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yeah--it's a little strange---if you have not particularly found the construction of obama as some left-type to be more than a conservative hallucination, there's not a whole lot to talk about in the fisa bill matter, simply because it follows--not from a facile cynicism regarding "politicians" in general, but from his own politics. my position is that obama appears to be part of a less self-enclosed, self-confirming ideological world than mccain, who is obviously in a position of trying to find some way to simultaneously distance himself from and maintain continuity with the delusional space of populist conservatism of the past 30 years. but i don't see obama as offering anything remotely like an alternate ideology to neoliberalism, anything like a viewpoint that i can say *will* result in coherence in the face of structural problems---but the fact that his is a more open position leads me to think he *might* be able to respond coherently, where mccain will not.
i also dont see obama as holding the bush people to account for much. my suspicion is that this would follow from the requirements of maintaining system legitimacy--there are limits to how far one could personalize the disaster that has been the past 8 years, associate it with the "bad apples" of the bush administration and thereby limit it to a question of individuals deviating from a trajectory otherwise rational, operating within a system that is otherwise legitimate.
but i didn't expect anything. i can't say as i'm disappointed.
what seems different with host is that there's a degree of disappointment i sense lurking about inside the anger.
but maybe i'm wrong.
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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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