The urban jungle that is Manhattan, with all its concrete skyscrapers, should be the very last place on earth where one might expect to see the start of a turning away from the Modern obsession with the artificial and the synthetic and a turn to the Postmodernity's renewed relationship with Nature.
But Manhattan is in fact the place where the wartime mass production of natural penicillin - with all that momentous decision's consequences for postmodernity - actually began .
Showing posts with label irony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label irony. Show all posts
Aug 25, 2014
Jul 8, 2012
Celebrating the UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES of 50 years of right wing elite levelling : 1964-2014
Goldwater Affect
Starting at the 1964 San Francisco Republican National Convention, right wingers world wide have wage an unrelenting almost 50 year long war to 'level' left wing elites, as they understand them.
Time perhaps, to see what has been achieved..... and at what cost to the right wing itself.
1945 Annus Mirabilis
It is fair to say that in early 1945, the right wing globally was Hegemonic ; we saw the world through their ideological eyes and we were basically respectful to all elites - and the right, of course, occupied most of the seats at the table of the elect.
So we respected them above all.
But the rapidly post-hegemonic world that emerged at the end of 1945 troubled the previously hegemonic Right most of all.
Reds Under The Bed
At first, their response was to blame it on hardline communists at home and abroad, but by 1964 they began to see that their real enemy was social-cultural not military-political and was coming from softline left-liberals.
Clinton vs Kennedy
Right wingers threw off centuries of deference to elites , even to elites not of their own tastes and vociferously exposed the post-1964 sex life of President Clinton in a way they never did for the pre-1964 President Kennedy ---- though Kennedy was probably more sexually active outside marriage than Clinton.
But a rising tide of elite levelling - intended only for left-liberal elites - levels all elites.
Ironic "Backfire", 50 Years Later
Ironically we can credit today's sexual, ethnic and religious liberations to the hard righters of the Goldwater Convention.
The Right would not be so beleaguered today, if its attack dogs hadn't given permission for all sorts of levellers to attack elites.
In the cultural chaos of our post-hegemonic world, media forces , once unleashed, wander as they will.
When most of the world's elites are right wingers, any sort of levelling talk is like speaking of rope in a house of a man about to be hung...
Starting at the 1964 San Francisco Republican National Convention, right wingers world wide have wage an unrelenting almost 50 year long war to 'level' left wing elites, as they understand them.
Time perhaps, to see what has been achieved..... and at what cost to the right wing itself.
1945 Annus Mirabilis
It is fair to say that in early 1945, the right wing globally was Hegemonic ; we saw the world through their ideological eyes and we were basically respectful to all elites - and the right, of course, occupied most of the seats at the table of the elect.
So we respected them above all.
But the rapidly post-hegemonic world that emerged at the end of 1945 troubled the previously hegemonic Right most of all.
Reds Under The Bed
At first, their response was to blame it on hardline communists at home and abroad, but by 1964 they began to see that their real enemy was social-cultural not military-political and was coming from softline left-liberals.
Clinton vs Kennedy
Right wingers threw off centuries of deference to elites , even to elites not of their own tastes and vociferously exposed the post-1964 sex life of President Clinton in a way they never did for the pre-1964 President Kennedy ---- though Kennedy was probably more sexually active outside marriage than Clinton.
But a rising tide of elite levelling - intended only for left-liberal elites - levels all elites.
Ironic "Backfire", 50 Years Later
Ironically we can credit today's sexual, ethnic and religious liberations to the hard righters of the Goldwater Convention.
The Right would not be so beleaguered today, if its attack dogs hadn't given permission for all sorts of levellers to attack elites.
In the cultural chaos of our post-hegemonic world, media forces , once unleashed, wander as they will.
When most of the world's elites are right wingers, any sort of levelling talk is like speaking of rope in a house of a man about to be hung...
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