The universe seems to me infinitely strange and foreign. At such a moment I gaze upon it with a mixture of anguish and euphoria; separate from the universe, as though placed at a certain distance outside it; I look and I see pictures, creatures that move in a kind of timeless time and spaceless space, emitting sounds that are a kind of language I no longer understand or ever register.
-Eugène Ionesco
Ronald Brownstien is the "political director for Atlantic Media Company." I don't know what that means. He's written a book, evidently, or several, and at one point it appears he worked for (!) Ralph Nader. In the September issue of
The Atlantic, he's got a piece called "
Reconcilable Differences." As you can imagine, it has to do with "bipartisanship," which is what happens when the theatrical divisions and minor factional disputes which animate life at Versailles quiet for a moment to reveal the essential consensus of our governing class. Just to give you the flavor, here's one early paragraph:
The tension between each candidate’s desire to hold the high ground and the extraordinary pressure to go negative—especially as Election Day looms—will be one of the central dynamics in this fall’s campaign. Over the past decade, unconstrained partisanship has debilitated Washington and prevented the federal government from addressing the country’s most pressing problems. This election offers a real possibility—the first in many years—for a de-escalation of the partisan arms race. But this possibility will recede if the presidential campaign turns as toxic as the last two.
I'll endeavor to reproduce that paragraph eliminating everything that
is not a cliché:
The tension between. Hold the high ground. Extraordinary pressure. Go negative. Election day looms. Central dynamics. Unconstraind partisanship. Debilitated Washington. Prevented the federal goverment from addressing the country's most pressing problems. Offers a real possibility. The partisan arms race. Turns as toxic.
You might choose to subdivide them differently, but I see no fewer than those twelve dead-letter figurations in a four-sentence paragraph. That's a remarkable pace.
There are a number of underlying fallacies that animate this sort of argument, and they all stem from a central belief that there are a set of objectively, verifiably correct policies--that via their implentation the nation will prosper and endure. The notion of governance as a type of science is humorously Soviet, particularly given our current contretemps with the Russkie. The adherents of this peculiar religion tend to believe that while it is perfectly natural for the nation to align itself into two (count 'em) oppositional political factions, it is "debilitating" for people and organizations with particular interests in particular outcomes to organize in order to exert pressure to those ends, such practice being the mark of "special interests," which are uniformly supposed to be contrary to the national or popular will. These special interests pull the two parties toward the poles of the American political spectrum, which is, again, "debilitating," because although the parties are supposed to be oppositional ("I believe in the two-party system")--a sort of additional "check and balance" in our system, preventing the consolidation of too much power--they are
also supposed to be cooperative, i.e. "bipartisan," at least where "addressing the country's most pressing problems" is concerned.
This is all staggeringly incoherent, self-contradictory, civic-catechismal crapola, which is why I call it a religion. The idea that a polity composted of 300 million people spread across a continent could be sufficiently homogeneous as to benefit broadly and deeply from this or that government act is as goofy an article of faith as the six-day creation or Noah's flood. The idea that such a gang constitutes a single entity with a "will" is even crazier. The idea that some "uniter" will "bridge the partisan divide" in order to do what "the American people" want is insane. The American people don't want anything. There is no American people.
Remarkably--or perhaps not--the people who most loudly plead for bipartisanship are also the people who are most convinced that their political prescriptions represent the valid, objectively correct course for the nation to plot, and although they often demur on the point if confronted on it, they believe that if only the parties would "reach across the aisle" and compromise, the inevitable results of negotiation and concession would be a compromise reflecting precisely that best possible, valid, objectively correct policy. Which is almost equally incoherent. As anyone who has ever negotiated anything--a labor contract, a divorce, the rules on tagging up at the pickup softball game--the end results are more often than not the
worst possible results, a hopeless hodgepodge of bad, but dearly held, ideas borne of intransigence, selfishness, short-sightedness, lack of empathy, lack of perspective, lack of maturity . . . in other words, humanity.
Fortunately, none of this is actually an issue in Washington, for while so-called social issues (fags and fetuses, I like to say) do result in actual differences of opinion, on the substantive questions of the scope of government power, the use of military force, the white-knuckled clutching at wheel of the U.S.S Global Hegemony, there
is in fact a governing consensus, although it has got fuck-all to do with the fictitious national will. Bombastic campaign pronouncements aside, John McCain and Barack Obama believe in the preservation and extension of American full-spectrum dominance. McCain represents a faction which believes these objectives can be best obtained through the open, frequent use of direct military force with occasional resort to slightly less open methods, and Obama represents a faction which believes that these objectives can best be obtained through the slightly less open and slightly less frequent use of direct military force, with the slightly more common resort to slightly less open methods. Whichever takes office will feel constrained to moderate his position moderately in the direction of the other. Voilà. Getting it done for the country.
