the winds of change bring nothing new

From afar, this election season already appears to be defined by a submission to blind faith in image more worrisome than in elections past. I do not mean to deny the capacity of images in constituting realities, but rather to note that the perception of candidates as "strong," "inspiring," "uniting," etc. not only dictates the coverage and outcomes of the elections but that this image, and this image alone, has become all that is at stake. While this is not essentially new, its vehemence is all the more disturbing as the faith-based absorption with image is, bizarrely, championed as precisely that agent of another vacuous concept - "change" - that is supposed to supplant the very system of Reagan-esque image-politics by which we are so nauseated and from which it secretly receives its legitimacy.