The Vandals Took the Handles

(c) Libby Hicks, of the Author & Cave Wall

Start out by reading this: 

http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/

Then when it comes to a theatre near you (or Netflix), watch the documentary called "Inside Job."  I haven't seen it yet, but I certainly will put it on my must see list.  This is reality, as opposed to the shadows on the cave wall we're mostly paying rapt attention to.  The shadows come in many many flavors these days.  Even Socrates lived in a world far adavanced from his distant ancestors, who actually lived in caves, killed game with stone points, and amused themselves watching the shadows thrown up on the back of the cave by the fire they kept going to keep the Ice Age from freezing them to death.  Today?  Sheesh!  We can spend whole lives watching sports, or watching what passes for popular politics.  We can go to Washington and listen to speechs, or we can go to the mall and shop.  As long as we can pay the light bill, we can keep our eyes trained on a variety of screens for nearly all our waking moments.

This is, in part, how the people who want to keep the election process under control have managed since 2008 to convince a large part of the electorate that our current President is a Marxist, an Islamofascist, a hippie, and a Kenyan interloper.  No one in the electorate has much of a clue what's going on--why, for example, the economy in 2008 suffered an enormous crisis of such proportion that the entire governing coterie utterly panicked, threw all of its political shibboleths to the wind, and actually did a few things which actually averted an economic cataclysm.

The cooperation between Democrats and Republicans in the fall of 2008 was as remarkable as the cooperation between Democrats and Republicans in the brief period after 9/11--those brief days before which the Republican Administration began to use patriotism as a club to achieve its assorted radical international economic ends, as dreamed up by the group calling itself the Century for American Progress.

Yet in a few short months, after Obama's election, millions of people in the US became convinced that Obama was an utter outsider--a Marxist, a Kenyan interloper, etc. etc. etc.  And this amazing advertising campaign on the part of--well, lets just call them Republicans for lack of a better term--succeeded in the face of the plain fact that Mr. Obama put the very same people in control of the economic sector who were in control during Bush's Administration and Clinton's as well.

This amazing event--almost unreported in the main stream press for what it was--now dominates the political season we're currently adrift in.  What the press reports is the anger, the angst, the upset.  The kookiest of candidates get breathtakingly lavish attention.  As the apparent mood of the back wall viewers changes, the press points that out, reinforcing the mood swing if anything--if Joe the non-plumber is upset, I should be too!  And By Gawd, I AM.  It's a kind of journalistic pornography.  Focus raptly and intently on the most emotionally charged parts--and never turn around and look at what's happening out beyond the mouth of the cave, where the ice has melted and the mastodons have moved north to better pasture. The event is the successful advertising campaign--a success accomplished in almost exactly 180 degree opposition to the mostly unreported truth of the matter. 

It's said that with enough of a bank account, profit and loss become provincial details. Perhaps the same is true for perceived genius.  Certainly Larry Summers has floated quite above the maelstrom for some decades now, and retains his credibility even as we speak.   But the idea that Obama is a dangerous Marxist?  Now that's some sell.  And so is the idea that if we don't like Obama we should choose the very same people who just completed an economic wreck job of epic proportions which climaxed during the last election cycle, fall 2008. 

Yesterday, at Fontana, CA, Miss Danica wrecked and finished 30th.  After the race she thanked the reporter for interviewing her at all--usually only the top few racers get interviews, and Miss Danica is sensibly aware that her celebrity is not justification for face time at the post-track events.  Odd that a failed Governor of Alaska can summon less humility than a pretty race car driver, or that a boy wonder with a spotty track record can shuttle back and forth between DC and Harvard, time after time.