Broder wasn’t analyzing Palin’s positions or accusations, or the truth or falsehood of her claims, or even the nature of the emotions that she appeals to. He was reviewing a performance and giving it the thumbs up, using the familiar terminology of political journalism. This has been so characteristic of the coverage of politics for so long that it doesn’t seem in the least bit odd, and it’s hard to imagine doing it any other way.Fine and well, but I feel obliged to add that Packer's piece lamenting this "characteristic" coverage is itself of a type and genre as currently popular and predictable as a glossy, glossing Op-Ed from Washington's pachycephalosauric Dean. If anything the contentless tactical "analysis" and the responding think piece regretting the absence of substance have become the political equivalent of the call-and-response liturgy, the undramatic dialogue at the center of the discourse of political journalism. In other words, yawn.
-George Packer
In any event, bewailing the failure of a geriatric columnist to delve into the "positions and accusations" of an American politician, least of all Sarah Palin, is engaging in a shell game of one's own. What Packer is bemoaning, when you get right down to it, is the failure of the Washington press corps to be sufficiently complicit in the fraudulent world of policy proposals, which are just as much the product of Public Relations as are the rhetorical tics of populism or the quibbling over who snubbed whom, who's in, who's out, etc. I mean, I defy you to come up with Sarah Palin's core beliefs, her political philosophy. She has none. But likewise Barack Obama. Their differences are stylistic and tactical. Insofar as governing is concerned, the exigencies of empire and entrenched wealth govern government.
41 comments:
This is the crap that Tim Leary referred to as "4 foot mammalian barnyard politics".
Leaving that shit aside...
I'm about 1/2 way through "Love and Theft; Blackface minstrelsy and the American working class" It's worth checking out if you can get your hands on a copy.
However, we must of course transmit the remains to you in a receptacle.
Out of three finalists for 2012, Heidi Klum says Obama is on the out right now. Also nony check out the Wages of Whiteness, or Chants Democratic if you want to indulge in a liberal racist treatise.
Is Ioz going into re-runs already? I didn't even know he had been syndicated.
Walter, I'm sure there's a reason you brought your dirty undies--
I get all my recommendations from Broder and Ebert.
All content is re-runs. (Can in, grammar queens.) If it weren't for re-runs, we'd all be mutes.
Amazing how much this beast looks like the Mugwump in Cronenberg's wonderful Naked Lunch, and would be equally apt to the topic. The caption would work just fine, too.
See M. Broder featured at 2:18. And thanks a lot for knocking down that wall, pal.
I suppose there's a point where knocking on the press is more self-serving and rote than it is pointed and accurate. (The inherent irony of calling that out is also not quite lost on me.) I'm well pleased to read you picking on the perpetual press dramedy today, can I have an amen. My opinion would be even stronger if I could remember which one's George Packer again, but I left my crib sheet at home this morning.
Always got more of a macronarian vibe from Broder's head, like I could imagine it on the end of a long, leathery neck contentedly munching leaves. RedPhil, how long you think it would take the WaPo Op-Ed crew to raise three pink transparent fingers (one for thesis, one for antithesis, one for yawn)covered with black fuzz?
I don't fundementally disagree, but I guess where I part company with you is best captured by http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/. That is, contempt for "both" (all?) sides, but for somewhat different reasons. Movement conservatism really is the root of ... not all of our problems, by a long shot, but the root of why the ediface is crumbling at this particular moment - I mean, there are many periods in U.S. history where the fundementals of U.S. society were worse, but we muddled through.
Of course, the fact that the movement is the prime cause of the collapse doesn't AT ALL absolve the other players of their own corruption, and inability or unwillingness to stop it ("Weimar" indeed captures it exactly).
Now, I understand (and am tempted in this direction myself) the fact that you and most of the commenters here celebrate that impending collapse, but excuse me if some of us fear that what's coming will be worse than what's preceeded it - as horrible in many ways as it's been - for ourselves and even for the rest of the world.
Not that I'm one of those people who have any illusions that Obama or any other politician in this period of decline is going to arrest the slide.
Which is to say, at the risk of beating a dead horse, is that the "the parties are two sides of the same coin" was very true until the crazies broke the compact in 2001-2008. That doesn't redeeem the Dems, who are to corrupt and feeble to do anything about it, but corrupt bargain of our post war polity, which allowed any number of horrors here and abroad, at least worked on it's own terms. But where I differ with you isn't that I'm less sceptical of the capacity for governments and individuals to screw peopel over, but I'm more sceptical. Hence my worry that, as bad as things are now, they can and probably will get a lot worse. We're going to look a lot more like Somolia than (say) Renissance Italy.
I mean, I don't particularly think I would have wanted to have lived under the late Roman empire, but it was a heck of a lot worse for most people in the early middle ages.
Movement Conservatives! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of late industrial state capitalism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
lol @ movement conservatives and their handy dandy patsies, the even more annoying liberal dems! LOL they're complicit, they just couldn't stomach sticking the knife in and twisting! they had to hold their noses, and they can't hold their noses and stick the knife in simultaneously. they'll just go watch the door to see if anyone is coming.
now tell me another one. and pass that bottle.
It's funny how a certain kind of argument isn't even understood on this site, somewhat understandably because of its very superficial resemblance to a more common argument which does indeed deserve only ridicule.
We can stipulate that the liberal dems (as mainfested by their elected offcials, at least), are entirely complicit in everything from the empire to the corporate state.
Where the Dems DO legitimately differ is in the embrace by contemporary movement conservatism of nihilism. These people are no longer interested in maintaining the post-war racket that combines state capitalism with the national security state. It's all about power PURELY for its own sake (or millenial Christianity among that minority of the movement that made the mistake of actually believing in the story that they tell the rubes), devoid even of the kind of class solidarity which characterized the corrupt post war consensus.
Now, that corrupt bargain is such that I can certainly understand people applauding its demise. I'm just cynical enough to fear something worse.
In a way I see the Dems as even more pathetic than some of you guys see them. Not only are they the (sometimes slightly squeemish) supporters of the evils that their supporters purport to oppose, but they are standing around impotently as the nihlists who control the Republican party cut their balls off.
If you don't like the very apt Big Lebowski altered quote above, think of it as Goodfellas, except that instead of whacking Tommy DeVito because his craziness threatens the sweet racket that they have going, the leaders of the mob stand by as he takes over and has them offed one by one.
Or, to put it another way, the post war consensus at least agreed to respect the trappings of liberal democracy, if of course not respecting its essence.
Movement conservatism is dropping the mask ... which I guess could almost be applauded as more honest.
Except that in the sorry history of our world, most times and places have been far worse off than the past half century, even with all of its many manifest evils,. If the government doesn't deserve the credit for that (and it doesn't), at least they did less to fuck it up than most governments in humanity's sorry history. And there's every reason to believe that the coming storm is gonna make the past 50 years look like a picnic in the park.
Of course, in one important sense the liberal Dems are complicit even in that - but make no mistake: the dems would prefer to continue/go back to the corrupt post war state capitialist/national security state consensus. They're just unable (or gutlessly unwilling) to stop the slide to nihlism that the movement conservatives have initiated.
they're in the way. now get outa my way, I'm trying to watch.
Do not punch the Mr Fundamental tar baby. That shit stinks like mad and never comes off.
so the pretense was dropped. wow. amazing. TELL ME MORE OF YOUR STORIES
Yes, a time machine would solve all of our problems.
I'm not making a call to action, for Christ's sake. Just a pendantic post hoc analysis. Not to mention I feel a need to puncture the overly rosey, even naive, view of the future that you guys have.
I mean, the pose of bored cynicism around here gets old after a while.
NEVAR!
lulz.
@Anon5:23 "Dem redemeer"
But then, some of unz were around at least during the BillyCs years, to know that plus ca change, bitches.
Speaking for myself now, even in my bored cynic pose, I do find such displays of innocent stupidity, touching.
So this is why Fluoxetine was invented.
What the fuck are you guys talking about?
Do you guys maybe not get that when you pull out the "dem redeemer" crap on someone who has even less respect for them than you do*, if that's possible, it makes you look like humorless idiots? I mean, by all means, deploy that shit against the people who come here whining about "but, but but, we've got to vote for them, they're the lesser of two evils," but that isn't my schtick, AT ALL.
I mean, you're the guys (well, IOZ is anyway) who purport to believe that the U.S. is going to go out not with a bang but with a whimper, leaving behind a bunch of semi autonomous city states, not me.
And it's not that I expect serious engagment of what I'm saying - ridicule is the MO around here, and more power to you, it's the one reason I keep coming back. But maybe, I don't know, it would be more effective if you deployed the ridicule against, you know, what I wrote, instead of against the typical "progressive" codependant bullshit that you somehow imagine I'm pushing.
Do you not get that, far from claiming that there is anything WRONG with bored cynicism, I'm saying you guys aren't cynical ENOUGH?
*I mean, what part of corrupt, complicit, ineffectual and cowardly don't you understand?
Were you listening to the Dude's story?
Also, pose? I mean, did it ever occur to you that we are, in fact, bored, cynical, and nihilistic. She kidnapped herself, man.
I would describe myself as "tired" before nihilistic, but yeah. Here, how about this:
Through the vast majority of human history, 99.9% of people have had virtually no influence on their sociopolitical status, and only a tiny amount of influence as to their personal status. Why on earth should we believe that we're any different today?
Shit, Dude, I didn't know. I wouldn't've done it if i knew he was a fucking crybaby.
and proud we are of all of them.
Rowan,
I'm not sure what I said to make you think I feel at all differently. Where have you heard any call to action from me? Hell, I can imagine ways things could have gone differently, but sure as hell not as a result of people participating in the political process or happy horseshit like that. Sure, one can posit different actions by the saner elites that might have at least preserved the crappy but by historical standards tolerable status quo. But that ship has sailed; at this point we're fucked beyond all hope of redemption.
Let me put it this way: it's indeed true generally, and specifically in the United States today, that the vast majority of people have zero influence (or next to none) on whether the society works. But that said, some societies work, some don't, for reasons well beyond the control of you or I.
But that doesn't mean that this particular society isn't going from bad to even much worse. And there are REASONS why societies go to shit.
There almost certainly isn't shit we can DO about it, and I'm the LAST person to bray to IOZ "but what's your plan, man," but that's hardly a reason to pretend that conflicts among the elites doesn't have real world consequences.
IOZ,
As for whether the nihlism here is a pose, well I can only go by what I read here, but you sure as hell look like poseurs to me. Not that there isn't tons of great stuff here, I wouldn't come here if it didn't amuse and sometimes inform, but really the problem is that you don't take it far enough.
Look, Larry. . . Have you ever heard of BLAWG?
...but really the problem is that you don't take it far enough.
What, we got a nihilism pissing contest on our hands now? Fuck you, I believe in way less than you do on the Internet.
COME BACK WHEN YOU CAN'T STAY SO LONG
Nonny, I have no idea what you were arguing about. I was just responding to IOZ, who may have had an idea. So I think I agree with you?
White Russian, please.
here is my entry in the nihilism contest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCf84ov2MZ4
Sort of an earth technopop.
Nonny's not calling for all hands to the polling booths. S/He is saying that the post-2000 conservatives are more evil and crazy than other iterations.
But really, what's different? Imperialism? That's old hat in these united States, ask the Cherokee, Mexico, the Philippines, etc. The Philippines make Iraq look like a dinner party at Human Rights Watch. Debt? Sure it came to a head in 2008, but it's not like Bush invented it or anything.
The difference is likeability. Bush wasn't terribly different from Truman or Kennedy or Reagan or Clinton, he was just a bigger jerk about it. The policies stretch back in a glorious, practically-unbroken chain to the drying of the ink on the Declaration. Nonny's real problem is that the Bushies made him confront the essential ugliness of his country by being personally ugly.
Enron, you syphilitic Siberian sonofabitch, shut your goddamned piehole or I will stick my dick in your nose.
look, I'm sure our "new" leaders will find you a nice comfy little desk job where you can stamp things after reviewing them and feel important and accomplished and effectual all at the same time. just don't forget about us bored fucks over here, ok? lulz. Blawg!
Shlomo,
Am I saying that they're more evil? No. More crazy, yes. Less competent, probably. Less committed to sustaining the corrupt status quo, definitely. Which might be nice if they were going to replace it with something better, or even something just as bad in an interesting way.
Of course the difference isn't imperialism. But say what you will about the Clinton years, and god knows there was plenty of evil and his share of bad decisions even in terms of the imperial consensus, but the level of competence in maintaining that corrupt status quo was infinitely higher.
Now, I'm far from celebrating the state capitalist/national security state, and my first instinct, like many of you, is to cheer for the less competent state capitalist/imperialists. But that's where my greater pessimism (or maybe better historical awareness) comes in. As fucked up as it was - and I have NO illusions about any of it - by historical standards it was - for us and more importantly the rest of the world - not a horrible 50 years. But now the U.S. is like a fucking wounded bear. And much more dangerous than one. IOZ and some of you guys seem to think that the U.S. is going to go gently into that good night - Whereas I think we're going to out in a fit of insane rage, turning at least a fair portion of the middle east into a nuclear slag heap, and the U.S. into a version of North Korea (I admit the Somalia analogy was off).
Now, if the sane elites had kept control, we would have plenty of bad stuff, abroad and at home, but more of the same along the lines of the last 50 years, with a long slow decline (which historically is far less destructive than a rapid decline). Is that paradise? No. Would I lift a finger to actively support it? No. But it's a hell of a lot better - for us and the world at large - than what's going to follow.
Not the 7:19 anon.
Post a Comment