding myself that being completely numb with disillusionment doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I’m PO’d at outcomes even while my whole soul desperately wants to see a better day for this decaying country.

    Reply

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