Presidential Foreplay 2016

Can you feel it? Are you ready?

It’s here, ladies and gentlemen and all those in between: the horse-race for the Presidency has begun in its usual mealy-mouthed fashion, as men and women–who most certainly have a personal lust for Presidential power–pretend they will simply be “humble” public servants in the name of “the people.”

This, of course, affords the media and the political segment of the citizenry the opportunity to speculate on the possible contenders.

Will it be a Senator? Maybe, Rand Paul? Marco Rubio? Bernie Sanders? Hillary Clinton?

Will it be a Governor? Chris Christie? Jeb Bush? John Kasich?

Will Donald Trump win?

Trust me, somewhere right now there are many people in this country getting off to this sort of thing. It’s mental masturbation on a grand scale.

Foreplay, as I understand it, starts in the mind, and we are now seeing the foreplay that will certainly usher in the national orgy of our politics–an orgy, by the way, constantly in search of a collective orgasm that never comes.

It is an altogether very ugly and disappointing affair.

Yet, the hype and frustrations of our past failures seems to sustain our desire to keep on working toward that big collective toe bender. I believe Oscar Wilde is credited with saying, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

This insight becomes even clearer when one watches the race for Presidential power.

One of the most egregious aspects of American political culture is this worship of the Presidency. The cult of personality surrounding the nation’s top executive office waxes and wanes in its fervor depending on the person in power, but what remains constant about the pageantry of America’s political tide is a foolish belief in the power of one person to represent, lead, administer, placate, ingratiate, mislead, murder, steal, defraud, and overall act like a highfalutin, clever ass in the name of the people–that is, the President is expected to perform all those actions necessary for ruling over a nation.

This belief is held in common by many rivalrous interests across the political spectrum, especially “the bases” of both political parties whose privileges and agendas are thought to be hitched to the “steward of the people” in the White House, and it is this competition between the interests for power that perfects the pageantry and strengthens the grip of the executive branch.  The President’s party usually defends him without regard for the integrity of their minds or dignity, whereas the opposition party, despite their barbed attacks and full frontal assaults on the person in power, rarely questions the power of the office itself, for their opposition is an envious sort of lust.

Accordingly, the power, prestige, and mythology surrounding the office of the Presidency has slowly been exalted to the point of deification with all the trappings one would expect within a charlatan led religious setting where piety, obedience, and respect for simple truisms and historical idiosyncrasies become window dressed in repetitious ritual to the point of banality, zealotry, and untruth. Though the gesticulations and incantations of America’s political leaders may be stuffed full of passionate appeals, accessible language, and good old-fashioned hype, they are utterly devoid of reason, discretion, and any fealty to telling the truth.

Why?

Because the “the people” want it; they love honest, homegrown, Presidential bullshit.  It’s a turn on.

Whether they know it or not, the people of the United States of America love to be whipped into a frenzy of righteous indignation, and the demagogues of America are more than happy to oblige the public’s thirst for spectacle.

What could be a better spectacle than a mano-a-mano democratic, interactive, systematic, zero-sum contest to be the “leader the free world” and “commander-in-chief?”

Can you think of a process more ingenious for aggrandizing political power in one place at the expense of human freedom all in the name of freedom?

But again, this is what the people want. This is the process they have chosen either actively or passively. No matter the issue if there is a wrong to be righted, an ill to be cured, an injustice to be reconciled, a mouth to be fed, a foot to be shoed, a hang nailed to be clipped, a butt to be wiped (gently with moist baby wipes please,) or a salty tear to be patted dry; you can bet on the American public time and time again to say, “Let us have another election! Let us have a new President!”

So, follow me my fellow American lemmings to the edge of the proverbial cliff of human history–the 2016 Presidential election is, of course, the most important election in the history of man–where down in the chasm below there exist dangerous entities that could hardly be said to exist at all if not for the confident support of belligerent nincompoops’ nonsensical beliefs.

I speak not of furry superstitions the likes of children skipping over cracks to spare their mother’s backs or societal rituals such as the patriotic requirement that one eat a grilled wiener and watch a fireworks show on independence day. Such practices may very well become tiresome and predictable over the years but this is only in the sense that they provide a charming and welcomed dose of languor to life’s long march toward the edge of an inescapable abyss.

Just to be clear, as far as these aforementioned dangerous entities go, I do not mean to implicate those unverifiable articles of faith in an Almighty God deeply held by the religiously devout among us. On the subject of theistic doctrines, I am thoroughly unconvinced of their being true, but I tend to keep this incredulity to myself. I find confronting believers with my skepticism of their religious belief often goes over like telling a family man his wife and children are just as ugly as he is; it is just not something one does. The rule being: even if one finds something true, it is sometimes best left unsaid.

Yet, it is in a spirit of candor that I must remind some of the faithful that their faith is indeed called “faith” and not scientific knowledge for good reason. Thus, my own personal unbelief aside, I cannot help but take issue when people of faith attribute with abject certainty a divine element to their earthly political projects: that the finger of God is forever and always pointing their way on election day, that it is has revealed the proper missionary practices for all in the boudoir, that it serves as an almighty shield on front lines of the battle field!

What nerve! I can only refer to such divine claims by my brothers and sisters in fallibility as the epitome of human boobitity, for as the funky song says: “Call it whatcha want except an act of God.”

This being said, we have finally arrived at our destination. We now stand at the precipice of our history. Let us peer over the edge and behold these dangerous entities whose effects are much more pernicious than any schoolyard superstition, patriotic festivity, or pastoral prayer.

Join me as we now look down upon man-made political authorities.

If there was ever an outward manifestation of the stamp of humanity’s lowly origins, it is our many attempts to create political authority. We are rather bad at it, yet we continue giving it a go. If not for our support, it would cease to exist. Yet, we persist in our attempts to arrange state power only to be proven again and again that we are indeed the blind leading the blind. And by insisting such political authority must exist, we self-fulfill our own bovine prophecies and think them to be destiny. Everyone seems to know political authority is not to be trusted, but we cannot seem to shake our baser urges to recreate the damn dirty thing over and over.

Take, for instance, the prideful imbecility of the average American voter who, while he distrusts and even fears the authority of a foreign power or a government run by the opposition party, believes wholeheartedly that his government, his nation, his party, his president is good, proper, and necessary for the sake of preserving the human race. One of the tallest tales in the great American storybook is this idea that the average American hates government. The truth is he only hates government which is not his own to command.

And it is not simply the American voter. Hubris has blinded many a people in their quest to erect state power and privilege for the sake of security, order, riches, fame, glory, etc. Throughout history, having gone by many names in many languages with many justifications, political authorities have risen to power of, by, and for the killjoys, cretins, and sociopaths inside of us all. And these authorities always serve a single recurring proposition that the initiation of force by a so-called just authority is necessary for human flourishing.

It is this ghastly proposition that has bolstered the capricious rise and fall of many authorities. Rose Wilder Lane puts the matter well:

“…history is one long record of revolts against certain living rulers, and revolt against kinds of living Authority. They replace the priest by a king, the king by an oligarchy, the oligarchs by a despot, the despot by an aristocracy, the aristocrats by a majority, the majority by a tyrant, the tyrant by oligarchs, the oligarchs by aristocrats, the aristocrats by a king, the king by a parliament, the parliament by a dictator, the dictator by a king, the king by — there’s six thousand years of it, in every language. Every imaginable kind of living Authority has been tried, and is still being tried somewhere on earth now.”

Death to this deadly proposition!  Let it die a quiet death, put down by the peaceful changing of our minds to superior ideas. And one can only hope that once it is released from its surly bonds of earth then soon to follow will be the specter-like, blood-drenched, nasty, brutish, and short-minded political authorities this proposition breeds.

But in the meantime, this deadly proposition is alive and well. The public foreplay will continue. A President will be named. There will be a honeymoon. Then everyone will once again realize they’ve been fucked rather than properly satisfied.