A nd so, from the dormant volcano that is American politics, out flies
Hillary, like Rodan the Flying Reptile pretending to be Granny Goose. Now
that she is officially flapping around the electorate, the excitable
mainstream press reports the initial caw-caw-cawing of her campaign: it will
be “based on diversity, discipline and humbleness.” These are endearing
qualities in any giant flying reptile, and reassuring to voters who might
otherwise fear something a bit darker on the wing.
The Elmer Fudd in the piece at the moment, former Maryland Governor Martin
O’Malley, did get off a clever first shot at the flying behemoth when he
cracked that “the presidency of the United States is not some crown to be
passed between two families,” but it seems to have only provoked a deeper
show of humility from the target. She’ll be starting a “listening campaign”
to detect rustles of discontent as she banks over the cornfields of Iowa
cawing platitudes across the sky, e.g. “Americans have fought their way back
from tough economic times.”
Point of fact: no they haven’t. They are still strewn over the landscape
with the economic equivalent of sucking chest wounds, but perhaps a few of
them have noticed with vicarious satisfaction the astounding rise of the S
& P stock index as they lie in a roadside ditch scanning the skies. It
must give them some comfort as their lights go out. Just maybe, their
children will also have the chance to become Goldman Sachs employees as
history marches on. The flying reptile wants to be their champion! She wants
to earn their votes — the old fashioned way, by purchasing as much TV
air-time as possible to put across the illusion of sincerity. On such
campaigns is the decline of empire propelled.
More to the point, what does the flight of Hillary say about party
politics in this land? That a more corrupt and sclerotic dominion has hardly
been glimpsed since the last Bourbons cavorted in the halls of Versailles?
Hence, my view that America will witness a very peculiar spectacle leading up
to and perhaps beyond the 2016 election: the disintegration of seeming
normality against a background of mounting disorder and insurrection. Hillary
will go on caw-cawing platitudes about togetherness, diversity, and recovery
while the economy sinks to new extremes of unravelment, and the anger of a
swindled people finally boils over.
Neither party shows even minimal competence for understanding the actual
crises facing this land, and indeed the project of techno-industrial
civilization itself. If the people don’t overthrow them, and grind their
pretenses underfoot, then events surely will. In the trying months leading up
to the presidential election of 2016, Americans will witness the death of
their “energy independence” fantasy — actually a meme concocted by
professional propagandists. The shale oil “miracle” will go up in a vapor of
defaulting junk bonds. Violence will escalate through North Africa and the
Middle East, threatening the world oil supply more generally. I would give a
low-percentage chance of survival to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and to the
Saud part of Arabia more particularly as civil war among the rival clans
breaks out there, with an overlay of Islamic State mischief seeding even
greater chaos, and the very likely prospect of sabotage to the gigantic oil
terminal at Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf. In comparison, the fiasco of
Benghazi will look like a mere Three Stooges episode.
If a third party were to arise in all this
turmoil, it might not be savior brigade, either. In 1856 the Republicans
welled up as the Whigs expired in sheer purposelessness and the Democrats
romanced slavery. The nation had to endure the greatest convulsion in its
lifetime to get to the other side of that. This time, I’m not at all sure
we’ll get to the other side in one piece.
