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back in the day, i used to subscribe to an e-list called red rock eater. it was run by a guy from ucla, and was really interesting--smart and in some cases prescient. i remember one essay he mailed that outlined what he took as a basic but at the time quite new rhetorical trick in conservative politics--projection. you know, the republicans move way to the right so they talk about the democrats as if they're way to the left and in the process frame themselves as somehow moderate--this at the level of the populist crap, limbaugh of the late 90s, say as an indicator, the phase of the open door for the militia movement and the old birchers and the ascendency of the pat-robertson xtian coalition, the emergence of the whole motely range of organizations that we all now remember so fondly from those grand old days of wholesale hysteria after 9/11/2001. the sort of politics that people thought cowboy george was all about until he took office. the folk who found themselves hoisted by the actions of the neocons. those folk.
anyway, we've seen projection from the right or long enough that you'd have thought folk would recognize it.
there is a fundamental difference between the political language of the republican coalition--the ways in which the political relay system talks to itself, to its demographic--and the ways the democrat's language works. the republican language has centered, and still centers, on identity--everything's about who you are, how you define yourself, how you feel because of how you identify yourself. democrat language does not address the same kind of coalition--it is looser, more diffuse--and so is in general more inclined to talk in terms of principles, to address how you think. these are very different one from the other, despite what pan might think.
the republican language enables them to mobilize people around fear, around xenophobia, around red-baiting and any number of other such tropes simply because it address who you, as Believer (this is the baseline identity) Are. so i think that these "negativities" are PART OF how the republican coalition talks to itself---now this is not to impute beliefs to individuals--rather the language SETS YOU UP to react in certain ways, based on certain cues--and it turns out that often enough folk have reacted that way--so there's no reason to wonder how conservatives think as people--which is as diverse a community at the individual level as any other, really--instead, you only have to look at the language--and you can work out, most of the time, what conservatives will say and how they'll react. not always, but most of the time.
so these emotions that pan complains about are, to my mind, PART OF how republican coalition politics ITSELF works.
democrats are not that far from moderate republicans on issues, but they DO talk to about about themselves differently. the point is that i do not think the parties are the same, that they traffic in the same type of investment, work the same emotions, make the same assumptions about their demographic.
does this mean that only republicans are angry in october 2008? hell no. people are angry about alot of things--take your pick--the veer into fascism-lite after 9/11/2001, guantanomo bay, extraordinary rendition and the other fab treats brough to you by the republican "war on terror"---the shabby, ill considered, unnecessary carnage in iraq, the farce in afghanistan, the wholesale mismanagement of the economy--on and on--of COURSE people are angry.
but speaking now for myself, i'm far less angry than i was a couple years ago because the end of the bush regime is in sight and the only thing that frightens me is that some bizarre-o chain of events will unfold that will result in john fucking mc-cain and sarah palin running the show into the ground for 4 years until the next single day comes around when american citizens are politically free.
i dont see much of anything, though, from the democrats, from the people who support obama from either principled or tactical reasons that matches the kind of poujadiste lunacy that's been caught on camera again and again at rightwing rallies.
so no, pan, at this point i don't think both parties traffic in the same thing in the same way. at all. this even as i am not sure how big a distance separates the two parties on issues--if you exclude the whackjob far right.
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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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