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well, the right has a Problem, which is simply that on matters pertaining to the economy, the dominant worldview is being pulverized at a very high speed---but at the same time, that same worldview is an element amongst others in the language that enables communication with the various factions that comprise the right coalition. so you have a strange little theater of therapeutic avoidance of cognitive dissonance which is itself being eaten away by the world that other people know about--so it has to be inflected as itself plus something else----i know what to do!---what is that?---something like what we were doing, but different from it!---what do you mean?---my friends, everything that's happening is a function of external contaminants--greed, excess, communism, terrorists---everything that's happening is caused by discrete outside agents penetrating the otherwise coherent world that is capitalism as we understand it--so the something else that i would do is the same as before except i would fight the contaminants!
o. ok.
it's a surreal time.
things don't make sense to alot of folk for the same basic reason---what's going on around them outstrips their framework.
the right has another Problem, which is that it's shared conception of Leadership involves Action Figure principles, which tends to force folk into some kind of decisive-looking position when a Problem emerges that is so Obvious that the usual mechanisms of avoidance get flooded. so mc-cain has to look Decisive, has to issue statements quickly--which, given the situation his particular ideological frame is moving through, is really not a good idea.
obama is not entirely outside of this either, but he has a more structurally oriented way of thinking, is working with a platform that is more amanebale to that, and is also not boxed in by this need to twitch into Action Figure Positions straight away. and he is simply not burdened with the absurd problem of trying to demonstrate that he is the same but not the same as the bush administration.
surreal times make for surreal theater. generally, the theater that you know about in, say, 10 years is made up of far fewer works than are circulating in real time==that's because many such bits of theater suck to sit through.
or something.
similar problem with military spending--given the way the campaigns are boxed in around stupid shit like Appearing Manly and Strong and Loving Israel No Matter What It Does So Very Very Very Much, you simply cannot expect a rational discussion about either military spending or the middle east or any connections between them. it's a degenerate state of affairs. i think in the end, if you think military spending is obscene at its current levels--and i do--then it makes sense to vote for the candidate who you think MIGHT do something about it as over against the candidate whom you KNOW will not.
or you can vote nader.
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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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