The Problem with Republicans, Chapter 2

David Plotz, Matt Miller, Madeline Albright, Robert Rueben, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Even Bye.

The Problem with Republicans

Nancy Pelosi: Lord of the Underwold

is democrats.

I think we need to have a talk.

...and I've been putting it off for a long time because, well, I just didn't know how you were going to take it. I don't like to make waves, rock the boat, whatever, but we just can't go on like this.

Being a Republican makes you a bad person. I'm sorry it's come to this but I just don't know what else to say or how else to say it. I have serious concerns about your ability to empathize, your understanding of the fundamental institutions of our political system and your pathalogical maintenence of superstitious ritual and supernatural mythologies. The ease with which you encourage amoral familism, historical amnesia and the constant redefinition of Republicanism in support of your profoundly egocentric worldview is trending rapidly toward a sociopathy that would require any alien anthropologist to conclude there are no standards by which you could be judged "a good person".

Now, let me throw you a bit of a lifeline. Being conservative does not make you a bad person. Being conservative may mean that you're wrong. Being conservative may mean that your personality developed in an environment which promoted a belief system which, though no fault of your own, encouraged suspicion of the civic, a deep soulful fear of things you don't understand, and a type of absolute confidence in your constructions which disallow the introduction of information which contradicts your suspicions, fears and confidences.

A whole other flavor of conservative believes in something called "free market capitalism". They believe in this concept so fully that they will conspire with other citizens who may or may not share their belief in order to create a coalition to with the triumph of the will to maintain the disemination of the construct.

You and I know Republicanism is not a uniform belief system. It isn't even necessarily the conservative party in America. I know, I know, the democrats aren't really the liberal party, but look this isn't about them, this is about you. The Republican party is only a collection of people who are not liberal. It is a negative project by defining itself not by the sundry hypocracies that stand in as campaign promises but as the anti-Democratic party.

This collection of anti-democrats end up being America's greedy and America's ignorant. The ignorant, would they give thier environment a second thought would realize the fantastic screw job they've been getting since at least LBJ gave them a choice between their own economic interest and really rolling up their sleves and letting thier fear of brown people set the agenda for a generation of crackers. The greedy would gladly sodomize their own grandmother if they thought it would eliminate the capital gains tax.

These identities, the fear of the ignorant and the avarice of the greedy are intrinsically tied. The greedy capitalize (as they're want to do in all occasions) on the irrational particulars of the ignorant at every turn. In short, the Republican party cannot exist if the ignorant do not believe the greedy are the leaders of their campaign to spread reductive puritanism and identify new targets for the externalization of thier personal shortcomings.

The greedy know this. They know unemployment isn't related to illegal immigrants or welfare, or any other bullshit idea. But the greedy have to maintain all myths that maintain and grow the coalition.

Let's end with this for today, and I want you to think about it after you go home. Your friends and loved ones care about you and want you to evaluate your life. We want you to stop what you're doing and come to your senses.

Please

The archetypal postmodernism of Mrs. Palin

The White Horse of the Appocolypes (maybe Red), William Kristol


[Note: cross posting today at www.projectivecaste.blogspot.com]

This week the prevailing framing from Democratic media outlets is that National Review founder and grand wizard of douschbaggery William Kristol is responsible for the nationalizing of Sarah Palin. It seems facile in the least to suggest one dillhole, no matter how mightely he might suck, could be responsible for pandemic platitudes, but let's continue under the assumption that he could. Further, lets allow that there is ample evidence to substantiate the claim that the beacon of the retardation can represent to a constituency their tribal ideal.

There have been numberous left leaning writers from Scott Horton to Andrew Sullivan are suggesting that the talented Mr. Kristol culled the G.I.L.F. not in spite of her empty suitness, but specifically for her vacuity.If her uncharacteristic character were cardianal among her endowments Bill Kristol's douschbaggery is tendind toward absolute truth. However, beyond the obscene anti-republican power to control such decisions the effect of political burlesque in this style represents either mastery of postmodernity with the cool menthol taste of deconstructionism or a rorschoch test which I'm sorry to say is going to lead to many more sessions, maybe bringing in some other members of the family, but let's do a couple more sessions one on one and see how it goes.

Peter Eisenman, Bill Kristol and Jacques Derrida. What do these characters from history have in common? They are all masters of the semantic school of the deconstructivist wing of the postmodernist party. (I think I've used that "wing of the party" gesture before...damn you Howard Dean and your lyrical word smithing)

The post Derrida-Eisenman break up to me signals the begining of the end of proper pomo, but in a way is the deconstruction of deconstruction. Somol-ien cool moves into or crafts the intellectual vacuum left by the collapse of criticality cum disciplinarity, and injects a theory of the thing dripping with faux zeitgeist optics and yearning for a criticcality of the uncritical. All this as a lyrical pathway toward expressing that postmodernism was shown to be a characture of itself, cliche and dogma dependant, stagnant and referential not of a historically crafted embeded system of knowledge but of a means of practice and a mode of product.

Damnit. I have to start writing these things earlier in the day. I've been absolutely wasting precious blogging time with this working that's been going around.

Cliff's Notes: She has substance and meaning and she is a symbol of her meaning. The meaning, sign and symbol are the same. there is no collapse of the meanings and valent representations, they develop in space coincidentally. The sign must then be emptied of it's meaning, the sign refilled with new meaning, and the sign becomes signifier of new meaning.

Anyhoo, the homework for if I decide to comeback to this: Notes Around Conceptual Architecture, The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture, Notes Around the Doppler Effect, Christy Canyon Unleashed (the Anabolic one not the Vivid Video release), Simulations (Buadrillard), The Myth of the Red and the Brown

Screw Flanders

P.O.W. Presidents and Detainee Prime Ministers

We've all seen the videos by now. When confronted by questions he cannot answer, positions he cannot defend or the unfortunately unpopular privilege of his biography John McCain has and will always present as proof of his indisputable membership in club every-man his time as a P.O.W. in Viet Nam. As surely as the seasons will turn, the Buckeyes won't live up to their hype, and Democratic leadership will always shy from a fight, the genuinely tragic reality of his time in Viet Nam will always be presented as and reported as unequivocal proof that his motivations are beyond reproach and more importantly that follow up questions would be in poor taste. 

Two recent examples of the technique. When the editorial board of the Des Moines Register noted that John McCain had lived his entire life with federally funded healthcare and then asked if that disqualified him from understanding the difficulties of the private health insurance system he replied by not really answering the question and then noting that he had no health insurance while he was a p.o.w. When he could not remember how many houses he and Mrs. McCain owned his campaign reminded us that he only lived in one house for five and a half years.

Constant reference to this chapter of McCain's life is not a reflexive response to uncontrollable environmental stimulus, nor is it the punctuation mark on a well crafted argument. It represents a calculated tactic intended to create a shield of credibility. The intent is to establish a direct causal link between his experience as a prisoner of war and his motivations and his policy catalog. That is, because he was a P.O.W. he must be working in America's best interests, and because  American exceptionalism is the foundation of republican tribalism, being a P.O.W. will make him a good president.

All this is a lengthy bit if history to establish the appropriateness of the following question:

Which of the prisoners in Guantanamo who have been or will be release without charge does John McCain feel is most qualified to be Prime Minister of their country of origin?

Joe Fucking Scarborough

"...if this election was about experience Barack Obama would lose." This is really the alpha and omega for not just Joe, who is basically a douschbag trying to sound reasonable, and in some ways the tripping point for contemporary Republicanism.

It starts with their belief that we electe leaders. I've never voted for a leader. Most people I know have never voted for a leader. I have on several occasions voted for a representative.

Now, it's always difficult to craft a logical aegis in defense of liberalism when combating republicanism because there is a unified political front, but no unified theoretical front. That is, as I've said many times before, republicanism is a coalition of disparate constituencies who do not agree in any way except that they are not Liberal.Its a perverted form of tribalism.

I digest, The phraseology, the Joe Scarborough debaters are searching for is "we don't vote for leaders with experience, we vote for representatives with judgement."

If you are coming from a point where you must have a leader. Where your starting point is cowardace and tribalism then leaders are necessary. When your starting point is faith in system, then representation within the system is adequate.