Friday, December 2, 2016

An Unending Election or a Culture Ending?

Why does it feel as if the election is not over? The deluge of information about political creatures - foremost among these, the great charlatan Donnie Tynahands, but including the cipher beings Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - continues. It is sordid, baffling, contradictory, always courting incredulity and always straddling the line between coherency and incoherency.

Perhaps what we are experiencing is not properly the sense of an election that is not over – but rather the sense of an empire and, indeed, a culture that is buckling and finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. The three ludicrous and terrifying founding fictions of the nation - that humans are somehow distinct from and superior to the rest of nature / that there are separate "races" of human beings / and that the purpose of existence is to pursue one's own personal greed to its always vanishing endpoint - were never a recipe for success. Are we now witness to the endgame of these wretched beliefs? One thing is for sure: the show, the spectacle is utterly mad.

2 comments:

Kate said...

Jeez Dan, your statements hit the bullseye; they are perfectly explicated. I don't follow alt right stuff or Fox so I don't know who Tynahands is exactly but I get it (I think). The two statements that hit me hardest are "sordid, baffling, contradictory, always courting incredulity . . . the line between coherency and incoherency." The thing about a citizenry taking responsibility for its culture collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions is that it has to own up to this first. The general public, I think, must collectively own this truth. Right now, between the canonization of the Obama family, the sniffling over not having a phony, pretend liberal centrist female in office, and on and on is that folks are not owning how the spectacle truly is utterly mad. I believe it is. I'm relieved you believe it is. So more than ever our job is to connect with people who see what's behind the curtain, like Dorothy unmasking the Wizard. Great piece!!

Dan Hanrahan said...

"Right now, between the canonization of the Obama family, the sniffling over not having a phony, pretend liberal centrist female in office, and on and on is that folks are not owning how the spectacle truly is utterly mad." Absolutely. Any credence given to the more genteel plutocrats who trumpet the horrible three founding beliefs I enumerate above is a great waste of energy. This moment offers us the opportunity to return to some sense of material reality grounded in spirit. Fools like Obama, Clinton etc. are invested in distracting us from us from seizing such an opportunity.