Thursday

Snow, yard, pictures

How is it that as far as I have seen, no one appears to realize that Glenn Beck's success is almost entirely due to the way he has adopted the semiotics, syntax, rhetoric, style, etc. of traditionally anitcapitalist, antiracist, feminist, and related discourses, and uses "their" (if I can even provisionally claim this unity) kind of an analytical strategy in a brilliantly perverse way? Listen to any given show and see how this is borne out.

In a country where you can't be overtly racist, he often takes the tack of appearing to support 'minorities' by promoting legislation or action that most not of his spectacularly [bizarre? expedient?] political position DO consider racist, and then calls people opposing him the "actual" racists. I guess his tricks resemble Slavoj Zizek's in that respect.

Glenn Beck uses a gently retuned "leftist" discourse to mute, cauterize, castrate the "left." It's in this way that we can finally understand what is otherwise a mindfuck of a book cover:



We can understand it because that was exactly and literally Benito Mussolini's strategy and greatest political strength, and whatever intent Beck might've had with this cover aside, it literalizes this fact more perfectly than could any lettered image (yes, I know, digital images are lingual, so to speak). His shocked, indignant guilelessness is exactly his guile; the only thing left for me to determine in that respect is whether it's in service to sincere political principles or fiscal expedience.

Glenn Beck's discourse is:
-Pro-capitalist

-Classist in the way that follows from the first principle, but also simultaneously

-Populist. And overwhelmingly so, not only rhetorically, but also in light of Beck's organizations (9/12 project, association with/de facto spiritual leader of the Tea Party), and in this way is reminiscent of

-Intensely nationalist (and I would argue this strategy both makes class resentment abate [we're on the same team!] and allows for the imaginary classlessness provided by that kind of identification as identity)

-Simultaneously traditional and revolutionary (in every significant sense of that word "American" or otherwise)

-Alarmist; adopts a tone of immanent threat and of necessary response. Glenn Beck, I would imagine, is a big fan of the state of exception

-Militarist; despite his 'peaceful protest' rhetoric, his tears (if nothing else) speak to a 'my home is being attacked/destroyed' sort of pathos, and a threatened home or family is excuse enough for anyone to behave violently


To say this is not therefore to call the other side of mass politics non-suspect, or to suggest that this sort of new fascism (one that in fact probably should not be named this way for a few reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Beck would certainly not identify as such and identification DOES MATTER) is not ultimately a biopolitical Janus, but I do think it accounts for something about Beck that has otherwise frustrated and confused a lot of people.

"Outsider" as an aesthetic term is meaningless. [At least once someone is known to someone other than themselves(?)]

"It's a crime to be white anymore" - first in an infinite series

"It must've been a little black boy because the name was, you know, some strange name"
-my Aunt

***

"You're probably going to say this sounds racist, but those people, they can't even take care of one kid and they keep having more! They don't work, and they just have more and more kids and try to live off welfare. And why can't they stop killing eachother?"

"What's wrong with 'Redskins?' Nobody actually has red skin! Everyone's so sensitive, it doesn't even make sense!"
-middle aged Mom from my school district

***

"So, the blacks have made it this far"
-step grandfather remarks made while driving down the Geddes hill towards the city after the reservoir & middle school. Sort of a 'high water mark' reference

***

"You can't say anything anymore. They're always stopping you or complaining, you get that Sharpton with the media on his side anytime anyone says anything"

"I've got a black friend, and even he calls 'em niggers!"

"Rush Limbaugh isn't racist"
-friend's father

***

"I went into Wegmans on Valentines day and saw all these things, they were decorations and they looked like I don't know, like little chocolate monkeys, and they were all over the place, and then I noticed that the blacks were going crazy for them and buying them. They were there for the blacks!"
-this one hurts... my Grandma :(

***

"Going to the Western Lights P&C is like taking a trip to Mexico"
-Can't remember the source exactly, reasonably sure it was a specific friend

***


-all of these, with the exception of my grandpa, were said in the past week. I should've started doing this last year when I moved home....

What is called SINKING?

BEYOND THE BLEASURE PRINCIPLE

These are our demands:

1.) These are not our demands. We demand that we not speak of “our demands.” There is only the I, here, speaking these – my – demands. There is only the “we,” as in “you and I;” a spectral you addressed in spirit by Me. A spectral you, a spectral youth, and the spectre of a disembodied, dispossessed, derealized youth-as-“youth,” haunted by its own past, to whom I am speaking. So to speak.

2.)