Palin on Obama and Bill Ayers

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/04/1492729.aspx

Sarah Palin isn't revealing anything new about Barack Obama's relationship with former SDS Weatherman Bill Ayers. Instead she does violence to simple logic.

The Obama campaign has already pointed out that IF Ayers supports Obama, this doesn't imply that Obama, way back in 1971 when Obama was a kid, supported Ayers and the Weathermen!

This error is really stupid. The deep reason must be explored.

Many American conservatives and Palinoids are also readers of the psychotic ravings of a Russian emigre philosopher, Ayn Rand, who managed to make philosophical borscht, deep and chunky nonsense, out of Anglo-American concepts because of her immigrant's loyalty to capitalismus. She outdoes Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in her mystical perversity, adding the twist that she raves about being rational (the hobby-horse of the genuinely nutz being that THEY are rational).

Rand's epistemology starts and ends with the stunning announcement that A=A, and she claims, falsely, that everything can be derived from this tautology.

But this is the taproot of Palin's insanity. If we have A=A, we don't need logic, including the pettifogging difference between A->B (A implies B) and B->A!

IF former Weatherman Bill Ayers supports Obama, then in Palinland we must "reason" that Obama supports Ayers and did so during the 1971 SDS weatherman phase! A=A!

Adorno believes "identity thinking" to be the default mode of damaged reason on the part of actual actors in capitalism.

Let's say your daughter loves a man of color. OK, so you are inundated with Willie Horton portrayals of actual, honest to goodness black male irresponsibility. These overwhelm your knowledge that you have acted yourself with irresponsibility and so have your white buddies, because industrial "civilization" teaches us, as a matter of shop-floor discipline, and the housewife's, to discount our own perceptions!

So, the "default" or "passive" racist in a sociological taxonomy that discriminates between him, and the active racist, REVERSES p->q (which here is the existentially qualified "there exists a Willie Horton") to q->p ("all black men are, or might be, irresponsible").

The reversal is shamefaced and in a spirit of "better safe than sorry".

Let's read the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek:

"Today's predominant mode of politics is ***post-political biopolitics*** - an awesome example of theoretical jargon which, however, can be unpacked: 'post-political' is a politics which claims to leave behind thee old ideological struggles and, instead, focus on expert management and administration, while 'bio-politics' designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its primary goal. It is clear how these two dimensions overlap: once one renounces big ideological causes, what remains is the efficient administration of life ... ***almost*** only that. That is to say, with the depoliticised, socially objective, expert administration and coordination of interests as the zero level of politics, the only way to introduce passion into this field, to actively mobilize people, is through fear, a basic constituent of today's subjectivity."

And how did Sarah Palin start in last week's debate?

“Go to a kids’ soccer game on Saturday and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy?’ And I’ll betcha you’re going to hear some fear in that parent’s voice, fear regarding the few investments that some of us have in the stock market — did we just take a major hit with those investments?”

FEAR, as Zizek's only active element in an otherwise completely administered world, where the political passions of fifty years ago are non-starters, was where Palin started in the Biden debate: she referred to Moms and Dads who might be fearful because some of them might have investments (despite the fact that most Americans are hard put to top-up their gas tank, as Sen. Biden noted in the same debate, and never see much more than 5K at any one time).

FEAR results in A=A thinking as opposed to "partial ordering" thinking, where the latter is the knowledge that just because p implies q, q does not imply p.

The scientific world view (which as technicians Palin's supporters inherit: they aren't peasants with pitchforks and torches) actually helps people to think in this fucked up way: for if you tell people on the job that they're dumb shits, the logically overstrong leap will actually seem more productive, simpler and safer...in short, somehow more up-to-date, with-it and scientific.

The administered world successfully made left-wing political passion a non-starter in the 1960s: today's soccer Moms in fact unconsciously and consciously inherit the political hopes of that era, such as feminism, in many cases by representing them as fulfilled...despite the fact that the husband's tech employer is gettin' mediaeval on his ass, and forcing him to work 247.

Today, McCain's conservatism has likewise run out of steam. Thus, Palin. Thus, the appeal to fantasy fears when in fact there's a lot of reality fears that we're too scared to face.

Investments, bitch? Those people can no longer fill up their tanks!