A faded, jaded mandarin
Saturday, August 21st, 2004 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerThere are certain points in the history of ideas which attract words like "ferment" and "melting-pot". Established truths were questioned (i.e. found not to be true, so why then call them established truths?). Something held up a mirror to something else. Paradigms shifted. Ground was broken. That sort of thing.
I wonder what a future popular historian will make of the early years of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, there does seem to be a certain degree of fermentation going on in the melting-pot, and there is plenty of skepticism towards meta-narratives, and indeed skepticism toward skepticism toward meta-narratives. Nothing, we are told, can be the same in a post-Cold-War, post-9/11, post-Bush era. This leaves us in a paradoxical situation where nothing can be the same, but at the same time, nothing is new.
In the Blue corner, we have the religious right, talk radio, family values, free enterprise, George Bush and the end of history. In the Red corner, we have anti-globalism protestors, cultural studies majors, Michael Moore and the end of meaning.
Oh well, maybe I'm just tired from reading too many blogs.
I wonder what a future popular historian will make of the early years of the twenty-first century. On the one hand, there does seem to be a certain degree of fermentation going on in the melting-pot, and there is plenty of skepticism towards meta-narratives, and indeed skepticism toward skepticism toward meta-narratives. Nothing, we are told, can be the same in a post-Cold-War, post-9/11, post-Bush era. This leaves us in a paradoxical situation where nothing can be the same, but at the same time, nothing is new.
In the Blue corner, we have the religious right, talk radio, family values, free enterprise, George Bush and the end of history. In the Red corner, we have anti-globalism protestors, cultural studies majors, Michael Moore and the end of meaning.
Oh well, maybe I'm just tired from reading too many blogs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 11:11 am (UTC)It frustrates me as well that "nothing is the same", but "this country was founded on traditional values" are the call-and-response of the American Right, which reduces in some creepy way to "Everything's Different Now -- we're in danger from yon Evil Ones. Therefore we must break the old Restrictive Rules like that silly outmoded Bill of Rights. But don't do these newfangle things like the Gay Marriage; we must do things In The Old Way."
Oh, and FYI, according to the mainstream American media these days, you have Blue and Red swapped.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 12:42 pm (UTC)Maybe they just swap sides of the pitch every four years, like in halftime football?
Hell if I know.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 05:26 pm (UTC)I hadn't thought of that connotation of "red", it's so irrelevant to American politics anymore.
We might say that we practice the Coastal Blues. That plot shows the race as far too close for my comfort.
the more things chsnge, the more things stay the same
Date: 2004-08-21 08:07 pm (UTC)As Dr. Melfi would say, I think we've had a breakthrough. It's taken me seven years, nearly to the day, to make me realise why I left Ireland, and came here. At least everyone knows what America is about.....
Irisharehere
no subject
Date: 2004-08-22 01:22 am (UTC)