What's left of the dream...

There is a sickness in the air and it fills me with dread.

I just finished watching a bunch of Ron Paul footage. Everyone's in love with the guy. He speaks the truth, he cares and he obviously would leave you alone if you were puking outside a bar. This guy wouldn't snatch the joint out of a cripple's hand and wheel him off to the cop shop. He also wouldn't hurt a fly, or at least that's what his wide-eyed, turkey-necked old guy thing makes me think. But even Ron Paul, the closest that stoners and secretly embarassed Republicans have ever had to a political messiah, even he talks about strong defense and religion. Deep underneath his polished veneer of "Message: I care" is the bitter tang of the Christ.

I'm more in favour of a return to "Constitutional values" than I am the current wholesale rape and pillage that the DeCeivers are currently elbow deep in, but even the most hardened Constitution buff has to concede that it was still drafted by a bunch of white slaveowners who knew how to talk the talk and seldom if ever walked the walk. Even Jefferson, as close to an enlightened President as America ever got, was a slaveowner and a hypocrite. Had some great lines though. And that's when the dread I mentioned at the beginning of this post hit me.

I'm sitting there, watching Ron Paul, digesting the Hawaiian pizza I had for dinner, drinking my lemon squash, nodding along in that oh-so-middle-class right on brother way, when I discover that even his measured, intelligent and most of all true words are ringing false for me. Why? He knows that if he gets elected he'll never push half that shit through Congress. That's the beauty of checks and balances. They check to see if change is coming and then they balance it out. Washington wasn't built to make changes, it was built to stop changes being made. Tiptoeing around the Constitution and the Declaration as if the guys that wrote it meant a word of it. Bullshit. He's flapping lip just like the rest of them but the worst part is he's making me believe. Him and Mike Gravel both, except at least Grandpa Mike has the sense of humour to know that the change isn't going to come from a white man in the White House, it's going to come from the people. Making me believe scares my piss cold because it holds the mirror up to all the things I really really want to change but know from bitter experience won't. Obama, Clinton, Romney, Ghoul-iani: all of them are the standard bobbing heads on the Washington Express. They flap lip, sing songs, kiss the babies and we know they're as fake as a dodo egg wrapped in a three dollar bill. The ones that are for real freak me out because I can't figure out whether they think they'll actually get listened to and make a change (in which case they're at best idealistic and at worst dangerously deluded) or if they're just blowing smoke from the opposite end to make up the numbers.

I won't go off about how much war sucks - deep down inside we all agree on that. Nobody likes taxes and nobody who was ever a teenager really frowns on pot smoking. Hell, I have it on good authority that Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, is a pretty hefty stoner himself and he's running against a guy that wants to decriminalise it. Politics makes no fucking sense and it never has. The question is whether there is the smallest chance for anyone to be for real anymore. At first glance, the answer is clearly yes. But when I listen, when I dip the toe of my mind into the murky waters of their campaign guff, I realise that the question isn't whether or not they're for real. The question is WOULD I CARE EVEN IF THEY WERE.

I'm worn out. I'm exhausted. Civil liberties, invasions, the inevitable growth of the imperial world tumour. As Tom Lehrer once said all those years ago, "we're starting to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis". I know something is rotten and so do you. I know something awful is happening and, even worse, I know that the really shitty stuff isn't even on the horizon yet. The wind is changing and I can smell the compost heap. Pick your metaphor, simile, whatever the fuck. We all know there is weirdness afoot. It's not that I don't believe anymore. I CAN'T believe anymore. Whatever idealism and political juice I had left long ago ran dry. Orwell said "If you want a vision of the future...imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." Every time I think of that quote the hair on my arms and neck stands up and I feel both proud and sick. I'm proud that someone was so talented that they could get that kind of reaction out of me just with their words. I'm sick because I know the words are true.

Democracy was and still is a dream. It's the oasis in the desert we stagger towards but only ever quench our thirst with handfuls of sand. It's a mirage and lately it hasn't even been a particularly convincing one. Just like the dying man in the desert, we're chasing after the dream, hoping it will keep us alive, using the elusive paradise as fuel to keep us going, living in hope. Over the next dune, the next one and the next one after that. The sickness in the air is the stale stench of lost hope. It fills me with dread because I know I'm not the only one feeling it. And when we crest the dune and dive headfirst towards that sparkling pool beneath the swaying palms, what's left of the dream is a handful of dust and a mouthful of grit. So Ron Paul, with your good intentions and hopes for the future, I applaud you. But not like I'd applaud someone at the start of a grand revolution. I applaud you the weary way a mourner does after the eulogy at a funeral. You're talking about how great the deceased was while alive, but no matter how eloquent your words, I know that the subject of your caring disquisition is dead. And no pretty words, great ideas or high hopes will put breath back in the lungs or colour back in the cheeks.