the profits of character assassination

Republicans, and certain Tea Party leaders, who use words and images irresponsibly, know exactly what they're doing when they walk along the thin line demarcating civility and barbarism. They intend to incite passions and to demonize opponents, and they have been fairly successful on both accounts. The question that should be put to them, after the carnage in Tucson, is this: was it worth it?

contradictions of the insanity defense

The Tea Party and its fellow travelers will hit the “mental illness” explanation as hard as the alleged shooter’s likely legal defense team; which will be curious, since law and order Republicans will likely decry such a defense. Hence, we could witness the following display of doublespeak from Republicans and Tea Party extremists: the alleged shooter is insane, he is not part of the anti-government movement; but the alleged shooter is sane enough to face trial and, potentially, capital punishment. It will be interesting to see how these two opposed claims will be reconciled.

Sarah Palin's chickens...

have come home to roost. It comes as no surprise that reckless, anti-government rhetoric has inspired violent action.

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”

I suspect Palin will turn this shooting into a political advantage. She'll make herself out as the victim of the "liberal media" for associating her with the attack on the Congressperson. She'll play the liberal media card while serving as a paid Fox News analyst, probably on Sean Hannity's program.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor (the Republican House Majority leader) has wisely postponed debate on the proposed total repeal of “Obamacare,” which was the object of most of the Tea Party's symbolic violence. He's likely aware the extremist rhetoric that House Republicans -- newly infused by Tea Party supported members -- deployed last year would not play well with the American public under the circumstances. Who knows how the rhetoric will be reshaped.

isn't it ironic

that Assange’s lawyer is complaining about a leak of information.

Incriminating police files were published in the British newspaper that has used him as its source for hundreds of leaked US embassy cables.

In a move that surprised many of Mr Assange's closest supporters on Saturday, The Guardian newspaper published previously unseen police documents that accused Mr Assange in graphic detail of sexually assaulting two Swedish women. One witness is said to have stated: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."

Bjorn Hurtig, Mr Assange's Swedish lawyer, said he would lodge a formal complaint to the authorities and ask them to investigate how such sensitive police material leaked into the public domain.

seeking 'good government' republicans

What is striking to me about politics from the conservative side of things (conservative understood quite broadly) is that no claims have been made that conservatives would be more "competent" governors. This might be because the rhetorical emphasis on the shibboleth of "small government" gets in the way of an interest in "good government." Or I suppose "good government" is construed narrowly as "good for business" or "creating jobs in the private sector." Political Republicans (i.e. the governing group of Republicans, not the Rogueistas) appear to see no positive role for government other than playing the role of matador, getting out of the way of the charging bull of liberty and entrepreneurial initiative. However, if the conservative side were to turn from the mantra of reducing government to that of a "government that works" (i.e., one in which the trains run on time, not simply "balancing the budget"), then candidates like Romney or even Bloomberg would make sense. But since government by definition means incompetence for the Right, these possible candidates don't seem viable at the moment. (Another possibility, Petraeus, has wisely demurred). Thus a motley crue of Palin, Huckabee, Pawlenty, and Jindal must suffice for a Republican Party geared more towards hair band aesthetics than substantive politics.

strawberry fields forever

Death is the great equalizer. Only the most horrific character is not mourned in some small way. Indeed, this may be bourgeois sentimentalism, but in contemporary society any sense of loss in the face of brutality is truly more radical than the self-righteous detachment of the politics of objectivity. In fact, detachment admits to a compliance with, and affirmation of, that brutality against which another brutality is being waged in the name of peace and freedom. John Lennon has become a victim of that brutality which announces itself in objective newscasts on the one hand, and in the overt pseudo-emotionalism of intervening advertisements on the other. John apparently saw things-as-they-will-always-be all to clearly in the late sixties. “Give peace a chance” itself pays witness to the formidable odds against realization of peace. A symptom of the culture industry, he attempted to turn his master against itself. But selling peace only turned into a repressive desublimation, just as today the selling of war becomes repressive resublimation. Peace cannot be realized in the market place of Ideas. Yet, on the other hand, John found no identification with the orthodox dreams, if even for unconscious reasons. One sentence from many in his music is crucial: “you say that its an institution [the constitution], you better free your mind instead.” The freeing of the individual from instrumentalized rationality was not overcome by the music of John Lennon. Ironically, his last work saw a return to the family and love, the possible haven in a heartless world and that radical moment of resistance, the vindication of the irrational, Eros. John lost his heart tonight, as did much of what survives of humanity.

Written December 8, 1980

wikileaks once more

It does seem hypocritical, if not cynical, that wikileaks itself lacks transparency. It would be nice to know the structure of the organization, the salaries of its employees, their training and expertise in the field of transparency. At this point, it is seems to be nothing more than the righteous, self-appointed guardian of full disclosure and insists on the same privacy privileges that nation states do with respect to "sensitive information." And like nation states, wikileaks positions itself outside the law when convenient, for Raison d'wikileaks. Who will hold wikileaks accountable? Where is the means for public oversight?

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Wikileaks is like a surrealist manifestation: stir up and offend the bourgeois sensibility just to see what happens. After the initial shock effect of the initial manifestation wears off, predictable reactions ensue. With the issue of the second word salad leak there occurs, first, a faux shock effect ("omigod can you believe THAT! The Queen hates X, Y, and Z, Blah, Blah, Blah"); then stern but weary tut-tuting from Secretaries of State and Defense; then a noble defense of the Dick Cheney Principle (adopted from Malcolm X) on the part of the Merry Leaksters: "by any means necessary we will expose (X, Y, and Z, Blah, Blah, Blah), because this is the most outrageous lie, the most horrible offense, the absolute total crime against human decency committed by (X, Y, and Z, Blah, Blah, Blah). Any questioning of our methods or our motives is unacceptable, is simply the doublespeak of power, and aren't you all just Agents/Borg after all." Finally, after a few days, silence settles over the global village. Then, once a considered amount of time has passed, calculated according to sound market research findings, another manifestation is exploded. "1 trillion super-secret cables released!" Repeat ad nauseum the faux shock, the enervated scolding, the impassioned self-defense. If an artist were to draw a mustache on a print of the Mona Lisa today, it would elicit the same yawn that our contemporary, naive political surrealists will incur over time.