This is interesting not least because the line between populism and elitism is something you've always trod in your work, hopping from the Decadence of the Eighties to strange music hall and back...
If I was to draw a lesson from your back catalogue it would be that the aristocrat's always at his best when he's impoverished, and the outsider is always at his best when he used to be an insider.
The kind of play that you're describing seems like a deliberate flight from power, though, for both the ingroup and the outgroup. That in itself can function as a commentary on GW, because he's not actually a conservative. (Conservatism is by definition reactionary, an oppositional viewpoint.) He's just a man with uncomplicated black and white values and too much influence. We think about our fantasies of regime change and we lurch away from him by disarming and confusing ourselves.
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Date: 2006-04-02 05:23 pm (UTC)If I was to draw a lesson from your back catalogue it would be that the aristocrat's always at his best when he's impoverished, and the outsider is always at his best when he used to be an insider.
The kind of play that you're describing seems like a deliberate flight from power, though, for both the ingroup and the outgroup. That in itself can function as a commentary on GW, because he's not actually a conservative. (Conservatism is by definition reactionary, an oppositional viewpoint.) He's just a man with uncomplicated black and white values and too much influence. We think about our fantasies of regime change and we lurch away from him by disarming and confusing ourselves.