The Apocalypse of Reality Politics
A Presidential debate and how it felt like Oppenheimer
I wasn’t going to watch, but I felt I needed to do it because this is our duty as voting-age citizens. I wasn’t going to watch, but I got myself prepared to watch two very elder statesmen, one a felon, the other a party machine stalwart, get to the podium. What I saw, what all the world witnessed was proof that if the revolution will not be televised, its provocation might be.
The importance of the Biden and Trump debate of June 27, 2024 can not be downplayed. It was a pre-school style debate, with tight rules meant to keep the two presidential candidates in line. Any semblance of a real debate of the issues was gone before either took to the CNN stage. It was, as anticipated, less of a debate and more of a fitness test. It was each candidate against the other; but really it was each of them against their own vulnerabilities. It was two shadow puppets shadow-boxing time, and the very nature of reality. It was two old men propped up by polls and by people living as corporations.
The point for me and probably for others, is not who won up there, but who lost down here, in the stands. On the X platform the memes were raging with videos of other non-presidential looking old men throwing punches. All over the media in real-time the emotional point was that we were all no more than kids watching the adults have their own “talk” while the rest of us were only invited to watch. Sit down and listen, dear children, as we tell you our stories. It’s the ultimate tell, that we are in a collapsed moment, one that reminds me of a moment in the film, Oppenheimer.
In that film, which I only watched the night before the debate, there is this most terrible and amazing scene where Oppenheimer and his team successfully detonate their nuclear test bomb. As Oppenheimer watches, as does the General, as do the many others involved in The Manhattan Project, the sound is erased and replaced by the sheer grandeur of the fire. For what feels like forever, the sound is nowhere and then it finally rushes in, taking over the body, the experience of the viewer. There is a kind of silence one might have felt last night watching these two old men stand up there; invisibly propped up by massive political teams, moving to the rhythms of transparent strings set in play by domestic and foreign power brokers. It was both a feat of collaboration and collusion; the win for one’s team still signalling a defeat for humanity.
There is a kind of silence that happens at the end of a tragedy as it becomes profoundly obvious. It happens inside us as we witness forces beyond our control laying waste to our sense of order and dignity. Unfortunately we watched what old money and new money attached to old ideas, hell bent on controlling “the masses” like you and me, can do. The arena of Rome could not have provided more spectacle. A world wrestling match could only dream to execute such perfect choreography of childish violence with known antagonists. The Kardashians could only lick their lips at the family intrigues, and the money-making potential of such must-watch TV.
I woke up this morning and I knew that Biden had lost the debate and that Trump had won. It meant almost nothing. What it meant was that our world as we knew it had already collapsed due to generations of greed and the quest for power. The power to kill, and the power to govern sit aside each other on a razor’s edge. The last few decades, as the technological world intensifies and as the dwindling of natural resources also accelerates, this razor’s edge becomes thinner, sharper, amplified. The quest to weaponize our world turns on us.
In the debate of June 27, 2024 we saw what we saw, we heard what we heard and the only consensus to be had is that when grand projects come to fruition there is a pause before the impacts are obvious. In our silence and in their debate, we witnessed not the destruction of our democratic system, but the shockwaves of chain reactions that have been built over time and by many not-so-innocent partners. Last night, the collapse of the modern era was televised.
May it bring to light the need for true change, for systems that are not right or left, but for systems that respond to the needs of the people. Our technology has advanced and our climate has matured through our hands, what excuse do we have for allowing our political systems to sit in such antiquated style, still wearing powdered wigs of some sort or another, still promising grandpa alone knows best, all the time, every time.
