But what is it Americans really look to in a President?
Consider something Jean Baudrillard once wrote in the 1970s.
"One can live with the idea of a distorted truth. But the
metaphysical despair of these people came from the idea
that images concealed nothing, and that in fact they were
not images...but actually perfect simulacra forever
radiant with their own fascination....All of Western faith
and good faith was engaged in this wager on
representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of
meaning, or that a sign could exchange for meaning
and that something could guarantee this exchange-God,
of course. But what if God himself can be simulated,
that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest
to his existence? Then the whole system becomes
weightless, and it is no longer anything but a gigantic
simulacrum-not exactly unreal but a simulacrum, never
again exchanging for what is real but exchanging in
itself in an uninterrupted circuit without reference
or circumference. "
"The Precession of Simulacra"
metaphysical despair of these people came from the idea
that images concealed nothing, and that in fact they were
not images...but actually perfect simulacra forever
radiant with their own fascination....All of Western faith
and good faith was engaged in this wager on
representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of
meaning, or that a sign could exchange for meaning
and that something could guarantee this exchange-God,
of course. But what if God himself can be simulated,
that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest
to his existence? Then the whole system becomes
weightless, and it is no longer anything but a gigantic
simulacrum-not exactly unreal but a simulacrum, never
again exchanging for what is real but exchanging in
itself in an uninterrupted circuit without reference
or circumference. "
"The Precession of Simulacra"
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