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i have not understood, and still do not understand, why folk find it so easy to move from opposing a political position--in this case the mobilization of protestant fundamentalists as a political block in significant areas of the the country--to attacking the people who make up that bloc---i sometimes do not understand why i find it so easy myself.
because it does not help anything.
it does not constitute an analysis.
and what seems clear to me at least is that understanding what happened in this election is pretty important.
1. the "red states" were often themselves highly divided. so the situation nationally is not red/blue--unanimity in the "red" areas is far far far from accomplished.
but what you are looking out there at is the result of a really successful, highly organized political mobilization undertaken by the right.
their success in creating a politics force of protestant fundamentalists is an imposing achievement--ironically one that runs directly counter to the ideological emphasis on individuals---even the right knows that if you focus on individuals, you evicerate yourself politically--power comes for collective mobilization. their own political position is evidence of that. so i guess what is important for the right is that people who are not in positions of pwer understand the world in terms of isolated individuals so as to maintain powerlessness--but that the machine is itself not bound by the ideology it manufactures.
the discourse of the right works is designed to make and maintain a sharp division between inside and outside.
it is structured as a double of a religious belief system, but is not itself one.
it seems to involve a control of the premises for political debate that pretty much insures that folk inside and those outside conservativeland will talk by each other.
so it poses analytic problems that are similar to those of the sociology of religion--explaining belief from an outside position does not coincide with teh views of those who believe--i might understand conservative discourse as a flight from uncertainty caused by globalizing capitalism, but saying it is probably not going to make much impact on someone who believes.
what is unnerving in all this is the simple power of the discursive space.
what is reassuring is that its power is far from uniform, even in the areas where it mobilized--to a certain extent--a majority.
what is a problem is that is seems too easy to confuse the surface features of conservative discourse (see above) for the nature of the constiuency.
if all there was to the right was protestant fundamentalists, they would be a marginal party.
i think it is a distraction to focus too heavily on this element.
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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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