My Exploding Head

In the impossible strange year of 2008, a year that Republicans becoming Democrats (well, Obama supporters anyway), Democrats becoming Republicans (Joe...just admit it), the Clintons, once the victims of a vast right wing conspiracy becoming a vast right wing conspiracy, all things seem possible...

Including a cogent piece by Stanley Fish on Deconstruction. Maybe he can deconstruct why he's such a shill for the Clintons...

I think I hear the Twilight Zone Theme...

ANN COULTER IS A FAG: A Deconstruction

I was more than a little disheartening to to hear the College Morons at one of my Alma Maters (for those keeping score-the Jesuit one) decided that, at this time of national crisis, when the disasterously stupid policies of King George are raining holy hell down everywhere, and even the Ur NeoCon's have repudiated the Iraq War (thanks...wish you'd thought that through 3800 dead Americans ago) have decided to bring Ann "Gore/Edwards/Liberal/Progressives are Fags" Coulter to speak to the faithful, who, by the way, are obviously not learning a fucking thing in school (or, more aptly, are learning everything they need from the WASP-wannabes at that institution-think Miami, only with a little more guilt. Only a little, though...).

Then again, they had Hannity in a few years back, so there you go.

Anyway, the word "fag" and "faggot", as a term of derision, comes from the Middle English, and means a woman or a child, and, thus, by extrapolation through the patriarchy, becomes a word of abuse directed at homosexual men, who, by virtue of their homosexuality, are thought of as less than manly, effeminate, even.

If we know anything about Annie, she loves the patriarchy. As Bill Maher pointed out in his recent comedy special, this does not means that she believes that Gore or Edwards are homosexuals, but she does believe that the consensus building, the thoughtful policy decisions, and careful study are less than manly. She might as well have called them geeks, but Annie, oh Annie, you are sooo redstate, and as the other redstaters know, that geeks are really faggots, right, because smart people make you feel stupid and thus...they have to be gay or something?!

After all, John Wayne couldn't be bothered to read. I just saw The Green Berets the other day, and that fucker probably couldn't do his ABC's. But he could kickass-or appear to, and that's all that really matters, right?


Ann Coulter, in a particular sense of the word, as a woman, is a fag herself, but what's interesting is the element of self loathing here, because she certainly doesn't seem to give a shit about other women, or the justice they fight for. Ann is all about the status quo, because that is how she makes her money, and to look at the misery the WASP patriarchies have foisted upon this country, and indeed, the world, and decide, as a member of an oppressed group, that this is a good thing makes one self loathing, to put it nicely.

So, either Ann Coulter is a cynical opportunist, or a self loathing fag, in the Middle English Sense.

Then again, there is that Adam's Apple, that love of Patriarchy, and all that butch bluster...

Perhaps Ann Coulter is a male homosexual trapped in a woman's body. I wouldn't be the first to speculate this, but the point I'm trying to make is a linguistic one; more specifically, a semiotic one, for it is Coulter and her ilk who poison the sign, only to hide behind some kind of detached tough pose-you know, "I'm only kidding." Except that she isn't: the valence here is exactly what you are feeling, my queer brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, moms and dads out there. This isn't some bullshit post modern irony here...this is, in fact, what it seems to be. Ann Coulter, regardless of whatever gender identity issues she struggles with, regardless of however deeply she buries herself in an a booze and bile GOP closet, she is exactly as she appears to be; the very embodiement of every negative valence surrounding this word "fag": a spineless woman, genuflecting through WASP entitlement, a child quaking at the sound of the stern father's voice, without critical thought, hell, without self reflection, and a fawning sycophant.

Perhaps Ann's love of this word is just another act of projection...

Unfortunately, I think it bodes ill for the health of this country that a semiotic train wreck has admirers, but hey...they are the Establishment, at least they'd like to think so.

Ghost of the Machine, part II: Infection of the Machine/Dr. Zaius and the Cave

"Remember the words that we say tonight/But don't say a word once we're in the light" (Kelly Willis "Wait Until Dark").

What lies in the darkness; waiting, cloaked, hidden, is our fear, or rather, fear itself: The root of fear is uncertainty, a queasy feeling that something is going to come and upset our little patch of the world as constituted by its phenomenological experience, or, in other words, what we think we know about our reality based on our being part of it.

It is what we have gleaned from being an agent in phenomenological space that we create from our experience in order to understand the "world". However, there is another space enveloping this narrow, solipsistic space which transcends our experience, yet is very much present in it, something we know exists, could exist- a contingency, if you like, but we are either in denial of, or made ignorant of, by Ideological State Apparatuses, such as religion, government, and media.

Sartre would argue that we are unaware because we wish to be, and thus, his concept of Existential Angst is tantamount to denial of trancendent, yet very physical, reality. Gramsci and the Marxists would argue that it is by virtue of a metaphysical class consciousness, reinforced, and constructed by the Ideological State Appartuses, that we are made unaware by design. Both thinkers have commented at some length about problematic, if not impossible, escape from what Sartre referred to as "facticity", or the material conditions of existence, which, by extension, must include Ideological State Apparatus.

By ostensible contrast, the Right (capitalists, neoconservatives, the religious right, free marketers, economic libertarians and readers of Ayn Rand) put themselves, philosophically, in opposition to the above, asserting free will and free thought, the freedom which comes from an unrestricted, unregulated market, the transcendence of reality that stems from the accumulation of wealth, the trancendence of death that stems from believing the above. The Right would assert that Existential Angst is exclusively to atheists, and it is only in a Marxist-based society,that we find such a thing as an Ideological State Apparatuses, because, in a free country, no such thing can exist, because we are all masters of our own destiny, and our success, or failure, is contingent on faith and will; faith in the market, faith in a deity, and the will to pursue both at all costs.

This affirmation of Right world view is, of course, an affirmation of their ideological underpinning for this reality, and, by extension, an assent to the oppositional nature of their world view to that other, the left in total: afterall, it was Lucifier, the Son of the Morning Star, who sat at the left hand of God, and look how that turned out...

In affirming this opposition so totally, the right wing uncovers its own contradiction, and unwittingly shakes it for the world to see in a grotesque strip show: The farther right they go, the more they show. If, as they claim, we are a Judeo Christian Nation, and, as an extension of that faith, evolution is untrue, as at least three of the presidential candidates plus the sitting president claim, then how can this monolith be anything other than an ideological state apparatus posing as God's Law? Indeed, if we are masters of our own destiny in this Judeo Christian Nation, then why the rush to legislate morality if this is not the work of an ideological state apparatus?

Indeed, in the post industrial, informational late stage capitalism that is the United States in this first decade of the new millenium, the right wing has effectively spun a reality different from the one the rest of the world lives and loves and toils and suffers under everyday. But this isn't the Matrix: This is denial, a purposeful ignorance, and a negative assertion of will. The true believer denies evolution because it contradicts the ideological construction which gives them a sense of purpose, comfort, in a confusing world. Unable to negotiate the phenomenological space in which they are presented with choices, unable to reconcile their own impending death with the responsibility of actually doing something for themselves, asserting their will positively, they retreat into religion, into paranoia, into idealogy, becoming ministers, criminals, or radio talk show hosts, what ever dulls the pain.

There are, however, other types of agents and thus, agencies, which operate in the Ideological States of America, on the right wing, and these agents are, in fact, not true believers at all, though, like Dr. Zaius, they defend the faith at all costs, knowing the terrible secret in the cave, knowing the illumination reveals, hidden in shadows, the mechanations, the gears, the circuits, of the Ideological State Apparatus; a human doll that talks is equivalent to a myth of free will, for example, and without this myth, the claims of the Right as being the defender of liberty, of the real America, of free will, must be exposed as for the terrible fraud it is. The infection of the machine is not with religious zealots, but cynical opportunists, furiously pulling levers, pushing buttons, and desperately trying to seal the cave up: Afterall, "there is no contradiction between faith and science-true science".

Part III: The Ghost of the Machine.