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well now here we are back in the hall of mirrors that is framing...when i look at how the administration has been handling itself across the first year, i see a group of pusillanimous centrists who are way too eager to play nice with the right in the interest of some illusory consensus--illusory because the right has politically nothing to say---it cannot even run on its own record from the bush period or from the reagan period forward---it is only a space of "not this" whatever this is. given that, it makes little sense to negociate with the right...(this may be why my phone hasn't been ringing, why the calls for tactical advice havent been coming in fast and furious from the administration)....but it's PARTICULARLY a problem that the administration hasn't fashioned a better, more clear and consistent communications approach. they're losing control over how issues are framed and even over how their actions are positioned. this is a problem. this is an indication of the persistence of the reactionary media apparatus. and that apparatus is what's saving the republicans from themselves.
i dont consider this election to have much of a meaning in national terms. that it is painted up as having one is another instance of the ability of conservatives to control how issues are framed in the press. their only strategy for months has been aimed at generating the appearance of stopping some imaginary obama momentum as it unfolds across news cycles.
what concerns me is that the administration is taking more and more of the hit for the socio-economic and political shitstorms left behind by the bush people.
that too little attention has been paid to addressing unemployment in particular.
that nothing has been done to accelerate commercial lending---taken together it looks like the administration is not addressing what to alot of folk is really fundamental.
not doing that makes things like health care change---which i support entirely myself, but think is not going anywhere near far enough----seem incidental.
and you've got an infotainment machinery that compulsively declares recession over and recovery upon the land-and folk look around and it aint happening.
this may well be a communication problem.
it may well be a communication problem that follows from being placed in an extremely difficult situation thanks to the monumental incompetence and blindess of the right, which now would have you believe that they represent "independent thinking."
well the thing that conservative ideology seems most independent of these days is the consequences of conservative ideology actually being implemented. so conservatives are pretty independent of reality.
i dont see this as a referendum on much of anything beyond the local political situation in massachusetts--which is a confusing place. i'm still trying to figure things out about it politically.
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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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