Straw poll

[CirclesAndDots]

The spread of this poll contrasts starkly with those of a broader reach. Professionally, ideologically, the candidate of choice for scientists or students of science or even, I suspect, the candidate of choice for skeptics, followers of fringe philosophies, and the non-religious is decidedly Obama. There's a few ways to craft a response to this rather characteristic "phenomenon"; this historical division between pedestrian politics and the politics that attract the 'learned.' ( I quote not to question the validity or viability of the knowledge but to give attention to the social distinction often made).

 

Obama, (this is purely a matter now of speculative discourse) or rather, the general political character of Obama during this campaign is popularly interpreted in the mind of social media as a sort of socio-political anchor. Yes, an anchor, a charged literary emblem. Gone are the days where Obama equates in public consciousness (especially the youth) to an exalted, almost mythological revolutionary. He is now mere safeguard or firewall from a totally realized neo-conservative re-working of America. This is what people fear and it is a fear legitimized by the governmental power of a ruling elite and a church-state that perpetuates a value system in tune with them: unfettered consumption, disregard for the disempowered (after all, God intends it), a disconnect and superiority over the natural world that justifies the misuse of our resources. (Consider puddle-thinking). This is the Obama people will be voting for. This 'moderation', this restraint, might very well lose.

 

The most dangerous thing the neo-conservative movement has given people is the idea of an enemy to rally and fight against. Be it drugs and the distorted imagery of drug users, specifically users of marijuana. Terrorism and the disfiguring narratives told to squish even the smallest rebellions and now Unemployment. Unemployment (alongside Energy of which the two have been carefully entangled) has been the defining issue of this year's election. It is the most visible piece of 'politics' for Joe Average. It requires no rustling through empirical evidence to feel for the jobless. Escalating gas prices is a sigh easy to participate in. It is the paranoia, the mysticism of capitalism the Republican party wrangles and it seems terribly convenient for the plot of bloated American romanticism to have a "hero" ( a successful businessman, mind you) at the ready--to pick up where the failed "prophet" left off. The fact that the GOP has created a "real page turner" is terrifying not because it doesn't include Obama on the next page but because it doesn't include a country of me and you. The people seem eager to swallow the blue pill and it isn't birth control folks.

 

The rhetoric of crisis is not usually something I partake in but when confidence in democracy is this endangered, when it is enough to live in the revolt of rock n roll, when hope is an artifact and liberty is commodified, when that is a summary of a reality that would lead to yawning or a response defending the apathy of civil action, words like doomed start to look appealing and appropriate. This economy of panic has sequestered the essence of change.