The end of politics as spectacle

For fifty years or more, American politics has been largely a spectator sport -- not merely in the sense that the hoopla and the horserace aspect are wonderful fodder for armchair warriors, but in the larger, more insidious sense that important policy choices and foreign adventures have seemed to be largely consequence free for Americans. So much of the costs of our Empire and its mistakes have been borne by Vietnamese, Iraqis, Saudi dissidents, and so forth. Only in a very small way have our policies seemed to blow back on our fat and happy ways here at home. That is of course an illusion, but an important one for the maintenance of our political economy. The limits we have reached on our economic and military power mean that illusion may no longer be tenable. And if it ends, our politics and our lives will have wrenching and far-reaching adjustments to make.