Pay attention to the man before the curtain
The pig of empire is sometimes enlipsticked, a few decorous phrases thrown in: freedom; concern; restraint; &c. These codes are so well-worn, so universally understood, as to make their decipherment a simple, if bleakly amusing, task.
Often, however - increasingly - no make-up is applied. Thus, breathtakingly, this.
- ‘Where it’s best to end up is in free elections at a certain point in time, but in the mean time to get a managed process of change …’
- ‘I totally understand that [that Egyptians want Mubarak gone now], but you asked me what’s the best thing for Egypt and for this region …’
- ‘I don’t think that Western governments should be the slightest bit embarrassed about saying we’ve worked very closely with president Mubarak …’
- ‘You have to say, he has been a staunch and often courageous advocate for peace …’
- ‘The important thing now is that we allow this process to happen in an orderly and not chaotic way …’
There is no embarrassment at opposing democracy in favour of imperial control. No blushes at, even now, encomia to the dictator. Nothing inadvertent nor shameful about the verbs ‘manage’ & ‘allow’ to describe ‘the West”s mission, faced with liberation. Indeed, shame is explicitly abjured.
Here is no great & terrible Oz to deflect attention. No smoke, no mirrors. No bread, no circuses. No dissembling, no lullabies, no kiss on the cheek, no taxi fare home. There is no wriggling. The man in the suit tells the heroines & heroes & martyrs of Egypt quite clearly that their lives, their revolution, their emancipation belong to him & his colleagues, to dole out as, & when, & if, they see fit.
Pas devant les domestiques
It is not a secret.
‘Last april, when the SEC filed suit against Goldman, the bank could have fought back. The suit complained it had sold fancy mortgage securities without disclosing that a hedge-fund manager, John Paulson, was betting that those same securities would blow up. To which Goldman could have answered: so what? … A bank’s first loyalty is to its profits, not those of its customers - it’s us-against-them, not zen and om. Despite claims to the contrary, banks frequently play customers for patsies …’
Rectofacticity, more calm assertion of the obvious, in the cutely pink but unblushing pages of the house organ of those with more money than god.
Out of the mouths of babes & CEOs
If Naomi Klein, say, were to describe the fundamental job of television as ‘selling available human brain time to Coca-Cola’, the snorts of derision at such tedious & passé Dave Spartery would be deafening. Spoken, however, by the CEO of an actual television channel, describing his day-to-day activities, what deafens is the silence.
Or take Free Speech (it is, after all, a special magic privileged organising principle du jour). It must surely be dirty Red slander that in the US ‘in order to fully participate & have your First Amendment rights, you have to be able to spend money’, glossing recent legal developments as ‘The Supreme Court said that money is speech’. How tiresome. What grotesque & tawdry ingratitude.
What if, however, these were the precise words of the conservative businessman & unspeakable bastard who brought & won that very case?
Then this - money is speech - would not be left-wing critique but right-wing crowing; not outrage but triumph; not crisis decried but desideratum achieved.
What to call these claims that, voiced by radical partisans for human emancipation, would be denounced as exaggerated, crude, tasteless political kitsch; but that are, in actuality, uncontroversial facts stated by their beneficiaries? Victorverité? Rectofacticity? Quantum Shondes?
