Fastened To A Dying Animal: the U.S. election process

[DogPoundPup]

Fastened To A Dying Animal: a short jeremiad regarding that affront to the nation's dignity known as the US election process
by Phil Rockstroh
Monday April 28, 2008

Here in this crumbling empire once known as the American republic, here in a nation that, at present, for all practical purposes, only produces Cheetos and killer drones, whose architecture is being winnowed down to thriving rural meth houses and foreclosed upon suburban mchouses, whose corrupt corporate culture has bequeathed upon our suffering planet dying oceans and the hyper-caffeinated tsunami of Red Bull Capitalism -- the essential question confronts us -- how does one retain (not retail) one's humanity amid the catastrophic machinery and inane accouterment of our age?

"Show your wounds," exhorted the late 20th Century artist Joseph Boyce. The wound becomes the womb, poets tell us. Out of painful truth, beauty is born. But, antithetical to the orthodoxies of consumer capitalism, there are no shortcuts. According to legend, Faust sold his soul for a glimpse of eternal beauty and the hidden knowledge of the world. Sadly, we've done likewise (but worse, pathetically) for a glimpse of Paris Hilton's privileged (but hardly gated and guarded) cooter.

Here, now, sprawled upon the detritus of our dignity, we are confronted by the exponential dynamics of decay known as the US Presidential Election cycle. In this, all three corporate candidates are of little use to us. Although all three have done very well for themselves by the present and prevailing arrangement known as Disaster Capitalism.

What motivation do they have to change the system by which they've thrived? McCain, Clinton, and Obama must serve the interests of the corrupt corporate class -- or else they would be marginalized. Paradoxically, as we have witnessed, as of late, if they make even the most minute rumblings to the contrary -- as for example, blundering into a steaming pile of the obvious such as the observation that the battered laboring class of the nation might be embittered by their lot --- they risk political immolation by being labeled an elitist.

Of course, Obama is an elitist. (As are Clinton and McCain.) And he has been put on notice by the Powers That Be that they have no problem with him being among their ranks, as long as he doesn't go rattling off at the mouth about those the rigged system benefits and those it kicks daily in the gut. Because in a political culture as far down the rabbit hole as is this one, the surest way to be branded an elitist is to refuse to serve the elite. (Not that Obama threatened any such thing.) This is the modus operandi of the lacquered, autoerotic dudes and dolls of the corporate media and the K Street cash-flushed phonies of the American political classes: Pose as protecters of the beer-bleary multitudes, as, all the while, carrying vintage Cabernet for a privileged few.

http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=445

[sam sarrha]

1. Excelent

[natrat]

2. good stuff

Sadly, we've done likewise (but worse, pathetically) for a glimpse of Paris Hilton's privileged (but hardly gated and guarded) cooter. -priceless

[Skittles]

3. "corporate candidates are of little use to us"

correct: THEY ALL SUCK