head explodes
Your cause and effect relationship doesn’t add up. Its not because the liberals described the conservative ideology that it was wrong and its not because conservatives adopt a pro-war / fuck what other people think imperialistic ideology and are honest about it that its the liberals fault. You don’t say the bully was beating up on other people because the smart kid made him feel stupid.
Its utterly and completely idiotic to say “deconstruction” is wrong because “deconstruction” is the basis of understanding how things work and its impossible to make progress without understanding the problems one is facing. The situation in Iraq is a perfect example of how people imposing their own realities onto something else_doesn’t_work and that neo-cons refuse to admit their situation doesn’t work, as they say its the fault of the people they tried to submit to their will. The only thing the dude did was admit to his own fucked up sense of reality and display why it was that it is inapropriate to have people that are delusional and willfully so, in positions of power. In the end, the people that try to create a reality they like to idealize , don’t create that reality and are left in a selfish ego-preserving denial.
A better analogy would be a jock who went to Church youth group every day, and generally tried to be a good person in his own simple way, until his peers made fun of his religiousness so much that he scrapped it and became a pure bully. In other words, liberals have spent decades arguing that conservative morality is an obsolete historical paradigm, as a way to tear down conservative tradition and ceremony that stood in the way of political reform. Conservatives have finally decided to play the same game. Their response is, essentially, “Liberal morality? Reform? That’s an obsolete historical paradigm.” And liberals suddenly realize they’ve undermined their own cause as much as that of the conservatives. The best they can offer is, “We want reform because we want you all to play nice,” an argument which doesn’t win much ground with conservatives. Deconstructive arguments are directly responsible for unleashing the monster of immoral conservatism.
Its utterly and completely idiotic to say “deconstruction” is wrong because “deconstruction” is the basis of understanding how things work and its impossible to make progress without understanding the problems one is facing.
You’ve misunderstood me if you believe that’s my argument. Deconstruction is an extremely useful method of thinking, and it’s helped me analyze all kinds of works and situations. It also has the potential to reduce that which is taken utterly seriously to a game of linguistic paradigms. Derrida himself says that modern human interaction is a kind of “word-play”. My concern is that these liberals’ rough-and-ready application of deconstruction to real-life morality, with only a short term goal of political reform, has unleashed a monster that must somehow be re-tamed.
There are other things I’ll be responding to, but I’ll have to do that later.
On the subject of reality and all that shit, they’re really right.
They are changing it.
Everything they do has such a wide-reaching effect that they really really are changing reality. Whether we like to admit it or not, the bush administration really does have a shit ton of power.
It’s been exhibited before with what’s going on in the middle east, and probably won’t be the last time before the end of his term.
What we think of as ‘reality’ is just the combined perceptions of everyone. That’s the problem with the neocons approach: they don’t realize that realitiy is the sum total of everybody’s perceptions. In fact, they write off other people’s perceptions. That’s why their approach is so farcical.
They can shape reality, all right, but not the way they want to, unless they’re willing to cooperate with others. They’ve certainly changed the reality of the world; now the perceptions of a majority of the worlds populace is that America is an evil country. I doubt that is what they were intending.
Exactly.
They’ve made such a stink of things, that everyone’s perception of the US has changed in one way or another.
Either you like us, hate us, or just don’t give a shit, they still have made changes to the ‘reality’ that is the US, as well as so many other places.
Your cause and effect relationship doesn’t work. My comparison wasn’t an explanation but me showing how it doesn’t work. Current neocon ideology is nothing new. Imperialism is imperialism. Imperial Europe in the old days didn’t become imperialistic because they thought they were clever in rejecting what had once been popular liberal idealogy (which most likely was inexistant back then anyway) and neither is what the guy that SK quoted saying show that this was a cause and effect relationship. He just said how it was useless for people to think like that because people like him would be trying to fuck things up anyway, making the observed facts obsolete.
People and neocons are a lot more simple than what you described this situation as. These people want power and belongings and are deluded by their own sense of grandeur. Things like Iraq happen when this is allowed to be put into action. Its happened before and it’ll happen again. Countless wars have been fought over one group’s sense of superiority over another and its desire to make it conform to its ideals so that it can gain what it wants from the territories of its subjects. The reason it never works is because these people don’t understand how people actually DO think and work (not the people they conquer, just people in general). They only care about what they think and what they like and how they think things should be. This is human nature and you will see it in your family, your neighbours, your classmates, your customers and your coworkers.
This analogy isn’t really relevant to the state of affairs at hand. In this country, every single large political issue involving religion today is about whether or not to legislate “conservative morality” as the absolute law of the land, backed by all of the force of the state. In not a single one of these issues is there any potential threat whatsoever to anybody’s right to practice “conservative morality” in his own life. In that sense, Sinistral’s analogy really is more accurate: the jock thought that his “natural” strength entitled him to be king of the playground, didn’t like the fact that some people didn’t want to accept him as such, and consequently lashed out at them. Neoconservatives aren’t persecuted by anybody. They’re running the country.
Do you really suppose that neoconservatives all went to Sunday school and were model citizens, until one fateful day when some obscure English professors who have no political influence of any kind made fun of them, thus turning them away from their previous path of righteousness? Neoconservatives didn’t use “deconstructive arguments” to justify themselves, instead they used all kinds of absolutist arguments dating back to Plato. Neoconservatives can’t use “deconstructive arguments,” because first of all, they view deconstruction as a kind of “moral equivalence,” which they vehemently oppose and denounce as “immoral,” and second of all, it provides no support for their own highly absolutist worldview. The neoconservative in the original quote isn’t really applying deconstruction to morality, either. Now, since he probably believes his actions to be the most moral ones possible, then you could say that in some sense he is “creating his own morality,” but every single absolutist in history has done that whenever he advanced any kind of coherent worldview that differed slightly from other previously existing ones. The only part of “liberal” philosophy that is reflected in his statement is the idea that our understanding of reality could be shaped or “constructed” by an outside force. But that idea isn’t really an argument for or against any worldview, it’s just an insight into the way in which political processes work, and if anything the quote shows it to be a highly perceptive one.
The subject of this argument is the relation of deconstruction to this quotation’s brand of neo-conservatism, so forgive me if I focus on that to the exclusion of other remarks.
This sort of reduction to absurdity is irresponsible in the present circumstances, since the neo-conservative quoted here is clearly not the “token absolutist” you make him out to be. My argument is that traditional conservatives, despite their flaws, took seriously the notion that there was some intrinsic standard against which their actions were being judged, and despite their hypocritical tendency to judge others for what they forgave in themselves, were not altogether selfish. I do not mean to imply that “conservatism by force” was indirectly created by Derrida. Napoleon certainly did not need deconstruction to justify his campaigns. What is new, and what Derrida and Nietzsche might take some credit for, is this speaker’s justification for conservatism by force: that we create our own reality by acting. Nietzsche believed that morality was the means by which great individuals control others, often for their own good. Derrida made the even more brilliant insight, that our conception of reality is dependent on our very language. Surely you have witnessed how neoconservatism consciously redefines the vocabulary of our reality: “terrorism,” “anti-American,” “Axis of Evil,” “9-11.” Surely you have been frustrated by how <i>effective</i> neoconservatism has been in subverting rational liberalism with this resurrected paradigm of good and evil. We might return to the quotation.
That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
The response of neo-conservatism is to do self-consciously what the Catholic Church did instinctively in the Middle Ages: <i>create the very reality its people live in.</i> Myself, I have not decided whether this is a good or bad thing. My main concern is that rational thinking continue to exist in some form or another meanwhile. It is admittedly depressing to know that our parents’ generation speaks more coherently than this one, and their parents more than them, and so on, and however much professors hate to admit it, it is obviously due to the anti-Enlightenment tendencies of modern education. On the other hand, it is heartening to know that ordinary people do not walk stiffly and wear dark, drab colors anymore, as they did a hundred years ago.
But they saw themselves as being the agents of this standard, as do neoconservatives, and insofar as they were acting for the sake of the standard, their transgressions were easy for them to justify. As Sinistral pointed out, neoconservatism has numerous historical precursors that took place long before “deconstruction.” If the Grand Inquisitors believed in god, and many of them probably did, they surely thought that they were doing his work, and of course, their own ambitions and their political agenda just happened to neatly coincide with “god’s work.” Various Catholic leaders throughout history likewise saw no contradiction between their political imperialism and their sense of religious obligation; on the contrary, the latter often informed the former. Later on, the French Jacobins believed themselves to be agents of history, and so forth. The absolutism of our present-day neoconservatives is very similar, and follows straight from this line (hence their admiration of Plato). They really do believe, for example, that the world would be better off if it were ruled by a “natural elite,” and of course it just happens to be the case that they are part of it.
Yes, quite true. However, first of all, Nietzsche was no liberal, and Derrida’s insight didn’t really “cause” neoconservatism, because neoconservatism follows a trend that long predates it. The insight just pointed out something that had always been there before. That it had always been there follows from your own words, since you state that the Catholic Church had been trying to do the same thing “instinctively.” This is just an insight into the way political processes operate; if you will, it illuminates some of the reasons why neoconservatives have been able to stay in power. If this neoconservative acknowledges that he is trying to do what the idea says governments try to do (whether consciously or instinctively), that only shows the accuracy of the idea. But political processes would work in this fashion, and have worked in this fashion, regardless of whether Derrida ever said so or not. The neoconservative isn’t using the idea to <i>justify</i> conservatism by force (presumably he does not feel compelled to do that before anyone), he’s just explaining the method by which it is achieved.
Now we’re entering into a different debate entirely.
Reality is based on perception and perception is base upon how we describe it, which therefore is dependent upon culture and language and the likes, or as I like to put it, the questions you ask the answers you draw from your observations.
However, this concept is nothing new. It is the basis of all politics, how to get people to agree to your point of view by putting things into terms they can understand or agree with, either honestly or dishonestly. Whether or not people buy into what’s being told to them depends on a variety of factors that has little to do with the whole thing about conservatives rebelling against liberal ideals, but everything to do with assessing current culture and reality. As SK said, this has nothing to do with Derrida and Nietzche but politics and how people work (as I mentionned earlier).
I think maybe Xwing is trying to say something a little different. If I’m misinterpreting him, then sorry. But here’s my interpretation, in any event 
Post-modernism rationally exorcised the lack of metaphysical meaning from the various disciplines. Politics is not about socially mobilized ideals but the exercise of power, language is not something organic but something constructed, we define things by what they aren’t and not by what they are, etc.
Therefore, if there is no “truth” to how we structure our world (or even worse, that the “truth” is manufactured or controlled inadvertently/purposefully by other people!), one can reasonably extrapolate the conclusion that “there is no abstract meaning to <i>anything</i>,” even the very presence of a real, physical world. Everything is simply my perception of it, and my perceptions are infinitely malleable. We may charge that what we see or can prove through experimentation is reality, but if I really wanted to pull the string of post-modernist thought it would cast a lot of doubt upon our own ability to objectively demonstrate anything.
This can lead one to conclude that all decisions are done via pure force, since there are no legitimate “aspirational” “superior” principles which previously we were supposed to adhere to. Thus, if the only legitimizing method is force, our perceptions of the world stem from that force. Therefore one can use their own force to create one’s own reality. And because you’re creating your own reality, that reality is therefore moral because all that matters is what matters to you.
This is why the neocons so unblinkingly do much of what they do. If the “moral” “reality” is one of American foreign/economic/political/social dominance throughout the 21st century, then it really doesn’t matter how you achieve it since the ends justify the means. You can argue with forged documentation, overexaggerate an enemy’s weakness, argue justifications for war which have no rational backing. Hell, just watch one of McClellan’s more excruciating press conferences. I think SK you actually pointed this out once or fifty times when Persian Gulf II started.
All they care about is that they achieve their end, because their end is “right”, because they’re successful at actualizing it, and your success at enforcing your reality on everyone else is the only guiding principle since every other principle is nonexistent.
Now ultimately I agree sort of with SK. I don’t think these neocons are conservative children of Derrida and Saussure. I think they’re ideologues, who’s overarching principles ring more true of Trotsky than Nietzsche (old-skool communism is really the climax of rationalist Enlightenment ideal-seeking). And I think they’re just cherry-picking some of the ideas of post-modernism that suit their goals, like manipulating language and whatnot.
But I think Xwing’s point is that at the heart of that one advisor’s quotation is a disturbing utilization of post-modernist thought to accomplish perverse ends.
also, just to point out, the argument that politics is merely the exercise of power is precisely a modernist and post-modernist tenet, a relatively new philosophical creed. A categorical rejection of Enlightenment ideals about natural rights and such. You could go back to Hobbes/Machiavelli/Thucydides to find earlier articulations of that idea, but those were all crushed under the weight of the progressive ideals of the last 18th and 19th centuries.
That is so damn close to how I think, I’m not quite sure what to say. Edit: actually I do in that I’d a few caveats about usefulness and how a complete extrapolation of this is an ultimately unhelpful analysis and loses meaning (ironically). Language is used to create meaning such that things can be defined and observed and so it does define something as what it is , in addition as to what it isn’t. Being physical organisms, we have mechanisms of interacting with the physical world, no matter what we think the physical world or how we perceive it. While you can deconstruct how perception works, you are nevertheless left with something to work and interact with, whatever this is and however you choose to define it. By existing, one interacts with one’s physical environment and you ultimately can’t not affect it in a way.
But neoconservatives do believe in natural rights: their own. They believe themselves, and only themselves, to have the natural right to spread their notion of “democracy” around the world at gunpoint. They don’t believe that force is the sole legitimizing factor, but rather that it is legitimizing only when they use it, which is why they apply such a grotesque double standard to any country that tries to somehow defend its sovereignty against their incursions. Maybe the post-modernist critique would apply to them, but they themselves would reject it, because it would not admit their own claim to <i>absolute moral superiority</i>. So in their reasoning, it is not that their ability to create their own reality implies their moral superiority, but rather the other way around: they first presume themselves to be morally superior, and on those grounds allow themselves to create their own reality in accordance with their ideology. They’re not post-modernist; they’re precisely admirers of Plato and Machiavelli, as filtered through Strauss. That’s where they get the idea of the “noble lie” that allows them to start wars for no good reason. They take elements of Trotsky’s ideology of “global revolution,” but the Jacobins and the Inquisition are also historical predecessors that have nothing to do with post-modernism.
My point is that this particular thought is just a description of the way politics work, like a formula used to describe a phenomenon. The phenomenon exists independently of the statement. So, I don’t think the advisor is “using” post-modernist thought as much as he is illustrating its descriptive accuracy. He is definitely not trying to <i>justify</i> his ideology with his ability to create his own reality. He is just gleefully <i>asserting</i> that ability.
this is actually sort of the beginning of my own developing idea of “reconstructionism,” coincidentally.