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so let's think about this for a second: in the diminished world of the right, the bushpeople do not play politics with situations such as these--but the administration did try to float a line linking this chaos in the uk to al qeada--a link that it simply made up and floated in order to generate a coherence amongst the conservative flock that would keep this plot away from the us-uk sponsorship of the israeli massacre of civilians in lebanon. that way, the action can be reclassified as motivated by the usual idiotic attributes that the bush people like to impute to their imaginary adversary the "terrorist"--they just dont like "us"...blah blah blah...it has nothing to do with the obvious facts of the international situation--nothing to do with the fact that the americans gave israel permission to escalate its action in lebanon and has obstructed attempts to reign it in despite both international political pressure and a growing humanitarian crisis in southern lebanon.
manipulation no. 1: labelling this conspiracy, if there was a coherent one (unlike the chicago "plot" which turned out to be a complete fraud) "terrorism" is already to shift its meanings into the political territory the right has staked out for itself. this territory is predicated on preventing people from thinking rationally about such "threats" as exist---removing explanatory contexts, imputing absurd essentialist motives--it is a politics of hysteria, nothing more and nothing less.
cowboy george's idiotic "islamic fascism" speech yesterday was but further evidence that from the very outset the bush people are trying to reframe this plot and use it as a device for their own political purposes.
there are two underlying dimensions to these claims that i can see:
1. vote republican or die. this is the rove campaign logic and now you all can see it. we will be treated to this specious manipulative horseshit for several months to come.
2. the "enemy" is arbitrary--its motives incomprehensable-so the power that confronts it must also be arbitrary and the actions must be arbitrary as well. this does not function as a description of anything in the world, but it DOES mirror the logic behind the affection that this administration has shown for extralegal actions, its obsession with unrestricted executive power, its beleif that only a de facto far right dictatorship can act to "save amurica" from its imaginary enemies.
for this schmittian de facto dictatorship to unfold behind the figleaf of legality requires a pliant, sycophantic congress willing for partisan reasons to block any and all attempts to counter executive power and questions of legality. this is what is at stake for the bushpeople in november--this is why events in the uk are so important for the right, and also why the right is so concerned to impose its worthless interpretive framework on these events from the outset.
it is interesting to note the differences between the uk interpretation of this conspiracy--such as has been floated so far--and the american, which does not wait for facts and moves directly into linkages outlined above.
it is wholly absurd for the right--even the sorriest representative of the right--to argue that there are no political games being played around this scenario in england. politically, the right is in a very very bad place and its real partisans can only hope and pray for an attack of some kind of happen between now and november. of course, that attack cannot be seen as following directly from the logic of american policy itself--that would be accurate empirically but a fiasco politically--better to simply make arbitrary assertions and jack up the hysterometer.
the right here seems to think that the conspiracy can be taken at what it pretends to be face value and to not accept the right's specious reading of the events is to deny the events---that is idiotic--and patronizing to boot.
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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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