roachboy

this is something i tried to address earlier, pan:
i think the basic mode of conservative argument is about self-definition first--you are either with "us" or against "us" a priori. this is NOTa typical mode of argument in a democratic context...this reduces politics to identification and identification to a matter of faith.

a short digression on the public mode of deploying neocon ideology: i think the neocons are people more like wolfowitz, what has been labelled the mayberry machiavellian trend within the administration--the wider right ideology is not identical with that--it is a complicated collage of rightwing tropes, some of which come from evangelical christian ideology, some from old-school american first types spaces, some from a kind of populist know-nothingism pioneered as a seperate ideological position by pat buchanan. end digression.

anyway, the arguments particular to rovethought work this way--he tried to rehearse the line that seperates "us" from "them" with a series of arbitrary assertions about what conservatives are not. the claims about iraq follow from this, and are shaped not by their analytic power (there isnt any) but by the identification with a far-right "us" first and foremost. this type of argument has been a constant feature of conservative ideology in its present form since the clinton period, you are right--it is a central feature of limbaugh "thought" which seems to have devolved alongside the wider ideology.

conservative ideology is not about a coherent description of the world. it is about defining a group as "us" and on that basis adding features that inflect this identification one way then another.

the other main feature is projection: take the example of "liberal media biais"--this is obviously false analytically--but it functions in conservativeland to make the fabrication of a completely ideological alternative media structure seem like a defensive response, when the fact is that it is the right that is seeking to change the rules of the game of journalism and conflate information with politics in a wholesale manner. presented as a positive argument, there is no way this would have flown--presented as a reaction, it does (it appears to redress a prior imbalance, when the fact is the opposite)--this only functions logically--politically--on the basis of the core conservative ideological move--identification as one of "us"

i think the responses from conservatives on this thread are perfect exemplifications of this process--they asserted themselves with considerable bile in an entirely fantastic manner on the basis of elements of rovethought, which operated to affirm their status as conservatives--on that basis, the various features of the delerium that accompanies continued support for bushwar got reasserted one after the other.

this is how rovethought works. this is how conservative ideology works.

and it is par for the course that when you say as much, conservatives pretend they do not understand.

it must be difficult if you work in the manner outlined above and hold your core political beliefs as a matter of faith routed through identification with a category to process dissonance. in fact, it appears close to impossible.--again, just read through the conservative responses on this thread alone for evidence.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite