Observing the electioneering on the tube last night I was struck, listening to Barak Obama, at the similarities of the scene to those described in The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer over 50 years ago (a book I'd strongly recommend being re-read . . . or read, if you haven't.)

"People in the atmosphere of a mass movement are fashioned into incomplete and dependent human beings . . . The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength. He sees no obstacles(!) yet is the author of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony. At root it is his conviction that life and the universe must conform to a simple formula--HIS !"

Do I hear change, anyone? Change to what? From what? Where are the "sheepul" being led?

"Mass movements substitute for individual hope. Folks who see their lives as spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement, and look at self-interest as something tainted. Unless someone sufficient talent to make something of himself, freedom is a burden."

So he's selling hope, but hope for what? Prescribed by whom? To what purpose? Seems I rremember a time not long ago when the man from Hope was selling some of the same stuff. Now it's his wife competing with Barak to see who can offer most.

It is frustrating to witness what is most easily compared to the "Beatle-mania"of the 60's, Elvis in the 50's, or the fainting for Sinatra in the 40's, becoming the political activity of the new century. Politicians always promise more than they can deliver, but one senses that Barak doesn't even recognize that what he promises cannot be delivered. It is politically, economically, socially, and philosophically (not to mention rationally) impossible.

He really believes that what he says is the truth, the whole truth, etc. True believers, as was noted long ago by Hoffer, believe that everyone does--or ought to--believe as they do. Anyone who doesn't is wrong . . . at least!

Our government is not responsible for the people--at least that was not the intention of the founders of our republic. Our problem today is that people too willingly give over to government the responsibility for making life worthwhile. It cannot be done by government, and the sacrifice of the freedom to be in control of one's own destiny is frightful, at least to me. Barak is promising a government solution to everything: safety from the terrorists to security in your mortgage payments. He presumes to take responsibility for all of life's activities in our name. Do we want that? Should we? And if so, can it really be done?

The answer is NO! So, let's try a little analysis and reality, shall we? It's especially important before November's election.

“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lay low until the wrath has passed. There is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse. . . . .”

This rant is precipitated by comments made in The World is Flat and several other such renderings I have more recently read.

Neil Postman once observed that Las Vegas is a metaphor of our national aspiration: a city devoted to entertainment: i.e. faux reality. It is, in essence, a prototypic American mall—on steroids! Like our modern shopping malls it is without significant statuary or public squares; public art is replaced by plastic plants arranged around contrived storefronts; artificial lighting is associated with “neat” electronic tricks. Everything is simulated. The occasional skylight admits a little sunshine from time to time.

Malls have been declared to be private places, with notable displacement of the public square where full freedom used to be exercised, right down to the nut on the soap box. It has turned us away from the authentic drama played out on city streets which are no longer the focus of a community. Instead, we have a 50-100 acre regional expanse “at the far end of the road.” There are even different types of malls catering to lifestyle, income, values, and décor – just as we have with neighborhoods of uniform homes in the same price range.

Commerce prevails over all other human values, thus diminishing the sense of citizenship, and one further senses a diminished sense of self-worth. No one really questions whether the loss of community is really a fair trade for the maximum in shopping values and options. Is citizenship more important then consumerism? One doubts it!

Carole Rifkind has observed cogently that consumption has replaced community as a means of identification, while William Kowinski commented that the mall is “the TV you walk around in.”

Cities smaller and less historic than New York and Chicago are disappearing. We end up with LA in varietal permutations. I grew up in a neighborhood where there were falling down houses rented to the poor, admixed with lower middle-class, middle class, and even relatively expensive homes.

Now there are subdivisions of near identical homes with prices varying little more than a few thousand dollars, separated from one another and from down town areas by miles of four-lane roads and freeways; and even the expensive ones are tacky, “kit homes”which remind of the Pete Seger song from half a century ago in which he was champed about Levittowns as “houses made of ticky-tacky all standing in a row.”

My move to Florida has been disappointing because there is a seriously diminished variety of all manner of things, associated with an over-arching vacuity. My prior promise to myself was that I’d “never live more than a few miles removed from oak leaf lettuce.” Here they’ve never heard of it, along with uncountable other kinds of produce . . . not to mention gourmet pasta, unusual types of meat and fish! . . . and class is spelled with a “K”.

I dunno ‘bout-chew, but I am frustrated that the information channels consider it news--and that we care--that all of the screwed up young and famous are in combat over their kids, enamored of their drug use, excuse their drunk driving and wallow in their sexcapades—even make movies of them.

It’d be delightful to go the rest of my life without hearing another word about Paris, Britney, Madonna, K-whatever his name is and their ilk. Even the aging Madonna!

When I was a kid there were problems in Hollywood—one hears about Doris Day’s sexual excesses, alcoholism, profanity, etc—but we never heard about it at the time. The tabloid press tried to make them exemplary citizens. Serious effort was made by the adults in charge to keep it under wraps and, one suspects, even acquire therapy when necessary.

Now we’re treated to hourly doses—even hour long doses—of this tripe, pretending to be news, and I wanna meet the adult who gives a S**T!