[lbo-talk] stupidest quote of the week from an American politician?

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Jul 21 08:09:02 PDT 2006


Dennis Claxton:

Shucks, you took all the fun out of it. Without the stipulation, this would be as easy as falling out of bed.

[WS:] Au contraire, the "stupid" stipulation would be quite boring. I stipulated something rather different and more fun - that people tend to follow established paths, group norms and expectations they create. This is a smart thing under most circumstances - it reduces transaction cost of decision making.

The fun part of it is that it has certain interesting implications for those who strive to mobilize for a radical change. The "stupid" stipulation would merely evoke the trite and stale vanguard party approach to such mobilization. My stipulation is that such mobilization would be dead on arrival unless it is portrayed as something already established and time honored. A revolution that "conjures up the spirits of the past , and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language."

This is why Republicans rallying to money, guns, church, and kids (as you correctly observed) are so darn successful in taking this country in the direction that few would take on their own. This stipulates that if their opponents want get somewhere politically, they too need start talking - maybe not money, guns, or church - but something equally time-honored in this society. This is also why folks like the Clintons have a chance (which they may utilize or waste, but that is another story), and folks like Kucinich do not.

Wojtek



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