Magic
There's that real cool thing about not being a native english speaker, that it's ok if you suck at it. This way, you can link to real writers without suffering of the comparison.
A propos, william gibson has a blog, and sez :
and too :
... And other miscellaneous interestingnesses (foreign speaker free pass! woohooo!). I humbly think i share a stone in the shoe with mr gibson.
It takes some political wonkery to hear them, but there are some tearing and screeching in the conservative ranks about this election, and about bush. According to most of the commenters, the bush years are to blame for this unrest : the small governement people are not happy, the alliance building people are not happy, the small footprint people are unhappy etc.
As polls show, this doesn't matter. It may be because of rove's dark powers, but too because these various stripes of conservatism share enough to make it happen nevertheless. I think that gravitation center is a solid belief in magic.
That brings us back, to reagan. Lots of the magical thinking in us seems to be linked to his presidency (or? calling all old farts out there). "If you do the right moves, and utter the right ceremonials (being optimistic and not helping ths poor), then your life will be ok" is the lesson he seems to have deeply carved into u.s. minds. The real explanation, (weirdo keynesianism, attracting foreign capital, and gorbatchev's choices) is unimportant, as what people really understood was simply that "magic works". Or, as the expression goes, that the "sunny optimism" of the president really mattered.
The Great Ancestor reagan is still a reference point for both candidate, and more largely for the u.s. political life, but the republicans, more than the dems, have mastered the use of the need for magic in the electorate -once sunny optimism, it os now steady leadership. Happily, as the perfomances of the u.s. army show, adaptability to your ennemy hasn't stopped to be valued. Simply the "steady leadership" totem will bring all kinds of good things, without the need to elaborate causes and consequences, magically, just like reagan's optimism.
Thing is, the playfield is not level : as far as magic goes, we're in conservative territory. The recent suskind article about bush's god-assisted decision making, or the reality creating epire bulkders, or the future state free utopia or god knows what other conservative fantasy.
The common denominator is that your attitude, your will, your "sunny optimism", your "steadyness", or faith are what matters, and that the money, people, geopolitic, economic, cultural etc factors take the backseat to these ones.
As i'm about to write that they really believe that steady leadership will stop bullets, i realize i'd better simply send you all to Fafblog, the one-stop for all your anti terrorism magical laser beam robots related activities.
----
Half related, and in a hurry, as i just decided i'd be too lazy for another post, there's the "greater generation" complex. The grave ponderings about, y'know, are we that good at nation building? Fully godlike or only half-the-stuff?
Ther's a part of simple naivety in it (building the japanese/german nation, rright) but let's put that aside.
The real problem there is that the greater generation did all these things worrying about gathering machines, logistics, capital, people, industrial production to solve problems, or to make the other bastard die for his country. That's all as reality based as you can get. And now we have the pie-in-the-sky all-stars referring obssessively to them (irak=germany, i'm telling you!) to promote their lunacies.
Tempora, mores, you get the picture.
A propos, william gibson has a blog, and sez :
[about reagan] His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.
and too :
Could it be that the obscenely comforting narrowing of imaginative bandwith (the real payoff in becoming a Bushite believer) was actually changing the world, or threatening to, via its chilling effect on consensus-reality?
... And other miscellaneous interestingnesses (foreign speaker free pass! woohooo!). I humbly think i share a stone in the shoe with mr gibson.
It takes some political wonkery to hear them, but there are some tearing and screeching in the conservative ranks about this election, and about bush. According to most of the commenters, the bush years are to blame for this unrest : the small governement people are not happy, the alliance building people are not happy, the small footprint people are unhappy etc.
As polls show, this doesn't matter. It may be because of rove's dark powers, but too because these various stripes of conservatism share enough to make it happen nevertheless. I think that gravitation center is a solid belief in magic.
That brings us back, to reagan. Lots of the magical thinking in us seems to be linked to his presidency (or? calling all old farts out there). "If you do the right moves, and utter the right ceremonials (being optimistic and not helping ths poor), then your life will be ok" is the lesson he seems to have deeply carved into u.s. minds. The real explanation, (weirdo keynesianism, attracting foreign capital, and gorbatchev's choices) is unimportant, as what people really understood was simply that "magic works". Or, as the expression goes, that the "sunny optimism" of the president really mattered.
The Great Ancestor reagan is still a reference point for both candidate, and more largely for the u.s. political life, but the republicans, more than the dems, have mastered the use of the need for magic in the electorate -once sunny optimism, it os now steady leadership. Happily, as the perfomances of the u.s. army show, adaptability to your ennemy hasn't stopped to be valued. Simply the "steady leadership" totem will bring all kinds of good things, without the need to elaborate causes and consequences, magically, just like reagan's optimism.
Thing is, the playfield is not level : as far as magic goes, we're in conservative territory. The recent suskind article about bush's god-assisted decision making, or the reality creating epire bulkders, or the future state free utopia or god knows what other conservative fantasy.
The common denominator is that your attitude, your will, your "sunny optimism", your "steadyness", or faith are what matters, and that the money, people, geopolitic, economic, cultural etc factors take the backseat to these ones.
As i'm about to write that they really believe that steady leadership will stop bullets, i realize i'd better simply send you all to Fafblog, the one-stop for all your anti terrorism magical laser beam robots related activities.
----
Half related, and in a hurry, as i just decided i'd be too lazy for another post, there's the "greater generation" complex. The grave ponderings about, y'know, are we that good at nation building? Fully godlike or only half-the-stuff?
Ther's a part of simple naivety in it (building the japanese/german nation, rright) but let's put that aside.
The real problem there is that the greater generation did all these things worrying about gathering machines, logistics, capital, people, industrial production to solve problems, or to make the other bastard die for his country. That's all as reality based as you can get. And now we have the pie-in-the-sky all-stars referring obssessively to them (irak=germany, i'm telling you!) to promote their lunacies.
Tempora, mores, you get the picture.
posted by yabonn at 5:13 PM
<< Home