View Single Post
Old 09-08-2006, 06:37 AM   #18 (permalink)
roachboy
 
roachboy's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
first off, taking a political analysis from the national review and presenting it as if it was an unproblematic analysis of contemporary politics is not much different from taking an article from the trotskyist paper workers world and doing the same.

the idea that anyone who is interested in seriously debating either the question of the distribution of wealth and its meanings, or democratic party strategy (such as it is) on the basis of a national review article is just silly.

the problems generated by the massively uneven distribution of wealth in america--the grotesque distortions of which are a lasting gift to all of us of the reagan period---are serious, but there is no way that i (for one at least) am going to participate in a conversation framed in any way by the perspectives of the national review.

and besides, you already have a good index in this thread of of the tedious rhetoric from the conservative set that would no doubt be spattered all over such a thread in the interest of the usual kind of trolling pseudo-contribution: x is what a "socialist" would say, not even a "communist" would say...blah blah blah...as if these constituted anything even approaching a serious argument. they dont. instead, these terms are little more than the rhetoric of border maintenance used by the right to label views they do not like. there is nothing of any substance at all in them, used in this way, except as functions within conservative ideology.

find a better source and start a debate on other grounds.

as for far right characterizations of the democrats, who really cares?
if the topic was how the right is attempting to frame the democrats as an aspect of their november strategy, then maybe this thread would be interesting.
because that is what the article is doing...
it relies on conservative political rhetoric and assumptions to orient a series of more or less tendentious assertions.
that means the article in the op is not an analysis as much as it is a polemical move aimed at an entirely conservative audience (who reads the national review who is not already conservative? who takes the national review seriously who is not already amongst the conservative faithful? this is why it can be equated with a trotskiyst newspaper...)

so the op article would be of sociological interest IF what you are trying to think about is how the national review functions as a relay within the system of conservative media and how that media apparatus is attempting to orient its demographic.

but that's about it.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Last edited by roachboy; 09-08-2006 at 06:40 AM..
roachboy is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54