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Have we been seduced into imagining that the day to day operation of government is spectacle, a made for TV reality show?  It seems so.  It’s hard not to obsessively check the news feed on the iphone to see what Fox News, CNN, etc. is reporting hour by hour on the latest Presidential tweet, or what some pundit is saying about the opposing party.  One is reduced to resistance to a gnawing nihilism, by avoiding “the news” altogether.

The outcome of the Democratic party caucus primary in Iowa was not encouraging.  The two or three or four winners, conditionally announced after hours of delay seem equally unprepared, to contend with the present occupant of the White House.  Is the Democratic party really going to send their standard bearer to a gunfight armed with a knife?  A candidate offering abstract ideas, proposals for summarily re-engineering society is holding a losing hand, bound to stand naked, without support in the arena of public opinion.

Where is the leadership that a complex society, a confused and divided citizenry must have if we are to survive the tremors that began a number of administrations ago, and now are nearing the 8.9 top of the Richter scale?  Words systematically degraded, to have no substantive content, —now are used shamelessly as emotive bludgeons.

Is the Democratic party really going to send their standard bearer to a gunfight armed with a knife?

A letter came to our house yesterday from the campaign of Mike Bloomberg.  I’ve been a subscriber of Bloomberg Business Week for quite some time.  The content of the campaign letter is similar to what I would have written as assessment of our condition as Americans.

The last two lines of the single page memo style letter:

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