Trevor,
you have been doing a great job keeping things going here whilst I've been away slogging away in the political machine in Canberra these last two weeks. I've reached the point of complete exhaustion. The machine sure sucks one's life energy away.

There is no spectatorial detachment from the world there in that chaotic flow. I reckon you could start a bastard kind of philosophy from within the machine; one that is a far cry from that of the bureaucrats of pure (scientific) reason who speak in the shadow of the despot and are in historical complicity with the liberal state. Theirs (eg., the philosophy of Bertrand Russell) is a world of good sense, stable subjectivity, rock-like identity, universal truth and white male justice. It fits snugly with the requirement of the established order.

Russell the person was another matter. A radical. But that radicalness was never expressed in his philosophy. He was too enamoured of science and mathematics. Hence the Schizoid character.

I agree that the politics in Federal Parliament is, and should be seen as, theatre:

Bill Leak

It is theatre for the television cameras that beam the images across the nation. It's an integral part of the society of the spectacle.

True, politics also works in terms of deals being cut in the backrooms away from the democratic gaze. Then the deal has to be sold to the electorate. Hence the importance of rhetoric in the form of the press conference and media release. It's selling the image after the deal has been made.

Good political cartoons are a form of rhetoric that seek to persuade. So too are most of the speeches and media releases of the politicians engaged in policy making, and the commentary by the top journalists. These are different forms of rhetoric that seek to persuade people to adopt a particular course of action.

I would resist the reduction of rhetoric to propaganda. Rhetoric used to be a part of philosophy---eg., Aristotle and the Romans---but contemporary philosophy has disowned rhetoric in the name of science. It divorced persuasion from truth.

However, if you read the Roman philosophers who were also senators in the Roman Republic (such as Cicero) or political advisors to Roman emperors (such as Seneca)you would quickly find that they argue that rhetoric can only persuade if it retains it's connection to truth. Truth needs a bit of embellishment or ornamentation to connect it to the common life and human emotions if it is to persuade.

Propaganda would then be rhetoric divorced from truth. The political word for this in a liberal democracy is spin. Spin is about gaining control of the issues on the public agenda. You want your issues on the agenda, not those of your opponents. Howard got control of the political agenda this week. In the hot house of Canberra the strategy used was all that masculinity stuff. The content does not matter. It is irrelevant. It's control of the agenda that matters.

Looking back at the ponderous academic apparatus of old style academic philosophy from within the chaotic flow of power in the political machine the image that comes to mind is arse fuck. That philosophy fucked you in the arse and the spurs that were used to fuck you produced monsters.