Its not quite a rant, more a depressed screed...
Like some dark and
morbid opera the US election process is building to its final terrible turgid crescendo.
On the stage lightning
cracks and thunder rolls as the characters stalk the stage singing the final
aria, their voices rising to shrieks and groans in time with the electric flashes
and cyclopean booms.
The audience sits
stunned in their seats; their faces leaping out of the darkness with each savage
illumination only to retreat as the surrounding darkness quickly swallows
them again; and their bodies struck tense as the deep bass crashes against
their chests and sets their hearts racing.
We are now down to
the final few weeks and the drama shows no sign of abating although it’s
guaranteed the curtain will come down.
The last year has brutally
exposed the US as the heaving mass of political, economic and social
contradictions it is and stripped the last remaining veneers of any tolerance,
respect or decency from the old established image of the “city on the hill”
that the US once portrayed itself as and left it naked and exposed as the dark
necropolis it has always been, as all empires always are.
It’s hard for me to
be cynical about the US as there is a lot of things I love about it.
Its art and music especially
(its cinema, jazz, blues, comics, cartoons,house music, modern art etc) are things that I have greatly
admired and enjoyed all my life as well as my many friends, acquaintances and
now family that are living in the US or from the US, but over time I have had
to separate its artistic output from its toxic political, military and social
cultures because these cultures are the cultures of empire; of dominance and
hegemony (things which I do not like or enjoy).
But another thing I
love about the US is its culture of protest, discussion and debate, often tied
to politics but also distinct from it in that it lives and breathes in some
many ways the US as a nation behaves and conducts itself. From its talk shows
and online cultures to its strong ethical base which arose in the 1960s and
still echoes to this day these things have also inspired me and shaped my life.
So like a child
caught between two warring parents I find myself in the position of condemning one
part of this powerful and influential nation while simultaneously defending and
enjoying other aspects of it.
Yet it is cynicism
I inevitably turn to when discussing US politics and more specifically the
current US election cycle and find it difficult if not impossible to not see in
this fractious debate the shadows of other examples of Imperial failure and
decline as well as Lincoln’s famous warning that “a house divided against
itself cannot stand”.
But it is the other
part of this famous quote which is more pertinent to what I am writing about
here, the part in which he says “I do not expect the house to fall – but I do
expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other” because what he was describing, at a time when the US was at war with
itself, was the inevitable outcome of two incompatible forces struggling
against each other.
It might seem that
this is simply a republican v democrat struggle but it’s really a struggle
between wealthy elites played out against a feculent backdrop of imperial decline and
stagnation.
This opera which we
are watching is Faustian in nature and like the tale itself is a story of a bargain
made at terrible cost, the loss of one’s soul.
The soul of the US,
as exemplified in the universal yet highly personal idea of the “American Dream”,
is an enduring myth and idea which inevitably rings hollow when tested (as
proved by Hunter S. Thompson in Fear andLoathing in Las Vegas and William. S Burroughs in his Thanksgiving Prayer) yet still retains it vitality as it emerges renewed in the artistic and cultural output of this mightiest of modern nation
states.
But the mythic core
of the American Dream, much like the core of the Kiwi Dream (the quarter acre
pavalova paradise), is one of success and equality in a new land for all
people; a myth which shrouds a darker colonial legacy and racial division which
are the dreams true animating forces.
And as the positive
aspects of the dream dies and the nation created under those ideals begins to
fail so do the darker parts of the dream begin to surface, rising from the
depths to reveal their hideous forms with no countervailing force to mitigate
their terrible effects.
And that is what we
are watching with this election. This is why the “lesser of two evils” argument
is folly in the face of what the lesser evil is. There is no escape option, no
returning to the past or the sanctity of the high ground and on a higher level
this event marks the final stage of the long process of 500 years of
Western/European dominance.
Whatever we use to
maintain ourselves now will not be underpinned by any moral argument or
position. It will be as it has been for the last 50 years in increasing doses;
force, cold naked force.
And as in the US so
to in the rest of the West. Democracy is in a fragile space at this time and
the alternates (oligarchy and autocracy) seem strangely appealing when the
democratic process appears as a bauble to be fought over by squabbling children,
neither of which show any positive character or virtue.
On one hand you
have naked power as exemplified by Donald Trump; an avatar for pure greed,
hubris and arrogance and a clear signifier of a return to autocracy if elected.
He might make America great but he will also make himself king. And it’s clear,
the king, once crowned, will not leave the building, will not go away as you don’t
bestow a divine right on someone and then simply take it away. Often the only
way to wrest a crown from a head is to chop the head off.
On the other hand
you have Hillary Clinton, a cold technocrat with Machiavellian tendencies and a
lust for power cloaked by the acrimonious reaction generated by Trump. In an election where one candidate can claim
a nation to be rapists and channel every sexist and racist spirit going yet
their opponent can barely keep ahead of them in the polls due to their own
deplorable state it’s clear that the differences are quantitative not qualitative;
that this is not good vrs evil but (as people have repeatedly pointed out) one
greater evil vrs a lesser evil and to which the end result will still be evil.
And while the US
twists and wrenches itself to some hideous climax we watch, absorbed and fascinated
at the grotesque spectacle, unable to pull ourselves away from the scene to
which we have clustered around, like slack jawed gabblers surrounding a seizure
victim.
So come the end of
November we will have a result one way or another but as last pealing echo of
music fades, stage lights dim, the curtain falls and the houselights come on
the audience will unstick themselves from their seats and slowly shuffle outside
to find that the dark fantasy they watched so cathartically has become the domain
of the real and they themselves are cast adrift on a larger stage in roles not
of their choosing.
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