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so let me get this straight:
in order to maintain the bushline on "terrorism"--bogeyman of the decade--what you have to do it falisfy history when it comes to un sanctions program against iraq--to do that requires that you repeat the bankrupt and dishonest line floated by the administration's media lackies in the run-up to the war as if nothing has come to light since that debunks the whole of it.... you have to repeat claims not taken seriously in real time by the unsc, not taken seriously by anyone not already a true bushloyalist from 2001---as if nothing has happened.
it seems that the ultraright has stopped even trying to make arguments and is now in a mode of compulsive repetition.
but i do not know how this type of repetition has come to be confused with compelling argument.
while i suppose that there is something kind of quaint about this type of thing in principle, in fact all that i see above from the ultraright folk is a rehearsal of sound byte-level claims that are completely without foundation...that conservatives--who by now must be really quite limber after a few years of doing the contortions required to maintain the illusion that bushlogic on the question of "terrorism" is coherent--would prefer to believe that iraq had something to do with terrorism in a world not particular to themselves is evident--but this is more about the psychological situation their boy george has put them in than it is about the situation factually.
seems to me that this repetition strategy puts the ultraright in a space of public abjection. that they seem not to recognize that only reinforces the abject state. arguing with the ultraright is like trying to play music with a bassplayer who only knows one riff, but who thinks the situation is otherwise.....whose mode of interacting is to play that one riff slower then faster then slower. but it is the same riff. it is always the same riff. there is no possibility of conversation under these conditions--it is almost like the only possible source of legitimation they have left is to force threads to collapse.
the effect of this compulsive repetition is to cover threads with a think blanket of tedium and to cause one to marvel at the power cognitive dissonance must have, given the energy with which the ultraright works to avoid it.
i guess it must simply be easier for the ultraright to divert things onto the iraq war than to ask themselves about questions that arise with reference to the bogeyman "terrorism"--whether the category functions analytically (it doesnt)--what it is about (keeping the ultraright afraid?)---what makes anyone think that, in a complex world in which there are a thousand reasons to mobilize politically in opposition to what exists, that there is a single entity "they" with a single coherent agenda "terror"? of course if you refuse to even start looking at social realities, this kind of argument might have some weight--but this refusal is a function of other, absurd beliefs, such as what you see on fox news is adequate as information, that soundbytes on tv can provide any complexity when it comes to covering violence, whether political or not...the problems raised by this category "terrorist"--which start with erasing any coherent political motive to any given action and the displacement of motive to ridiculoius questions like "jealousy" and so forth---are so far-reaching that if you think about the signifier at all you are driven to the conclusion that it is an instrument the bush administration has chosen to float and exploit for their own purposes, that its primary objective is keeping the supporters in line by enabling them to imagine that by supporting the administration they are defending their "way of life"....the category "terrorist" is about mobilizing people on the basis of what they fear most--death--which they can displace onto an "agent" who is everywhere and nowehre, inside and outside, all at once.
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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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