William Pitt gnashes his literary teeth in poetic angst...

[yella_dawg]

Because the nation is riveted to the slow-speed chase of Paris Hilton while a political earthquake shakes the nation.


Douglas Adams is remembered as a talented comedic writer who died too young. I suspect that he may eventually be remembered as the greatest mind of the twentieth century. Adams tells us that elected officials are outrageous images whose only purpose is to distract the masses while those who truly govern get on about the business of running things.


Because I believe Adams, I frequently claim that national politics is nothing more than elaborate good-cop / bad-cop theatrics. But is Paris a distraction from the distraction? Or is her drama a window into a greater reality?


Anyone who has even briefly studied mob psychology understands that the sum of a group, a community, a society, or a nation is greater than its parts. Jung named the mechanism underlying this phenomenon: the collective unconscious. In short, Paris Hilton is proof that we, as a nation, deserve George Bush.


The good-cop / bad-cop melodrama plays out in the Halls of Congress, on Internet message boards, and in living rooms across the nation. It is the fiddle we play while our Rome burns around us. If wealth disparity is any measure, our society is in tatters. Our environment is in crisis, and the world economy is burning with a fatal fever. And we have a definite opinion of who should really have won American Idol or which team will win the championship this year. Bread and circuses, indeed.


In the end, is it better to sleep through the conflagration, or finally wake up and accept the fact that when those we trust to govern us fail, the final responsibility for our lives, our nation, the very future, rests with us?


Torches and pitchforks, anyone?