k-punk
Spectres of Mark
The fruits of a brief but typically super-stimulating conversation with Infinite Thought and Alberto Toscano (a man badly in need of an alias).
We all know that Blair is a liar, right?
I'm not so sure.
What is certain is that Bush is a <i>poor</i> liar. But I suspect that Bush's failure to be a good liar is precisely what accounts for much of his appeal to the American electorate. (And <a href=http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/the_liberal_waterloo/>Zizek</a> is surely right: even gliberals cannot hide from the fact that the American public actually wanted Bush to lead them this time.) Far from being overlooked by the American voters, Bush's notorious linguistic slip-ups, incompetence and stiff lack of conviction as a public speaker actually play positively. Because it is easy to translate Bush's failings into a hostility to politics or politicians. Bush lacks the lawyer slickness that is the stock-in-trade of the postmodern politician. <i>How could they have voted for a bad politician</i>? seems to be much of the content of the liberal plaint.
And what is at stake here is the european middle class liberal's persistent faith in the institutions of 'democratic' power. (Such faith amounts to a vested interest, of course, so it need not surprise us).
Belief in party politics is a strangely middle class affair, after all. It's always faintly disconcerting to go into a middle class house around election time. You're left scratching your head, bemused. <i>They actually think this is important</i>? The vulgar, 'uneducated' working class view, of course, especially now that there is no effective working class representation whatsoever, is that 'they are all liars' and that it doesn't much matter which bunch of Oxbridge bourgeois lawyer fucks do their silly debating soc antics at our expense for the next five years. (Of course, though they'd never admit it, election coverage is the bourgeoisie's equivalent of Pop Idol or Big Brother.)
Being a politician and being a lawyer are effectively indistinguishable in postmodern liberalism. In this respect, as in many others, Bush remains conspicuously pre-postmodern. It's almost as if he hasn't seen the disastrous footage of Nixon sweating in the TV debate with Kennedy, as if he doesn't realise the importance of spin and soundbites and everything that is allegedly necessary to be successful in politics today. The hyper-vigilant Blair never gives that impression.
But it is because Blair is a consummate politician that he has no legitimacy whatsoever and his popularity is disintegrating all the time.
But it is worth questioning our default assumption that Blair's nauseating smarm is equivalent to dissimulation. That would be to miss what is darkly distinctive about the postmodern liberalism of which he is the most sinister exemplar.
The point is that Blair can't lie, because like every good postmodernist, he has dispensed with the concept of truth, or at least installed a strange kind of persepctivist-absolutist model of truth. 'What is truth?' you can imagine Blair asking, in tribute to the postmodernist's ultimate inspiration, Pilate. 'My truth is the need to run the country/ the world well.' This messianic properly Nietzschean Truth overrides the contingent or local truth of facts. All facts may count against the Truth of the Mission, but no matter... so much the worse for the facts.
Blair is that most dangerous of entities: a lawyer who absolutely believes in his own rectitude, who is unable to distinguish intellectual rigour from the imbecility of debate. We should expect no more, but Blair is the product of a bureaucratic PR class which literally finds doing anything unthinkable. For the Blairite, reality is just a distraction from PR. 'Winning', beating your public school/ Oxbridge rivals, is all. Hence again, the flatness of Kynikal-innocent kapital, Blairism and Nietzcheanism: in all of them there is a denial of the importance or indeed ontological validity of the distinction between appearance and reality ('How the true world became spin') alongside a hyper-pragmatic dismissal of ultimate truth in the name of expediency and will.
So, no, Tony can't lie.
We all know that Blair is a liar, right?
I'm not so sure.
What is certain is that Bush is a <i>poor</i> liar. But I suspect that Bush's failure to be a good liar is precisely what accounts for much of his appeal to the American electorate. (And <a href=http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/the_liberal_waterloo/>Zizek</a> is surely right: even gliberals cannot hide from the fact that the American public actually wanted Bush to lead them this time.) Far from being overlooked by the American voters, Bush's notorious linguistic slip-ups, incompetence and stiff lack of conviction as a public speaker actually play positively. Because it is easy to translate Bush's failings into a hostility to politics or politicians. Bush lacks the lawyer slickness that is the stock-in-trade of the postmodern politician. <i>How could they have voted for a bad politician</i>? seems to be much of the content of the liberal plaint.
And what is at stake here is the european middle class liberal's persistent faith in the institutions of 'democratic' power. (Such faith amounts to a vested interest, of course, so it need not surprise us).
Belief in party politics is a strangely middle class affair, after all. It's always faintly disconcerting to go into a middle class house around election time. You're left scratching your head, bemused. <i>They actually think this is important</i>? The vulgar, 'uneducated' working class view, of course, especially now that there is no effective working class representation whatsoever, is that 'they are all liars' and that it doesn't much matter which bunch of Oxbridge bourgeois lawyer fucks do their silly debating soc antics at our expense for the next five years. (Of course, though they'd never admit it, election coverage is the bourgeoisie's equivalent of Pop Idol or Big Brother.)
Being a politician and being a lawyer are effectively indistinguishable in postmodern liberalism. In this respect, as in many others, Bush remains conspicuously pre-postmodern. It's almost as if he hasn't seen the disastrous footage of Nixon sweating in the TV debate with Kennedy, as if he doesn't realise the importance of spin and soundbites and everything that is allegedly necessary to be successful in politics today. The hyper-vigilant Blair never gives that impression.
But it is because Blair is a consummate politician that he has no legitimacy whatsoever and his popularity is disintegrating all the time.
But it is worth questioning our default assumption that Blair's nauseating smarm is equivalent to dissimulation. That would be to miss what is darkly distinctive about the postmodern liberalism of which he is the most sinister exemplar.
The point is that Blair can't lie, because like every good postmodernist, he has dispensed with the concept of truth, or at least installed a strange kind of persepctivist-absolutist model of truth. 'What is truth?' you can imagine Blair asking, in tribute to the postmodernist's ultimate inspiration, Pilate. 'My truth is the need to run the country/ the world well.' This messianic properly Nietzschean Truth overrides the contingent or local truth of facts. All facts may count against the Truth of the Mission, but no matter... so much the worse for the facts.
Blair is that most dangerous of entities: a lawyer who absolutely believes in his own rectitude, who is unable to distinguish intellectual rigour from the imbecility of debate. We should expect no more, but Blair is the product of a bureaucratic PR class which literally finds doing anything unthinkable. For the Blairite, reality is just a distraction from PR. 'Winning', beating your public school/ Oxbridge rivals, is all. Hence again, the flatness of Kynikal-innocent kapital, Blairism and Nietzcheanism: in all of them there is a denial of the importance or indeed ontological validity of the distinction between appearance and reality ('How the true world became spin') alongside a hyper-pragmatic dismissal of ultimate truth in the name of expediency and will.
So, no, Tony can't lie.