Kanye West runs for President
Let us look past our current misfortunes and plan for a better America
Is anyone out there? I am an American lost at sea. I have been surviving on Trader Joe’s French croissants for ten days now. My belt is too big, I cut a length of rope to help keep my pants fastened around my waist. That’s how much weight I have lost, lately.
Donald Trump has been president of my country for the last four years. Another TV star, Kanye West, recently announced that he was running for election. And given Americans’ current distaste for Trump—this after his catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic, causing the deaths of thousands of my fellow countrymen, and his current White Power phase, pandering to the lowest common denominator—I would not be surprised if Kanye West won, if only as a joke, you know, hahaha.
I was going to turn my boat around and head for South Florida’s shores—home is a-calling—but, after reading the news on my Latitude Rugged Tablet that Kanye West had launched a bid for the White House, I decided to head for Cuba, instead, if only to stock up on food and other essentials and spend a few days hunkered down on shore before heading back out. I will spend some more time on the high seas after that, because, maybe returning home is not the best decision at this time. My country got weird, and it’s about to get weirder.
Havana weather: daytime maximum will be with a high of 33°C
A nation that has been humiliated by the antics of a reality TV showman and that now may have to suffer through four years of a rap star president must surely have gone to the dogs. I had better stay away. And yet, I have questions.
Is America a failed state now?
Who believes that the Oval Office is up for sale, and why do people believe this?
Why is our American democracy so mind-numbingly defenseless against attacks from the aforementioned?
Who let these people in the room, Ivanka, Jared, Stephen Miller?
Have you, dear reader of my Substack Blog, ever sat on an admission panel at Harvard? Do you know how much intelligence quotient it takes to land a six-figure salary at Google? (I bet you do).
And yet, arrogant billionaires with little English skills and even less aptitude in governance can have for ambition to access the highest office in the nation, and actually succeed at it? What does that say about the greatest country on earth? When will America start looking great again? Can the world ever look up to us?
Kanye West is not happy merely existing as object of desire. Like others before him, he might have satisfied himself with creating one or two styles of sneakers (to be added to the many other existing ones), a couple of seasons’ worth of clothing fashion lines, interspersed with new albums coming out, highly-promoted appearances at award shows, before seeking refuge in oblivion, eccentricity and marital bliss—or strife, as the case may be.
Not Kanye West. West, long suspected of being mentally ill, uses speech that is full of the most remarkable blather, cacophonous ejaculations of drivel. It’s as if West was evangelizing on behalf of the Church of Loon Bird, and manufactures pop culture gloop to be served up en masse in his ever quest for credibility. Since he’s hardly a creative himself, he does what any talentless individual does: he surrounds himself with enough brain power to render his image and his persona credible in the eyes of the public. Exhibit A: Virgil Abloh, style maven, for hire.
Like Victor Frankenstein Kanye West his dead-eyed monster he props up one new Kanye personality after another, feeding these automatons to the excitable collective psyche, stamping their various body parts with labels, hyperlinking his cult of the dead selves to online baskets and payment pages.
West married a dim-bulbed Venus who responds to name of “Kim” and generally does not say much but is gifted at producing mountains of cash thanks to an ample bosom and perfect complexion, courtesy of mom and dad, that helps her push make-up. In addition to his own discography, where he excels at being an extra-terrestrial rapper with a God complex (and the rap, it is very good, West’s status as one of modern times’s greatest rap artist being more than merited) West has launched merchandising franchises, manufacturing forward-thinking clothing that he would just as soon label art because, probably, the word “clothing” is not really appropriate for something that he makes.
Like a parasite, West feeds off of popular culture and regurgitates it. He is talented at creating an event where none existed before, turning consumerism into an artful ambition for the masses and making each moment of his public life into a high-stakes personal project. Not content with living like mere billionaire mortals is the calling of Kanye West and his vocal chord-challenged Venus. The former, a delusional and tormented egotistical workaholic has confessed to having a God complex in his songs and on record. No one really knows much about the latter, since aligning three fully-functional sentences appears to cause her undue stress, so she generally avoids speaking candidly for the cameras. Few women have achieved what Kim Kardashian West has achieved, however: photogenic perfection. From eyebrows to cheekbones and makeup: everything is right with this person.
I have been caught in a vast array of flotsam for the past three hours. The whole trail, composed of wooden, plastic and metal objects, makes a loud, crunching sound every few seconds. It is slowing me down. I have been working hard at breaking away from it.
Kanye West is unhinged, Donald Trump is unhinged. America has been held hostage by two men in a row, the former as rap star accustomed to cameras and spotlights and the latter as the forty-fifth President of the United States Dubya, as former President George W. Bush was known, appears to me like Fred “won’t you be my neighbor” Rogers compared to Trump or West (of note: the two men are friends). The time when being President meant to be in service to the people, to be a servant of the collective, is long behind us.
Where is America headed? Has the greatest country the world has ever known become a failed state? Is the great capitalistic experiment a magnificent failure? Although a liberal, I am no socialist or communist, far from it. The thing is, none of the existing configurations function well absolutely. Whether it’s France’s combination of socialism and capitalism, or China’s communist-induced brand of capitalism, or America’s runaway capitalism, everywhere you turn, human rights are trampled, the middle class is expanding, but the gap between rich and poor is increasing and the 1% and governments are colluding with private financial interests to keep a parallel economy going that benefits only they (by the way, say hello to the biggest speculative bubble ever—one day, in the next 12-18 months, this bubble will burst, and many lives will be lost as a result, making 2008 look like Cat Stevens sitting at the foot of your bed, lulling you to sleep). Instead of choosing the rightful sort of government (anarchism, at its pure form, would seem like the best option but retrofitting our societies to fit into that mold would be impossible) we, as humanities, can but choose the least-worst option.
As time goes by, this lack of maneuvering room in adopting the right form of democratic governance for our modern civilizations is showing some serious strain. And it may just be that we are in for a major implosion—so be it—but what will come after that? More of the same? And, with either Trump or, very unlikely, after all, Kanye West (LOL) winning the White House, the catastrophic incompetence of the people leading our great country will cause more harm to this great country that is America.
But if we look past the current misfortunes, there is a plan of action.
Prescription for change:
Electoral laws need to change. The electoral college should be done away with. Trump was elected because of it, the argument for removing the electoral college should never more persuasive than this.
A five-year plan for a complete dissolution of statehood needs to be implemented, with the ultimate object one nation with one central government. Five large regions, named prefectures, will replace our states, with a prefect at the helm of each one, answerable to Washington.
Off-shore havens and the fiscal loopholes that allow them to thrive need to be dissolved.
A national healthcare plan modeled after that of some European countries (Scandinavian countries, France) will need to be implemented.
Education must be given primary focus. Debt forgiveness programs will be implemented and public universities will go into direct competition with private universities, by dint of the quality of the education they will provide.
Education is key, but why should private university hold the monopoly on providing America’s young with a first-rate education?
I will continue to circle the seas on my boat, and will survey the situation back home, hoping that one day, I can get back to America.
The Constitution needs to be retired to a room at the Smithsonian Museum.