Special @ MindSay

Publié le 11/09/2008 N°1878 Le Point

Sarah Palin : opération « castration »

--Jacques-alain Miller, psychanalyste


Le choix de Sarah Palin est un signe des temps. En politique, l'énonciation féminine est désormais appelée à dominer. Mais attention ! Il ne s'agit plus des femmes qui jouaient des coudes en se modelant sur les hommes. Nous entrons dans l'ère des femmes postféministes, qui, sans barguigner, font la peau aux hommes politiques. La transition a été parfaitement visible durant la campagne de Hillary : elle a commencé par jouer le commandant en chef, et ça n'a pas marché. Alors, elle a envoyé un message subliminal qui disait quelque chose comme : « Obama ? Il n'a rien dans le pantalon. » Elle a aussitôt remonté, mais trop tard. Sarah Palin prend le relais, mais, plus jeune de quinze ans, elle est autrement féroce, elle manie le sarcasme féminin avec un naturel incomparable, elle châtre ouvertement ses adversaires mâles, et avec une franche jubilation, tandis que les malheureux restent cois : attaquer une femme qui joue de sa féminité pour les ridiculiser et les réduire à l'impuissance, ils ne savent pas. Pour l'instant, une femme qui abat la carte « castration » est imbattable. En France, on avait pu voir Ségolène accomplir l'opération « castration » sur Fabius et Strauss-Kahn, mais par la suite, toute à se polir une image de madone, elle négligea Sarkozy, qui sut la peindre en évaporée nunuche. Quant aux Martine Aubry ou Michèle Alliot-Marie, c'est l'ancien modèle. Quelle est précisément la différence entre les femmes de ces deux époques ? Les premières imitent l'homme, elles respectent le phallus, et font comme si elles l'avaient. Les nouvelles savent que ce n'est qu'un semblant, elles ne le prennent pas au sérieux : c'est la féminité décomplexée. Une Sarah Palin n'affiche aucun manque, n'a peur de rien, pond des enfants tout en maniant le fusil, se présente comme une force qui va, « un pitbull avec du rouge à lèvres ». Obama a-t-il déjà perdu ? En ne choisissant pas Hillary comme partenaire-sur les instances de son épouse, dit-on, elle aussi très pitbull-, il a ouvert un boulevard à McCain, qui s'y est engouffré. Grâce à Palin, McCain est revenu dans la course. Sarah passionne l'Amérique, elle apporte en politique un nouvel Eros. Si Obama gagne, elle a les meilleures chances d'être son challenger dans quatre ans. Si c'est McCain, Hillary sera son adversaire numéro un. Dans tous les cas, une nouvelle race de femmes politiques monte en puissance.

I'm thinking about wearing my favorite shirt on Thursday.

Anyone else doing anything special for 9/11?

Best Work!
Expository

Edcer Jerecho Laguda
Leona Paula Lipio

Yesterday was.. What is the right word? Despite not being able to take community service for the remaining semester (Which, I must say, I am so pissed off about this, I've had it with these douche bags dicking around my schedule over and over again), it was, Dreamy? That sounds like the right word. Especially in the whirling pit of nothingness that is goading me to jump in.

 

Dreamy? Rightfully so. Especially on the manner of not wishing to wake up for fear that it might all be a dream and this was just some random scheme thrown into my head to make me feel miserable. But, I met someone. No, not like that. However, the turn in which my life has suddenly taken is absurd. It's amazing how meeting someone can light up a darkness that's been busy consuming your insides. I spent the most of yesterday (Since I got home early) talking to her, and I enjoyed myself greatly. Talking. Connecting. It really feels like I've met her somehow, but of course, that isn't possible. Considering she's on the other side of the globe. Le sigh, it's a bit upsetting. But I have to tell myself that I am the way I am now because of where I am and what has happened to me, and I wouldn't meet people if those things changed. So.. I guess, in a way, it's a good thing I'm a completely insane idiot or else I wouldn't've met her. I enjoyed talking to her so much, and here's a chance where I can actually help someone else instead me feeling miserable and another person trying to deal with my insanity. I could ramble on for a very, very long time at how bubbley I feel at this encounter and connection, but I'll spare her the embarassment and chance to scare her away since she reads my page. Though, I am, for what's seemed like a long time, very happy.

 

Today there is no school, since freezing rain started up. And, out of the goodness of their hearts, the school decided to yank the stick out of their ass and close it for today. Probably because every school in a 50 mile radius was closed, and maybe they felt a little inclined. I cannot wait until I graduate. I cannot wait to break free of this prison. I'm almost half tempted to just buy a plane ticket to some random place and head there and start my life anew. This is, of course, insane. Some people might think about something in a day dream and then just brush it off, where as I take it to heart and strongly consider doing it. Ugh. What's wrong with me?

 

Either way, I've got to get out, and I'm not sure if I can endure the four months that's left until I am. It's always a "Well, time goes so fast!" No, no it doesn't. Time is very slow, so slow that it nearly causes me physical pain. But of course it would be "stupid" to quit school and go somewhere else in the country, canada, europe, or somewhere else. The part in my mind labeled "Reason" slaps me across the face and says that I'd probably just die from not having anywhere to go, money to buy food, unable to find a job, ect ect ect. The "Insane" part counters with a, "So what?" but ugh. I feel so stupid sometimes. Normal people probably shouldn't consider such things.

 

Still. My mind is spinning and it's making me dizzy, I'm unable to get a grasp on it to make it stop. I have the day to myself, but I'll probably just end up working on Xenogears (I fell asleep last night playing it without saving...) or read Prozac Nation, or maybe do some non-blog writting just for the sake of writting. That might be fun. Though, I'd like to do something a little more creative that write World of Warcraft fan fics. Hah. I have ideas to mind, but I haven't given them any wings yet. Maybe I'll do that today, I'll have to see. I almost forgot today was friday. Day off + weekend is wonderful. I suppose lady lucks throws me a glance every now and then. Though, a pessimistic part of me wonders when all this happiness will just suddenly cease like it likes to do, as if it gets some pleasure out of seeing my spirits fall. But really, I don't care.

 

If this is a dream, don't let me wake up.

I have nothing to add, Keith says all that is necessary.

Transcript

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the President’s cataclysmic deception about Iran.

There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr. Bush has left us with tonight.

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three

about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible

hyperbole —

or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked —

at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so —

whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief.

It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction:

A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer,

a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency:

an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

After Ms Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night,

the timeline is inescapable and clear now.

In August, the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence,

Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always

see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be,

in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president, Ahmadinejad:

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III,

it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have

the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric

was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, sir, to scare the Americans?

Does Iran not really fit into the equation here?

Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the

same template you used to scare us about Iraq?

In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, sir,

would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.

A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing

that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged,

irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria

and his own delusions of omniscience.

Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Bush.

The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, sir, that you see in the mirror.

And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised intel \

as long as two weeks ago — briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit

of this imminent threat four years ago — who never bothered to mention it to his boss.

It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency,

it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed,

behind-the-scenes string-puller.

Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance,

it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president’s evil ventriloquist,

or he thinks he is.

What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information

of this urgency and this gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning,

instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation — or a criminal one?

Mr Bush — if you can still hear us — if you did not previously agree to this scenario

in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you’re the Remington Steele —

you must disenthrall yourself: Mr Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers,

cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented

presidency in which the facts have become optional, the intel is valued less than the hunch,

and the assistant runs the store.

The problem is, sir, your assistant is robbing you — and your country — blind.

Not merely in monetary terms, Mr. Bush, but more importantly, robbing you

of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk,

for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.

Mr. Cheney has helped, sir, to make your administration into the kind our ancestors

saw in the 1860’s and 1870’s and 1880’s — the ones that abandoned Reconstruction,

and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland…

Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr. Bush.

Presidents who will be remembered as functions only of those who opposed them —

the opponents whom history proved right.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland… Bush.

Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.

But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it,

he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.

The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s website.

It is staggering.

March 31st: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon…”

June 5th: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons…”

June 19th: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon…”

July 12th: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons…”

August 6th: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…”

Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out,

so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President,

not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror —

but there may not even be a tree there…

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

August 9th: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium,

which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program…”

August 28th: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons…”

October 4th: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon…”

October 17th: “until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t

real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

Before August 9th, it’s: “Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.”

After August 9th, it’s: “Desire, pursuit, want… knowledge, technology, know-how to enrich uranium.”

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003…And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th…

And that term suspending is just a coincidence?

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?

Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true —

something like “what the definition of ‘is’ is” —

but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.

Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial…

but ethically, it is a lie.

It is indefensible.

You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months,

after the guy on the other end had already hung up.

You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.

And more over, you must have realized that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz,

and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.

We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department,

cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?

And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?

You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August, but you also knew it was all accurate.

And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent,

you merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside,

while you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of —

as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote “nuclear holocaust” —

and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: “World War III.”

My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase

“George Bush has no business being president.”

Well, guess what?

Tonight: hanged by your own words and convicted by your own deliberate lies…

You, sir, have no business being president.

Good night, and good luck.