Thirteen years ago, in this tawdry and marginally readable newspaper that recently issued a noncommittal and moronic “double endorsement” in the state Democratic caucuses, I published an award-winning essay called “Just Shut Up.” At the time, America found itself embroiled in a “debate” over invading Iraq. I put the word debate in quotes because it was obvious then, and it’s even more obvious now, that the Bush administration was going to do whatever the fuck it wanted in Iraq and all the mountaintop fulminating in the world wasn’t going to stop them. Shockingly, the collective bleating of our slam poets couldn’t prevent the military-industrial complex from raining hell on Tikrit, though it did a damn good job of distracting us all from the mortgage-securities bubble that would ruin our economy.
Well, here we are again at a historical crossroads, facing an election that will determine the future of America and the future of the Supreme Court and the future of the world and the future of who gets to write for Slate. Christopher Hitchens is, mercifully, dead, so we don’t have to listen to his Spy Who Came in from the Cold paranoid nonsense about the Clintons. Andrew Sullivan has bivouacked to Provincetown, only occasionally emerging to blather with Bill Maher about the pope and to play himself in crappy Superman movies, where he sounds even more Orwell-manqué than he does in real life. Michael Moore continues to portray himself as Fat Progressive Jesus, here to save us from our original American sins, and Ann Coulter continues to fire off racist missives from her vampire cave. But they are just spoiled fish wrapped in back issues of the Atlantic. Fresh competition has emerged, pretentious voices multiplying despite scant demand, like food trucks selling “Asian-inspired cuisine.”…