No, this is not a post about alcoholism, and the only drunkenness to which it might refer is the manic inebriation that comes with the exercise of great power.
As the U.S. presidential race settles into its pattern of opposing camps supposedly at great odds, especially every four years — of conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, progressive versus reactionary — it is good to be reminded that underneath all of the hullaballoo (and I agree it’s hard not to be caught up in it, as detestable as Bush’s GOP has been these last seven years), that nothing about this race will really change how the U.S. is run, or rather who runs it.
Along those lines, I’d like to refer to a succinct statement of this issue from Chris Floyd, who himself quotes the insightful Gore Vidal. Reading the following, inspired by Floyd’s coverage of the U.S. intervention into Somalia and the subsequent human rights disaster that has followed, is like a splash of cold water, of stone cold sobriety regarding both the festivities and inanities of the past two convention weeks.