The question is not whether McCain, thanks to the addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket, is going to win the election. That result depends on other variables and is secondary to what her candidacy reveals. Her candidacy is a symptom of a deep mutation in the symbolic order of society—that is, the emergence of a maternal figure to whom the power of the State is offered.
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From the first distance, it looks like a faintly lurid overspill from the window above, which is full of scattered lights—as if the fragments of rose glass hadn’t quite been able to contain themselves. It hovers over the void below, rather like a flash of Islamic script, perhaps the soft fiery writing of God himself, a muted warning, a tinted fiat. Looking back from the East transept, just glimpsing the pink glint under the Nave bridge, but too far away to make out the words, the bright caption almost looks magisterial, a condensation of the window’s eruption. Islamist terrorism is not disappearing, nor is the challenge to understand its origins. Whenever it began, it catapulted to the forefront of public attention on 9/11 and has been haunting the world ever since. The diversity of its venues makes it a global phenomenon. Successful attacks and foiled plots have taken place in Bali and Bosnia, in China and Indonesia, in Denmark and Germany, in Spain and England, in Israel and Jordan, in Algeria and Argentina, in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Tunisia—demonstrating the wrongheadedness of that simplistic thinking that blamed the massacres in New York and Washington solely on U.S. policies. What we face is a worldwide threat defined by a willingness to use extreme violence against civilians while justifying it with appeals to Islam. The local pretexts vary widely, the organizational structures are loose, and the technical sophistication is uneven, ranging from hypermodern high-tech capacities to archaic decapitations, sometimes in the same event. This Islamist terrorism will remain a primary security threat in the coming decades, demonstrably able to adapt and evolve and to benefit parasitically from competition and contradictions in the international system. To anyone familiar with Zimbabwean history, the newly formed government of national unity in Zimbabwe should come as no surprise. In fact, the formation of the GNU should be met with some apprehension: Zimbabwe has a short but recurring history of internal settlements within its political elite. On June 1, 1979, an internal settlement was reached which saw the formation of a government of national unity between the then-illegal white minority government of Rhodesia, led by Ian Smith, and a group of moderate black nationalists headed by A. T. Muzorewa. Last week’s roller coaster on the world’s financial markets highlights the extreme volatility that characterizes the current economic system. Volatility is generated not just by uncertain prospects and a lack of trust in existing institutions and practices but also—and perhaps above all—by new forms of risk linked to complex financial instruments such as derivative trading. While the recently signed ZANU PF-MDC agreement has been advertised in many places as a sharing of power, a close examination of the document shows that it is a mere sham. The document itself is nothing like the rumors that were so skillfully circulated prior to its release. There are none of those highly publicized details about how Tsvangirai and MDC would be in charge of the police. The cold reality is that this agreement hardly chips at Mugabe’s established powers, but it goes on to grant him what he most needs at this moment: legality and a rescue form international condemnation. |
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