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foolthemall sums up what i was trying to say using machiavelli above: it really doesn't matter who representatives are as human beings or what they believe as human beings---what matters is how the frame themselves politically, what they appear to be, what they appear to believe. but once they make these choices as to how they frame themselves, they are stuck with the consequences of that choice--they have to live and die publically that way--whence the problems for the far right this scandal has generated--and why i have no sympathy at all for them
for example, the protestant evangelical community is a big part of the far right's populist base--the right adapted its politics to appeal to this base---but if you read stuff that is emerging over the past two days from david kuo's book, it is obvious that this adaptation was strategic and did not mean that everyone in far-right land was in fact either an evangelical or even took the statements they would repeat designed to suck up to evangelicals terribly seriously. all that mattered was consistency of appearances--all of which is rapidly falling apart. i would expect that kuo's book will damage the far right coalition more extensively than this farce will, simply because kuo's central argument is that the evangelicals have been chumped by the bush people, who regard them as nutcases privately, and who created administrative cul-de-sacs within which evangelical-friendly programs were set up and left to rot.
which is one of the only things the bush administration has done that i approve of.
more importantly, kuo is of the evangelical community.
so this should be friendly fire--but it isnt.
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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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