A good mob is hard to find

Paul Krugman, in his most recent column in the New York Times, has become yet one more liberal participating in the project of denouncing those who are protesting the policies of Barack Obama.  To see liberals reach for their guns of derision so quickly to shoot down the form of protest that they invented is amusing, to say the least.  Krugman, labels these conservative activist groups as “townhall mobs,” and he makes the typcial liberal maneuver to say that these protests are discredited by the fact that they aren’t real “grassroots” movements.  I find it fascinating that liberals, who are quick to fasten themselves to theories of postmodernism, are so suddenly worried about authenticity.  

After all, many of liberalism’s claims to fame (multiculturalism, moral relativism, deconstruction) are all based on a premise that authenticity is an elusive ideal that if pursued too aggressively will lead to violence and fascism.  So now the cultural gatekeepers of authenticity are observing forms of social protest from conservatives and saying, “unlike our fabricated, contrived, and orchestrated social protest groups like ACORN, PETA, the Sierra Club, the ACLU, Code Pink, the AFL-CIO etc. these conservative protest groups are not legitimate, because they are fabricated, contrived and orchestrated.”  If you follow this logic through to its conclusion, a reasonable observer would have to conclude that if authenticity is what gives the stamp of legitimacy to a social movement, then the major liberal movements of social protest are an exercise in inherent fraudulence.

Krugman concedes that some of these protesters appear to genuinely angry, but he can’t figure out why.

Krugman says:

There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.

Now, people who don’t know that Medicare is a government program probably aren’t reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing.

He then concludes that these people are just being racists.  I must applaud Krugman for his authentic liberalism.  There is nothing more authentic than a liberal trying to read something like race into every issue.

In response to Krugman’s anecdote, where he implies that people on Medicare shouldn’t be opposed to it, I would have to suggest that this is the problem with entitlements in general.  Once an entitlement becomes entrenched in society, a politician can always pull this trick on his constituents.  Maybe Krugman and Gene Green should pay more cognizance to the fact that even people who are enrolled in Medicare are still opposed to it.  This seems like a good question, and unfortunately for Krugman, the answer probably isn’t because they are a racist mob.

Maybe Krugman, recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, could take a look at the current budget projections for Medicare, and ask the question of why Americans would be against an expanded government role for health care.  Given the fact that Medicare is an abject economic failure by all standards, one has to wonder why someone who claims an advanced knowledge of economics would be holding this program up as something that should be supported.

Ultimately this leads me to say that I am not an ardent supporter of these town hall protests.  Conservatives don’t need to go shout down their representatives like a bunch of mindless liberals.  I would like to hear politicians like Gene Green answer one simple question:

“Mr. Green, every year I get a statement from the Social Security Administration that tells me that Social Security and Medicare on a fast-track fiscal train-wreck.  Given the undeniable fact that the federal government has proven to be grossly incompetent in managing these massive failures, why should average American citizens support an expansion of the government’s role in health care?”

If the answer to the question is the same meaningless Obama drivel that we have had to listen to for almost two years now, then maybe I undervalue a good mob.

Jake is in blue, I am in green:

I like your post on multiculturalism. However, I found myself wondering when I was done reading it, it is obvious that you don’t like multiculturalism, but you seem to assume it is bad as opposed to posting a substantive argument as to why this should be the case. Surely for conservative readers of your blog this is not a large assumption to make and will likely go unnoticed, but as an anthropologist (and one who claims to know a few things about culture), I still found myself scratching my head and thinking, why is this message to Iranian citizens such a bad thing, because it was phony and contrived.  How should the avowed disciple of multiculturalism engage the other who doesn’t share the same multicultural paradigm?  Where multiculturalism is a useful, historically located social construct for Western academics in the liberal arts to gain their fair share of grant money, since they can politicize an otherwise apolitical field of inquiry, unfortunately not all cultures have the same social constructs to encourage them to participate in this cult.  Despite its best intentions, multiculturalism is a very one-sided engagement with the other, and is therefore inherently and irreparably flawed. and more so why is multiculturalism such a bad thing? because of its strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest (notice the lack of pluralization on the word interest). And why is it such a bad thing particularly in a country as diverse as ours, where just about everyone who claims to have a culture disagrees fundamentally with at least someone else’s view from their “culture” why would we want to encourage a recipe for a melting pot of whiners?  Multiculturalism inflates the value of the cultural currency of minority groups and creates value where there is none., Mormons With what essentializing compass do you reductively circumscribe Mormonism as a monocultural phenomenon? certainly not being the most popular of these groups. Many southerners still talk about “the war of northern aggression,” for example.  I am assuming you have some field research to back this up, because it feels like a stereotype to me.  Honestly, if identifying a monocultural identity is so difficult how is drawing ever smaller circles around multiple cultures in any way a redemptive alternative?  At what point do you stop drawing smaller circles?  Ultimately, doesn’t the whole multicultural project become an exercise in arbitrary capriciousness? Is this not cultural difference?  Cogito ergo sum.  Are not two individuals islands of cultural difference? If you don’t think so, many of them certainly tend to think so, and also many of them don’t. When we look to such a rich history of immigration from diverse places of the world that populated this country not to mention the dynamics of time, history, syncretism, adaptation, it seems difficult for me to even begin to imagine whose monocultural stance we are going to adopt as “American.” I would have to begin to imagine that that there is a monocultural American identity that these diverse immigrants are adopting either through a process of assimilation or accommodation.  I would also have to begin to imagine that this monocultural American identity is largely the product of cultural discourses and narratives that are mostly rooted if not exemplified by the founding texts of America.  My short list of the founding texts of American culture are 1. The Constitution 2. The Bill of Rights 3. The Bible and 4. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.  I will grant that to their benefit these founding documents do create a space for multicultural exchange.  However, I would hesitate to essentialize America as a multicultural country.  In other words, I wouldn’t adopt the monocultural stance that we are a multicultural society.  This is a small part of American cultural identity usually made more important by liberals who exploit it for political purposes.  I am going to take a wild guess that, if this is ever going to happen I don’t think of cultural identity as an event, it is most likely not to be that of the average person in Utah valley however, your average person in Utah Valley probably has no problem adapting their multicultural proclivities to the hegemonic American culture that is rooted in America’s founding texts.  Also on another note, your average person in Utah Valley is probably more “multicultural” than your average American.  Most Americans haven’t immersed themselves in a foreign culture to the extent that the majority of average Utahns have.  So for you to essentialize America as multicultural and then use one of its most multicultural sub-cultures as an antithesis to your claim seems to be something of a paradox. So, again, I ask, why not multiculturalism? On further reflection, I am not opposed to multiculturalism, but I am opposed to the phony, half-assed multiculturalism that liberals use to advance questionable political agendas.   What is so bad about it? What parts of multiculturalism (as vague of a concept as it may be so framed) don’t you care for? And why is it so bad that our president should be considerate of the diversity of religious and cultural perspectives not only in our country but among the nations with whom we hope to engage diplomatically? I guess I don’t see engaging someone self-righteously through your own social constructs as considerate.  I also don’t overestimate the value of “being considerate” when it comes to international foreign policy.  Really, honestly, I can’t seem to figure out why you think multiculturalism is such a bad thing I can’t argue that it is a bad thing, but it certainly isn’t a good or viable or just solution to the world’s problems, except perhaps form a perspective of some type of massive group identity threat, which I don’t think to be the case.

Tis the Season

The atheists who had this sign posted in the capitol building in Olympia, Washington next to the nativity display are going to hate hell.

The discourse of “Reason” or “Rationality” is also myth and a superstition that is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment.  It is just as easy to indict the cult of reason for hardened hearts and enslaved minds.  However, it is difficult to find prominent examples where those who religiously adhere to the cult of reason have mobilised to become active participants of “good.”  For example, you don’t see volunteers driving trucks from the cult of reason to bring relief supplies to those who are victims of natural disasters.  They are too busy trying to figure out how humans caused the natural disaster.  In fact, the ego-centric Cartesian brand of rationalism that is the foundation of modern atheism, has led to the myth and superstition that the self can be elevated at the expense of the other.  The mythical narratives and superstitions of rationalism have led to violence and suffering in ways that make the crimes arising from religious zealotry look tepid.  Hey atheism, you’ve got something in your eye.  You might want to get that checked.  It looks like a beam or something.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the atheist’s monumental sign is the dismal lack of creativity or symbolism behind it.  I propose that everyone who reads my blog come up with a symbolic display that can better reflect the spirit of atheism and their holy reverance toward the winter solstice and reason, so that they don’t have to be stuck with a boring placard.  I will start.  How about a picture like the one below with a lighthearted holiday message:

May Reason Prevail! Happy Winter Solstice, from the the same school of thought that brought you nuclear weapons

deconstructed

I am fascinated with the idea that God has a sense of humor. Never is this possibility more perturbing as when I am driving my car through the sea of stupidity that we call humanity. Generally, my thought processes gravitate to a question that, I believe, is at the heart of deconstruction. If God has created infinite worlds, why couldn’t he have put me on one by myself? Why must my existence be shared with so many others who only seem to antagonize my existence? Nevertheless, I am stuck here with everyone else. Ironically, without everyone else, my being is nothing. To add insult to irony, language is the only tool that has been given to me to negotiate and navigate through this sea of stupidity. However, driving is one of the facets of my being where spoken language is transcended and higher, more abstract forms of communication are involved. I refer to the communicative process of tailgating.

I am of the persuasion that tailgating is a transcendental signifier whose signified is “get out of my way.” However, the responses that have been elicited by my experiences with tailgating indicate that maybe this signifier isn’t so transcendental. My problem is that I am using myself as a standard for what is. I assume that when I tailgate someone that they understand what I am communicating. According to my radically subjective definition for the rhetorical semantics of tailgating, there is no other signified other then “get out of my way.” The irony of tailgating is that no one ever gets out of my way. This could only mean that my definition of tailgating needs to be deconstructed and ethically constructed with consideration given to the context and intention of my communication with the other. I consider my tailgating to be an artifact/sign that signifies the event of one needing to get out of my way. Nevertheless, the response to this artifact is another artifact/sign, which signifies the event of one refusing to get out of my way. My intention in communicating this sign to someone elicits an entirely antithetical response. What we get is a signifier that is in dialectical opposition to the signified. A beautiful example of différance is the result of what I think my action signifies and how the other’s response to my action is antithetical to my semantic myopia. Within this space of différance, an infinite amount of meanings for tailgating can be conjectured based on the context.

For instance, let’s imagine that the other in this case is a middle-aged female English professor, who drives an oversized SUV as a source of empowerment. When she sees a twenty-something male college student in a sports car tailgating her, she might interpret the tailgating as a variety of signifieds. She might dismiss the action as a folly of youth, and in her wisdom she will intentionally slow down for didactic reasons. She doesn’t interpret the signifier to mean “get out of my way.” She sees it as, “teach me patience.” She isn’t just constructing my definition of tailgating, she is also constructing my definition of myself as a youth. Or perhaps there is some gender contention. Instead of “get out of my way,” she understands my tailgating to mean, “Woman, subugate thyself to me by moving.” In a strict act of gender defiance she refuses to switch lanes. Once again she is constructing my definition of self, specifically that masculine side of myself. Or perhaps the meaning lies in realm of socio-economics. Let’s pretend that the English professor is driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee and the student is driving a Lexus. The signifier then comes to mean something like, “I drive a better car than you, I am therefore the dominant one on the road, and all must yield to me.” However, this meaning is complicated by the fact that both drive nice cars. Cars are ambiguous signifiers of class status, which leads to another infinitely confusing mess. The whole thing might just boil down to pure physics. “I drive a bigger car, so I will drive how I want.” “I drive the faster car, so I will drive how I want.” One thing is for sure, a lot more things are being said besides “get out of my way.” Another thing is also for sure, a lot more is being defined besides the sign of tailgating.

I could continue for pages to describe different scenarios in which the meaning of tailgating could mean a variety of different things. The result of this demonstration would eventually show that tailgating is an empty signifier. It is a vacuum waiting to be filled with meaning, and this meaning will only be created as tailgating is used as a sign in the process of communication with the other.

With that said, if you ever see me tailgating you, rest assured that I am only conducting an experiment in metaphysics. I am not saying, “get out of my way.” However, I am saying something. How you respond will fill the vacuum created by my empty signifier. So in a sense you will be defining tailgating for me, and in the process you will help me define myself. This does not necessarily mean that you shouldn’t get out of my way. Don’t limit your response to simply staying in my way. We are dealing with endless possibilities here; let’s explore them.