I wanted to rant a bit about the grotesque spectacle of the Bush’s inauguration celebrations, but Dan Gilmour beat me to it:
The spectacle of George W. Bush and his friends celebrating (Reuters) his election so expensively this week is one of those revealing moments in history. The announced spending of $40 million just on the parties is undoubtedly less than the actual amount, but even if it’s accurate it’s a staggeringly high number in such a time when even a tiny bit of sobriety would have been appreciated.
Meanwhile: Soldiers in Iraq still go without sufficient supplies. The tsunami survivors are just starting to pick up their lives. African warlords slaughter their people. America’s middle class continues to shrink toward insignificance. And so on.
Dan’s just as disgusted as I am, but I think he misses one aspect of this: the bread and circuses aspect–both in the ‘distract the masses with a party’ sense, and also in the more metaphorical ‘allusions to an imperial system tainted by decadence and the absolute rule of the privileged”..
