I tend to avoid politics, at least in its concrete form; gender politics, identity politics, and such are comfortable for me, but perhaps because I was a teenager during Watergate, and then watched my life and career disintegrate in the 1980s under Reagan, I tend to distrust the entire discussion. Not that I am willing to attack the US as the source of all evil – the Brits around me love to play that game, but it's nonsense: any mistakes we make are the same as what they would make, what they are making, they're just amplified by our greater size. Besides, since getting so unfairly deported from Australia, I simply think of most governments as – in the words of a friend talking about policemen – "a bunch of thugs".
It's interesting, therefore, to watch The West Wing (ending soon) and its flimsier but still relatively charming imitator, Commander in Chief. What's so remarkable about them is that they are so obviously elaborate fantasies – you might call either of them answers to the question, "What if, by some strange chance, someone actually intelligent, integritous and strong-minded were to become President of the United States?".
In that way, for me, it lines up with my love of fantasy, science fiction, and as-if stories... what if everything were completely different? And, although many of those fictions are dystopic, the joy of the ones that turn about to have happy endings... they also line up with such more personal fantasies as, What if I had moved to New York in the late 1970s?, or, What if AIDS had never happened?, or, What if I had had a career that was perhaps more appropriate, or more successful? Although I know it is not a particularly productive way of thinking, I have never been able to buy into lines like, "Non, non, je ne regrette rien." I regret a great deal, and frequently imagine things going differently.
But this fantasy is of course staged at a different level: the idea that those above us could be trusted, that those who govern could be the kind of people we would want governing: it is sad, that they are only television shows....
Of course, if Martin Sheen or even maybe Geena Davis (but absolutely not Arnold Schwarzenegger!) somehow became President, perhaps I would want to go back home. Perhaps it would be worth going back to the USA....
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