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well what you see in the above is clear enough:
the bush administration is in a position to identify its short term political calculations with matters of natinal security. and they do it. they have done it before, the are doing it now, and if re-elected will do it again.
this blurring points to a number of basic problems with the american system--for example, if fund-raising activities for a national election require that the president be a shill for donations for the next election almost as soon as the first is over, for example, then a significant aspect of being in office is also campaigning.
this in general is an index of how the blurring gets set up, how it is possible.
the bush people have taken full advantage of this. my sense is that they have been worse about it than previous administrations, more amanebale to a wholesale collapse of any division between the political interests of the president and the presidents party and matters particular to the functions carried out by the president once in office.
why is bush not being held to account for this?
partly because the bush squad did not invent this problem, the simply are cynical about it and willing to act on the basis of that cynicism.
partly because of how bush is being sold: he is constructed as a resolute Leader in conservativeland using a rhetoric of the Will framed by a paranoid and/or calculated set of references to the "war on terror"--- one function of this is to place bush in a position where he is not accountable to any empirical problems. what do empirical problems matter if the central questions are elaborated on the terrain of Will? what do problems of an illegal colonial war in iraq, lying to the american people and the international community about war, destroying american credibility globally, and on and on and on matter if the relevant questions pertain to "resoluteness"?
behind this is the problem of campaign financing, the cost of advertisments on television, etc etc which neither party has an interest in addressing seriously, which functions as the framework within which the american oligarchy functions. it is indeed expensive to persuade a population governed by oligarchy of the democratic nature of the regime.
this general matter entails other problems: that the election cycles is not legally limited to a particular, relatively short timeframe; that telvision stations are not required to provide free airtime to political campaigns as a function of television being a public service, the airwaves and cable waves being a public good, etc.
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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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