totalitarianism today

The NATO menu.

According to the Romanian newspaper, Adevarul, a restaurant for NATO officials will be opening soon in Bucharest. This suggests that NATO has big plans for Romania in the coming years, as there would be no reason to open such a restaurant without the expectation of a large number of NATO officials and staffers in the area. Of course, the port of Constanta offers a wonderful strategic location for NATO's expansion in fighting the war on terrorism, most of which will probably take place in the Middle East.

Only yesterday President Bush urged a stronger role for NATO in Iraq in a meeting at the G8 summit. So the NATO restaurant will probably get a fair amount of traffic. A list of potential entrees includes "Sarajevo Stew" and "Quagmire-Laced Quail".

Quoting the Clash is terrorist behavior.

In Britain, the guitarist in a rock tribute act was quizzed as a terror suspect after sending a text message containing lyrics from a song by punk rock act the Clash to the wrong person. Band member Mike Devine, 35, the bass guitarist in a Clash tribute group called London Calling, intended to text the lyric from the band's song Tommy Gun to singer Reg Shaw - but sent the message to the wrong number.

Her Majesty's Secret Service has better tasks at hand than pursuing mediocre musicians. Frankly, I don't think any al Quaeda members were prone to listening to the Clash, much less being familiar enough with the lyrics to quote them. I grant that Clash lyrics, when read out of context, can be provocative-- but so can the lyrics for any punk group. Why else would punk be considered a form of protest music?

Conservatives move into punk.

Quick note: Catch MSNBC's take on "conservative punks", as best represented by the website, Conservative Punk.com. The argument is a usual suspect-- conservatives mobilizing voters by co-opting leftist populist, grassroots strategies-- but one that will be touted more vociferously at November approaches. Sociologists and political scientists, take heed. This is hot. And it will be a long-term trend. Get your disseration proposals ready.

Political language games.

There is no question that George Lakoff is correct--conservatives do use language games to control and/or affect politics. Bush "framed" the Iraq war as a compassionate, freedom-loving operation (i.e. Operation Iraqi Freedom) in order to rope in the foreign policy liberals who supported the Clinton-Gore consensus on Bosnia. But we miss the poignant problems when we focus solely on how Republicans have abused language-- democracy, terrorism, evil-- for the purpose of acquiring (or extending) political power. We should also ask how liberals have been complicit in the demise of meaningful politics through their own careless bandying about of such terms for other political purposes.

Both parties are to blame for the fact that "democracy in Iraq", in the minds of millions, acts as proxy for American political power in Iraq. Democracy and American political power are not the same thing-- they are not even two sides of the same coin. Continuous obfuscation and spin on this point only serves to further alienate the vast numbers of non-voting Americans (who, by the very political behavior, arguably don't think too much of the current democracy at home).