It's been a busy week and I've spent most of my free time drinking and trying to get laid, neither of which I've been doing much of lately.
I watched some of the speech with the sound off. The difference between Reagan and Bush is that Bush is an idiot who can't act. How anyone could refer to him as being capable of feigning 'moral seriousness' let alone attaining it is beyond me. And Bob Herbert referred to his ability to make a 'Moving' speech. What idiocy. The problem with democracy is that at its worst it's government marked on the curve.

Let's see what else is new.

Orcinus has a post on the various definitions of Fascism. He writes in a faux 'scholarese' but what he says or links to is good enough. Yet he misses a very important point, the presence or absence of which allows me to go back to my comments on kitsch, and find something to write about tonight.
Fascism is a kitsch simulacrum of monarchy. It is the dream of an ideal its followers can never attain except by falsehoods, and is predicated on the absolute mediocrity of the dreamers themselves.
Fascism is the desire of the fat middle aged glutton for the body of the beautiful boy: that wants to be the boy, fuck the boy, and kill him out of jealousy. It says, "I am a superman, not because I am noble, or strong, or just, or wise, or smart, but because I say so. And I have the gun so you'll all agree it's true." Contra Foucault and the rest, not all relations are strictly power relations. Most social orders are structural and linguistic. Monarchism is a rule of law, of a kind of law. Despotism is the rule of power without law, except perhaps the law of the practical: the despot needs to stay alive. Fascism is the rule of illogic and hypocrisy. If I say the trains run on time you will agree; whether they actually do or not doesn't matter. It's the destruction of language, under the pressure of desire. It's the pederast from Opus Dei. Bush could be described as showing signs of a fascist sensibility because he wants to be seen in a certain way regardless of how he performs his duties.

Fascism is the ideology of a certain type of adolescence, and begins with a love that turns sour with failure. If you want to understand something of the poetic of fascist idealism pick up a copy of David Bowie's Hunky Dory, a brilliant memento of fascist desire.

"I'm living in a silent film
Portraying Himmler's sacred realm
Of dream reality"
-Quicksand.

Thomas Pynchon couldn't say it better.