In the same way, when Bush was elected, I often used to argue that Bush would subvert his own presidency; that he would lay bare the mechanisms of the 'ruling ideological edifice'. And indeed, he has done so (or at least, it's all there on the surface - Wolfowitz makes no attempt hide the fact that there aren't any WMDs in Iraq - with Clinton in power we had to dig just a little harder). With Clinton it was all human rights and liberation; with Bush, you get the public discourse (human rights and liberation), but also the obscene private discourse as well (WMDs are a secondary issue; the carving up and selling of Iraq). With Clinton, the obscene element was hidden.
I'm sure these are all commonplaces for you, but I guess what I want to ask is how it is possible to lie so badly and get away with it, particularly when it's the liar who exposes his own fraud!
A friend of mine wrote that there is now no hierarchy in broadcast media, meaning that 1) Every truth has an equal and opposite truth (if you interview a Democrat you have to interview a Republican, even if what the Republican says is false, and you just report the two sides) 2) Each of these 'truths' floats in a kind of 'discourse space' where there is no hierarchy/'truth-value' 3) Such a hierarchy is therefore subjective (we as subjects build it).
Of course we don't have access to the truth, only its afterimages. But is the problem that there is just too much of a 'fact soup'; facts, words and images floating around without structure, so that we tend to grab for what is close to us: personality and phrases with immediate resonance. We make 'a' sense, but it is the wrong sense.
Simon
> From: Bill Bartlett
> The current US government, unlike its predecessors,
> is so stupid and
> arrogant that it disdains to disguise its hegemony.
> US aggression is
> paraded naked through the capitals of the world, it
> ugliness arousing
> enormous opposition. A return to the more sensible
> practise of
> disguising this power and cloaking it in "consensus"
> and fake
> multilateralism would not change the practise, but
> would minimise the
> opposition.
________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk