Wednesday, June 29, 2005
(8:04 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The New Non-Conservative Strategy
It seems that all of us non-conservatives (called "liberals" by conservatives) have finally come to our senses in terms of responding to conservative attacks. In part, this is due to sheer exhaustion. After years of responding to the exact same attacks, week in and week out, our belief in the good faith of our conservative opponents is completely gone. We realize that, the whole time, they were talking to people who already agreed with them, even in situations where normal human beings would talk to the person actually present -- and we realize that, since the orthodox conservative way of thinking is so stupid and contradiction-laden, mindless repetition is the only possible way to "convince" people of it.So now we non-conservatives are slowly realizing that our last refuge is sarcasm. Yes, I'm casting magic spells to make the Iraq War go poorly. Yes, I've devoted my entire journalistic career to aiding and abetting terrorism. Etc. I count this as a victory of the pro-satire wing of the epic battle of the Wealth Bondage Dumpster. Though perhaps not a victory of the non-conservative movement in this country -- more a strategic retreat. One hopes that sarcasm can unmask the stupidity of mainstream orthodox conservative discourse, which proudly and openly proclaims its historic inability to compete on equal footing with other ideological forms in the public discursive space of classic liberalism (the "liberal media," the universities) -- but one hopes also that people do not continue to embrace stupidity because it "at least" offers something positive, in contrast to the debunking and discrediting strategies of non-conservative commentators.
