Galloway and the US political culture
Is the subject of this Bionic Octopus post:
Still afloat in a haze of Gallowegian euphoria, I’ve spent the morning watching the Joy of George dawn over the American blogosphere. I’m honestly a bit verklempt, reading all these people hollering their amazement and delight and vindication and respect that someone has dared to stand up to their forked-tongued leaders and speak badass truth with passion and supreme power. I believe we witnessed something historic yesterday, and I can only hope and pray it provides the critical impetus for American progressives at long, long last to demand something honest and substantive and real from their representatives. And if that should happen to involve the creation of a serious grassroots left-alternative party to challenge the unearned hegemony of the Democrats, well, then…
The explosive conjunction of Galloway with the Senate points up a phenomenon I’ve had in mind for a while, a quite significant cultural disconnect between American and British public discourse. I call it the Freedom Fries Effect.
Beyond the obvious explanations of arrogance and turret-minded isolationism, the big reason Norm Coleworm and his boys didn’t see GG coming is that American political discourse just doesn’t work that way. There is a bizarre, pervasive doubleness to the rhetoric of public life in the States, a sense that public discourse is at a significant remove from, and operates according to different rules than, the discourse of everyday life.