In a week when we are mesmerized by molasses pomp and ceremony celebrating
a Queen’s sixty years, the velocity of change in our own society is staggering
by contrast.
With each electoral tally, the American political landscape is turning
into Yeats’ vision of civilization over there in “The Second Coming” after
World War I:
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all
conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
The week also brings the death of Ray Bradbury, whose novel “Farenheit
451” foresaw a dystopian America where books are burned and dissent is
destroyed, less by tyranny than an “electronic ocean of sound” drowning
individual thought and reason.
Nowhere on the horizon is there any hopeful sign of recovery from this
summer’s political fever dream.
In Wisconsin, a distraught voter slaps the face of Scott Walker’s
disappointing challenger, a gesture more appropriate for the entire American
electorate as it sleepwalks blindly toward the edge of anarchy with little hope on
the horizon for awakening in time.
You asked "what just happened?"
ReplyDeleteIt's somewhat complicated, but it's pretty clear that what just happened is that leftist nuts and union thugs, with their death threats and shrill screaming lunacy, were smacked down. Hard. The complicated part is that people who may have voted out Walker at the end of his term were forced to vote FOR him by the spiteful recall effort (polls show that people don't think public officials should be recalled except in the case of misconduct. "Misconduct" is not doing something within the bounds of the law that some weakened fringe group doesn't like.)
The unions picked this fight, they lost. Perhaps not, as some on the right are gloatingly trumpeting, because of his strength or courage, but certainly because it was a stupid thing to do. "I don't like your policies" isn't a reason to recall someone, it's a reason to vote them out next go around. Otherwise, we'd have recalled Obama in 2009. Heh.
I love love love your hyperbole and writing. The Bradbury (RIP) quote is perfect to your point, and your writing is sublime (as usual). Your use of that quote is priceless, actually, in light of your insistence that we are on the "edge of anarchy" (while you studiously ignore the pooping on cop cars, rapes, lice, murders, suicides, threats of government overthrow, and general rabble rousing of the OWS dregs).