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for what it's worth, i see nationalism as a collective mental disorder.
in the case of this election, i do not see what possible problem there could really be with all and any attempts to inform american voters that there is much at stake in this election, that bush is widely viewed around the world as having been a disaster as a president not only for the americans but for the entire global order.
in this case, nationalism seems to be invoked in order to enable folk to not think about what they might find to be unpleasant, to not introduce realilties that might force folk to think about bush in a frame of reference his party does not control.
to do this, the argument that has to stick is that the u.s. is at some level seperate from the rest of the world.
an idea that is ridiculous empirically and a gateway to fiasco politically.
i still maintain that it is defense of the otherwise outmoded notion of nationalism that explains more than anything else the entire iraq war farce, explains the republican's vitriolic actions under clinton (they know full well that clinton was not far from them ideologically, but he was too much a fan of multilateral agreements, too much willing to further the process of integrating the american economy into the global one--he did not pay adequate attention to tending the obsolete signifers of nation that conservative politics depends on)
dont believe me on iraq?
read the project for a new american century website--any critical reading of it prompts the argument that i am making to emerge clearly.
the bush administration can be seen as peforming a kind of neurotic reaction to the implications of a globalizing capitalism that they cannot criticize, that they have to see as an unqualified good--faced with this, and with the institutional implications of it (look at conventional conservative parties in europe--the writing is on the wall and the right knows it) they prefer to erect a fantasy of nationalism and use it to prop up their own political framework.
but maybe people prefer simple fictions to complex realities.
it fits well within an information context where news is understood as a commodity, where information is framing for advertising.
better not to think about it too much.
but that changes nothing about the status and function of nationalism.
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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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