Time Bomb

No, not the Rancid song, though I find that infinately more edifying.

Instead, we are talking about folks who do not realize that 24 is a television show, and think that we need to conduct our anti terrorism in the same way. This was the sentiment of John Fund (My Bad...It was Stephen Moore-Wiz 10.24, 16:22) on Maher's show last week, and to which, Barney Frank, thankfully, took him to task.

Folks, listen up:

Television is not real. Movies are not real. The 1950's were not Father Knows Best. Rambo is not foreign policy. Ronald Reagan was just an actor.

You have a so called conservative agenda that privileges simulacra over reality. Yes, by asserting that this privilege is truth, its proponents get to fill that sign with heroism, rigtheousness, and "good feelings"-all of which are constructed in the world of the narrative.

Baudrilliard, in asserting the simulacra as a xeroxed reality, does not deny the reality under the representation. Similarly, phenomenology asserts that all we "know" is our experience of the world, but this is not solipsism, because what we know is necessarily informed by verifiable fact, which we also experience, yet, sadly, it is the very misreading of these people that informs this problem. It is a travesty, really, that the people who are making decisions in our name do not know the difference between representation and reality, as though they took a Critical Theory class, got to Baudrilliard, and failed to complete the reading, or, more likely, they chose to cherry pick, as they do, to support their world view.

In a sense, then, it was no suprise to see Bush reading Existentialism; it was only suprising that he hadn't gotten to the misapprehension of that known as Martin Heidegger, whose work with phenomenology and Nietzschean thought apologized for National Socialism. Afterall, his conclusions allowed for the strong to create reality in their own image, something very appealing to the NeoCon thinktanks.

We do not create reality (regardless of what ever dorm-LSD epiphany you may have had): We reflect it, or deflect it, or genuflect it, but nevertheless, it is always there, independent of us. The material is always here, and I think its about time that we demand it be accounted for. It is dishonest to continue to deny it, and yet it gets denied, and that is the real scandal.