Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - What's all this hub-bub about George Bush?

roachboy · 08-31-2007, 09:01 AM

dc: just to clarify, i had the "war on terror" in mind in the broadest sense, to include the entire range of actions that the administration has tried to justify through it, from the attempts on cheney's part to "roll back" the notion of executive power that had developed since the vietnam period to the warantless surveillance to the debacles in iraq and afghanistan and potentially iran. all of it.

at this point, speaking strictly for myself, i find it difficult to work up the energy to rehearse the range of objections i have to this administration's actions in much detail because i feel like i am just repeating myself. while this is maybe problematic in interactions with newer members, it is nonetheless the case.

the only advantage of this is that it is easier now to link some of the various idiocies of this administration back to structural features of the american system than it once was.

i dont regard the bush squad as a particular abberation then: they are the expression of system-level incoherences AND they are in particular almost mind-boggling in their incompetence. the upside is that i think the bush squad is the most damaging blow that contemporary conservatism has yet suffered and look forward to its implosion on account of them. this keeps me chipper. the downside is that the bush squad remains in power, and so long as they are in power, they are capable of doing even more damage--and the appearance the administration is giving that they are actually considering an action against iran is an example of that.

the bush administration inhabits an ideological worldview that i regard as wholly dysfunctional, much more geared around maintaining obsolete categories than about coherence in the face of real-time complexity. i see it as a strange composite, many core elements of which are variants of neo-fascism (the nationalism, they way the bush people have used nationalism to mobilize support since 2001), others of which are simple-minded neo-liberalism (they are not necessarily identical, but in the case of this administration, they are).

i think it may be better to find oneself in a position of being able to see the administration in a cold-blooded way. getting all snarky seems a distraction, a waste of energy.

08-31-2007, 09:01 AM	#32 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	dc: just to clarify, i had the "war on terror" in mind in the broadest sense, to include the entire range of actions that the administration has tried to justify through it, from the attempts on cheney's part to "roll back" the notion of executive power that had developed since the vietnam period to the warantless surveillance to the debacles in iraq and afghanistan and potentially iran. all of it. at this point, speaking strictly for myself, i find it difficult to work up the energy to rehearse the range of objections i have to this administration's actions in much detail because i feel like i am just repeating myself. while this is maybe problematic in interactions with newer members, it is nonetheless the case. the only advantage of this is that it is easier now to link some of the various idiocies of this administration back to structural features of the american system than it once was. i dont regard the bush squad as a particular abberation then: they are the expression of system-level incoherences AND they are in particular almost mind-boggling in their incompetence. the upside is that i think the bush squad is the most damaging blow that contemporary conservatism has yet suffered and look forward to its implosion on account of them. this keeps me chipper. the downside is that the bush squad remains in power, and so long as they are in power, they are capable of doing even more damage--and the appearance the administration is giving that they are actually considering an action against iran is an example of that. the bush administration inhabits an ideological worldview that i regard as wholly dysfunctional, much more geared around maintaining obsolete categories than about coherence in the face of real-time complexity. i see it as a strange composite, many core elements of which are variants of neo-fascism (the nationalism, they way the bush people have used nationalism to mobilize support since 2001), others of which are simple-minded neo-liberalism (they are not necessarily identical, but in the case of this administration, they are). i think it may be better to find oneself in a position of being able to see the administration in a cold-blooded way. getting all snarky seems a distraction, a waste of energy. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite