Mandate to end Postmodernism

Referenced documents:

A President Forgotten but Not Gone
By FRANK RICH
Published: January 4, 2009

Highlights of Accomplishments and Results (15MB PDF)
- The Administration of George W. Bush

Frank Rich's NYT column A President Forgotten but Not Gone is an analysis of the last marketing campaign of the Bush Administration. Rich focuses on the GWB regime's exit interviews, a greater number of interviews than any previous President. In all the interviews, Bush/Cheney/Rove have ( with a straight face ) put forth a glowing review of their tenure. Add to these interviews the regime made headlines as the most environmental president ever with the Jan 5 announcement of the largest marine sanctuary in the world (Grist).

Contrast this with the rhetoric of Obama. He is an engineer, a social and cultural engineer. Our tribal subjectivisms are duly noted in his speeches, and he asks us to transcend past them to make a more robust, wealthier, healthier, and inventive society. In his world view their is work to do, criteria, and success or failure upon reflection. In his world view, we can't just make shit up.

The GWB Regime, by contrast, is entirely contained in its tribal subjectivisms -serving its base, ignoring or gunning for the rest. The GWB Regime was the greatest achievement of postmodern tactics. This week, with the view provided by Frank Rich, we are seeing Postmodernism with one foot in the grave, touting itself as forever relevant, so oblivious to empirical data that it will not know its lights are about to go out forever till its lights are out forever.

Within the Postmodern semiotic, tribes echo chamber their values within, and attack the tribes that are opponents. Since sometime around the George Wallace presidential campaign, and Nixon's swooping up of those voters with his southern strategy, Republicans have not been a coherent policy in the least, choosing rather to attract tribal subjectivists who do not measure real world goods but rather make symbolic gestures to express their hatred for all things urban. While the Republicans made this unreal world of incoherence, the countercultural left was fast maturing past 60's recreational subjectivism and by the early 70's were creating a big economy via publishing and academia. Subjectivism ceased to be recreational, old hippies got professional about their psycho-somatic methodologies.

Republicans ruled Washington (East Coast), and Dems/counter-cultural left ruled the storytelling worlds of Hollywood (West Coast) and books.

Then on Sept 11 World War III broke out. Washington responded with the largest , longest barrage of subjective making-shit-up the world has ever known. More powerful than 1000,000 of the original atomic bomb. Through 70's and 80's Repubs and Dems had toyed with casual Postmodernism, with the most adventurous being on the left side in academia or popular books. But on Sept 12th, the Bush Administration pulled a Postmodernism out of a research hanger at the Heritage Foundation that simply made history and science melt away.

This Postmodernism kicked ass, mowed down opponents like they were grass. Except for real opponents. Oh yeah, that thing the hippies and the new Repubs forgot about -objectivism, realism, empiricism. You can make history and science melt away, but reality does not melt so easily. You, the subjective, will melt first.

A survey of what is hot and what is not: 1960-2008 Making-shit-up in your head and finding others who agree was the new cool. 2009-? Engineering and empiricism are in, making things and finding other to help make it better is the new cool. Rest in Peace Postmodernism, the head trip was fun till it became an addiction.