Or, why I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the Democrats winning the House/Senate.

Occasionally, one feels slightly embarrassed making arguments that are incredibly obvious, but given how openly contradictory political actors can be, this is an embarrassment that needs to be swallowed.

Today, I am slightly embarrassed to have to make the argument that the operation of the "Democratic victory" is to "cover over" the war, to draw it back into a controlled discourse and hide the rotten core of the American political system.

This is totally fucking obvious for one important reason: these scumbags supported the war in the first place. And not because they were deceived or because they were ill-informed, or even because they made a wrong decision: they supported it in the full knowledge of its implications.

Hence the fact that these elections turned largely on questions of war makes the process entirely bankrupt. That is, if what was at issue were, e.g., universal health care, then one could at least make the argument that the system wasn’t bankrupt (one would still be wrong, but one could make the argument).

But the fact that this was a vote to close a circle of historical developments—to erase the beginning of that circle and thereby to begin it anew—is what reveals the very rotten core that it attempts to hide.