The Surrealism Of American Politics

Conor Friedersdorf dreams:

My aspiration is to one day vote for a president who gets the nation to go along with his trillion+ dollar policy proposal by persuading us the trade off is worth it, rather than pretending that there is no trade off. But it seems instead I’ll be forced to choose between Republicans who act as though military spending isn’t real, Democrats who act as though social services spending isn’t real, and George W. Bush, who managed on this issue to be a uniter, not a divider, by pretending that all spending wasn’t real.

On the totally surreal front, my aspiration is to live in a country where the president actually explains that no-one can or ever will win an imperial war in Afghanistan, that we cannot possibly leave Iraq in the next eight years without a bloodbath, that Iran cannot be prevented from getting a nuclear bomb in the foreseeable future, that an energy policy without nuclear power cannot do anything to stop global warming, and that Israel has lots of nukes, and will never, ever withdraw from the West Bank.

But that's me, crazy old me. I prefer to start from reality and work forward. Not America. Here, fantasy is still alive and well ... and running the country.