Empty plate

 

The torrent of political ads flooding the airwaves in the last hours before Tuesday’s vote places in high relief the issues that our political class thinks should decide the outcome. Here in New York state, they boil down to very few:

 

·         Crime, which is the fault of squishy liberals who hate the police and love felons;

·         Abortion, which male predators want to outlaw so that women return to the kitchen barefoot and pregnant;

·         Gas, which is too damn high;

·         Trump, who is Evil and a dictator.

 

Missing from this list:

 

·         The deaths of 800,000 people from Covid during the Biden presidency: One doesn’t have to think it’s his fault to wonder why this actual threat to our citizens’ wellbeing is a non-issue. Two murders on the subway apparently scare people far more than several tens of thousands of cadavers in ICUs.

·         The prospect of a shooting war with a nuclear power even as U.S. military personnel arrive in Ukraine to “monitor” arms deliveries, which have been going on for months.

 

Old dudes like me can remember the arrival of “advisors” to South Vietnam as a precursor to the dispatch of a half million troops. Gingerly suggesting that a door to negotiations be opened is so taboo that two dozen Democrats were beaten into backtracking when they dared to breathe the word. Once again, we are allowed to be afraid of a nutcase coming at us with a knife on the street but not of ICBMs turning New York City into a smoldering parking lot.

 

For whom does one vote to express opposition to debtors’ prison? For whom does one vote to endorse diplomacy over war? For whom does one vote to block the consolidation of oligarchic control of our economy and the rule of money in politics or the spreading of state-techno censorship? The “democracy” that our neocon cabal insists on exporting throughout the world does not offer such choices on the 2022 ballot. 

 

Prediction is a mug’s game, but let’s play anyway: a very solid GOP victory, sweeping them into power in both houses of Congress along with some unexpected prizes that no one would have expected a month ago (e.g., NY governorship). A delegation visiting Sleepy Joe at the White House to discuss a retirement package before year’s end—not meaning Social Security.