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Mitt Romney's sickening insincerity was on
full view Sunday night as CNN served up both candidates complete finish-line
pitches to the Ohio crowds thought to hold the fate of the election in their fickle
sway. Romney has consistently proved one thing over the whole, long,
nauseating course of his campaign: that he will say anything to get a
vote, no matter how hollow, fatuous, craven, or at odds with reality the
utterance is.
Last night he went on about how the USA would
become "energy independent" when he opens all federal lands to oil
drilling. This plays on some lamebrain notion that there are vast fields of
easy-to-get oil sitting out under the Wyoming hardpan waiting to be tapped.
Surely Mitt know better.. or does he? The reality is that these lands fell
into federal ownership largely because they had so little value in the first
place. If there was another Spindletop lurking under the sagebrush you can be
sure it would have been found long before now, so Mr. Romney is just preying
on the public's wishful ignorance (or his own) when he says these things.
Which gets to the larger issue of what the
"drill drill drill" mantra really means: namely, that Mitt
Romney has no idea where history is taking us. The public may be very nervous
about how they will pay for gasoline needed to live in the suburban matrix,
but the reality of the situation is that the suburban matrix is the problem
and doing everything and anything we can to prop it up is going to destroy
the nation. Mr. Romney is oblivious to this reality and so you can be sure
that his mysterious "plan" for leadership is an empty promise. A
reality-based plan, for instance, would be the rapid rebuilding and
electrification of the regular railroad system, both as an economic
development measure and a national security issue, along with the spirited
promotion of walkable neighborhoods and the rebuilding of our small towns and
small cities. But Mitt is "a car man," as he likes to say.
President Obama was on display, too, a little
later making dubious claims about his accomplishments and distinctions. (Jon
Corzine is still at large.) There's no evidence that he understands the true
nature of the implacable economic contraction underway and how it will change
everything about how we live on this continent. But I think there is a better
chance that he could get a clue in the next four years than is the case for
Mr. Romney. Also, I don't trust Mr. Romney to deal intelligently with foreign
nations, while the specter of yet another arch-conservative idiot on the
Supreme Court of the type that would rule affirmative on something like the
Citizens United case gives me the vapors... so I have to pull the lever for
Mr. Obama.
Finally, I just don't like Mitt Romney. He's
the over-eager twerp in the classroom with his arm always sticking up. He's
the missionary bozo in a necktie ringing your doorbell to sell a fairy-tale
cult religion dreamed up in the 1820s by another over-eager con artist. He's
obviously using the national stage to work out his father issues (George
Romney ran for president in 1968, blundering his way out of the race early
on). He shamelessly panders to the worst elements of his own party - the
ignorant, militaristic, punitive-minded Nascar evangelicals - and dissembles
so automatically that there is nothing left of whatever core beliefs he might
have theoretically developed earlier in his career. He's too chicken to
engage with the realities of climate change, so visibly on display this
season. He's spoiling to rumble with China, apparently oblivious to the fact
that China's leader-in-waiting, Xi Jingping, is an army brat. I pray at my
little alter of ecumenical totems that the tides of history will sweep Mitt Romney
out to the seas of retirement from public life, where he can enjoy his
Medicare entitlements secure in the guarantee that he will not be hassled
over any pre-existing conditions.
Speaking of tides, we are now a week past the
awful depredations of Hurricane Sandy and a lot of people are yet sitting in
the cold and dark. The story is still developing - in a way similar to
Hurricane Katrina - in the sense that the ordeals of individual suffering and
loss are slow to emerge from the chaos of the moment into public awareness.
For instance, it took weeks after Katrina for many property owners to learn
that the loss of their house was attributed to "flooding," which is
generally not covered in home insurance policies. There are still vast neighborhoods,
such as Long Beach, Long Island, where the issue hasn't even come up yet, at
least not in the news media. When it does, it will be much bigger deal
politically than was the case in Biloxi, Mississippi, or the 9th Ward of New
Orleans, where people were more accustomed to the cruel boot of authority,
not to mention the frequent tantrums of a subtropical ocean.
I don't know how Sandy will affect the
electoral results in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, but
even if polling places can be set up in ruined, blacked-out districts one
would think the eligible voters have a lot more urgent matters on their
minds.
Anyway, once this dreadful election is over
the floodgates of events will open up and we will once again be forced to
reckon especially with the epochal forces that seek to shatter the financial
system. Sandy was a kind of preview of coming attractions for a different
sort of wreckage to come.
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