Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Moving nOn, Again

He was of the lucky generation to travel the world when it was still a moderately safe place for North Americans, and although he faced fierce looks in places like Nicaragua, and machine guns in Guatemala, at the time he was still hopeful, that one day his future children would travel with a similar freedom of gaze and further distill in those faces the lingering glimmer of something resembling a mutual trust...For they know not what they do. The American people have just declared themselves the greatest threat (and the greatest ignorance) of the future and womankind.

For lingering questions about the election, one may read News Target Network's piece on DemocraticUnderground.com, this live journal, or Crooked Timber if one is so inclined. Or, of course, Greg Palast. The global monitors apparently weren't so impressed either. In all likelihood however, the sorry and simple truth is that a Republican-lite Democratic party straight-up lost it. As apparently Kerry's sermons just weren't that interesting or compellingly zeitgeist-mifesting after all. A time of unprecedented instability and scum, as well as, perhaps, opportunity. (Time for the DNC to embrace progressives or see the party die? Or more likely repackage its cultural pitch? Time to address the millions of "moral" Americans who consistently and proudly vote against their pocketbooks? But what is this "progress" precisely? And to whom does it belong? Who are you to say "we" at all with such authority? An habitual diversion? A vague commitment to an emancipatory ideal? An openness to a future? Is one ruled by it or does one prick and stitch it? Time for endlessly cloying strings of questions and patronizing frank talk?) "The war on terror," as the US invades Fallujah, Iran, Vermont and onward, is all many will hear for the next four years. Welcome to MacWorld vs. MacJihad the sequel, selling everywhere you are sold... Harper's Guide to expatriating.

"Liberals can understand everything but the people who don't understand them."

--Lenny Bruce

Or there is always, I suppose, the armchair liberal's "fuck you Alabama" and delusion of immunity.

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