Post modernism; the conservative's new clothing AKA Viper Fang!

Its downright Albrechtsenian I tell ya! Post modernism gone wrong and running wild all over the place! ("Watchya gonna do, brutha?") So who is responsible for the latest po-mo shot in the ongoing battle to destroy meaning in language? (would have used English, but that would be an oxymoron) Fidel Castro in Che Guevara's reanimated zombie body indulging in some semiotic hi jinks would have been my guess. (Have the socialists nationalised zombifying technology yet? And when will capitalism strike back? Market opportunities abound here, surely Malcolm Turnbull!!)

But no!!! Turns out the latest missive in undermining traditional Western culture and the 'Enlightenment values we hold dear such as inquiry and reason' has been fired by that well known post-modern collective of free-thinkers and lefty, latte sipping, the Monthly magazine reading, human rights activists known as Bushco Inc. Those Frenchie bastards; you can practically envision them all standing back, having a laugh with Derrida and Duchamp over their latest toiletry turn at art/critical theory. Why wouldn't the most incompetent administration in US history intentionally try to fuck up Western culture as much as they have fucked up the(ir) (world) economy, the Middle East, the 'War on Terror', pick your own personal favourite from the et al list to end? (Editor's note: I am aware that they wouldn't read the Monthly in the US, but I was channeling Gerard Henderson and couldn't contain myself. Method writing!!)

Well, you're in luck true believers, because those neo-con economic whizkids at USA Inc have set their sights on language in such a way that there's no doubt that us proles will all be speaking IngSoc by 2020. In what has to be one of the most blatant examples of Orwell's Newspeak imaginable, the US and Iraqi governments are now commencing talks on drafting a 'time horizon' for US troops to withdraw from Iraq and to hand full security responsibilities to the civilian Iraqi government. Sounds great; get the troops out of the country, which will hopefully reduce violence levels further and leave the future of the country in Iraqi hands, who are to be responsible for it from now on minus all the private companies that are moving in after the vacuum of nationalization of industry under Saddam has passed . It's a similar attitude we take towards dolebludgers; if you want the cash, you have to work for it (alas, dolebludgers do not bludge over underground oil deposits that corporations have boners for, and the government doesn't put itself in deficit to pay the dole. Bad analogy!) But wait! What the fuck is a time horizion??

Now this is where it gets interesting, and where Janet, the Oz (both of who have had nothing to say about this and other po-mo exercises that the Bush admin run, but will gleefully tear apart less apt comparisions), Orwell and po-mo gone wrong all start to loop up and link together, just like the last story arc in a Grant Morrison uber-run. The schadenfreude that one registers from Bushco being forced to use the term 'time horizon' is because they were so vociferously opposed to drafting a time line for when the troops would be withdrawn from Iraq. ("I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their job. And I believe artificial timetables of withdrawal would be a mistake.") Through their dedication to prickishness over the years, the Bush administration has managed to take what was supposed to be a significant policy change on Iraq (to be talking about the possibility of withdrawal from Iraq is a major policy change, given that they were so opposed to the mere mention of it until July this year) and have somehow managed to make the messenger the issue rather than the change in policy, the message.

Simply put, if Bush hadn't made the initial (and subsequent) song and dance about time lines for troop withdrawal, his use of time horizon would be a non-issue. But because there have previously been these semantic word games played over the definition of words like torture (to quote Christopher Hitchens, 'if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.' ), civil war/sectarian conflict, financial market bailouts/liquidity backstop (that one's a real 'wtf were they thinking of trying to argue there?') it demonstrates that the administration has form here, and it is worthwhile examining the techniques that are being used to see if there is any rational sense behind their application or if its all as nonsensical as their figurehead, Dubya, is.

Bush himself plays a central role in this analysis. Famous worldwide for his struggles with the vernacular of the English language, (sadly not News) poll ratings indicate that a major appeal of Bush to voters was his simple grasp of language and that voters could see themselves having a beer with him more than they could with either Al Gore or John Kerry. There are always handicaps to having an above average vocabulary, but you would not countenance said vocab being a bar to the presidency of the United States! This anti-intellectual bias seems insane, in that effectively the most eminently qualified person for a job is overlooked on the basis that the recruiter/voter cannot identify with them and thinks that they are overqualified! This would seem to be the case given that Gore was (apparently?) a competent Vice President and, in his post political career, a climate change activist of some success and renown, whereas Bush only had experience running baseball teams, oil companies and (now) a major world economy into debt. I don't self-identify with Kevin Rudd on any personal level (can't envision us knocking back some Grey Goose and lemonades anytime soon) but that doesn't mean I'm likely to go vote for Barnaby Joyce for Prime Minister instead, solely because I could picture myself having a beer with him (he'd have a few stories to tell, wouldn't he ol' Barnaby?) Bush's term has led to a shocking drop in standards of what is expected from world leaders; his constant mispronunciation of words, his groping of the German Chancellor in 2007, decline in the standards of accountability of government. Ok, even Paul Keating groped the Queen's ass, and Bush is still quite a way off Yeltsin, but is he intentionally lowering the bar of what is expected from international leaders during a time that media organizations are becoming more sophisticated in how they broadcast, but less sophisticated in what they produce/broadcast? Maybe, but it would not have been a goal he set for himself before he began his first term.

The irony in Bush and his ilk devaluing the meaning and currency of words, is that they are doing far more effectively in practice what conservative columnists like Albrechtson and the Oz decry about post-modernism; moving us away from a fact-based POV to a worldview where the facts can be malleable enough to fit whatever argument you want to make (facts are not eternal/found, but rather are dependent on what lenses/viewpoints are being applied to those facts. Feel free to disagree and pick apart with this statement, just throwing it out there without trying to refer back to any textbook definitions). So while time line and time horizon are one and the same thing, Dubya will refuse to use time line because he was so strongly against it initially and to save face he cannot use that term. In true Newspeak style, we are lead away from the thought of a troop withdrawal being something linear in that you set the date for it and then withdraw the troops; no, now we have the time horizon, something that is much more ephemeral, that only hints at something that might happen far off in the distance. It is an attack on language itself, striking at the expectation we have that events are to proceed in linear fashion, by not using any word associated with linearity (line) and substituting in a meaningless word, and in effect trying to cut down the number of words we have available to us to form concepts and assign meanings to. In English, we have the adjectives good and great, with great being better than good. In the limited range of Ingsoc, we would be left with good and double-plus good. In Bushspeak, we have time line and time horizon.

The latter example seems to demonstrate an intention to impose a restriction on language, but what is harder to determine is if that comes from the speaker (Dubya) or from his demonic overlord (controller)/(carer)/(Cheney)? Bush does seem the incurious type who would wall off different types of thinking in himself, so can we dismiss it as simply as that and a voting ploy ("I'm dumb like you= vote for me") or is it a more cynical use of po-mo'ism than thought? I'm leaning to it being a cynical/practical use of post-modernism rather than this being a school of thought they absolutely believed in and just had to apply all of its theories and thoughts in practice (although, that could explain why certain strands of ideological thinking, neo-conservatism I'm thinking of you, really seem to flower and gain hold and political traction at certain times. The neo-cons had been around for awhile agitating for a shot at Saddam; they simply had to wait for the stars to align to go all the way they did. And Bush is the perfect post-modern president! Or would Bill Clinton have been the first? Digressing anyways...).

It's the same with torture. Dick Cheney is a reasonably well educated chap (we assume...) and if it weren't for the fact that torture is against the Geneva Convention and he wants the president to reserve the rights to any powers...that...are...necessary that may contravene that act, he would agree that some of the administration's practice would constitute torture. Except he can't come out and say that. (Post modern closet?) His boss is going around telling, and convincing the generals and co, that "America doesn't torture", and you still have to feign allegiance to the Convention, the UN and international law, truth, justice and the American Way, yadda yadda yadda. No, the post-modern use of language is an easy way out for the Dick and his cohorts, to cynically weasel their way out of trouble. "We believed...", "I didn't know...", "I can't recall...". These aren't sinister assaults launched upon our society and sense of reasoning by renegade, nihilistic artists, trying to tear down meaning in everything. It's the pillars of society themselves, our leaders and captains of industry perpetrating this, trying to escape and back away from any notion of accountability and proportionate senses of scale and responsibilities. Time horizon is a phrase you would expect to hear from NSW Premier Morris Iemma begging off about implementing election promises made regarding the health system; its not the type of slippery word that you expect to be applied to a war that has been in progress for 6 years. But, that's Dubya.

So fear not dear reader, while the Australian might have you concerned that the scourge of post-modernism in our public institutions is all Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan's fault(!), it can be safely said that we have less to fear from these idiot savant types than we do from the respectable pillars of society (to be fair, cocaine is an old money favourite), from which our much beloved Dubya was spawned. Which is fucked up and true if you think about it; political pollsters, analysts and the rest of the mofo's deconstruct us to such an extent they can predict with confidence how we will react and vote (look at Kevin 07 he half jokingly says) upon certain issues and based on which stance a candidate takes. Is it surprising that they have now applied these skills to the actual governance part of the job and not just strictly for campaigning? There's a lot of fascinating strands of thoughts to be picked out and discussed from the above I think.

Last song: Light My Fire by the Doors