roachboy

i think the equation of bush with hitler is diversionary--but the broader claim, which is that populist american conservatism can be understood as a variant of fascism, is not.
of course it is to an extent a polemical claim. but there is a significant degree of accuracy within it. the ways in which this argument would work have been posted over and over on this board--i have yet to see any evidence that even a single conservative has bothered to think about the technical sense(s) in which this might be accurate. too much work i suppose. and kind of depressing....better to invoke godwin or some other such stupidity and follow with the requisite tsk tsk tsk....

but there is really very little that seperates americna conservatism these days from poujadisme or other forms of reactionary populism. the fact that this ideology is speaking to, for and about americans does not in itself change a single thing about its structure and implications. when it comes down to it, i suspect that cliches about american exceptionalism make it almost impossible for conservatives to think that their politics could possibly resemble anything else that is not american.



as for the "flip flop" matter: all that was important for the right was that the phrase was repeated early and often. it did not matter whether it designated anything accurate or not...it was as if the rove machine was able, through the medium of continuous and co-ordinated repetition of the same cliche, to persuade their base that changing one's mind in light of new information was something like weakness. of course they never came out and said as much--the claim made in a postive sense would have been absurd. but i still find the success of this cliche to be pretty remarkable. i wonder sometimes what weakness in the collective right worldview is played to---resoluteness, firmness etc. is in itself good regardless of the quality of information that underpins it? i wonder if anyone actually believes that. what matters in iraq is resoluteness even though every last argument floated to justify the action in the first place has been proven, over and over, to have been false? does anyone actually believe that? the cult of the manly leader, wrapped in flags and espousing military values, who activates a national destiny of conquest and plunder? well then you start to loop back into the opening paragraph of this post, dont you...

the bush administration has retained for itself some margin to change course simply because the sleaze machine of right media supports anything this administration does and so does not label inconsistencies. it simply reproduces the new line, and like good footsoldiers, conservatives follow. you can see a version of how this works in the modulation of various conservative lines in the rove farce that is unfolding....first here, then there, then somewhere else without the faintest whiff of a sense that any of these shifts amounts to an inconsistency.

as for kerry--i think he ran a weak campaign. he ceded too much to the right sleaze apparatus. he allowed himself to be labelled by it, without really responding in kind. maybe he thought the american people were too smart for that. it turns out, sadly, that was a mistake. 51% apparently are not.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite