> Buchanan isn't stupid, not at all. He's a brilliant polemicist, who can
> turn a phrase and knows how to make propaganda. If he were so of a piece
> with our mass culture he might have won a few more primaries.
Stupidity in the sense of a Bill Gates or corporate CEO: they're not dumb, but the system they thrive in prevents them from understanding, or even doing much about, the exploitation they direct and manage. Adorno says somewhere that the dominant form of subjective reason or rationality in late capitalism -- the drive towards self-preservation, to literally manage your own subjectivity as one would manage a business -- is precisely the negation of subjectivity; the subject is treated as so much disposable capital, to be invested for maximal returns (in Buchanan's case, of course, the marketplace in question is that of an archaic Imperial "paytriarchy"). The Rightwing is that which knoweth not its own history: literally and figuratively, they're damaged goods. Which is why they repeat themselves so much, and constantly long for a fantasy-world in which non-identity would be violently exterminated -- and then put policies in place which do exactly that.
-- Dennis