Our Future Dystopia . . . and Hillary

I find it loathsome to delve into current events or politics lately, but a few stories caught my eye this week. The most fascinating read was the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025 report, a frank if somewhat bleak assessment of where the intelligence community thinks we are headed. Bleak, at least if you are American or European – evidently, if you live in China, Brazil, or India, you could be in for some good times. Or relatively good. The National Intelligence Council the Director of National Intelligence’s medium to long term research arm, made up of government technocrats and members of the academic community. So succinct they ain’t. The whole report is here, but the jist is pretty simple. Power, as I suppose it historically has, is moving east. The report predicts that while the US will remain an important actor on the world stage, perhaps the most important, and our influence will decline – as well as the influence of Western-style, secular free-market democracies. The main factors the report stipulate are the flow of capital into China and Russia, our own dwindling intellectual capital, technological and scientific advances, and asymmetric warfare. I don’t suppose this comes as much of a surprise to most people, but I found it curious that this report was birthed at a government agency. This would be something I would expect out of some lefty university or think tank, not our intelligence community. I am glad the incoming administration is getting this kind of advice. In addition to the depressing assessment of our own outlook, we also get a fantastic account of a hurricane pounding Manhattan – caused, of course, by Global Warming (with capital letters), a Malthusian tirade about dwindling food and resources due to population growth, and an actual letter from the President in 2025. Don’t know how they pulled that off. Interesting read if you are into that kind of thing.

It looks that once again we are going to be bombarded by President Obama and Hillary news every waking minute, to the deafening cheers of cable news networks. I admire the President for being so . . . Christian, I suppose, but I am not looking forward to the endless parsing of their mutual body language after every public event together. Are we really in such dire straits in this country that Hillary is the most qualified candidate for Secretary of State? Or is this an ego thing for the President, pull a former rival under his wing? I shudder at the thought of Bill Clinton anywhere near the Oval Office, what with his cultivation of villains out of 24 to pay for his goddamn library. At least we will be guaranteed four years of funny Maureen Dowd columns about the two.

The resurgence of the Hillary story also brought back a pet peeve of mine – the lack of creativity in the writing of the news. Over and over, once again, we hear Hillary’s “personal narrative.” Have you noticed how every reporter on the planet picks up on certain words, evidently words that make them feel smart, and repeats them over and over ad-nauseum. I realize a journalism degree isn’t exactly difficult or challenging, and that basically most of them were hired for their sex appeal, but cable news has become so all-encompassing that you see them trickle down into the print media as well. Jon Stewart is all over this – that phenomenon of a certain phrase or description catching on at one of the networks, and they all just copy it and repeat it again and again. Off the top of my head, the first word I am tired of hearing is meme – but then I suppose we are actually talking about the proliferation of memes! Really, do neologisms like “meme” deserve such prominent usage in leading newspapers and television newscasts? Just to sound hip, like the newscaster frequents 4chan or something. I know, I am sounding like William Safire . . . but Richard Dawkins made that word up just a few years ago, and he was talking about evolution. Yeah, it works and will definitely be a permanent part of the lexicon, but just because it pops up on your word of the day toilet paper doesn’t mean you have to use it over and over again. The aforementioned narrative? As in “he has an inspiring personal narrative?” Blaaahh. Enough already. Maybe the most used word of the campaign coverage was metric - he was leading by any conceivable metric, etc. Innocuous, at least at first, but after the 92nd time Wolf Blitzer blurts it out . . . today . . . it becomes tiresome. I know there are smart people writing that copy, really, that is all you can come up with? Retire those words for awhile!