#903 PED

Okay I admit it. I’m suffering from PED. P-E-D-.
No, it’s not Pre-Erectile Disorder. PED stands for something more insidious and devastating than an occasional bout of non-performance. I feel drained, limp, unable to face the future. It’s Post Election Depression.
PED is that malaise that settles on people and nations and, most importantly, comedians, following a news-filled and contentious election. There just doesn’t seem to be as much to talk about. Or it doesn’t seem as important. I mean, we were talking about electing the leader of the free world.
Now it’s back to graffiti attacks, missing dogs and a global financial apocalypse.
Boring.
We don’t even have any gaffes to report. Darn. So I’ll trot out one that never did get reported during the campaign by the mainstream media. Which I found a little disconcerting. Their anti-intellectual bias was showing. I expect that from lowest common denominator Fox news, but the New York Times? This was their plum.
In one of his interviews about the financial crisis early on, it may have even been in the first nearly-suspended debate, John McCain said that Wall Streeters and Bankers had broken the “social contract” that Adam Smith talked about.
Woohoo. John. Look at the invisible hand. Adam Smith never once mentioned a Social Contract in “Wealth of Nations.” The Social Contract was the premier idea of Swiss Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who formulated it to counter the notions of Hobbes.
Not Calvin’s pet tiger Hobbes, but Thomas Hobbes, author of the opus “Leviathan” which talked about civilization and government being a thin skin stretched over the craven surly brutish greedy beast of true humanity.
You know, Wall Street.
Be that as it may, John McCain would be the first to say he was no philosophy student. But it’s still unusual that none of the gotcha media gaffe-grabbers would have pounced on this.
Oh well, the Straight Talk Express was doing some other furious twisting, turning, and generally erratic driving so there was plenty to report.
But you know, sharing that little election tidbit seems to have helped my P.E.D go away a little bit.
My resolve to stand up to the future is somehow firmer.
America, ya gotta love it.