Dear George,
Postmodernism is a gift from Satan, a gift that offers you many opportunities to upgrade the American way. Because it denies the existence of both absolutes and meaning, postmodernism gives you an open field in which to create both. In the past, meaning was manifest; now it is marketed. Into the vacuum left by the absence of absolutes, pour made-up absolutes such as Intelligent Design and Neo-conservatism.
Thanks to postmodernism, you have the opportunity to recast all of our traditional values, which are no longer traditional values because they are merely Socially Constructed Realities and not absolutes, which mean they can be recast as the faux traditional values that become our new absolutes.
Freedom is recast as the peace and serenity that comes from the micromanaged life that is buried beneath layers of social and legal strictures; critical thought becomes compliance; independence becomes good behavior; peace becomes war; free speech becomes a clever marketing slogan.
You also have the opportunity of correcting one of the great fallacies that has been a millstone around our intellectual necks: The belief that because we understand paradigm shifts, we can create them at will. You have turned this fallacy on its head because a paradigm shift now becomes whatever you declare a paradigm shift to be. A stunning example of this is your proclamation that 9/11 changed everything, thus giving you the freedom to do with the American people as you see fit.
A public that lacks both meaning and absolutes is susceptible to the claim that everything has changed because they have no memory against which to judge it. The thirty-second spot has given the nation a thirty-second memory.
There is much political hay to be made out of the constant change that changes nothing; you have only scratched the surface.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
8:52:35 PM
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