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war on x....yes well it mobilizes the christian solders, doesnt it?
war is a central trope in xtian literature, particularly in that complex novel calld the bible...good vs. evil, black hat vs. white....and, like charlatan said, the word is a good marketing tool.
obviously the bush "war on terror" differs in kind from the other examples--war on poverty, war on drugs---in that it has functioned as a factor in the curious discourse conflict that shapes political life in the states. political life in the states in 2006 is basically different from previous periods--the rise of the right ideological machine is a marker of that distance.
the right in particular understands that if you can control the terms, the frame of reference, you can shape how people who use that frame to model their experience and the world within which that experience unfolds---you can shape the logic folk use to link phenomena together and so to fashion explanations and projects for themselves. the "war on terror" in its earliest phase marks the greatest extent of conservative discourse---as it turned out, the worst thing that could have happened for this formation has been the second bushterm, which has seen a significant crumbling of its explanatory power. such as it ever was.
while it is hard to make general statements about the states that mean anything--as it is about anywhere else---it seems that folk are encouraged in general to treat politics as a very limited sphere of social life, a type of consumer choice the power implied by which is exercized one day every 4 years (that one day americans are free, but not directly)---politics is a type of consumer choice, an extension of one's image of oneself---that image does not have to be grounded in who you are--the right has become quite good at using the illusions folk entertain about who they would prefer to be as the basis for political mobilization (the emphasis on the individual entrepreneur engaged in the Important Task of Getting More Cash) and channelling anxiety about economic and social position in the process---politics is not generally understood as involving any philosophical component, so reflexivity is not a feature in this discursive space--immediate belief and reflexivity are mutually exclusive--contemporary conservative discourse is about immediate belief and so it follows. this explains surreal results--the identification of petit bourgeois types and their conception of economic activity as a reflection of one's inward state of grace (one's calling) with the interests of transnational corporations is but one example.
the war on terror, whatever that is, functions to drive folk further into this type of relation, to retreat fuirther into that which is given, to become even more unable to think recursively about the effects of the frame of reference that they choose to adopt. the toll is fear, the shutting down of thought its result. it is pretty simple, actually. vote democrat and you will die is a simple message, aimed at simple, terrified people.
all this because, unlike the other "wars" noted in the op, the "war on terror" involves actual state of emergency, has entailed actual abuses of power, has been exploited with mind-boggling cynicism, to promote the political interests of the american extreme right.
the "war on poverty" was in the main a nice catchphrase that enabled johnson to address the superficial effects of the american mode of distributing wealth without actually changing anything about the causes of social and economic stratification of american society. to address poverty really would have taken more radical steps to force a different type of distribution. johnson was far far far from such a radical, conservative delirium about him not withstanding. conservative critiques of this program are wholly worthless, expressing more their contempt for the poor and their efforts to draw a clear line that divides the extreme right from saner politics for the benefit of the christian solders on the ground.
the "war on drugs" is simply idiotic. as was everything else about the reagan administration---for me, that period is best summed up by the image of lovely contra types throwing liberation theologians to their deaths from helicopters (let freedom ring)....but i digress....
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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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