- California has just elected an adolescent fantasy as
governor. One imagines fans, used to paying for Schwarzenegger's image
projected on a screen, leaving rallies feeling blessed at having glimpsed
him in the flesh - dyed hair, induced tan, eyebrow-waxing, capped teeth,
and all - much as winners from a church bingo go home feeling blessed.
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- The model for American society is fast becoming a set
of gigantic lotteries, the final reduction of the American Dream. While
I dislike most nonsense about dreams and visions, at least the line about
the American Dream did recall an epic struggle in a brave new world with
its waves of vibrant, migrant population.
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- For years now there has been a growing view in America
that opportunity consists in every citizen getting a lottery ticket for
some dazzling pay-out. It's an idea implicit in think-tank pamphlets and
in the behavior of many American corporations. Of course, lotteries only
work because almost everyone loses, but they are fun along the way, taking
your mind off unglamorous reality, and anticipation is hyped-up for each
new draw.
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- The lottery-society idea now has been extended from the
economy to government itself. The people of California voted to eject as
governor a perfectly competent man overtaken by a wave of adverse economic
change. Never mind allowing him to make changes and adjustments - that
is, allowing him to govern. Never mind orderly government. He's a loser,
get rid of him. We want it all, and we want it now. In his place, bets
are placed on a celebrity whose every utterance is a cut-and-paste slogan
from the Internet site of some American think-tank.
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- And it doesn't seem to matter that his past is littered
with nasty behavior. The right-wing is like that: ceaselessly preaching
morality, but when one of its own is caught, as it were, with his pants
down, he always somehow still qualifies to govern.
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- The current President had a history of substance abuse
and rich-boy drifting, but a few mumbled references about the Lord made
him a Christian warrior-President. And so Schwarzenegger's life-long lousy
behavior towards women and past Hitler-admiration are swept away. I don't
know that he ever mentioned the Lord during his campaign, but clearly he
is needed for the Lord's work.
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- Despite the tired slogans of his campaign, Schwarzenegger's
opening gambit, as of this writing, is to demand money from the President
for California's financial plight. Now there's an original idea. I wonder
how many drawling, sputtering Republicans over the last thirty years have
excoriated liberals about money and "the damned fed'rah gov'ment"?
Well, this is a sophisticated new breed of Republicans. They've discovered
a magic formula: it's okay to spend more, lots more, as long as you also
cut taxes.
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- Of course, Schwarzenegger will have an entre at the White
House the former Democratic governor could never have had, but it does
seem an awkward time to ask for money. The new Governor may have to stand
in a long line of diplomats from countries seeking early installments of
their War on Terror bribes, from Pakistan, Turkey, and Poland to some thirty
or forty others. There are scores of corporate representatives lined-up,
wanting their first bloated payment for screwing in light bulbs or replacing
taps at American headquarters in Iraq. There's also an impressive contingent
looking to donate to the President's upcoming campaign, providing some
understanding over contracts in Iraq can be reached.
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- Well, Schwarzenegger probably will get in ahead of some
of these people. Bush does want a warm greeting in California during the
re-election campaign. Could it be that the principled Schwarzenegger is
using political leverage for a bribe? No, this is the business of the nation,
as conducted between Republican governments.
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- Well, a no-account, ranting, army-nut drifter in Germany
about seventy years ago did set Germany back on the rails from the Great
Depression, just before he proceeded to blow up the entire rail system.
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- People do get the government they deserve, and California
has elected a circus, complete with heady whiffs of elephant manure and
an obscene cabaret act. My God, there's even America's Political Gothic,
the ghastly Borgia clan from Massachusetts, taking bows as toothy, sequined
performers, drawn to new sources of power the way vampires are to fresh
blood.
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- Oh well, they can always have another recall, can't they?
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