Reading

Joan Didion’s Miami makes me feel almost sorry for the Cuban exiles. Of course, no exile is sweet, but while there were plenty who fled the betrayed revolution (show me a revolution that wasn’t betrayed), it was the worst elements, the Batistists, the oligarchs, the autocrats, and fascists who rose to power as claimants of the mantel of los exilios; yet even these mucho macho assassins and bombers, dreaming of return, were toyed with by a national security state eager to use them, and just as eager to abandon them yet again. The Greeks had a word for it, the goat song of tragedy. The coast of broken dreams, and it’s cost? 40 years of absurdity that’s only fed Castro’s authoritarianism, and a reactionary stain on American politics only too eagerly absorbed by the Republicans, those tireless exploiters of resentment and hate. And in the Miami environs right now, “our” terrorists, sent to pasture in retirement.

What Didion’s so good at is the grubby little performance that is American politics, the sham of the contemptuous little prick behind the curtain as the Wizard has his photo-ops and stays on message until the next message comes along. All of them of the television age, from Eisenhower to Bush II, are props to varying degrees. And we’re the saps from Kansas, buying the bullshit year after year after year. Enough already! Basta!