Okay, it's been a long time, but thinkness is back in the saddle. Last week was just too busy, and this weekend pulled me to New Orleans for a bachelor party. I'm still alive, surprisingly, and ready return to blog country.
A few months ago, thinkness made an abrubt but long anticipated turn away from posting so much about politics. I'm still interested and very invested in the subject, but I had become a little frustrated with a seemingly inherent problem with following politics: everything that is of interest and insight is quite separated from what actually matters, and what actually matters is fooling people and playing on their misconceptions and preconceptions.
But recently I've been too agitated about the state of the world to stop posting. So I'm going to drop some political bombs, just making sure to do it in a truly thinkness-esque way: looking at the trends in political thought and events, getting beyond the daily news bullshit to see where things are and where they're going.
A recent MediaChannel story by Philip Smucker (with a name like Smucker, it's got to be good) about how right-wing American media currently sounds like some of the hateful radio programming that helped incite the Rwandan genocide. Not knowing too much about Rwandan radio I can't say exactly how right it is, but it definitely registers with me that this current of hard-line thought -- excusing prison torture as a frat-like prank, for instance -- is noteably fascistic.
It reminds me of my oh-so-prescient point raised in my long post on postmodernism -- our society is psychically fractured right now because of the chasm between one mindset which uncritically accepts pre-packaged meaning from authority figures, and another mindset which is hesitant to warmly embrace sincere meaning at all. The central problem of fascism is a blind acceptance of national identification, and the radio crap coming from Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage is a step in that direction.
In the fall of 2001 I saw a lot of people sending out this quote from Hermann Goering:
But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
It may be a little trite, but it's true, and whether they intend to do it or not, Savage and Limbaugh are embarking down this path. American junior fascism is a much more organic development than the full-out variety from the previous century -- it's more of an emergent phenomenon than it was in Germany or Italy, nations which didn't have as strong safeguards against political upheaval.
By the way, Terry Eagleton -- who I cited as turning away from postmodern theory in that long post -- wrote a very interesting review of a book about fascism, speculating that it might be making a comeback. I think he may overstate the disconnect between free societies and free markets, but he makes good points.
Overall, what the country really needs is not just people on the left to point out junior fascism in the US, but to figure out ways to bring the two mindsets a little closer. I'm still working on it -- hit me with any suggestions.
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