I have no hope for the next 56 days. None whatsoever. Reality’s relevance was lost somewhere between Invesco Field and the Xcel Center. We’re going to get lofty post-partisan dreariness from both presidential candidates, and a vicious 1992 culture-war brawl under the radar, which will be thoroughly deplored in public by the people who profit from it most. I shouldn’t have to watch Karl Rove tell me about the American people and how they vote. I should get to watch Karl Rove being hauled off in chains to Danbury. The major television networks will curl up into a ball roughly five minutes from the start of the first presidential debate. The whole campaign is now going to be conducted on the level of pure mythology. If they had any intellectual honesty whatsoever, the people on TV would dress in white robes and divine the campaign through the movement of waves and the burning of laurel leaves. For a minute back in the spring, it seemed like the country was ready to admit to itself that it poisoned itself with bull***t over the past seven years and was prepared to issue itself a corrective. Not any more. We’re back to “personality” and “character” and “narratives” and all the other stuff that keeps anyone from thinking about what’s really at stake here.

Karl Rove in chains to Danbury — now that’s a good idea.

Flip-flopping away, flip-flopping awa–aay…
You know the nearer the destination the more he’s flip-flopping away…

Can you guess who the man is in the song? Why, it’s none other than that master flip-flopper, and not so darling of the far right, John “Hundred Year War” McCain. Easy to guess, eh?