The Real Obama analyzes Reagan Revolution

The Clinton Machine spun me yesterday, right round, right round...until I saw what Obama did say in an interview in which he ANALYZES and interprets why Reagan and the Republican Party APPEARED to contest the conventional welfare state wisdom during the 80s and 90s, I believed the Bill and Hillary spin machine that Obama had praised Ronald Reagan.

The Real Obama Quote

Now if you look at the video above, you'll see that Obama is saying that Reagan was able to crystallize and ride public discontent, turnin the country away from (I'm adding this -- Keynesian economic policies) welfare state bureaucracy driven social solutions to the appearance of a dynamic entrepreneurialism that Bill Clinton did not fundamentally disagree with. Obama is saying, but in perhaps too subtle a way that a moment for a real change of direction in government has arrived where a political RETURN to progressive economic policies can be made, and that Hillary won't be able to make good on it. Obama says that he isn't invested in the political struggles of the 60s and that he can galvanize cross-party consensus in much the same way Reagan did.

It's hard to encapsulate in a 30 second sound bite -- but the Clintons are acting as if they are "encapsulating" Obama's position -- they're playing dirty and if that's that they think they need to do, we need to denounce it. If my experience in academia holds, those post 68 Boomers, the Clintons will not cede their false vanguardist position to younger, less radical peers who are less ideologically impatient and dishonest.

my plug for Obama

I've come back to blogging to make the following plug for Obama -- I do this as a private citizen, exercising my right to freedom of political expression. Many have expressed ambivalence about his lack of substance and experience.

I concede some part of truth to those objections. That said, I will say that Obama represents the first possibility of a radical remaking of the Democratic Party. He talks about the powerful ethics of national unity and the positive potential of solidarity rather than the language of "pride" and ethnic difference. He represents the real possibility of breaking the back of the identity politics of cosmetic diversity in Democratic politics, which has alienated the white working class, as well as young people, and he has at least in rhetorical terms, taken on progressive national affirmation, and progressive political renewal.

I know the Devil is in the details and the Democratic Party is a juggernaut. Nothing is going to move it quickly. But with Edwards populist economics and Obama's rejection of divisive and false "pride" -- we may see some hope for political mobilization.

And yes, I am no fan of Hillary's establishmentarian politics. I read that her campaign spent 2 million dollars polling Iowa, which barely boasts more than two million inhabitants...

break from blogging

I'm thinking of shutting down the blog...life and writing have gotten the upper hand...as well as a new office "Director the UCI Humanities Center": I don't want to compromise the voice here, but I also don't want my readers to mistake any statements I make here as emanating from that office.

Thank you to my readers! And feel free to email me and send me stuff you think will be of interest. I will do my best to reply and respond. I hope to finish the manuscript -- Modernity and its Discontents by December!

LOL theo

2008

belong 2 who?

pwnerer!

It's been a little crazy

around here and I am working end of the quarter grading as well as trying to get Seymour Hersh to campus (money, money, money, money) and negotiating with a proposal for a Human Rights and Media initiative here at UCI. As of July 1, I will be assuming the directorship of the Humanities Center. I push to finish my book on Academic populism. So blogging will be sparser than ever --

I take my battles to the corridors. Enjoy the weather! On the Orange Coast, it has been unusually cool! We have also decided that feminism is code for sexy. I was back at the MOCA show, "Wack!" at the Temporary Contemporary in downtown LA when I found myself alone with two very focused men in a room filled with images of Throbbing Gristle. They were definitely writing dissertations on the stuff -- if you know what I mean...

OC to hell and back

intolerable tolerance

Tolerance is the new slogan under which we are supposed to fight against intolerance, but these two terms are strangely enough not antonyms. In tolerance is the other idea of an alway already intolerable other that we have to learn to "tolerate" not accept or even more dangerously -- question. Tolerance only asks that we aspire to a greater level of repression, whereas I think the problems of racism and intolerance, or even of deep mutual antagonisms can only be addressed with a stronger statement: No tolerance for Intolerance!

There is a campus campaign for tolerance here and while I would like to endorse tolerance, I feel as if it doesn't even come close to getting at the heart of the matter -- which is dealing with the different passions of the student body and their different beliefs as a sphere of political contradiction and conflict that should a public airing!

world subway graphic

Fake is the New Real.. Check it out. It's very cool, gives you a comparative picture of public transport and density, from Seoul to Moscow to LA...

a brighter tomorrow?

A bright and happy Asian-American family is looking into the sunshine of a brighter tomorrow through organic consumerism… wow! Brought to you by Chank Diesel.

What would Deleuze Say? What would Jesus Do?

Just returned to the office from a bruising fight with myself to control my impulse to fight with a famous feminist Deleuzian on campus giving a series of lectures.

She kept saying, "Well I don't know what Deleuze would say if he were here, but..." followed by explanations of why Deleuzian philosophy offers the best account of singularity, the event, the unpredictable...and surpasses Marxism and feminism..and structuralism because they are basically predictive processes...but listening to this mode of philosophizing makes me wonder...Uh...is that like asking, "What would Jesus do?" when we encounter moral dilemmas -- when we encounter philosophical problems, we say, "What would Deleuze say?"

It seems that Deleuze would say that he is for radical openness, being for art and against a plan. The most political question is, "What can a body do?" Hate on liberalism. Laugh at it actually...That's what a body can do...

What can Jesus' body do? That is the question!

Maybe the power of Deleuzian philosophy is that it produces such negative responses in me! Instead of a quiet afternoon in the office, I encounter this allegedly immanent mode of philosophizing whose pure positivity and refusal of critique leave me holding the ugly bag of negation, channeling the crotchety spirit of some old fashioned dialectician with bad knees, an assemblage of populist tics, laughable reservations, untimely, angry, debased, vengeful, confused, outraged by its contempt for "translatability" or even communicability, its arcana, its smug sense of overcoming critique AND science, its "pretend" erudition. Every single encounter with Deleuzians has evoked some of these emotions in me...passions actually, a passionate desire to fight what I have to admit, I feel is a kind of charlatanism and therein, I must in some way concede lies its power, which for me is entirely negative.

This Deleuzian relied on Deleuze's erudition to found his authority. He has allegedy read everything.

Toy Choice

Recently a friend was complaining about the "toy university" where we teach. I don't take such a harsh view since I used to teach at Cog in the Machine University, and frankly, I prefer the more playful one.

I began to invent "My Toy Life" "My Toy Husband" "My Toy House" as a way of dealing with this diminutive sense of our world, and realized that in the end, under late capitalism, our choices are consumer choices -- Mac or PC, Verizon or Sprint, Nike or Adidas?

let me make a few totally presumptuous connections

between the blond mother with the three year old I saw at an Irvine Community Park today and the fact that the USS Nimitz is steaming into the Persian Gulf. Republican politicians count on the indifference and ignorance of their constituents and their supporters. Witness Orange County, Gucci sunglass wearing, Paris Hilton-channeling citizen mother who let her toddler feed cheerios to a pair of ducks. She and her toddler referred to the one with the brilliant green head as the mommy duck, and to the duller, brown one as the daddy duck. "Give some to the daddy!" she said. The seven year old friend of my six year old told her politely, "That's not the daddy duck. The daddy duck is the one with the greenish blue head, but the mommy duck has a bluish feather on her wing." She looked at him and said in with a flatliner's inflection, "Really?" Her perfectly made up lips and the red riibbons on her high heeled espadrilles matched, and her hair was so beautifuly highlighted that she must have just figured that the more colorful duck had to be the female duck, decked out in the best ducky finery to attract a well-endowed, and financially fit male.

I said in my best National Geographic commentator voice, "Yes, isn't that funny? The male ducks have to win over the female ducks with the colorful plumage." Ha. Ha. Ha.

She confirmed my worst fears about this region of California that we live in -- and I hate to be anti-fashion or anything like that, but the more expensive the outfit, the dumber the wearer...Actually, she looked as if she were trying to get a role on the next Real Housewives of the OC...a show that demonstrates to me everyday that the worst fears of Allan Bloom have come to pass, but not because of the PC Left...It's worked out very well for a political class that hopes to dupe us all into indifference...an unpopular war seems to be in the throes of begetting a disastrous continuation. Animal Planet has replaced stodgy documentaries with TEN MOST EXTREME PREDATORS so you can NOT even learn any natural history from television. You end up with an E! channel count down...TEN BEST CELEBRITY BODIES....