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mythologies like the "liberal media" and "obama is a socialist" will die off slowly simply because alot of folk like them. liking this sort of thing and that sort of thing being accurate about the empirical world have little to do with each other---myths like "liberal media" and "obama the socialist" operate to make the conservative the Center of Persecution, which presupposes the Vast Importance of the Individual Conservative, who must be an object of concern for the Natas that is the non-conservative world because the Individual Conservative is at the center of this vast machinery the sole point of which is to Persecute the Conservative. so it follows that everything is an Affliction: the state is an affliction, taxation is an affliction, watching television is an affliction...when you drive you car, the image of environmentalists is an affliction...the terrorist is an affliction--everything and anything that is not you is an affliction. and you are Defined by your Martyrdom, the Extent and Quality of your Suffering at the hands of all that Persecutes you. it's all very evangelical. i remember this from back in the day--we used to be encouraged to wear this goofy wooden crosses around our necks even though we all knew that wearing them to school would bring down Persecution upon us--but that was good, because telling detailed and bitter stories about the Awful Outside World was the central activity at prayer meetings as such.
but if that's the case and the Depth of your Belonging is measured by the Magnitude of your Persecution, then conservatives *need* the rest of us. without us, they'd all be like monopolies in hayek's political economy--you know, the most influential conservative economist that none of the conservatives have read. they'd be blinded, operating in a world or projections, substituting what they want to see for what there is. wouldn't want that.
and all this is a pretty straightforward discursive structure. it's a psychological mode that's grafted into the center of conservative identity politics and fed back to you.
and it is an example of the type of being-conservative that has helped bring the republican party to the edge of the big desert, which it will now walk through for 40 days and 40 nights. you know the rest of the story. the choice out there will be whether to continue this story or to make a new one. i hope that this repetition of the same old story turns out differently. for all our sakes.
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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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