Rod tells me that Nate Silver, who gained fame as the best, most readable electoral statistician around, has made a mistake. And so he has:
Beck is a PoMoCon — a post-modern conservative. And his philosophy is not all that difficult to articulate. It borrows a couple of things from traditional American conservatism:
– It shares an extreme distrust for government, particularly the Federal Government.
– It shares the notion that American society is in some sort of state of existential decline.On the other hand, it also features some important differences:
– It is much more distrustful of non-governmental institutions, such as labor unions, corporations, political parties, community groups, the media, and scientific institutions.
– It is largely indifferent toward ’social issues’.
– It is much less explicitly aligned with the Republican Party.
– It has much less use for elites, which it also distrusts.The PoMoCons are not so much less self-consistent as they are less concerned with consistency, as compared with traditional conservatives. Theirs is a bric-a-brac, skeptical (sometimes to the point of paranoid), play-it-by-ear, relatively spontaneous reaction to the here-and-now — not something cooked up by a K Street thinktank. There is no future, no past — there is only today. And today is a pretty good day to be Glenn Beck.
Silver’s thumbnail anatomy of Beck’s politics is plausible enough, but on its face there’s nothing here it makes any sense to call postmodern. From a wider view, this is perhaps an opportune time to set the record straight on a few points about what is and isn’t postmodern-conservative.
So first consider Silver’s list of differences. Distrust of the non-governmental institutions Silver identifies has been a hallmark of social conservatives now for decades, which makes it somewhat discordant for Silver to suggest that ‘indifference’ toward social issues is in some way postmodern. The postmodern left is obsessed with power, viewing politics through a lens in which all social relations are function of power relations; and since I imagine Silver’s understanding of postmodernism is, unlike the one we actual pomocons tend to share, based on left postmodernism — about which more later — it’s unclear how or why he thinks social-issue indifference is pomo. And anyone who has followed our recent long exchange with the Front Porch Republic community knows that they, not we, are “much less explicitly aligned with the Republican party,” and in some important ways have “much less use for elites” than we do. These traits are more likely to be evidence of left conservatism than postmodern conservatism well understood!
Which leaves us with Silver’s catchall claim that pomocons are simply eclectic or ecumenical. Silver seems to confuse or conflate ideological eclecticism with the sort of political posture or practice that people without consultants adopt. And he seems to confuse both of these with a disinterest in the future that, at least to my eye, would utterly suck the wind out of Beck’s sails. Glenn Beck’s fame and identity derive entirely from a gripping fear that They are Taking Our Country Away From Us — horrible not because life has become unbearable today (the cry of leftist revolutionaries) but because the life we have lived will be made irrecoverable tomorrow. That’s a good-old-fashioned, white-bread conservative trope, as far as I can tell.
Now: there’s another incorrect vision of postmodern conservatism making the rounds — one we could associate with someone like Alan Wolfe, whose bugaboo is Carl Schmitt. The story goes like this: conservatism is no longer popular enough to command electoral success on its own strength. Very smart conservatives who know this realize that the only way they can stay in power is by scaring America’s rubes into a heightened, unnatural, protracted state of activism. So politics becomes crisis theater, and the task of very smart conservatives is to convince a bare majority of people that we live in a world where only giving very smart conservatives arbitrary ‘emergency’ power can save us. Very smart conservatives, of course, may or may not believe this to be true; what matters is ensuring that they can rule and preserve their own way of life. Since there is no longer any legitimate or honest way of doing this, they must become actors first and statesmen or philosophers later, if at all.
This is the brush that some have used to tar the Straussians and neocons. We needn’t pass judgment on the wisdom or merits of their critique in order to observe that the kind of stance attacked really has to be called conservative postmodernism and not postmodern conservatism. It’s is a postmodern position through and through, assured that all social relations are power relations and that all individual identities are masks. The conservatism is incidental — the mere ‘preference’ that motivates the use and abuse of the ‘facts’.
But recall that Strauss’s own critique of Max Weber — one in which he was joined by Philip Rieff, no neocon — insisted that the strict separation of ‘facts’ and ‘values’ at the heart of Weber’s sociology created the very conditions under which all social relations could become power theater: Weber begets Foucault. One point we pomocons have made before is that warm fuzzy left postmoderns like Richard Rorty are actually hypermodernists. Unlike the Foucauldians, Rorty wants to map facts and values onto liberalism’s public/private divide such that we can be John Stuart Mill in our social realtions and Nietzsche in our own fantasies. Rorty tells us that this strategic polarization will allow us to carry on a politics in which fact and value can actually live in harmony. This is not to abandon secular modernism but to go to extremes in the hopes of redeeming it.
For we pomocons, a postmodern conservatism is postmodern because it rejects Rorty’s project as kookily devoted to the modern longing to eradicate even the concept of eternity from human life; it is postmodern because it rejects the extension of Weber’s modern scientific heuristic to a conviction about what human nature really is. But these postmodern approaches open us onto an understanding of the wisdom of conservative dispositions, commitments, and convictions. We’re not pomo for pomo’s sake; we’re not conservative for pomo’s sake; and we’re not conservative simply because we feel like it or wound up that way and pomo because we have to be in order to get what we want.
A word about Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is the worst. But why? Not so much because of who he distrusts or why. From where I’m standing, Beck is so awful because he theatrically combines and conflates performances of ultimate sincerity with performances of ultimate sarcasm. I think this is a telltale sign of a soul disordered by a confusion of love, power, and resentment. It becomes impossible, in such a person, to tell quite where their selfless solidarity, their egotism, and their hatred borne of weakness begin or end. And the titillating quality of this unstable charisma is precisely what they latch onto and exploit to become less a famous person than a famous happening. Their individual being becomes incidental to the phenomenon they represent. They actually corrode or dissolve their own identity in order to experience some hugeness that seems impossible to experience as a normal, integral human being. Any actual pomocon looks on that kind of allure as troublesome and dangerous, and the kind of person in thrall to it as no pomocon.
September 24th, 2009 | 11:18 am
[...] ~ September 24th, 2009 in Society The latest from James Poulus was a bit much even for me This is the brush that some have used to tar the Straussians and [...]
September 24th, 2009 | 12:04 pm
I agree, Glenn Beck is no PoMoCon, that is if we describe pomocon’s as men/women who have a vested interest in the existing order, and while possibly participating in some degree to critiquing the existing order have no interest in removing the regime.
Beck who eschews both the GOP and the Dems seeks to actually change the existing order. If he speaks the truth, he wishes to recover the principles of the old republic that have been lost and destroyed.
I don’t think Glenn Beck is troublesome or dangerous.
September 24th, 2009 | 12:56 pm
[...] The PomoCon Himself: Silver’s thumbnail anatomy of Beck’s politics is plausible enough, but on its face there’s [...]
September 24th, 2009 | 3:47 pm
One would need to find a somewhat coherent approach (and I do think the PoMoCo “anti-ideology” is a reasonably coherent approach of disposition and sentiment) to in any critique a popular figure that wants to be taken seriously. Beck and all the cable tv populist blowhards are not terribly noteworthy outside of an empty populism, although that can certainly have socio-political impact (despite our astounding levels of fragmentation).
September 24th, 2009 | 5:28 pm
Beck is so awful because he theatrically combines and conflates performances of ultimate sincerity with performances of ultimate sarcasm. I think this is a telltale sign of a soul disordered by a confusion of love, power, and resentment. It becomes impossible, in such a person, to tell quite where their selfless solidarity, their egotism, and their hatred borne of weakness begin or end.
Perhaps – or perhaps you’re trying too hard. Oh it’s an interesting analysis of Beck. Silver’s is too (though I agree that he is wrong). My analysis is simpler. Beck is a showman, through and through. End of story.
September 24th, 2009 | 7:14 pm
If we’re critiquing uses of postmodernism, I’ll agree you’re right to call out Silver but your own definitions make little sense. First, Foucauldians are post-structuralist, not postmodernist, perspectivalist not relativist.
Second, Postmodernism’s idealism isn’t just the denial of truths but also the Leninist release to pursue ones constructed truth like a rabid dog with no concern other than the intuition of embedded social practices (the unthinking conservative/reactionary ground). Here Beck fits perfectly as a postmodern conservative; did you see his Benjaminian art critique of the fascist and communist semiotics of Rockefeller Center? Nothing but pulled-out-of-his-ass assertions on meaning that become true because of his commercial authority and circular logic.
The other interesting connection is Derrida’s focus on Nietzsche’s “Perhaps” (veilleicht) of ‘Beyond Good and Evil’:
“Perhaps! – But who is willing to take charge of such a dangerous Perhaps! For this we must await the arrival of a new breed of philosophers, ones whose taste and inclination are somehow the reverse of those we have seen so far – philosophers of the dangerous Perhaps in every sense. – And in all seriousness: I see these new philosophers approaching.”
Is this not Beck’s “I’m just saying”, his “I don’t know”, the caveats which allow him to say things that are in fact not true by asserting the infinite unknowability of anything? This is his worst postmodernism, I think. In presuming conspiracies, he is putting forward a hermeneutics of suspicion, that the existence of a veneer of open and honest government necessarily indicates its opposite, a rampaging fascist entity planning FEMA camps.
In the end, because Beck doesn’t believe any of this and he is a showman of a kind. He is allowing himself to roam like some anti-Oedipal Id, schizophrenicizing actual political ideologies by instinct in order to produce a television show, nihilistically cannibalizing discourses to produce new configurations. It makes too much sense. As postmodernism fades as a viable mode of thinking, aren’t there going to be the nostalgics and conservatives who desire the old days when signifiers had free play and reality was just another construction?
September 24th, 2009 | 8:07 pm
[...] post modern conservatives are turning on him too: A word about Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is the worst. But why? Not so much because of who he distrusts [...]
September 24th, 2009 | 9:04 pm
Really good stuff James…”Weber begat Foucault” esp…although I’d hate to leave anyone with the impression that being pomocon hinges on reactions to Rorty!
As for Beck, his favorite founder is Thomas Paine…not a good sign. He’s not “the worst,” though, and of late has been highlighting some good investigative work and tea-party spirit. For whatever credit he ought to get for the 9/12 DC protest, I am grateful. Sam Adams was a jerkagogue, you know, and John Adams and esp. his mentor James Otis had a bit of that spirit in them as well… Perhaps, though, Beck will wind up crashing and burning us all as you imply, due to ego-investment issues. His “I’m a half-entertainer/comedian” stance is certainly troubling. Combining Jon Stewart ironic-commentary with angry American Knot-headism is not what we need. As for the worst, haven’t you listened to Michael Savage?…awesome radio voice…very intelligent…and VERY manipulative of his listeners. A touch of Satan there…
September 24th, 2009 | 10:43 pm
Pomocon? Give me a break.
September 24th, 2009 | 11:24 pm
“And the titillating quality of this unstable charisma is precisely what they latch onto and exploit to become less a famous person than a famous happening.”
This is a cryptic statement regarding Beck and modern politics, but it is on to something. There is much to unpack here. The “he” somehow becomes the “they” unbeknownst to him or them. There is no doubt some sort of confusion or disorder here.
September 25th, 2009 | 2:35 am
Is all this definitional analysis really constructive? At this point in time, we, it would seem, have greater issues to tackle (with as much truth and sincerity as we can muster) than the narrow one about whether Glenn Beck is or is not a PoMoCon.
Your final paragraph decries Beck as “the worst” because you worry that he is capable of corroding or dissolving his own identity “in order to experience some hugeness that seems impossible to experience as a normal, integral human being.” Well, my goodness. Isn’t that, in terms of possibly different focus, what the great mystics have done? Not that I am suggesting Beck is or wants to be on the same platform as those sainted men and women. But the fact remains that human beings can and do desire — from their very cores –to extinguish their own small selves, to unify themselves with the Most High, the Other, the One. Alternatively, human beings may channel their hunger for a unification with Greater Meaning into works on earth. They may, like our Founding Fathers arguably did, decide that a moment in time should be seized and turned to the fullest in order to change the course of human events.
We would seem to be living in a very pivotal time here in the U.S. Many signs (economic, social, and political) point to this being a watershed: we can either allow the forces of “progressivism” to engulf our nation (following the path onto which it has been set gradually over decades) or we can wake up and more actively than ever before stand in the path of this tide and demand that it both advance no farther and then recede. Our economy and our finances on practically every level have been abused so long that we will have to endure harsh penalties for our passivity and misunderstandings, but we still have the wherewithal and the will, as a people, to put ourselves back on a more proper Constitutional footing if we act now with absolute resolve.
I’m not expert on Glenn Beck, but he has apparenlty repeatedly stated forthrightly that he has had personal problems; he makes no bones about that. And when I see him I can’t be certain how much of him is showman. However, one can say the same about many “talking heads” in the media, so that is hardly unique to him. The point is, he isn’t perfect, without a doubt, and we fallible human beings don’t know the true state of his soul. So be it. He is out there asking questions, making connections, encouraging honest Americans to get involved. He is sticking his neck out. He may not be the sharpest sword on the ninja wall, but he claims to seek the truth, he claims to love God, and he claims to want to preserve America from becoming a Big Brother State. He is “doing something” which is more than can seemingly be said for erudite pontificators who want to examine the finer points of what exactly a postmodern conservative might be.
Does it really matter on iota if we obsessively split people who are basically conservative into a myriad of different sub-groups? Not a single one of us “conservatives” is going to agree with another about everything. What we must do is seek to agree upon a fundamental set of values that will attract and inspire enough of the American voter base to finally stop continually returning the usual suspects to office (locally, statewide, and in Washington D.C.). Glenn Beck is not “the worst;” he isn’t haughtily blogging to little purpose, he is energizing Americans to think, question, connect the dots, investigate for themselves, and stand up to government overreach at all levels. The Bible says to judge by their fruits. And that will be his judge too. If he has the strength and the integrity of spirit and character to carry through, we will discover that. If he fails for whatever reason, there are, fortunately, others who will come to the fore.
Populists (such as Thomas Paine) may earn the scorn of some highly educated theorists, but certain grave times require their passion, their unbridled speech, and their commitment. This is, by many indications, one of those times. Instead of railing about how to label Glenn Beck, instead of trying to climb into his head, perhaps the constructive thing to do is to go to a meeting of the 9/12 people (or the organization of your choice) near you and pitch in by helping to find viable candidates to run against incumbents in 2010. Or something of the like. Something concrete and productive for a better, more Constitutional America.
September 25th, 2009 | 3:15 am
I don’t have enough familiarity with Glenn Beck’s conservatism in order to nuance it with the rigor of your other commentators. Cursorily, it does seem to me that he is not an authentic pomocon.
Your blog is aptly named Postmodern Conservative, which describes approaches that are methodological & practical but not ideological like either postmodernISM or conservatISM. A pomocon, in my view, applies such tools as subsidiarity & tradition as proper biases, not absolutes. S/he employs a contrite fallibilism in response to the postmodern critique but remains metaphysically and morally a realist, not sawing off the epistemological branches where one’s ontological eggs are nested.
A pomocon thus avoids the epistemic hubris of an Enlightenment fundamentalism and the excessive epistemic humility of a radically deconstructive postmodernism (practical nihilism & moral relativism). Suitably chastised in postmodernity, a pomocon recognizes that one’s deontology must be considered at least as tentative as one’s ontology is speculative (and Christianity is still in search of a metaphysic).
A pomocon recognizes the distinction between propositional cognition and participatory imagination and views them as axiologically integral (working together in all human value-realizations) even if methodologically autonomous (science, philosophy & religion, for example) and affirms a semiotic realism where language has both reflective and productive roles vis a vis reality.
It seems to me that we especially go astray when we both selectively apply and absolutize such proper biases as the subsidiarity principle. For example, big government is either always good or always bad. For example, big government is potent overseas but impotent at home, or big govt should stay out of our boardrooms but is welcome in our bedrooms & living rooms. Paleocons, socialcons, theocons, neocons & anticons (liberal extremists) are often inconsistent with where they want BIG GOVT, whether domestic or foreign, social or economic, and tend to absolutize such postures, where subsidiarity would have socialization processes hold or fold as needed. The Libertarians are the most consistent (got to concede that) in wanting to have nothing whatsoever to do with BIG GOVT and also confuse license with liberty and are thus the kookycons.
The reason I can’t comment on Glenn, in particular, is b/c the few times I tried to watch him, he seemed to be one of those spookycons!
September 25th, 2009 | 10:27 am
What is disturbing is the ease with which these so called “Conservatives” dismiss people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. It is no wonder the Republican party, which has tilted to the middle and away from the party Ronald Reagan led, have lost so much in the last two election cycles.
September 25th, 2009 | 11:07 am
To me this whole discussion is ridiculous & worthless. Who cares what Beck or anyone else is? Why does this matter? I agree with almost everything (although not as paranoid) he says BUT rarely watch him-because the ranting, raving, “showmanship” turns me off. I prefer my information to be a little more fact & a lot less raving-it adds nothing & takes away from the important information Beck does have.
September 27th, 2009 | 11:08 am
I get Glenn Beck almost completely. He is a serious man, with an antic Shakespearean fool side to him that he uses like a ventriloquist’s dummy to say things that his serious side cannot express adequately.
He also employs a pedagogical approach, or has beenn employing one, in his approach to looking beneath the surface of the Obama administration. He is trying to take his viewers step-by-step through a slightly confusing matrix of organizations and personalities that are part of the Obama apparatus that remain unexamined by the rest of the media.
As far as “PoMoCon” goes, it’s an entirely meaningless concept.
September 28th, 2009 | 1:53 am
[...] performances of ultimate sincerity with performances of ultimate sarcasm,” James Poulos writes. It is indisputable, anyway, that Mr. Beck employs misleading hyperbole, farcical sensationalism, [...]
September 28th, 2009 | 4:29 pm
Beck fans, and half-fans of Beck…James is NOT the kind of guy who snifs at people because THEY AREN’T A POSTMODERN CONSERVATIVE…it’s just that he has a bit of a personal investment in the term being used correctly! He started the first blog of that name, just as Dr. Lawler is the one here who has the book title Postmodernism Rightly Understood that contributed to his coining the term, I assume. Thus, the fact that James doesn’t like Beck is a distinct issue from Beck not being a postmodern conservative. I’m never 100% sure what a pomocon is myself and certainly do not think the term lends itself to crisp definition. Jim C. on the masthead here even sometimes says the term is bad to use…but I do know that if we’re correct in saying there are pomocons, i.e., a school of thinkers distinct from other conservative ones, Beck just isn’t a pomocon. That’s just a fact.
October 5th, 2009 | 6:49 pm
Re: “the modern longing to eradicate even the concept of eternity from human life”
WTF? What “concept of eternity” do you mean and why is “eradicating” it (assuming that someone wants to do so) a problem?
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact