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The Poverty Of The American Political Theater Of The Absurd
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
The Poverty Of Our Political Theater Of The Absurd
The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater.
All we have left in the U.S. is a deeply impoverishing Political Theater of the Absurd. Policy, theory and governance have all been reduced to competing stage performances in the Theater of the Absurd. The actors are transparently given to farcical overacting in exaggerated dramas drained of meaning; they proceed through the cliched motions as if the audience hadn't seen the same charades overplayed dozens of times before.
"Government shutdown" and "debt ceiling" may have engaged audiences starved for entertainment in a bygone age, but now they exemplify a theater that is so impoverished it can only re-stage tired formulaic dramas with a savage appetite for incompetence and buffoonery.
The poverty of this substitution of theater for actual ideas is best displayed by ObamaCare. The entire complex edifice of ObamaCare is not an expression of policy--it is simply the perfection of state complicity with a private cartel that increases its share of the national income regardless of which set of bad actors are on stage.
As for the alternative "policy," it is nothing but a reversion to the pre-ObamaCare cartel-state arrangement that artlessly combines gross injustice, insensitivity to cost and insane incentives for fraud, skimming, defensive medicine and the pursuit of national chronic ill health as the most profitable state of existence.
That these two variations on state-cartel predation pass for "policy" is a clear indication of the absolute impoverishment of American political/social/economic ideas. We are adrift in a political order that glorifies and rewards overacted farce and punishes policy grounded in actual ideas rather than the theatrical trends of the day.
The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater. The players, bereft of talent and inspiration, chosen for their blind obedience to those benefiting from the eradication of ideas and the replaying of tiresome charades, are blind to the poverty of their performance and political theatrics.
Will the audience ever tire of this cheesy Theater of the Absurd? It seems the appetite of the American public for this sort of play-acting entertainment is essentially bottomless. As a result, so too is our poverty.
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"One look into the empty, black holes that are their eyes says it is so."
Like a white shark before it bites you.
LONG LIVE WALMART BITCHEZZ
Black Friday Towel Sale for the masses
The quality of the actors and the scripts have taken a nosedive.
From masterful Reagan and the the Cold War and the War on Drugs... to vapid Obama and Syria and Obamacare.
The war on drugs was "masterful"? Really?
"It seems the appetite of the American public for this sort of play-acting entertainment is essentially bottomless."
What do you expect when "The Voice" and "Dancing with the Stars" are the #1 & 2 most watched TV programs.
to the extent that the theater will be gamed for gain the absurdities will continue. I think there is a realization that the entire system or process is in fact being "maneuvered" at this point so i hold out the hope that a language of consensus (something i think Minority Leader McConnell is quite good at actually) will emerge and the purpose of politicking in the first place will be realized. This shut down cost the taxpayer an enormous amount of money...and it was entirely crafted and created by folks who have no interest in Washington DC either acting for functioning in any "home-static" fashion. The irony that interest rates then plunged on the news of resolution should be lost on no one...least of all the political class. That says to me there exist evidence as to who (or "what" i guess i should say) is in fact "in charge" here. We'll see if they get serious about revenue recognition and wiping out the trade deficit once and for all here or not. My understanding is that it has basically been confirmed that the Permian Basin in West Texas does indeed have more oil than Saudi Arabia...with something similar going on for the Bakken formation in North Dakota. Don't even get me started on natural gas which currently is being produced in the USA on a Continental scale and at almost zero cost. If Tesla drive systems can in fact be retrofitted onto existing vehicle platforms for say...5000 bucks...then guess what...the need for gasoline, ethanol or other bio fuels will collapse probably within in a year. In effect you'd be giving away the fuel in the USA for the next thousand years. obviously this wouldn't be true of the export market although clearly the USA would become the low cost leader for whoever wants to do business with us. the price differential i imagine would be large and of course based upon the quality of the product the customer wishes to receive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery. Here's the major source currently being observed http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-Wyoming-Lithium-Deposit-co... (although Chile is the world's number one producer by far.) And here's the company if i were to pick one: http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/fmc?source=search_general&s=fmc
Pipe dreams and hype. Yes, the US has a lot of oil underneath the ground. Problem is, a lot of it costs a shitload to extract, and I'm not talking dollar costs. I'm talking resource and energy costs. Natural gas requires a lot of energy to compress into a volume that it is useful for running vehicles, but that could be worked with. It still won't be nearly is convenient as liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel.
I think the people who have a journalist role are a signiticant contributor to this non-sense. Here is my short description of this recent stupidity...
This reporting is like a comedy. Let me see, two sides are in dispute. Only one side threatens to NOT negotiate and the other side is perceived to have caved to the party that would not negotiate. Which side would you say was willing to default on debt payments? The media says the side that caved risked defaulting on USA debt....funny eh.
Raising the debt limit does NOT address the threat, because the threat is the debt. $17 trillion and growing debt, who cares? Do you know how much interest our government pays China? $20 trillion debt and 5% interest rates are coming soon. For those who think this is funny money, soon $1 trillion annual interest payment will be paid and you can hope there will be enough money left for your social security, medicare and medicaid. And the young generation that voted for Obama, enjoy your FREE health insurance. HOPE AND CHANGE THAT MAKES A COUNTRY STRONG!
Obamacare is another entitlement. Simpson-Bowles has documented the entitlement problem well. With a $17 trillion debt and Fed printing over $1 trillion a year, why would any sane man expand entitlements in this financially difficult environment? The STUPID republican LEADERSHIP could never focus on the ENTITLEMENT DEATH DIVE. America was great because the people who were here WORKED.
We had an opportunity as a country to have a rich discussion about institutional, cultural and entitlement problems that have no easy answers. Many people and institutions failed us; however Main Street Media who had a responsibility to lead this conversation FAILED.
Theatre of the absurd?
You lot have never lived. You want theatre of the absurd then, let me tell you about the three clowns who run the three main parties here in bonny England. You have the leader of the Labour party,(Democrats) who is known and addmitted zionist, a right marxist who speaks through his nose and crippled us here while in office as minister for energy when he imposed the 'Green Levy' on producers, which jumped bills by 20% near on overnight. He looks like a child, acts like a child, and stabbed his own brother in the back for the leadership so we could here his wingey nasal voice and laugh at his complete inability to look serious, or even come across as such. This is the Ed Miller Band.
Number two is current fuckwit leader of the house and prime minister, the idiot conservative, (Republican) who has done more U-turns than a london cabby, increased forgien aid while his own go hungry and use exploding numbers of food banks, employs more theives, chancers and peodophiles than you can shake a stick at, sells the royal mail to his mates at below par, and on the first day of trading the price shot right the fuck up. Imposed gay marriage and more bastard bird mincing windmills, subsidised by us mind than even 'Broon and B.Liar', and to top the fucker off, reckons he is the 'Heir To B.Liar', this right cunt is David Cameron.
And then the leader of the fucking Liberals, whatever the fuck hes meant to be God only knows. A yellow bellied fucking coward parachuted in from the 'EU', a waste of space, a thing more concerned about plastic fucking bags at grocery shops than the benefit of his supposed 'Cuntry', a man who promised to do away with 'Tuition Fees' for kids, and promptley trippled them, a more unsuitable young fucking man has never wasted a set of clothes more than this bastard, the deputy prime minister and genuine clown on a string Nick Clegg.
Google and youtube videos of these three fuck ups particularly the Clegg. I could go on but this post is long enough. You lot are more than lucky you dont have these three inbred cunts running the show on your side. Feel sorry for us mind. We do.
;-)
Like watching the Three Stooges with a difference.
When Moe slaps Curly and Larry, we feel it.
It's just like a bunch of crazed animals at this point but instead of wolves at the door it's threat letters in the mail. At somepoint when the wolves loose the ability to send a bill they will show up at the door. That day is coming.
Thinking today that at one point in history, the average American was better educated and harder working than anyone else on the planet.
Today, for starters the average American doesn't exist. But of the two Americas that do exist, the lower class not only refuses to be educated no matter how much the gov spends on their education, they also are a lazy lot such that anyone showing up from places like Honduras, Mexico, and Guatemala just kick their ass in any and all labor intensive occupations. The upper class, just as lazy as their lower class counterparts, are not actually educated but are educated to believe they are educated. Anyone showing up from Northern Europe, China, Japan, and India have more base knowledge and end up with the high tech, high intelligence jobs.
? SHADE the Motion Picture - YouTube
1hr 33min