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81

‘One thinge that ouerthroweth all that were graunted before’: On Being Presidential

4
terms
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notes

Miéville, C. (2017). ‘One thinge that ouerthroweth all that were graunted before’: On Being Presidential. Salvage, 5, pp. 81-94

(noun) the inherent nature or essence of someone or something; a distinctive feature; a peculiarity

81

He may be president, but he is not presidential. The liberal world is in mourning for this dispositional quiddity, presidentialness.

—p.81 by China Miéville
confirm
5 years, 3 months ago

He may be president, but he is not presidential. The liberal world is in mourning for this dispositional quiddity, presidentialness.

—p.81 by China Miéville
confirm
5 years, 3 months ago

the opposite or counterpart of a fact or truth; the side of a coin or medal bearing the head or principal design

82

The implied obverse, an unbroken culture, would be a more civil form of class and imperial rule.

—p.82 by China Miéville
notable
5 years, 3 months ago

The implied obverse, an unbroken culture, would be a more civil form of class and imperial rule.

—p.82 by China Miéville
notable
5 years, 3 months ago

(adjective) given to tears or weeping; tearful / (adjective) tending to cause tears; mournful

84

The culture industry’s hagiography (Barry, Southside with You) is accompanied by a torrent of schmaltzy and lachrymose words

—p.84 by China Miéville
notable
5 years, 3 months ago

The culture industry’s hagiography (Barry, Southside with You) is accompanied by a torrent of schmaltzy and lachrymose words

—p.84 by China Miéville
notable
5 years, 3 months ago

(noun) a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”)

88

with the crisis of their project in a destablising world, liberals’ obsession with norms of appearance, trappings and proprieties of a collapsing system, may grow, in glum aspirational metonymy

—p.88 by China Miéville
notable
5 years, 3 months ago

with the crisis of their project in a destablising world, liberals’ obsession with norms of appearance, trappings and proprieties of a collapsing system, may grow, in glum aspirational metonymy

—p.88 by China Miéville
notable
5 years, 3 months ago
91

When reality fails the model, the electorate refusing to do what they are told, the result is an epistemological crisis which throws up various and variously wild speculations. The Russians are said to have ‘hacked’ the election, and there is a useful elision in the verb between meaning literal IT interventions (such as the leak of John Podesta’s emails that so outraged Clinton’s supporters because it disclosed certain truths about their candidate, plausibly-enough blamed on hackers with Russian backing), and in a more vague and very urgent sense of tweaking any system towards a desired outcome in some way or other. On the latter, leaving aside the obvious hypocrisy of the outrage (given the US’s long and vigorous history of interference in foreign elections, from Italy in 1948 through the 1970s, Japan in 1951, Germany 1953, via the Philipines, Vietnam, Laos, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Chile in 1964, and on and on – eighty-one times between 1946 and 2000, not counting coups, according to an estimate by political scientist Dov Levin), the paranoid nebulousness of the latter, broader allegation is striking.

—p.91 by China Miéville 5 years, 3 months ago

When reality fails the model, the electorate refusing to do what they are told, the result is an epistemological crisis which throws up various and variously wild speculations. The Russians are said to have ‘hacked’ the election, and there is a useful elision in the verb between meaning literal IT interventions (such as the leak of John Podesta’s emails that so outraged Clinton’s supporters because it disclosed certain truths about their candidate, plausibly-enough blamed on hackers with Russian backing), and in a more vague and very urgent sense of tweaking any system towards a desired outcome in some way or other. On the latter, leaving aside the obvious hypocrisy of the outrage (given the US’s long and vigorous history of interference in foreign elections, from Italy in 1948 through the 1970s, Japan in 1951, Germany 1953, via the Philipines, Vietnam, Laos, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Chile in 1964, and on and on – eighty-one times between 1946 and 2000, not counting coups, according to an estimate by political scientist Dov Levin), the paranoid nebulousness of the latter, broader allegation is striking.

—p.91 by China Miéville 5 years, 3 months ago
92

Discussing CA’s signature technique of ‘psychographics’, one contributor warned urgently that the company was ‘using psychological techniques to change people’s thoughts and behaviour’. Of course, this could be read as a thoroughly banal description of everyday PR – or as crude apocalyptic warning of nefarious, Manchurian Candidate– or They Live-style total manipulation.

Certainly, there is no ‘free’ choice under capitalism, no preference not complexly shaped. The intricacies of agency, of choice and its constraints under neoliberalism and its ideologies demand nuanced analysis. That, visions of mind-control rays, of putting the ’fluence on the masses, ‘chang[ing] people’s thoughs’, are not.

’For some opponents of Brexit, the idea that the EU referendum was hijacked by alt-right hypnotists wielding high-tech psychological weaponry looks, perhaps, like a reasonable explanation,’ the report startlingly concludes, stretching the definition of ‘reasonable’ by some way. Almost ruefully the piece closes: ’But the known facts don’t, quite, support this theory.’

on Cambridge Analytica. nice rejoinder to liberal hysteria over that

—p.92 by China Miéville 5 years, 3 months ago

Discussing CA’s signature technique of ‘psychographics’, one contributor warned urgently that the company was ‘using psychological techniques to change people’s thoughts and behaviour’. Of course, this could be read as a thoroughly banal description of everyday PR – or as crude apocalyptic warning of nefarious, Manchurian Candidate– or They Live-style total manipulation.

Certainly, there is no ‘free’ choice under capitalism, no preference not complexly shaped. The intricacies of agency, of choice and its constraints under neoliberalism and its ideologies demand nuanced analysis. That, visions of mind-control rays, of putting the ’fluence on the masses, ‘chang[ing] people’s thoughs’, are not.

’For some opponents of Brexit, the idea that the EU referendum was hijacked by alt-right hypnotists wielding high-tech psychological weaponry looks, perhaps, like a reasonable explanation,’ the report startlingly concludes, stretching the definition of ‘reasonable’ by some way. Almost ruefully the piece closes: ’But the known facts don’t, quite, support this theory.’

on Cambridge Analytica. nice rejoinder to liberal hysteria over that

—p.92 by China Miéville 5 years, 3 months ago
93

If the failure of presidentialness is less the failure of the inaugurated persuader-in-chief to persuade than of the unpersuaded to be persuadable, presidentialness’s partisans can only pine to dissolve the people and elect another.

love this

—p.93 by China Miéville 5 years, 3 months ago

If the failure of presidentialness is less the failure of the inaugurated persuader-in-chief to persuade than of the unpersuaded to be persuadable, presidentialness’s partisans can only pine to dissolve the people and elect another.

love this

—p.93 by China Miéville 5 years, 3 months ago