You may not know it, but you’re living in a futuristic science fiction novel. And that’s a fact.

[kpete]

2016 Campaign and Forever War: Electorate gone to Disney World
By contributors | Oct. 30, 2015 |
By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – –

You may not know it, but you’re living in a futuristic science fiction novel. And that’s a fact. If you were to read about our American world in such a novel, you would be amazed by its strangeness. Since you exist right smack in the middle of it, it seems like normal life (Donald Trump and Ben Carson aside). But make no bones about it, so far this has been a bizarre American century.

.............

It’s no secret that our presidential campaigns have morphed into a “billionaire’s playground,” even as the right to vote has become more constrained. These days, it could be said that the only group of citizens that automatically mobilizes for such events is “the billionaire class” (as Bernie Sanders calls it). Increasingly, many of the rest of us catch the now year-round spectacle demobilized in our living rooms, watching journalists play… gasp!… journalists on TV and give American democracy that good old Gotcha!

In 2001, George W. Bush wanted to send us all to Disney World (on our own dollar, of course). In 2015, Disney World is increasingly coming directly to us.

After all, at the center of election 2016 is Donald Trump. For a historical equivalent, you would have to imagine P.T. Barnum, who could sell any “curiosity” to the American public, running for president. (In fact, he did serve two terms in the Connecticut legislature and was, improbably enough, the mayor of Bridgeport.) Meanwhile, the TV “debates” that Trump and the rest of the candidates are now taking part in months before the first primary have left the League of Women Voters and the Commission on Presidential Debates in the dust. These are the ratings-driven equivalent of food fights encased in ads, with the “questions” clearly based on what will glue eyeballs.




MORE:
http://www.juancole.com/2015/10/campaign-forever-electorate.html

[MisterP]

1. yeah, HL Hunt's fantasy where the richer you are the more votes you get

http://www.texasreader.com/the-billionaire-s-weird-utopia.html
www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/rich-people-more-votes-hunt-alpaca
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2000/09/25/editorial3.html

[malthaussen]

2. Maybe war was made banal by becoming entertainment with intent.

The only flaw with that theory is that it doesn't satisfactorily show how the media were compensated for the loss in ratings. Maybe by increasing the number of Presidential debates?

-- Mal

[CJCRANE]

3. I'm sure it's one of those classic sci-fi novels that I never got round to reading

like John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar.