roachboy

pan:

i marvel at your busby berekeley argument each time you make it.
come on everyone, let's put on a musical. pull together as a team, etc.
in the interest of national unity....

but what are you really asking us to do?

the fact is that folk who are not conservative are listening to the conservative arguments--they simply do not accept them. what you find is almost no reciprocity--conservatives do not appear to take critiques of their positions seriously. ever. particularly not on this matter.


on the question of terrorism--whatever that is--you have alansmithee as the self-appointed representative of the "to attempt to work out why an attack might have happened is to sympthatize with terrorists" school.

among other things, in this thread he has tried to argue that "lifestyle" is not linked to the economy. he has tried to argue that the "motive" for this type of tactic is jealousy. he has tried to argue that if you link american policies--state and economic to name just two--to the causes for such attacks you are a effectively a sympathizer.

the prescription that we are offered--what should "we" do if any attempt to understand why this sort of thing happens means that we are sympthizing with the attackers?
kill em all let god sort em out.

the fact is that this kind of position heads off trying to understand what is happening around you.
it prevents coherence--it does not inform it--it is an obstacle.
it seems a perfect example of the mode of argument that i have tried to isolate several times in various threads of late: contemporary conservative argument is not about the world--it is about the individual conservative first, the mode of identification between the individual conservative and a sense of him or herself as articulated through the conservative media apparatus. features or claims about the world resonate primarily with a sense of self-identification as conservative, are legitimated that way--they are not about a coherent description of the world itself, they have nothing to offer anyone who does not identify as conservative a priori.

conservative argument is also about border generation and border patrol.
if folk from the right devoted anywhere near the intellectual energy to trying to work out why things are as they are that they expend on trying to distinguish an us from a them, the whole of political debate would be much better for it. but i think there is little chance of that happening until this ideology grinds itself to powder--which is a process that is well under way. but you never know with this kind of thing, really, until the process is over.

so most conservative argument on the question of "terrorism" are more about "i am conservative and you are not" than about anything approaching a coherent relationship to the question at hand.

where is there any room in this for compromise with people who do not identify as conservative? theirs is a kind of battle ideology. we who are not conservative are the primary enemy. the discourse of "terrorism" quickly devolves into a kind of running litmus test: are you for us or against us?
think about the implication of how alansmithee's arguments have run out here (he is not alone,,,there are others...i simply use his posts here as an example)...those of us who do not agree with me ARE terrorists. what the fuck is that? how do you expect there to be any room for compromise? even if i were personally to find compromise desirable, where would i start if by virtue of not accepting the right line, i am defined a priori as part of a fifth column?

but you claim, pan, that we should compromise?

how?

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite