The Age of Pipik

So now we know two things, amounting to a paradox, to matter meets anti-matter boom. First as per "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign" that new, hot supposed exposé, neither Hillary nor her staff knew either why she was running or how. Her defeat was therefore doubly assured.

Then, as per a NY Times investigative piece ("Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election," 4/22/17) FBI head James Comey inadvertently, by virtue of sheer high-minded praetorian idiotic klutziness, managed to fatally undermine the Clinton campaign while reigning in his forces when they could have done the same to Trump's.

This is, as they say, concerning 

But is it rocket science? No, far worse, it's quantum mechanics, which means if you think you understand it then, as per Richard Feynman, you have no idea at all.

To continue: we have Bernie Sanders touring the country to unify the Democratic Party and put it, state by state, on a progressive basis. But how can Bernie manage that, given he's not even a member of the Democratic Party?

Quantum physicists want to know.

***

Some think we're at a turning point in the West, as in Brexit and Trump.

I think so too, but not for the same reasons. I don't think Lenin and Marx have anything to say about it, nor their counterparts on the right, including deep fried thinkers like Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss. I fear that not even likes of Isaiah Berlin have much light to shed on our crisis.

When political thinking tanks, betraying its limitations, the time is right to consult literature.

I look to a work by Phillip Roth, and no, not his brilliant, oft-cited "The Plot Against America" in which he posits the fascist victory of the hi-tech aviator — Lindbergh — over the old school philatelist — FDR — pregnant as that opposition may be.

No, I allude to what is but a footnote to his novel "Operation Shylock: A Confession." There Roth avers that the moving force of history is not anything grave or deep. The enemy is Pipikism, which Roth calls, "the anti-tragic force that inconsequentializes everything -- farcicalizes everything, trivializes everything, superficializes everything."

Have fun with your Marx, your Lenin.

Forget the dialectic, assuming you still remember it.

We're in the age of Pipikism now.