Drift.

Fred Reed captures the accursed failure of the electoral process to put vitally important matters before the voters, making drift and "make nice" the default operating mode. The politicians do not discuss the vital issues and the voters do not demand that they do.

But, as Fred warns, there is no guarantee that drifting politically necessarily involves drifting away from the rocks. Given that Americans in large numbers assume that the sane, secure, workable society of their experience to date is ordained by God as unchangeable and eternal, it is quite fair to describe Americans as hopelessly naïve at best and, at worst, people who have sold out their children and their ancestors.

In the clownishness that we regard as presidential campaigning, none of the contenders has much to say on the matter. In a dance of evasion that has become customary, the candidates carefully ignore those matters of most import for the nation, since considering hard questions might be divisive. War, peace, race, immigration, affirmative action, the militarization of the economy, the desirability of empire—these play no part in the electoral discussion.

. . . Many people, alienated from the United States by policies and trends they find odious, no longer care. There is no national consensus. The country fractures into a congeries of warring agglomerations and the resulting paralysis manifests itself in drift.

The problem with muddling through is that one may not like what lies on the other side of the muddle.

"The Art of Unpolicy." By Fred Reed, Fred on Everything, 4/7/08.