"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Fatigue, Or, Why I Didn't Bother Watching The State of the Union

The upside of human-animal hybrids
Those were what I called our "salad days."

As one commentator for this Mike Lux post put it, "soaring rhetoric, like most anything else Bush touched, is dead for me for a while." And lately it hasn't even been soaring.

George W. Bush is headed to history's footlocker as possibly the most unpopular president since measuring popularity was invented. He doesn't even have a "Nixon goes to China" to pin on his legacy, just a shitty debt-based economy, a brutal and senseless war/occupation, and a wave of fraud, indictments, and political malpractice that's only going to smell worse as time ripens the pile.

So I didn't really have any interest in watching the State of the Union. G-dubs is haggard and on the defensive. His popularity has been so low for so long, he can't even help out his peeps except by steering clear and trying to keep his stink off 'em. There would be no substantive announcements, and with his lack of political zazz, no entertaining shout outs warning us of "Human-Animal Hybrids" or the like.

Indeed, overall the reviews are tepid and our first-drafters of history seem eager to pass on by this guy, get back to covering the race to replace. People just don't care anymore, not even those of us who many thought were "haters." The Bush administration seems ready to fold up shop with a whimper, which is better than a bang given their predilections, I suppose.

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The Crud, The Snow, The Life

Not much going on 'round here. I have become infested with the Humboldt County Crud, which will hopefully pass soon. On the upside its a winter wonderland here (rare snow) and we replaced our broken dishwasher, raising the Westhaven standard of living by 3.35 points in a single afternoon.

Since I've been sleeping and laying in bed more, I've been thinking about what kind of life I want to lead, trying to let my mind wander, entice the possibilities. It's been a year and a half since I relocated to this little slice of earth. Time flies.

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Reading for the Revolution

I've been reading more lately, which is good. In addition to dumping my Netflix subscription in favor of The New Yorker and Harper's, I've digested a few books, which I'll talk about briefly and (ahah!) interconnectedly.

Air Guitar
A collection of short pieces by Dave Hickey, subtitled "Essays on Art & Democracy," this book is just fantastic reading if you like $5 and even $10 words, distrust academia and other elite discourses, and enjoy thinking about art and culture with a political bent. The text occasionally diverges into minutia of fine art that lost me (I don't know from painting) but in almost all cases the thread returned to terra firma, and I didn't really feel like I missed out on the true meaning of Hickey's prose because I have no idea what Cézanne was really all about.

Harper's recently had a great excerpt from an upcoming book by Slavoj Zizek in which the Slovenian guru (who I encountered because a really pretty girl making a documentary wanted to talk to me about Music For America once) chides various leftist tactics around the world, in particular the "retreat into criticism" and the "politics of infinite demands." It made me wonder if Zizek has ever read Hickey, who's an art critic and not a "Critical Theorist," but whose writings as such contain, to me, some of the most insightful and generalizable observations about politics I've ever read.

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And, Teh Politix

Latest Chris Bowers post has some wonky breakdowns of the upcoming political shenanigans. I'm going to have to vote early/absentee as I'll be on the road Feb 5th. Leaning towards Obama as a Clinton victory here would be decisive for her campaign, and it doesn't look like Edwards will be positioned to pick up many delegates.

I also really agree w/Chris's closing sentiment:

If I could only choose one outcome, I would choose Romney winning the Republican nomination, since it should lead to a big Democratic victory in the general election. For my money, that is a lot more important than the differences between Clinton and Obama, and a lot better than struggling to try and scratch out a narrow, come from behind win against McCain.

On a pure candidate level, Huck! remains the strongest GOP challenger, I think. He's their best perfoming politician. However, he's low on cash and really is loathed by Republican insiders and business elites, and the media has decided -- after years of telling us all how important some generic concept of "faith" is in politics -- that an actual honest-to-jeebus believer is weird and icky.

McCain, on the other hand, has the media in a veritable trance and maintains a lot of crossover mystique. At the same time he's shown GOP insiders that he's willing to play ball and has the anti-choice credibility to rope in evangelicals to his coalition. The fact that he seems eager for war will probably not come up as a campaign issue. He'd be a formidable candidate.

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