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The Void of Postmodern Politics

by Johnny Reb

In our postmodern world we no longer find eternal verities, universal categories, stable sets of values or meaningful conceptions to be understood in their intellectual or scholarly context. Truth has been reduced to "whatever turns your crank" so if "2 + 2 = 5"  and "crows are white" makes you feel good and gets you get through the day, why not?

Everything appears indeterminate and in a state of flux.

We currently live in a global economic village in which utility and profit trump everything including truth, reality and ethics -  even people and life itself.

For example, in Communist China we find the most dominant, competitive and ruthless capitalist system in the world today. On the other hand, in the self-described capitalist United States  of America we find the most pampered communistic corporate welfare nanny state in the world. Are you confused and experiencing dizzy spells? You're not alone.

Political movements and their labels have been rendered irrelevant because what they truly represent and what they call themselves have been reduced to a vacuity. In the United States the duopoly of the Democratic and Republican Parties, despite their claims during corporate financed political campaigns about their ideological differences, are indistinguishable once elected. And the Enlightenment philosophy of "liberalism", once deemed an historically uplifting noble movement that challenged the authority of church and the feudal system, is now a derisive characterization of contempt.

The British Labour Party, once a working class socialist party, became in the post-Thatcher era under Tony Blair, even more  reactionary and regressive than the Conservative Party of Britain. In Canada, the NDP (formerly the CCF) has undergone a mutation from a progressive socialist party under the illustrious Tommy Douglas to resemble simply another tedious right wing status quo party, like all conservative parties throughout history.

Like the current dominant neo-conservative ideology, these so-called social democratic parties now embrace unconstrained free markets, war and imperialism.

The global 2007-09 financial meltdown and the massive multi-trillion dollar government bailouts of "too big to fail" rogue hyper-capitalist corporations ought to cure anyone of any delusions about the aforementioned  assertions.  "Too big to fail" makes no more sense than "too small to fail". The latest metaphor designed to instil fear in the credulous masses is "fiscal cliff".

And let us not continue to delude ourselves. Contrary to what they all claim, political parties from the extreme right to the extreme left sanction "big government". It's just a question of cui bono. Once elected, who will benefit from their largesse. 

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