Desiring Machine

A former professor of mine, Steven Shaviro, has a great post on the liberal blogosphere’s response to the Sarah Palin VP pick. Steven is one of those minds that I find myself in agreement nearly 99% of the. So much so it is frightening. But on Palin he is right on. He articulates what I have thought but haven’t yet been able to say. The Palin choice is, although it may be cynical and laughable, a real threat because she is the “affective” choice, a personality deliberately chosen to counteract the euphoria of the Obama campaign. We laugh off the choice to our own peril. Steven articulates this strong undercurrent of smugness on the part of the left this election cycle.

Everyone points to the laughable lack of experience of Palin and the very real chance she will become president should McCain become ill during office. But this is precisely why she is there. She is pliable and completely malleable by the neocon machine that runs our government. They truly don’t want anyone who has experience or autonomy, for this would just be a liability. Look at how Bill Kristol gushes all over the Palin pick. He knows deep down she is pliable and that is best they can ask for in order to promote their agenda.

This gets to my next point, we need to stop attacking Bush directly. We need to attack the entire necon apparatus. The people who surround Bush/McCain in the shadows. The marionette handlers not the marionette doll. Bill Clinton started to address this in his convention speech by speaking in terms of policy and not the persona of Bush. Clinton seems to be one of the few who actually understands politics as it actually functions. As an affective process. He gives credit where affective credit is due. He doesn’t underestimate the opposition, but rather accepts them for their strengths. And understands that it is a machine behind the person, not a person behind the machine. And for Bush, McCain, and Palin are all just symptoms of a larger disease-machine that is corroding our society. The rhetoric needs to be taken beyond the cult of personality and persona politics and brought into focus on the systematic fascism that is overtaking our system of government. When we spend all our time talking about what a failure Bush the person is, or how inexperienced Palin the person may be we fail to draw sharp contrasts to the systematic differences the parties offer. And to spend time talking about personas we run the risk of devolving in an affective personality fight. And in that fight we lose. We have lost ever since JFK. Bill Clinton was a brief relapse but every other major candidate pick by the Democrats and the left has been a disaster on the affective front. And while the Republicans may be terrible for the country in policy they are masters of affective politics. They learned this lesson ever since the disaster that was Nixon. And Sarah Palin is just another media friendly photogenic trojan horse presented to the American people. And we should be more wary and less smug.

Go read Steven’s posts. He says it far better than I.