With the DNC starting, we are clearly in the thick of campaign season, and with it an assault on our symbolic reality. Campaign managers will serve as symbolic pyromaniacs for the next ten weeks -- throwing their matches of ideas to see what catches and spreads like wildfire among the populous. With these efforts, we're going to see a lot of political and symbolic incongruity. A broad example is Biden's about face from the primary season to now partnering with Obama; or McCain running against Bush's agenda and now trying to legitimize himself among conservatives by supporting the Bush agenda. As a bit of a cynic, I'm used to these, but do find them funny.
What's harder for me to take is when an individual chooses to sum up their beliefs in bumper stickers (arguably the symbolic cue of the fantasy themes and dramas that comprise that person's symbolic reality). In the case of one of my neighbors, s/he has two bumper stickers on their car. The first says "Got Experience?" -- that was the pro-Hillary, anti-Obama drama. Fair enough. But then the next bumper sticker is Al Franken for Senate. For those not familiar with the MN Senate race, satarist Al Franken has no experience as an elected official. It's hard to take your bumper stickers seriously when they demonstrate a lack of political consistency or the good sense to remove one when that drama has died.
2 comments:
Matt it is hard to make an argument that good sense exists anywhere in the current political stage.
Witness the two main actors; the first rightly argues the need for change and stakes his entire political future on the simple concept and then promptly makes his number one a well entrenched old hand in the play.
Now comes the voice of consistency and experience who argues loudly and strongly that experience is what truly maters since none of us wish to take on the risk of the unknown of inexperience; and promptly makes his number one a small town mayor and governor that no one has ever heard of in the real world. And never has it mattered more.
There's an incongruity for you. The bumper sticker crowd in merely representing in their own trite way the reality in which we live.
Thanks for the comment. Deep down, I love bumper stickers -- they are the symbolic cues and short hands of the themes that construct our symbolic reality. Sometimes we see them and nod or cheer (when we're in that tribe); other times we are infuriated by them (when we're in a competing tribe); and yet other times we have no idea what they mean.
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