Blair not a liar shock

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.
 

Greg

Member
k-punk said:
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.

Nice work... but I still can't help to think that this "persepctivist-absolutist model" that Blair adopts is a convenient cynicism, to give the impression Tony believe's in the validity of his distortions. It could be taken that if this is a veneer, then it allows Blair to knowingly lie, safe in the comfort that a pragmatic front is enough.

I suspect the disintergration of trust may stem from the fact that spin has collapsed, and people simply don't believe in it. Are we not already one step ahead of this political mode of New Labour that Blair is hanging on to? I suspect that even the United States has advanced further down the road of this strange Mobius-strip of modern politiking than liberal Europe. Isn't George W Bush the logical step in a post-Blair (hence post-Clinton) progression? A man for whom belief is all - a post-postmodern (!!) politician.

btw bourgeois I am, and most my friends too... don't worry, we all think they are lying fucks. you don't need to be working class to hold this view.
 

luka

Well-known member
my mum is a lawyer. that makes me as middle-class as its possible for a person to be. she does terrible things like, if a mother is injecting salt into her baby's bloodstream she saves the kids life. or finding homes for the victimes of child traffiking. lawyers are evil.
 

luka

Well-known member
for what it's worth, after that defensive spasm, i don'#t think tony is an easy character to get a handle on. its his religous belief which complicates things. my take is that becase he beleives(genuinely)that he is Right, it doesn't matter so much about the truth. if someone believes (as many think tony does_) they are on a mission from god, things like lying aren't very important.
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
I think you're spot-on Mark with your analysis of why Europeans can't believe Bush won. But I'm less sure about "the european middle class liberal's persistent faith in the institutions of 'democratic' power". Actually, hasn't some recent experience - Bush, Le Pen, even bloody UKIP, or the BNP in Bolton - shown that too often it is the liberals who sit at home while the rest go out to vote? That was certainly the case with Le Pen - his support didn't come from liberal faith in democracy, it came from right-wing votes and liberal apathy. If only middle class liberals voted in the US, it would be Democrats all the way, surely? It seems to me that fear of right-wing government will get liberals out to vote, but it's always the right that motivates the electorate first.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Innocynicism

Innocynicism -- that's the word I needed earlier....

Luke, I'm sure some lawyers are OK, but as ever your arguments are individualistic, inductive and subjectivized, whereas mine are structural.

As a general point, and this goes for the RCChurch of Satan defenders too: any 'argument' that begins 'My [insert family member, friend or shagpartner] is x' is no argument at all. So what? Either the conduct of such a person is defensible irrespective of their relationship to you or it is not. The fact there is some biological or social bond between you and someone else is a reason for distrusting your defence of them (i.e. vested interest).

Some lawyers are there to put right the evil that other lawyers allow, defend and make possible. There's no question that the Lawyer Plague of postmodernity functions to erode personal responsibility and shore up the big O, liability-metastasis goes alongside Blair's corporate (ir)responsibility, which means that no-one is responsible for anything (it's everything Nietzsche feared and abominated in BGE and GoM). The basic function of Law is to impede justice.... I'm definitely with Plato on lawyers.
 

luka

Well-known member
mark, you're a clever boy but you say some stupid things.
if you say a is like this, and yet every example of a isn't anything like what you say it is, it s a shit argument. end of story.
 

luka

Well-known member
you-what have the romans ever done for us?

me-well, theres the aqueducts

you-(grind teeth, pull out hair, fulminate)
 

luka

Well-known member
its the standard intelllectuals misapprehension. to think that because an argument is internally consistant it must be valid regardless of any evidence to the contrary. its why the neo-cons are 'fucking crazies' and its why you sometimes put foward these weirdo ideas. its how you end up debating angels and pinheads.

its whyphilspophy is a dead subject.
 

luka

Well-known member
i really dislike being patronised.
if you're defining your terms its easy to make a structurally sound argument, its a parlour game, so please don't make it out to be the height of human intelligence. its what the overeducated do to amuse themselves over roll-ups and half-pints of beer.
 

johneffay

Well-known member
luka said:
i really dislike being patronised.
if you're defining your terms its easy to make a structurally sound argument, its a parlour game, so please don't make it out to be the height of human intelligence. its what the overeducated do to amuse themselves over roll-ups and half-pints of beer.

His argument isn't structurally sound; you demonstrated that in your 12:39 post.
 

k-toe grrl

New member
I agree with greg, i think much of the explanation for Bush's popularity rests upon what greg terms "post-postmodern" politics. I heard lots of Bush supporters (and a few "undecideds", yes, they did exist) say things like"Bush is at least a real person, Kerry is such a...you know, politician." As for truth, it's Bush's own messianic version of truth that really sells, and that's because it's the only truth available now. People have learned that other stories about truth don't sell, possibly because of sloppy liberal relativism's stranglehold on education "Well, that's just my opinion, it's true for me, i guess." "That's just your opinion" or worse, what i often hear from students "Didn't (insert any philosopher's name here) say that there's no such thing, as, like, truth?". People have also learned that anything that comes out of a politician's mouth is a lie, (Nixon, Watergate, Monicagate) It seems the only truth anyone is willing to take seriously is religious truth, and that's the snake oil Bush has been selling all along. (I say snake oil, but i suppose Blair is the snake oil salesman here, Bush actually believes in it). There is no possibility of lying with religious truth. And with this kind of truth, you can be a bumbling idiot/holy fool and it still is the kind of truth people want to hear. Because it sounds profound yet has no content, so people can't argue with it or be put in a position of having to defend it. And that makes people feel 1) they are in on a profound secret 2) warm and safe 3) apathetic and complacent, and justifiably so.
 

Greg

Member
luka said:
its the standard intelllectuals misapprehension. to think that because an argument is internally consistant it must be valid regardless of any evidence to the contrary. its why the neo-cons are 'fucking crazies' and its why you sometimes put foward these weirdo ideas. its how you end up debating angels and pinheads.

its whyphilspophy is a dead subject.

Philosophy isn't a dead subject, as k-punk has shown its structural discourse is a good way to approach these type of arguments. as for validity... well you cant make the assumption that it is valid by default. I don't understand who would though.
 

Greg

Member
k-toe grrl said:
I agree with greg, i think much of the explanation for Bush's popularity rests upon what greg terms "post-postmodern" politics. I heard lots of Bush supporters (and a few "undecideds", yes, they did exist) say things like"Bush is at least a real person, Kerry is such a...you know, politician." As for truth, it's Bush's own messianic version of truth that really sells, and that's because it's the only truth available now. People have learned that other stories about truth don't sell, possibly because of sloppy liberal relativism's stranglehold on education "Well, that's just my opinion, it's true for me, i guess." "That's just your opinion" or worse, what i often hear from students "Didn't (insert any philosopher's name here) say that there's no such thing, as, like, truth?". People have also learned that anything that comes out of a politician's mouth is a lie, (Nixon, Watergate, Monicagate) It seems the only truth anyone is willing to take seriously is religious truth, and that's the snake oil Bush has been selling all along. (I say snake oil, but i suppose Blair is the snake oil salesman here, Bush actually believes in it). There is no possibility of lying with religious truth. And with this kind of truth, you can be a bumbling idiot/holy fool and it still is the kind of truth people want to hear. Because it sounds profound yet has no content, so people can't argue with it or be put in a position of having to defend it. And that makes people feel 1) they are in on a profound secret 2) warm and safe 3) apathetic and complacent, and justifiably so.

more questions arise!

a) did moral relativism (and as a result political relativism) in the United States die on the 11th of September 2001?

b) is Bush a dupe? there is the possibility that he does not in fact represent a new political order, but a subtle continuation of the old. I understand this to be possible if you fall in line with conspiracy theory - that Bush is a puppet playing in the hands of the real political leaders (Wolfowitz, Cheney etc - real politicians in the trad sense).
 

Greg

Member
ah... there go my theories...

capt.arrf12711182200.clinton_library_arrf127.jpg
 

mind_philip

saw the light
The idea that Bush might be a dupe is comforting, but empty. I was in the US for five weeks leading up to the election, and from what I saw, Bush convincingly stands for issues that Americans really do care about, in large numbers. The outrage over Janet Jackson wasn't fictitious, millions of people were shocked. The non-profound conservatism of many states really can't be over-estimated. A whole host of little signifiers of probably larger prejudices abound, couples who hold hands in the streets as if they are trying to stay as far apart as possible, no gay couples at all. This mantra of nebulous 'values' and respect for a cherished but undefined way of life won at the election because that is all a lot of people care about. As long as they can go about their lives without having Janet Jackson's nipple flashed at them or having to deal with the sight of two men kissing in the street, they are happy. Bush promised security of a kind that these people understood, while Kerry promised nothing of the sort.
 

MBM

Well-known member
Either the conduct of such a person is defensible irrespective of their relationship to you or it is not.

And a truth is that most people do not wake up in the morning, wring their hands, cackle manically and plan what evil they will wright on the benighted earth.

Goerge W Bush included.

I know many flawed, selfish people (including me) but few genuinely evil ones.

The "evil" we perpetrate is systemic. So how do we get rid of the “Lawyer Plague” – do we Kill ‘Em All? Or do we look at the bonds of trust between ourselves>

Because most legal activity takes place in the civil sphere and is a replacement for trust not justice. Altho the two are interlinked.

And do I think Blair is a liar? No. Sadly I don't. I couldn't tell you what he believes.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
johneffay said:
His argument isn't structurally sound; you demonstrated that in your 12:39 post.

No he didn't.

He missed the point of it, and his subjectivist huffs and puffs and further ad hominen nonsense rather confirmed my analysis.

But I suppose if you're not into rationality, anything goes.

Lawyers are _structurally_ evil. The fact that some lawyers are good is not because they are lawyers; on the contrary, it is in spite of the fact that they are lawyers, i.e. because they have ethical principles which they will stick to despite the logic of their profession which is intrinsically and of its nature amoral. Law is precisely the emptiest of empty parlour games, the raising of idiot debate and winning to the highest principle. In other words rhetoric, rather than argument. Philosophy, by contrast, is about argument and rationality. I know these terms are anathema to the dominant Teen-Nietzsche Ontology of hey everything's relative man, let's just talk nonsense cos everything's as valid as anything else -- but if you are engaging in argument you simply have to present valid reasons for your conclusions. This is why rationality is impersonal; it doesn't matter who or what is making the argument and why outraged offence - 'my feelings have been upset by', 'one of my best friends is....' is not an argument, it is a substitute for an argument.

Of course, philosophy is 'dead' in the commonsense, everyday world - but then who would want to live in that? (But then of course irrelevant appeal to popularity is yet another fallacy... but, natch, you only think there are fallacies if you're not a committed irrationalist....)

A good lawyer is like a good soldier. It would be better if we didn't need either wouldn't it?
 
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