h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Postmodern politics has recently become best expressed by G.W. Bush and his administration's policies. They present a marked departure from traditional American Republicanism, which in the name of fiscal conservatism prefers a small federal government and larger state and local governments. Bush and company rather perceives states as having overwhelming differences that should be respected rather than tampered with in most cases, turning most federal standards into an imposition.

This has resulted in part in the gutting of some federal agencies that are controlled by the president. Funding has been cut. Standards have been relaxed. In a few cases, protesting officials who have served for decades under many different presidents have quit in protest over directives that they either stop certain duties or else remove findings from their reports that might lead to increased federal initiative.

Predictably enough, nobody has been more upset about this than the scientists. (If there are any true modernists remaining in modern society, it is them.) While they understand that policies will be guided by many factors, they don't approve of determined facts being removed from reports for political reasons. Neither have they enjoyed watching field experts being replaced by political cronies with no real experience. The latter can be understood as a natural action to take when the importance of the agency's work is no longer highly valued.

Hurricane Katrina has highlighted the ultimate price society pays for postmodern politics. It is true that there were errors on local levels. The mayor of New Orleans delayed evacuation for one day out of concern that local businesses would sue over lost receipts. The state governor waited approximately a day and a half to give the federal military the power to take over the operations of the state's National Guard units. She feared being blamed by the feds for the failure to evacuate earlier.

However, the huge majority of blame can be layed at the Bush administration's five prior years of postmodern governing.

FEMA, the agency responsible for recovering from natural disasters, had lost its cabinet level access to the president. It was headed by a friend of a friend of the president with almost no real emergency planning experience. The agency's plan for evacuating New Orleans had major gaps, including the admission that as many as 100,000 people could be trapped in the city under the plan they had cobbled together.

The Army Corps of Engineers, a federal and military group, was responsible for keeping the levees working in case of a flood. They had been severely underfunded for years. Even the study they had proposed to determine how to recover in case of a strong hurricane had been ended prematurely due to lack of funds. Warnings by that agency, by FEMA administrators, and by the national weather predicting service had been completely ignored by officials with cabinet level access or above.

When the hurricane hit, FEMA officials moved slowly. They did so in part due to poor funding, poor planning, and poor access to cabinet level agencies that could offer aid. The other, less reported part of the story is that FEMA and the governor of Louisiana were embroiled in complex paperwork bickering due to postmodern concerns about the federal government usurping the state's right to guide recovery efforts.

At one point, FEMA demanded that the state government provide it with a complete list of everything it would need. The list was to be itemized and include an estimated price tag. The Louisiana governor has likened this to walking into an emergency room in a hospital with obvious gunshot wounds and being asked to tell the doctor what surgery would be needed and how much it would cost the hospital. It was over a week before the paperwork issues were worked out to the feds' satisfaction.

Meanwhile, of course, tens of thousands of homeless people had descended into chaos. The city and state were unable to handle the huge undertaking necessary to evacuate the flooded areas. Nor were they able to provide food or water to the people. The timeline by which the locals were relying on the feds to offer relief came and went, and people began to die due to federal incompetence. In the end, I'm sure we'll find that Katrina killed only a few hundred. We did the rest.

gosh - what a long posting! I'll post an immediate reply then re-read it and give a more considered response later.

First I'm afraid I would disagree with your opening statement. I did read somewhere (New York Times?) while researching the article a comment about Bush being a postmodernist because he disregarded scientific evidence of climate change and had a bit of a chuckle about it. I don't see this as an expression of postmodern politics (whatever that might be - I mean, what was modern politics? Bismark? Trotsky? Thatcher?). I would imagine Bush cares as little about the Republican tradition as Thatcher did about traditional Conservatism here. Bush, like Thatcher, chooses whatever position suits him at the time so long as it doesn't cost his voters any money. This sort of politics is mentioned in the article; rather than being postmodern politics it is actually a symptom of the social changes that postmodern analysts are trying to understand in order that people can effectively prevent the ensuing disasters.

After I've had time to digest your posting properly I'll add some detailed argument to the above.

I understand your point. I have written a lot, and I imagine there are many people who would vehemently disagree with me. And that's fine.

In America, in particular, the various states developed their own local political traditions before joining the union. In my opinion, then, "postmodern politics" implicitly assumes that each state can and should still have very different laws and policies. That is, the goal of politics is to have small, fragmented jurisdictions rather than a single overarching jurisdiction where most things are decided. This helps to explain why Bush has a very antagonistic relationship with the United Nations, the ultimate single jurisdiction political body.

Bush's tendency to change the rationale for his policies, often while claiming there was no change, is another postmodern symptom. (He occasionally changes the actual policies as well in the same manner.) There is no real sense that consistency is called for. The famous quote from 2002 is from Ron Suskind, who contacted a senior advisor to Bush to discuss the election debacle in Florida.

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

In a modernist view, policies and the rationales for them may change in response to changing conditions. In Bush's postmodern view, the politicians themselves can change them at will as long as the majority of people will continue to follow along. And for Bush, it's quite clear that it makes no difference how slim or fragile that majority is.

I can't say this is all Bush's fault. Americans on either side of the political spectrum have radically different understandings of politics and news these days. Media journalists here have decided that there's not really any such thing as unbiased journalism. So instead of fact finding, news has become more about spinning a narrative of current events in a way that will appeal to a particular targeted demographic.

Bush inherited a country fractured by a liberal/conservative dichotomy. Rather than heal the fracture, though, he has exploited it. Yet many here still believe he is "a uniter, not a divider." Amazing.

<>

That's a natural conclusion of the concept of rule by concent of the governed. The US is too large and the US has too heterogeneous a population for very similar laws nationwide to be consented to by more than a small majority.

Anyway, if that's part of postmodern politics, why does Bush believe that it is wrong for Massachussetts to permit gay marrige when other states don't and wrong for California to permit medical marijuana when other states don't?

Oh, now that's different. Those things offend his moral sensibilities.

Seriously, though. You don't see Bush taking special measures to try and stop Massachusetts from granting gay marriages, for example. Satisfied that no other state has to honor the gay marriage, he has in fact left well enough alone. And this is despite pressure from within.

As for the U.S. being too heterogenous, I suspect there are many things we can generally agree on despite our differences. I'm fairly certain no state condones murder, wants to gut out their highway system, or would rather fend for itself in case of a major natural disaster. But in Bush's mind, each state should have its own laws on these anyway.

No state condones murder--but they disagree on the definition and punishment. Is doctor-assisted suicide murder. Most states say yes, but either Oregon or Washington state says no. Should murderers be executed? Depends on the state.

I question whether Bush thinks states should fend for themselves in the cases of natural disasters. That he gutted FEMA sounds more like shortsightedness and cronyism to me. Although having local civilian defence councils to handle first responces isn't a bad idea--FEMA's always taken a few days to respond because it's hard to quickly move resources across the country and into an area where a lot of infrastructure's been taken out.

As for his unwillingness to federalize the national guard without Blanco's permission, the Constitution sort of requires him to do that and it makes some sense--allow the president to send in troops to a state without the govenor's permission and in effect you're allowing him to override state laws by invasion.

Fragilis, I have a feeling that we are still arguing about two different things here. I would guess that our opinions of Bush and his politics are very similar; where we differ is that you have decided to label them "postmodern" while I have written an article about a set of ideas that attempt to bring about an understanding of the gap between Enlightenment idealism and social reality - a gap that has led to the sort of problems you mention

sorry run out of time again - more later

Maybe we are, Chris. I have the distinct feeling I'm missing something.