In Which I Faciley Dissemble Facile Dessemblage

This whole Palin thing is predictable, almost too predictable. She is like a new contestant on any of the myriad number of brain-numbing TV shows. She is the new American Idol contestant trotted out to spice up the end of the season. Or she is akin to the cliffhanger that everyone watches even if the show sucks. It is a cultural phenomenon of transient quality. It is not a meaningful collective experience beyond the salesmanship inherent in it. And predictably, that salesmanship seems to work. Honestly I could never say what "Americans" value or conversely don't. I'm Californian (and Southern at that) and I think that disqualifies my ability to understand. You know? I am too provincial to have the hubris to speak universally.

That said, being from SoCal doesn't disqualify me from having shocked emotional/intellectual responses to "American" politics (or the lack there of). Personally I know a lot of people who don't vote. Regardless of the potential impact of my solitary vote, I feel very strongly about voting. There has never been a candidate that mirrored my politics, but there are those who more clearly are antithetical to my seemingly marginalized belief systems. So, I have little or no time for those who don't at least symbolically participate in elections by voting. It’s a cop out to say it doesn’t matter. I view that sentiment as tacitly saying that, “if I don’t participate, I am not culpable for outcomes.” That is entirely too facile a position for my tastes. A strike may not always succeed, but you have to walk the line or you risk becoming a fence sitter in the truest definition. And a strike is participatory and negotiable. Compromise is not always desirable, but often inclusive. Wishy-washy? Weak? Doomed to failure in the face of power? Perhaps. But standing up makes it harder for abuses of power to occur. At least this Pollyanna thinks so.

McCain/Palin have gained traction primarily (in my view) due to the fruit being beared by the rather systematic marketing of fear/rudeness/self-interest, which are prevalent in TV/Movies/periodicals, coupled with the ongoing assault on public education. Much like the erosion of teamwork in the marketplace as a result MBA programs designed to benefit the divide and conquer marketplace.

Evidently lots of folks want to be the bully that laughs at the bespeckled kid at school (read: the panel on American Idol, dismissive tastemaker arrogance, etc.) and as a result be part of the popular clique of ‘winners” (us vs. them), even if that means labeling yourself an “outsider” (viz. “alt rock”, chasing the next “thing”, etc.) which is identifying with the bullied rather than the bullies—ultimately that leads to the same ideological pitfall as I laid out above—we want to belong somewhere, no? But do we actually belong with “them”? The outsider naturally gravitates to the loner on the borders of the collective. Yet they are often the canaries in the proverbial coalmine.

Still, divisiveness is the work of cowardice in the face of responsibility. Social and emotional responsibility. It is as if we are all potential victims of a culling process, and we know it. Fear lives in the lonely that are desperate for validation. Homogeneity is a womb that denies respect for difference. No, a love for difference. Boredom lives sameness. Boredom leads to complacency in the face of horror. Boredom has no voice beyond the smoke and mirrors of the “us vs. them” bedroom community of the collective American conscience. Lock-stepped, either side of these faux dichotomies, march off to the arrogant safety of certitude.

But either socio-cultural direction one identifies with, there is a sacrifice of emotional and intellectual curiosity that perpetuates the knee-jerk “us vs. them” dichotomy—an artificial dichotomy of control in my view. Once again, I am not innocent when it comes to foaming at the mouth in the face of beliefs that scare the shit out of me. But how do you deal with intolerance and still remain tolerant? My answer is to not cultivate feeling too precious about my ability to always see the “way” through the forest.

I am a hypocrite though. I fucking hate injustice and dismissive social liassez-faire for the few. And as a result, I can spout off with best of them. I screamed “fascists” at the TV during the whole Republican Convention. I’m sure that my blanket statement made a real difference in helping someone understand my personal viewpoint. Nope. I find myself angry and feeling marginalized. The horror is that those feelings are constructs I have cultivated by virtue of my personal identification with “outsiders” despite declaring myself as an egalitarian liberal. I am a John Reed socialist I suppose on some level, despite the recognition that he too fell on his knees before the altar of true belief. Yet I still think and feel. Otherwise my time exploring mind-suicide would be deemed a complete success!

It is this lack of recognition that we live inherently in a Rashamon world that leads to the necessity of backing an identity at all costs. The elimination of divergent opinion, within these compartmentalized blocks of whatever stripe, is a result of increasingly simplistic and jingoistic criticism, sans humility laced debate, further bolstered by media and the subtle-- and not so subtle machinations--of Madison Avenue. Am I paranoid? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I do know that I am fallible in the extreme at times, and need to have the ability to remain emotionally and intellectually plastic. Hence my distaste for over identification with any group that cuts strangers to my ken out of my purview.

No. Now we have anathema. You can't be thoughtful enough to have been wrong about something, and as a result, change your mind. Nor can one allow others to evolve over time in a thoughtful manner. Adults are now supposed to be shortsighted long-term adolescent true believers. If you don’t embrace the dichotomy you are morally and constitutionally weak. This is tastemaking/tastenumbing of the highest order. Did I say fascists? On that note, evidently Rove is working directly for the McCain campaign while also working as an "impartial" commentator for Fox News.

I guess the Palin thing points out that if you are a "journalism" major, and as a result learned to read off a teleprompter (and worked as a TV "news" reporter for a little bit), you are qualified for anything regarding public service. Wait! Oh that's right, Palin has a "B.S." in Journalism from the University of Idaho. Funny I don’t think they don't offer a Bachelor's in Science for that discipline at U of I. But it looks better than having a lowly B.A. Dissembling at every turn. Now experience doesn’t count for everything. I hold intuitive intellect in high regard. But it is the “hive mind” aspect that so clearly runs counter to intuitive individual intelligence that Palin exemplifies.

Palin's RNC speech was written by members of the Bush administration and reeked of that most classic of Rove-ian tactics; co-opting language for use in making an argument for the opposite of the definition. As a Kate Millet self-styled Feminist, I am greatly offended by the giant step backward that this co-opting of language implicitly implies in the case of Palin’s impact on women and politics in general. And yes, I can be a Feminist and be wary of a black-and-white world (read Millet).

So yeah, the Republicans are indeed great at the vilification of intellect game, but they have a lot of help. TV. TV. TV. Nary a spreck of intelligent analysis to be had anywhere on the box. It’s all shills all the time (who is there? Moyers perhaps?). Of course, Credit Card Joe from Delaware sends shivers up my proletariat spine. He did as much as anyone to solidify the future of debt slavery in this country. God knows, I used to kind of like Biden. But the “Obama is too smart” argument that is the implicit backbone of the Republican “just plain folks” spiel is an embarrassment. And people are buying it seemingly. Once again, whom do you want to kick out of the house on Big Brother? The hunter or the lawyer?

Anyway, the last presidential candidate who was "too smart" to be elected was Adlai E. Stevenson (Governor of Illinois who came to initial national prominence via a keynote address at the DNC. Hmmm?) I just reread a Stevenson campaign speech from Denver 9/5/52 called "Time for a Change?" Pretty amazing that it is in many respects the same speech given at the DNC by Obama. And the issues Obama spoke of in responding to the Republicans agenda remain the same as those spoken of by Stevenson: fear (cold war), economic elitism (instability leading to recession), isolationism wed with unilateralism (foreign policy debacles—then Korea and the Cold War--again) all of which the Republicans utilized in paralyzing the electorate in 1952, all the while running on a ticket for "change". Pah!

We have stood still. The hippies had their chance and fucked up. Let's see what my generation can do--probably nothing. My generation has always been politically lazy and, I suspect, jealous of the hippies for having had their way with culture (however briefly). All we gave the world was punk rock and that lasted for two years tops before morphing into business as usual.

success in self destruction
that "high road" of individuality
nothing gets done living yesterday
an embarrassment of poverties
blind faith forever beyond a glass
bad, a bad person, a bad man, bad,
awake now on the "low" road
from without this isolation of intent
not minding the salvageable anymore
I surrender with a handful of cowardice