Are We Not Men? No! We Are Dada!

I have a confession to my loyal readers, numbering now in the single digits--the Bush re-coronation has been very bad for this website. What once began as strictly an anti-artistic endeavor, driven by a love of the absurd, has devolved into another political muckraking diatribe. One loyal reader pointed out:

The vast majority of the digerati, intelligentsia, and neo-liberal expansionists have abandoned irony for the duration. The clash of values has proven the superiority of the New Republican Man, and Dadaism will wither away. Among those supreme values is now Art, exemplified by the neo-Romantic landscapes by those of the painterly school, such as Thomas Kincade. To insist that Art has no utility, or worse, that that there is no Art, is to deny the message implied by the victors of the present value war: Life has meaning, and God has given it to us in abundance.

Astute readers of this site will recall that I did wring my hands over the fear that a Bush reelection would result, in the short term at least, in a marked decline in absurdity in American discourse. Lately I have asked myself, "Is meaninglessness dead? Can I assimulate myself into the new Republican world order?" (Although I am tempted to draw historical comparisons to an analogous historical event of the last century, I will, for the moment, refrain.)

Take, for instance, this email* that I received prior to the election, perhaps our last free one:

My name is (***), I am a nineteen year old girl from (***). I think that if you know what is good for your country then you know that George W. Bush is the right one to vote in to again be our Commander-in-Chief. I think that he has done a very good job on running this country. Far more better than Clinton ever did. Bush is a God fearing man and is not ashamed to say "God Bless America." I believe that without him we would have never caught Hussein, who is now where he needs to be. He is strong and he not only says that he will do something, but he actually does it. He has done well in helping gaurd our borders. He will not back down from a terrorist.

John Kerry is a fake. If he says something, he goes to change it by the next day. He wants to make sure that the UN is in favor of the US going to war before he does it. If that were to happen, we would never go to war, and this country would be hurt badly. Kerry gave support to communists in the war. He did whatever he could to get out of the service. John Kerry is a coward. He led VVAW members in a protest and they threw all of their medals and ribbons over a fence. Do you want a president who wants to please other countries before he thinks about America? I hope not.

*actual unsolicited email

With the election over, and the values brigade in charge, I fear that the plurality of 51% will become the new moral majority. People everywhere will embrace meaning, purpose, and divinity, and begin painting romantic landscapes in neo-classical mode. I see a revival in sacred harp music from the last century. Dress hems will lengthen. Perhaps seamed stockings will be revived. The Ten Commandments will become codified and integrated into contract law as well as torts, with a corresponding increase in our prison population, as more and more men (and women) begin to covet the wives of their neighbors that they previously had not even known.

What does this mean to Dadaists and anarchists everywhere? I don't know yet. There is, however, some hope. As more of our leaders begin to take advice from "God," I predict that we will see a movement away from boring legislation dealing with zoning rights and recapitalization percentages, and more toward a social engineering efforts to curb idleness and concupiscence. We will just have to see. Unfortunately, "God" seems to be in a warlike mood lately, at least according to someone we both know. And, to paraphrase our leaders, this is one war that threatens to outlive all of us, particularly this blog.