Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Spurious attacks on Obama, what do you think?

roachboy · 11-12-2008, 05:42 AM

thanks dunedan, for that post.

there are some strange aspects to it. first, i happened to watch a bio-doc about lee atwater last night, and the Fear you outline is exactly the fear that his political operations presupposed AND WORKED TO STRUCTURE. we've lived in a political context that has been dominated by traffic in this for 30 years, from the reagan period, through bush 1 etc etc.

the strange aspect of the post is the opposition between proximity (the Individuals who are close to you, whom you know as individuals and the lifeworld, i suppose--for lack of a better shorthand--that they share) and distance ("the collective" in your parlance, the many people whom you do not know, whose values who do not know about, whom you collapse into some Huge Amporphous Scary Mass)---the trick is that this is both way too simple and is entirely reversible---folk who live far from you and far from your world could just as easily play the same game as you, reversing the terms, adding their own choice patronizing adjectives to spice things up, and from there head down the same paranoid road as you.

"the collective" which is comprised of all the people you neither know nor understand, but who you imagine to see themselves as unified by some identification as part of an "elite" of some kind--this phantom gets pushed along the resonances generated by the word "collective" into some stalinism.

with that you, and the people whom you know and whom, because you know them, you differentiate into actual people, now find themselves facing something like stalin's first and second five-year plan, the centerpiece of which was the collectivization of agriculture.

but positioning yourself as some russian peasant, which would be the way this metaphor wold lead you, is not glam enough, so instead you substitute for your perception of this situation that of the native americans.

so the argument becomes that you are facing genocide.

i think that is a problem.

11-12-2008, 05:42 AM	#22 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	thanks dunedan, for that post. there are some strange aspects to it. first, i happened to watch a bio-doc about lee atwater last night, and the Fear you outline is exactly the fear that his political operations presupposed AND WORKED TO STRUCTURE. we've lived in a political context that has been dominated by traffic in this for 30 years, from the reagan period, through bush 1 etc etc. the strange aspect of the post is the opposition between proximity (the Individuals who are close to you, whom you know as individuals and the lifeworld, i suppose--for lack of a better shorthand--that they share) and distance ("the collective" in your parlance, the many people whom you do not know, whose values who do not know about, whom you collapse into some Huge Amporphous Scary Mass)---the trick is that this is both way too simple and is entirely reversible---folk who live far from you and far from your world could just as easily play the same game as you, reversing the terms, adding their own choice patronizing adjectives to spice things up, and from there head down the same paranoid road as you. "the collective" which is comprised of all the people you neither know nor understand, but who you imagine to see themselves as unified by some identification as part of an "elite" of some kind--this phantom gets pushed along the resonances generated by the word "collective" into some stalinism. with that you, and the people whom you know and whom, because you know them, you differentiate into actual people, now find themselves facing something like stalin's first and second five-year plan, the centerpiece of which was the collectivization of agriculture. but positioning yourself as some russian peasant, which would be the way this metaphor wold lead you, is not glam enough, so instead you substitute for your perception of this situation that of the native americans. so the argument becomes that you are facing genocide. i think that is a problem. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite