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charlatan:
acknowledging that freedom is almost purely formal in the states --that there are profound authoritarian tendencies in contemporary political and cultural life--particularly in america--all of this is one thing, a kind of critical analysis.
but it is quite another when you shift from critique to a set of almost normative arguments rooted in an endorsement of these trends.
in other words, it is for me not ok that you would argue on the basis of these trends--which are obvious enough---that things at any level have to or should be this way.
another way: i am comfortable with the critical analysis--i agree with much of it---but not at all, at any level, with the other.
not conceptually.
not politically.
not ethically.
there is not a single register on which i accept this switch in kind of argument.
as for naming the regime that i see as being implicitly endorsed here: if you are going to argue for it, why not name it?
but please note that i included a caveat--this is the logical conclusion from how i see things--maybe there is another conception of what an authoritarian politics would look like--in which case i would be interested to hear it--i probably would not endorse it either, but at least there would be a positive version of what is so far a kind of empty category (authoritarian) that is on the table.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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