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i think that the historical bloc we are looking at here extends back to the formation of the neo-con movement itself, so we are looking at the mid-to-late 1970s with the reagan administration as the surfacing of the Beast. this is the period of the construction of neoliberalism out of thatcherite and reagan-cadre political/ideological materials. what the bush people appear to be the endgame of is the hegemonic period of neoliberalism (noeliberalism being the term used to refer to what you see sometimes called "market fundamentalism" in the states--for some reason, this ideology has gone largely unnamed here, which i think is a HUGE problem because it explains such purchase as this vacant ideology still has on folk--the don't necessarily see it as an ideology, but more as just how the world operates...the problems with the bush administration, had they been more competent, could have been confined to problems for the right--but i think it's much bigger than that now, given the convergence of the financial system crisis and the political fallout from the idiocy of the "war on terror"--this not even to begin really thinking about what it would mean were these asshats to invade or bomb iran...)
i don't see any particular difference ideologically between the reagan, bush 1, clinton and bush 2 administrations--i see differences in tactics within the same basic conceptual world. clinton is a neoliberal who favored multi-lateral arrangements; bush a neo-liberal who favors bilateral agreements. in the difference between the two lay the space of radical nationalism, that lovely neofascist element that the bush people used and used and used in a context of such radical and sustained ineptness that they've managed to shatter much of its appeal...
if you look at the bush people in this longer-term context, much of what's happening makes more sense--and the formation of the neo-con movement and its rise to maxmimized incompetence is a central organizing feature.
that's a frame.
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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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