Two Quotes

"The State is the coldest of all cold monsters, and coldly it tells lies, and this lie drones on from its mouth: ‘I, the State, am the people’.” -Nietzsche

“Like those of imperial Rome, America’s elites are an urban and international group, perhaps on their way to forming a distinct transnational class. They are cosmopolitan-citizens who often have more in common with members of that same class around the world than with other members of their own society. The elites of Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston may be American by birth, but their wall hangings are from Peru, their sculptures from Nunavut, their literary fiction from Sri Lanka, their CDs from Brazil, their basmati from India, their wine from New Zealand. Their religious values, if they have any, may be drawn impressionistically from Eastern and Western traditions—an eclectic pantheon.” [Excerpted from Are We Rome?The Fall of An Empire And The State of America by Cullen Murphy, 2007, p. 147.]

These two quotes describe the tension in American politics today. On one hand the leaders masquerade as representatives of the people--their leadership houses as microcosms of the nation--and on the other hand have the same separation from the people as prerevolution aristocrats, with much more in common with their peers than their subjects. Here at the G20 they are truly at home. They move in armored caravans from luxury hotel to luxury restaurant, meet with each other, talk to each other, give awards to each other and proclaim to each other. Outside, a small group of children, sensing some indefinable outrage, scream incoherently. The rest of the city, usually active and vibrant, is abandoned.