we the people
2003-07-16 : 12:08 p.m.

Richard Rorty claims that shallow people and banal culture are simply the price we pay for a free and open form of social life�that the philosophers of the sublime (and their political counterparts, the William Bennetts of the world) are always totalitarians at heart. Private perfection must remain just that, private, if freedom is to endure. Rorty always puts freedom first: �If we take care of political freedom, the truth can take care of itself.�

And I agree. Most of the time. Not when I�m wandering around Wal Mart at midnight like I was last night. That�s a little closer view of the shallowness and banality of my fellow citizens than I care to get. That may sound snide, but it�s depressing, that�s all. Everyone�s overweight, loud, crazy-looking. All these kids wandering around with 12 kids of their own. All these glazed, open-mouthed expressions. William Ellery Channing, when he was very old and when America was just coming of age, once said that �we were always young for liberty.� One wonders if he could have ever imagined a scene like this, a world where freedom means six choices of Hot-Pocket fillings, two indistinguishable candidates for any given political office, and exactly one possible form of life: that of the capitalist consumer.

CNN reports another American soldier killed in Iraq this morning, bringing the total number of American combat deaths to 148, the same total as for the 1991 Gulf War. Investigations into the veracity of some/any/all of the President�s arguments for pursuing this intervention in Iraq are ongoing. In the face of these, the President�s men pursue the usual Bush administration policy of simply repeating a statement until it seems true. In this case, �The President did the right thing.� Regardless. For his part, King George II is quite certain that the information he receives is �darn good�, and in any case, the buck certainly doesn�t stop with him. Because he�s not the chief executive or anything. No, Dear Reader, the buck stops with George Tenet, naturally. He�s the last remaining Clinton appointee.

And so politics spirals merrily away from either truth or freedom. And all the while, we the people keep on shopping.

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