Hurricane hits benevolent dictatorship!

All the presidential candidates in the USA are now having to consider exactly when to arrive in New Orleans. This is a tricky one, because the only logical answer is: never. Why do the people there need their future president {whoever that may be} to personally supply them with bottled water and blankets? Some may reply; ‘but they need to see the situation on the ground’. But why? Has their chain of command and intelligence gathering apparatus become atrophied? 

This situation would remind anyone who has heard of it of the Soviet propaganda film where Stalin is strolling down a country lane and spots a farmer bent over his broken tractor. Stalin approaches and scrutinises the inner workings of the machine and promptly fixes it with his bare hands. The man of steel to the rescue. But as Zizek points out, just how ineffectual must the State have become when you need the premier to go around fixing every little broken tractor personally? Are we going to phone citizens advice and find Obama, McCain and all the others clamouring on the other side? “Your recycling is collected every Thursday!”, “remember to use the correct coloured bags!”

This crass totemic approach to politics belongs only in a dictatorship. What is a democratic country doing with a personality cult contest? A bigger issue is the absurd idea that everybody can only do their job as a representative. A BLACK president, at last a fair deal for black america. And he’s YOUNG and McCain is OLD. But that means he has EXPERIENCE. But that means he could be corrupt so he has a running mate with NO EXPERIENCE. And she is a WOMAN. The idea that anyone cannot perceive the fair thing to do for everyone suggests the fair thing is somehow hard to figure out. The idea that you leader has to be the same as you belies not only common sense but restricts your freedom. It says you are not a free individual, this status is first modified by your colour, gender, age…

I suggest if you put your faith in a ‘young’ ‘black’ president you’ll just witness how quickly he can become old and white. Or how quickly a female political outsider can become a corrupt old man. If you are part of an agenda; that agenda could have a life beyond its main characters, who incidentally, could be anyone at all.