Should I go there? I’ve been debating this to myself for several days now. It’s been so tempting, but those fires burn hot, and who knows which way the flames will blow.
OK, I’ll go there.
I have been marvelling (I think that “marvelling” is the right word here) at the odd spectacle of Senator Hillary Clinton, in her argument as to why she is the rightful heir to the throne (oops, I meant presidency), pointing out to the American people that Barack Obama is unelectable.
No, not for that reason, the one people are not allowed to actually say out loud (here’s a hint: a word that rhymes with “grace”). No, it’s because he has finally crossed the line by saying the unthinkable.
I’m not talking about something trivial or unimportant here, like making up out of whole cloth – and repeating for months – a self-serving fib about having been in the line of fire in Bosnia. No, that’s really ok. We want our politicians to be practiced liars, to say untrue things that give us plausible deniability. Isn’t that kind of the point, in fact what we’re paying them to do? Isn’t that exactly the job that George W. Bush has been doing for the last seven years?
A country like America, whose citizenry consumes at a level vastly out of proportion to its population, is by definition built upon exploitation. The clothes we wear, the energy we burn, it’s all based on an artificial economy, one in which we arrange not to see where things really come from, and under what conditions. We could not exist any other way at our current rate of consumption. And if we were forced to look at the situation squarely, without pretense, we would likely go mad. The trick, as a culture, is to not look at things squarely. We pay our politicians to say all the right things, so we never have to blame ourselves.
So when Clinton lied about Bosnia, that was ok. It just meant that she knew the score.
But Obama did something far worse. He did the unforgiveable: He suggested that America’s love of guns and hunting is a product of bitterness. Yes, he quickly took it back, realizing his strategic mistake. Both Obama and Clinton have been falling all over themselves this past week to assure America that killing for fun is really quite nice.
But the damage has been done.
I’m going to continue this tomorrow. But meanwhile, try to keep in mind the image that Senator Clinton herself cheerfully put in our heads several days ago to prove why she, unlike her rival, is electable: It is an image of a young Hillary Rodham back when she was a girl, gleefully picking a rifle and setting out to the woods to go hunting.