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Meanwhile, there went Teddy during the same week. I can't say I ever felt particularly moved by the Kennedy brothers. Perhaps it was their sense of entitlement and their opportunistic tendencies, their ability to be vicious to get what they wanted, or my general aversion to celebrity worship in America and the vicarious living it seems to engender among millions who would do so much better to live their own lives rather than living through others'. And yet, nevertheless, the contrast between this man, who had everything and yet devoted so much of his personal and professional life to assisting those who had less than nothing, versus the heartless grinding destruction of ordinary Americans in pursuit of the further enrichment of the already wealthy, so vividly on display courtesy of Tom Coburn, says everything about the American political condition in late 2009.
And thus too the stasis in the ideological wars at the moment. The right is utterly bereft of ideas for governing, in no small part because it never really had any other than those that were used as covering fire for the looting of the country. Liberals, on the other hand, maintain a stock of public policy responses that have weathered well across the decades and remain every bit as relevant today as they were in the middle of the twentieth century, yet these folks utterly lack the courage of their convictions, even on the rare occasions when they actually have convictions. In short, the right has all the passion now and none of the ideas, while the left has all of the ideas and none of the passion.
But the current stasis feels all too reminiscent of that found in trench warfare. The levels of violence remain high, though the battle lines don't move much over time. More importantly, though, when there ultimately is a surge, it breaks through powerfully, and the war is over in a rout. This is why the stalemate of the moment feels precarious. American society is under considerable pressures -- economic, environmental, demographic and more -- and these pressures are unlikely to relent anytime soon. Meanwhile, the utterly inept and thoroughly conservative Obama administration is every day more ruthlessly savaged from the right as some sort of alien predatory pretender to the throne, even while it continues to serve the interests of economic elites in a fashion that could make George Bush proud of the achievements of his third term.
Obama could never have hoped to have sustained the support of regressives in America (good god, surely he isn't that deluded?), who suffer today from a mental illness that is broad and deep, such that perhaps 100 million Americans are more or less completely impervious to persuasion based on fact and logic. Centrists, on the other hand, seem basically interested in voting for whoever will lower their taxes the most. Since Obama is spending gobs of money -- in part to save the country from the plunge over the cliff brought on by the Bush administration -- the president is rapidly losing their support. And, because he has literally not done a single thing to satisfy those in his progressive base, while continuing to pursue policies indistinguishable from the hated Bush administration, Obama is rapidly losing popularity on the left as well. Moreover, if there are any personality characteristics that are most discernible at this stage of his presidency, they seem to be, first, always choosing the least bold course of action, and second, always empowering everyone else and then negotiating with them, including those trying to destroy him.
The upshot is that a year from now United States could find itself in a scenario reminiscent of 1994 -- in which a failing presidency resulted in the loss of control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans -- only worse. Obama doesn't even have the luxury of turning to the right, as Bill Clinton did, because he's already there, and because those policies don't solve the problems increasingly bedeviling the American public, however much temporary satisfaction they might bring to those who crave a good foreign war, the occasional execution of a condemned inmate, or a bit of racist violence, in order to feel better about themselves. Meanwhile, regressives are having a field day trashing yet another Democratic president who refuses to stand for anything, even if that just means fighting back to preserve his own presidency.
Who could have imagined, six months ago, that the ideology of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be poised for a comeback, perhaps in an even more toxic form than what we suffered through these last eight years? But that is, indeed, precisely where we find ourselves. The danger in America for some sort of radical ideology to take control of the government and society -- yes, I guess I'm inevitably talking about fascism here, despite trying to avoid that overused term -- seems all too potent to me now, even in this moment of stasis. Americans are already angry, and they're all too often shockingly stupid about where they direct that anger. Imagine the sort of sentiments that might be coursing through the veins of the body politic twelve or twenty-four months from now, should the economy continue its downhill slide or sustain only a tepid jobless recovery, should the right maintain its relentless drumbeat of vitriolic and escalating deceit, and should the so-called left of Reid, Pelosi and Obama continue to offer in response its porridge-bland menu of non-solutions, pulled from the fridge and served piping cool at room temperature.
That's a lot of "ifs', but do any of them seem far-fetched? I think not.
My gut tells me that, however ludicrously inflamed is the current political discourse, relatively speaking, it's probably pretty quiet.
Relative, that is, to what comes next.
Quiet, that is, as in the quiet before the storm.
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