Thursday, October 21, 2004
(5:16 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Anger
If you want to read something really good, read this Derrida post from The Reading Experience, which is basically the best response to Derrida's death on the Internet. If you want to read something that I wrote, read this:There are good reasons to be conservative. There are good reasons to support limiting the size of government and generally to oppose the centralization of power in the hands of the federal government. There are good reasons to support sexual restraint and to discourage people from choosing the path of heterosexual monogamy. There are reasons to be proud of military service and to be fiercely patriotic. There are reasons to worry that perhaps judges are overstepping their bounds and to view the Founding Fathers as a still-relevant source of guidance for our contemporary political challenges. I don't share those views, but I can understand how one would. It is more than possible to be an intellectually honest and reflective person and to have conservative political views.
However, most people who go under the name "conservative" in public discussions are not intellectual honest and reflective people, at least in terms of the politics they advocate. They are partisan Republicans, extremely partisan Republicans -- to such an extent that a Republican can do no wrong and the slightest slip-up by a "liberal" is indicative of their moral bankrupcy. Take, for example, the most recent post by frieda, Cap'n Pete's absolutely horrible co-blogger whom he should fire immediately. I will gladly excerpt it here:
dear john kerry,I'm going to take John Kerry's word for it that he's a "lifelong hunter" until the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth come out with shocking evidence that he's never hunted in his life. The Google results for "john kerry lifelong hunter" all -- of course -- call Kerry out on his rank hypocrisy for enjoying hunting and supporting animal rights, and maybe that's a terrible thing that should make us all hate Kerry from the depths of our very souls -- but at the same time, all the stories agree that he was consistently able to hit his targets. The very fact that there are "dead geese" is prima facie evidence that he is in fact conversant with hunting, and it is completely appropriate for him to go to a hotly contested state and demonstrate that he shares interests with many of the voters in that state.
we are the spirits of the geese that you killed needlessly so that you could get the vote of the nra and support of ohio voters. shame on you, you fake, opportunistic bastard. next time you walk through a beautiful field where we fly, without a gun and camoflauge, we will make sure to poop on your head.
signed,
the pissed off geese
Yes, it's "political," but he's running for political office! By accusing Kerry of constantly making campaigning decisions -- not decisions in governance, but campaigning decisions, decisions in a context that is almost purely political -- based on "politics," the Republican hacks are implying that they are somehow not being political -- but as Carl Schmitt points out, claiming not to be playing politics is a particularly fierce way of playing politics. Jonah Goldberg and others were deeply offended by Alan Wolfe's article claiming that contemporary conservatives seem to be channelling the spirit of Carl Schmitt, but in reality, that's just a way of saying that Republicans are really good at playing politics. Being so extremely nit-picky and ridiculous while studiously ignoring the faults of the people on their own side is a brilliant political move -- perfectly calibrated to make one's non-Republican-hack opponents (commonly lumped together under the heading of "liberal") so angry that they can no longer think straight (as in my response to frieda's post, where I told her to "shut the fuck up" -- something for which I emphatically do not apologize), and thus reinforcing the stereotype that "liberals are all angry." Or, if the "liberals" patiently refute their claims, the Republican hacks can use that as evidence of the fact that "liberals are overly intellectual and lack the necessary clarity and decisiveness."
I've got to hand it to the Republicans on the politics -- they're great at it. They beat the Democrats in politics hands-down. The problem is that it leaves them very little energy to attend to the business of governing. The majority of Americans do realize that all the bluster of the Republicans is just that, and that Democrats are simply better at running the country. The problem is, those for whom the Republican bluster is a matter of life or death often outnumber those sensible Democrats-by-default on election day. Hopefully that will not be the case, and we will be able to return to the "radical center," neo-liberal normality of the Clinton years.
I fully expect to be deeply disappointed in Kerry, but I'd prefer his oppressive Enlightenment rationality to Bush's moral clarity, also known as willful ignorance of the way the world works (i.e., when you fight a war, sometimes people die -- that kind of thing). With Kerry, I can channel my disappointment and even my anger into a reasoned discussion; with Bush, my anger just stays anger. I know I'd be a morally better person if that weren't the case, but it is.
So yeah, Cap'n -- if you don't know how to remove team members from your blog, I'll give you a tutorial. Thanks!
