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for a long time, there was no real barrier that prevented folk who identified as conservative from seeing that there were systemic problems with capitalism as a mode of production (look it up)...differences between conservatives and other folk tended to play out across types of responses--conservatives preferring to advocate positions that maintained the status quo becuase in doing that they defended their own position--other advocated responses that may have requried more effort/disruption. with this older-school form of conservative, there was the possiblity of discussion about issues.
an example of old-school style conservatism: for many conservatives from brazil--say--there is no problem with admitting class stratification--at times there is no problem with admitting the injustices that follow from this--but they, in the main, support the police in this context because the poice defend the order that is because it is and for no other reason---and these folk benefit materially from that order---so they have every interest in seeing that order continue.
contemporary american conservatives--those shaped by the populist idiocy of the limbaugh school, directly or indirectly--cannot even bring themselves to admit that there are problems with capitalism. if you mention the problems you are a marxist or a pinko.
so it is no wonder the administration now in power, which wraps itself tight in the blinkered little world of contemporary conservative ideology, is so thoroughly incompetent. they prefer to not see problems...like the need for a plan in iraq--or the need for a coherent response to katrina.
i did not previously accord enough respect to old-school conservatism because i understood their tactics as reactionary. but now, i kind of miss them. in comparison with the kind of tripe you see from this administration, what you hear on right media and what you see in here from folk like yourself, ustwo, they seem paragons of lucidity.
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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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