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my basic contention has for a long time been that there's something particular and kinda curious about contemporary american conservatism as an ideology (worldview in this case)...that it operates with a particular way of staging relations to that worldview one effect of which is a peculiar relation to information. i've been interested in how the discourse works. so i see it as a sociological and political phenomenon. it's obvious that there are variations within any group of people in how investments in that ideology happen, but that doesn't mean that there aren't constants at the level of patterns within the ideology and patterns that are repeated by alot of folk who hold this political position as consumers if you like.
second, i don't know what conservatives are talking about when they refer to the left. typically it is little more than a phantasm, the mirror image of conservatism, something that is constructed politically as an imaginary referencepoint which positions conservatism along some spectrum that apparently has therapeutic value, and which serves to conceal just how peculiar contemporary american conservatism really is. because it provides something to point at and enables the claim "whaddya mean, we're just doing what they're doing"
but the fact is that there is no left as conservatives like to imagine it and that conservatism in the states is a peculiar entity.
luckily, i don't think it matters so much any more.
but it could matter again, so it's good to keep track of just how strange it is.
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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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