Bruce Sterling knows what's up

Once a year Bruce Sterling does this "State of the World" discussion at the WELL (for you young ones, that's a sort of social networking/forum website from the early days of the interwebs, it's about as oldschool as things get on the interwebs). This year's has started, Bruce is in top form:

This is a rather doomy conversation... it has to be, because that definitely suits the period, it reflects the facts on the ground... but one of the ways to escape a sense of learned-helplessness is to postulate the opposite.

Like: imagine a world in which Bush was one of America's greatest presidents. He was still Bush, believing everything he believes, but he was a statesman whose vision had overwhelmed his critics.

For instance: Imagine that Iraq had been brimming over with nerve gas, secret missiles and even some homemade nuclear devices. Every grim thing that noted RAND futurist Donald Rumsfeld (remember him?)belived about the Iraq situation was keenly prescient and accurate. So a pre-emptive invasion was completely justified; even brilliant.

We'd still be in Iraq right now. EVERYBODY would be in Iraq right now. The Coalition of the Willing would probably be in Iran, too, and aiming for Pakistan. There would be a military draft, and a world war of sorts, but what other choice would we have? Bush would be a military hero who had saved us from a nuclear Pearl Harbor.

Imagine that the destruction of the middle class, the K Street strategy and crazy income disparities had led to a brilliantly solid American economy. It was Republican, yet technically innovative, with a sound dollar, a government surplus, Chinese-style ten percent GDP rates, and stock market boom conservatively based on radically improved productivity and genuine prosperity... Bushnomics would rule the
world.

Imagine that the Christian Right set America's social policies, and that they were Christian ladies and gentlemen. Imagine that they had so much moral authority through their good works and spiritual power that one felt ashamed in combatting them. They were not demagogic Elmer Gantrys who bashed gays, ambushed women and ruined the nation... instead, wherever their kindly shadow fell, the hungry were fed and housed, sinners were rehabilitated and made active members of the community, drug abuse was abandoned in favor of prayer, Martin Luther King's southern baptist dream vision was destroying the scourge of racism from sea to shining sea... The Culture War would be all over; the USA would be a theocratic state.

But none of that happened. Instead, we have what we have. And the people who voted for that -- Joe and Jane NASCAR, with their variable-rate mortgages and their cousin in the Army -- man are they ever gonna catch it in the neck. The closet is full of skeletons, and that's bad, but the skeletons are there for good reasons; they're all
skeletons of rotten policies that died horribly and deserved to die.

I know, that's a huge quote and this is now the longest post ever. Bruce is awesome though and that quote is really funny.