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well, to respond to the op: we dont.
we are a management problem. we are managed. effective political management seems to presuppose the illusion of choice between positions. so in the states, you have the neo-fascist right embodied by the bush administration and the conventional right embodied in a fractured way by the mainstream democratic party, and a host of other groups on the margins of both which end up, one way or another, ceding ideological territory to the dominant Position simply in order to get themselves heard.
want proof?
it is self-evident at this point that the war in iraq was started on at the very best premises based on information so incompetently gathered, ordered and interpreted that everyone associated with the process should be out of a job, and at the worst premises that were based on information that was knowingly falsified. where are the political consequences of this? that's easy: there arent any. why is that?
what have we been told? that vietnam period political action is part of some hallucinated syndrome that "we" should "get over"....that there is no distinction between social-democracy and stalinism, political dissent and terrorism...we have been subjected to the crassest and most indefensable type of neofascist identity politics since 9/12/2001, the arguments for which were repeated willingly by the entire "spectrum" of the american press, television and print, until the problems with the infotainment they were being fed became so obvious that these corporate institutions began to shift--out of concern for their own legitimacy--but to shift into what? stating what was obvious since the case for this colossal fuck up in iraq began to be floated--that the infotainment was not worth the paper it was printed on--well fine, but does that mean that we are now supposed to see in the mainstream press a group of valiant journalist-heros? where the fuck were they in 2002-2003?
i think lots of people imagine that the entire american political and social order is a hopeless wreck, and they tell each other as much as they watch television at home or in a bar or anywhere else (you cant avoid it)..but they dont do ANYTHING beyond that. what is there to do? what are the options?
public protest seems a waste because it is largely invisible...public pressure seems to change almost nothing. why?
because in american democracy, "we" are held in contempt, considered cattle, seen as a problem.
so long as we continue to buy shit, everything is hunky dory.
politics has been collapsed into a variant of consumption.
the measure of political freedom in america is your credit limit.
and we submit to it.
we like it.
it suits us.
we dont have information. sure, you can get information, but that's work, and why work when there's buying shit to be done? besides, folk are tired--they have to run and run to make ends meet and at the end of the day want to be entertained--something fragmentary and not at all challenging if you assume that the way in which infotainment is programmed for us reflects anything about who we are or what we think or what we do.
[[ok so i just had to dig a chicken leg out of my couch where my husky had hidden it, presumably as punishment for my having had to go out for a bit earlier. kinda busts up the rant groove, that. geez.]]
but one more thing:
seaver: let's not be disengenuous, eh?
when it suits american political interests, collective guilt is assigned without hesitation--there are legion examples of american military actions that operationally pay only lip service to the distinction military/civilian--just as there are legion examples of other militaries paying only lip service to it. it is a basic assumption of total war, of modern war. and it is not pretty. but the question is not whether you like that it was turned on you, seaver: the question is the nature and quality of the arguments that resulted in that. i dont think anyone gives a shit whether you find the claim to be other than pretty. but when you endorse american military action, you accept not its modalities but the justifications that are floated for it--and the blurring of the civilian/military distinction (intended and "collateral" damage in "low intensity conflicts" dontcha know) is a consequence. to say "no-one wants to hear that bs" is just weak: what it show is that you personally cannot imagine the united states doing anything fundamentally wrong. and that, seaver, is naive.
[my husky's back. i guess there must be more chicken in my couch. this isnt working out as planned...]]
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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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