From French, literally "already written by driftglass", is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an article or op-ed currently you are reading has already been written in the past by driftglass. "driftglass vu" is a feeling of familiarity, and "driftglass vécu" is the feeling of having "already lived through something driftglass talked about, shit, has it been a decade already?"; a feeling of recollection.
It is gratifying to see the sorts of things I was banging on about ten years ago suddenly appearing with the imprimatur of Serious Persons in paying publications here, there and everywhere.
However it is not nearly as lucrative as you might imagine.
From Bill Moyers in Salon today (h/t two different Alert Readers)
Andrew Sullivan is blind: It’s elitists who helped give rise to America’s neo-fascist movement
The patrician essayist blames Trump on "hyperdemocracy," completely oblivious of his own complicity in this tragedy
...For all of his occasional apostasy against the new Republican orthodoxy by being an openly gay conservative, Sullivan still has just enough emotional attachment to a patrician, largely imaginary version of “classic” conservatism as to want to protect his ideological mirage from contamination by the Trump craze. He favors some fantasy version of the conservatism espoused by his idol, the British political scientist Michael Oakeshott. It is his delusion that there now exists a conservatism purged of its reactionary impulses that can function as an anti-ideology rather than the ideology it actually is. Contemporary conservatism, with its harping on tradition and values, is an elaborate evasion of the fundamental political question all societies face: Who gets what, and on which terms? When Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the mystic chords of memory,” he did not mean the dead hand of custom, but rather a steady confidence in popular government derived from the inalienable rights of the governed.As with other right-of-center polemicists of late, Andrew Sullivan seeks to distract us by playing down or ignoring the role of movement conservatism in creating the ugly carnival that is Trump by waving shiny objects in front of us labeled “political correctness” (so he can blame “the Left”) or popular culture (to diffuse the blame throughout society). Sorry, Andrew: The conservative movement, and the elites who back them, built this Frankenstein monster. They own it.
Clearly there is an ever-widening niche for this kind of writing.
And clearly I established myself long ago as fully capable of delivering it, hot, fast and readable.
So my question is...
9 comments:
DG, you know why.
There is a club.
You are not in it.
Bill Moyers just barely barely is acknowledged by the Club, and frankly, from where I sit, Moyers really ain't in it, either. He's managed to hang on by his fingernails, where "lesser" mortals, like Phil Donahue got thoroughly drummed out, completely discredited and are totally ignored by being placed behind the veil of the blackout curtain. We rubes are lucky that Moyers gets noticed for anything he says or writes. I guess the PTB concede to Moyers as the exception that proves THIER RULE, as it were.
As for the rest of us, DG included, well... fahgedabboudit.
Moyers' article, while articulately and well written, simply states the fucking obvious (no slur intended for Moyers).
Qui bono? Who benefits is indeed the only real question in politics. Sully imagines a time of polite, Burkean, idealized institutional conservatism that has never, in fact, been a part of U.S. history. (He shares this delusion with DFB, of course.) The conservative movement of the last 50 years wedded former Dixiecrats, wealthy plutocrats and working class white resentment towards any change. This Frankenstein's monster always depended upon the Republican political class being skilled enough to distract the non-plutocrats with hate causes, wars and an enormous propaganda machine so they could shift the tax, regulatory and financial systems decidedly in favor of the plutocrats. But the GOP political class has also become increasingly incompetent at this balancing act as it has become more extreme and it is now falling apart. But it's never been about political correctness or popular culture. it's always been about qui bono.
What, no post about David Brooks and his efforts to get to know the real America?
He's finished visiting the Resnicks now; he's off to an elite liberal arts college today to get in touch with the people?
(I guess he fears he wouldn't survive long in an economically depressed urban or rural area.)
It's coming :-)
After you run around kissing babies in public in front of the cameras.
You then need to go around off and steal those babies lollipops.
Only then will you prove a value to the club for your promotion and practice of their style of capitalism.
NO SOUP FOR YOU!!
DG, it's not that the PTB don't like you, or think you are wrong. It's just that you started this whole thing so long ago with your long wild hair and your animal skin robes shouting in the desert. Now that the subject has been brought indoors, they really can't bring you in along with the subject, or people might start asking questions about whether you were the same guy. How would it look if they were to all of a sudden legitimize you after ignoring you for so long? Think of the embarrassment.
The help will give you some honey and locusts on your way out. Use the rear service door - wouldn't want any of the guests to see. You understand...
Driftglass vu? Oh yeah, I get that all the time, like when I'm writing a comment at the Field Negro and all of the sudden I can hear it coming off of my keyboard in your voice:
"you have to remember that to right wingers history began on January 20, 2009. To admit any more time into history would risk the admission that we on the left have been right about them all along."
That one was from last night. There was one about Sully a few days ago, but I'm way too lazy to dig it up.
I like Bill Moyers, especially his Jon Stewart interviews and the time he was on the Daily Show. Also, he wrote an article right after W got elected (04) about how these women in Texas actually claimed to be for civil rights and it just never occurred to them that black people should get them too. It was fascinating.
-Doug in Oakland
To avoid driftglass vu, just keep writing "the liberals were right about the right all along". That will never appear in the mainstream media, even ten years from now, even one single time.
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