powerclown:
Quote:
You have a new word to add to you're rhetoric now, rb.
"blairworld"
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you made that up.
i would not have made this move first because i see nothing parallel in england to the ways in which the right uses the particular prominence of television of organize public opinion.
there is certainly nothing similar in the kind of absurd loyalty you see amongst american conservatives toward the Leader.
third, for me bushworld is primarily a term used to designate the tendency within american conservative mode of argument to split away from the reality that other people know about and to replace it with this bizarre self-referential, self-confirming political space. i think that is a particularly american thing at the moment--of course there have been parallel uses of mass media to incite more murderous variants of this in the past (april-june 1994 anyone?)--but in the states, bushworld is new and relies specifically and heavily on television (and to a lesser extent radio--a decade ago it was the other way around)--and on the specific uses that americans make of their televisions.
so no, powerclown, i would not use the term even if i were inclined to.
perhaps you should consider modulating your new persona as witty gadfly.
but i think there are some interesting things going on--if you judge by the various webforums that are having conversations about this, you can see (1) that this is bringing lots of folk in two very different political contexts into direct contact with each other and that is opening onto a big, diffuse conflict over how these events are to be interpreted. (2) what is particularly interesting within that is the inability of american conservative perspectives--like ballzor's for example--to acquire purchase. the discourse that was able to channel 9/11/2001 is no longer effective in the states---whether it would become so were there an attack on the states itself is an open question, the possible answers to which are pretty horrifying---and is encountering a sense of how limited/specific that view really is in the world. american conservative discourse cannot control the debate on this. i find that interesting.
that this would result in flamewars is not a particular surprise, frankly.
but no-one not already far far to the right appears to be buying the linkage between iraq and the so-called "war on terror"--but they are making a link between iraq and these attacks, insofar as to policies of tony blair have set london up to be a target despite the very powerful opposition to those policies at home.
which would indicate that folk are seeing in the misbegotten colonial war in iraq the cause of these attacks.
which would in turn open up the possibility of thinking about these events not in terms of the fatuous "they hate us and must be stopped" pseudo-thinking that has done so much work since 9/11, but rather in terms of causal possibilities that really would put bushworld on the spot.
because i have not been watching american television, i do not know what i am supposed to think about this. but the webforum conflicts are much more interesting than watching the reactionary spin machine kick into gear.
it is obvious that the bush people would prefer to avoid this entire line of questioning/argument and so are trapped trying to make a rather pathetic argument for linking this to the Eternal Enemy of "terrorism"....witness rice's bland statement.
it is a very complex, very interesting moment to be watching webforums.