The right-wingers will not understand it. Sidney Blumenthal should apotheosise faux using all them big words

Blumenthal writes:

"With their fabrication of faux identities, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were of a piece with the other cultural warriors. Fashioning themselves in the image of historical characters was ultimately fashion. Rather than the real things, they were impersonating the genuine articles. And after the judgment of Election Day, they were revealed as historical reenactors without the costumes."

Cheney as tough guy = drag.

Haggard as straight married preacher = drag.

Karl Rove as true mastermind = drag.

Bush in flight suit on aircraft carrier with oversize codpiece = drag.

In the end, like their strategy in Iraq, the Republican's had only an ideology and not a policy from which to stump. There have been no accomplments made by thelock-step Republicans, unless you are part of that one-half of one percent that has benefited from their kickbacks. All that the Republican's could offer was mean spirited rhetoric. Their only platform was a picture of fear and hatred. Somehow, America woke up.

So, we are calling it "kitsch" now? I suppose that's one way to keep the conversation alive.

Describing kitsch, Mr. Blumenthal writes:

"While the proponents of the faux retro style claim to uphold tradition, they are inherently reactive and parasitic, their words and products a tawdry patchwork, hastily assembled as declarations against authentic complexity and ambiguity, which they stigmatize as threats to the sanctity of an imaginary harmonious order of the past that they insist they and their works represent. Kitsch presumes to be based on old rules, but constantly traduces them."

I can't stop thinking that the much shorter description of this sort of politics is Griffin's "palengenic ultra-nationalism." There's an even shorter one-word description, but that would bring us to Godwin's Law and who wants to go there? Today we have won an important battle to regain the future course of this nation. I would be happy to simply return to a world where facts matter.

Hahaha - "apotheosise faux" - now that's funny!

Superb analysis. Blumenthal exposes the methodology that has brought so much pain to so many. As an Asian residing in Asia, we have witnessed, in many Third World countries, politicians appropriating historical and cultural figures and events to justify policies that are really a comourflage for rampant corruption and self aggrandizement. That America fell for this ruse for this long is painful; we held America to higher standard of (moral) behaviour and accountability. Naivete on our part maybe, but who else can we turn to provide the counterweight agianst our ills?

While we are looking towards Uncle Sam saying its not A OK to do torture, we can't help but wonder, why and how it took so long for Americans to cotton on to the Bush design, when it was obvious for those of us outside the US from day one?

rajan

I see Blumenthal's use of analysis as entirely appropriate here. Indeed, the house of cards has fallen, and "house of cards" an apt metaphor. There's really no other way to describe all the "facts" Bush has brought us without resorting to metaphor and comparison: Iraq=quagmire, Bush=hollow/shallow man, Rumseld=an unreflective, angry McNamara.

It's not that Bush et al were wrong to compare themselves to historical figures, but that they did it inaccurately, self-righteously, pompously. I have to think of governments overturned by coup d'etat that were as arrogant, lying, corrupt and cynical in their use of fear and war. We rise from a lowpoint in American political history.

I appreciate this "literary turn" from Salon, again leaving other media outlets in the dust with strong content.

If you really want to OWN a copy, go to Amazon and pay your $495, but if you just want to READ it...

http://www.whitehouse.org/administration/lynne-cheney-sisters-complete.pdf

Unless you saw the Bush press conference today this notion of kitsch coming from the right seems like verbal chutney. Is anything what it seems? At best maybe the President is taking a cue from Arnold Schwarzenegger, if you can't beat em', lead em'; a reference to the California governors adroit efforts at reinventing himself on the fly. I was just kidding about Iraq, really.

I thought Bush was a bit crazy before, but today I am sure about it. Yesterday all Democrats were made to feel like the enemy, to an administration which was gradually subverting our rights to prove otherwise. We wanted to see Bush thrown out of office and so did Al-Qaeda. Now we share the same values? Who are these people?

Thank you, Sidney Blumenthal.

I'm reminded of a excellent lecture Arthur Miller gave after the presidential election in 2000, On Politics and the Art of Acting :

"...[I]t seems to me that when one is surrounded by such a roiling mass of consciously contrived performances it gets harder and harder for a lot of people to locate reality anymore. Admittedly, we live in an age of entertainment, but is it a good thing that our political life, for one, be so profoundly governed by the modes of theatre, from tragedy to vaudeville to farce?... [I]n a subtle way we are induced to become actors too. The show, after all, has to go on, even if the audience is obliged to join in the acting."

"...[I]n the middle of a play you can't have a major performer deciding to leave the scene without utterly destroying the whole illusion. For the system to be said to have worked, no one is allowed to stop acting."

[The entire transcript can be found here: http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/miller/lecture.html]

Puts his finger on what bothers me most about this group.... Their PHONINESS. Dressing up in a flight suit when Bush never heard a shot fired in anger, etc etc. "Kitsch" sounds more knowledgeable, but it boils down to their all being a great group of complete

PHONIES!!! I disagree with John McCain about just about every important issue, but he doesn't set my teeth on edge the way George Bush does, because he is not, or is not YET so irredeemably phony as the administration. These guys REALLY bring out my inner Holden Caulfield.

Not to mention they're a prize bunch of Archhypocrites.