Sunday, October 12, 2008
'With mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments'
Most of you have probably seen this David Brooks column. But what caught my attention was his use of the 'mirror-image' metaphor to describe the interaction between Republicans and Democrats, right and left, etc. I've harped on the mirror-image phenomenon here, here, here, here etc. It's what happens when one or both sides in a contest (such as politics) so despise each other that they feel compelled to counter everything an opponent says or does. ... Whitaker Chambers once noted this mirror-image phenomenon in terms of Randian economics:
Most of you have probably seen this David Brooks column. But what caught my attention was his use of the 'mirror-image' metaphor to describe the interaction between Republicans and Democrats, right and left, etc. I've harped on the mirror-image phenomenon here, here, here, here etc. It's what happens when one or both sides in a contest (such as politics) so despise each other that they feel compelled to counter everything an opponent says or does. ... Whitaker Chambers once noted this mirror-image phenomenon in terms of Randian economics:
One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. … The author (hasn’t), apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing.I'm still in a sort of state of disbelief that Alan Greenspan, Christopher Cox etc. actually bought into, and tried to implement, a variation of Randian laissez-faire economic policies. Greenspan is now left muttering something about how it was the humans, not the theory, that were flawed. ...
