They tell us that / We lost our tails
Evolving up / From little snails
I say it’s all / Just wind in sails
Are we not men? / We are devo.
– DEVO, the world’s first postmodern pop band

Postmodernism and everything connected to and stemming from it took a harsh (and probably deserved) pummelling in the wake of Alan Sokal’s hoax on Social Text, but it’s not as if it enjoyed a better reputation before. Everyone hates pomo who isn’t a postmodernist. To the conservative mind, it’s a colossal waste of time and money, not to mention immature. A bunch of leftist ivory-tower con men sitting around and writing incomprehensible essays about some one-eyed Mick, postmodernism serves as a ready example for every right-wing slander of the academic world. From multiculturism to relativism, the unspeakable concepts of pomo philosophy saturate the reactionary vocabulary of slurs against the left.

While the right-wing hatred for postmodernism is unmatchable, however, the relationship between the orthodox left and the pomo left has been shaky if not outright hostile for some time. As an unapologetic adherent to a philosophy that would generally be described as postmodernist, I’d like to explain why much of this animus is misdirected. The leftist complaint against postmodernism is threefold: one, that it makes a mockery of orthodox leftism, even while purporting to embrace its basic tenets; two, that it’s hopelessly mired in worthless theoretical debates and inaccessible language at a time when a populist message is needed more than ever; and three, that it makes the left look bad.

This is the introduction to an uninteresting series of indeterminate length that I will be writing. This introduction is posted to ensure that you are not holding your breath.

I chanced to see this on Pharyngula. Let’s set aside the normal rigmarole about the Partnership for a Drug-Free America being a pack of mendacious puritans funded by purveyors of liquor, junk food, pharmaceuticals, and other socially acceptable drugs intent on keeping the competition down. Instead, let’s choose to be charmed by their use of the interrobang, that stillborn punctuation mark beloved of tiresome freaks with too much time on their hands. Ahh. Boy, it sure makes me wish my dear old mom and pop had talked to me about drugs before I started stuffing opium-laced hashish up my ass. You know, all it takes is a few minutes “rapping” with your teen about drugs, sex, and voting for Hillary Clinton to make an unshakable impression the impressionable young tot. That impression will be that you’re a clueless old bastard who can’t get it up, but you tried and that’s what counts with these crazy kids today.

Scienceblogs, which is where Pharyngula is hosted, has a long history of unsavory advertising for loathsome causes and companies, a tendency which is shared by your higher-class media outlets like PBS. Normal network television might feature comforting advertising for body spray that turns women into bisexuals or soft drinks that allow you to ejaculate laser beams, but shows like Nova and Christ Jesus, Is Jim Lehrer Still Alive? are prominently funded by such corporate winners as ADM, DuPont, Dow, and Monsanto. It’s a minor dent in their budgets, I’m sure — Dow nets around $4 billion a year, DuPont $3 billion, and that’s profit — but it shines a lovely halo on these companies that will be most influential with the generally pro-science liberals that watch those programs. It cannot be understated how important it is for Dow to be associated with plastics and technological process instead of napalm-scarred Vietnamese children, Agent Orange, and Bhopal.

Right: Four out of five creepy bus magnates favour keeping homowork out of Scotland’s schools.

Generally when I’m in reverie about the compelling amount of bullshit that makes up this American dream today, I keep in touch with reality by reminding myself about the bullshit suffered by our Redcoat neighbors across the sea. Surveillance cameras — Afghanistan — Keep the Clause — Princess Diana — Robbie Williams — holy fuck, does Britain suck. Let’s not even get started on the antigastarbeiter swarthy-horde BNP fucknauts or the tiresome god-botherers who back them up. However.

It strikes me that in the UK, and in Europe and the rest of the damn world in general, there’s actually a certain amount of struggle going on. At the very least, the English can be relied on to piss and moan about fooking Labour being a bunch of fooking cunts, and they actually win their strikes from time to time. We’ll kindly overlook the homoeopathic remedies to prevent your poor wee laddies from going gay after doing their homowork. In the US, not even the UAW can be relied on anymore to put the management’s balls in a vice. In Burma, we’re seeing protesters go up against assault rifles to demand basic freedoms. We’ve got a government run by insane apocalyptic cultists and larcenous gangsters that’s killed around a million-plus people, destabilized what was already the world’s most volatile region, and appears to have its knives out for one of the only remaining hopes for a modicum of stable, indigenous independence there. And we pretty much just sit down and let it happen.

Sure, we bitch about how the cowardly Democrats aren’t doing what we elected them to do, but let’s be honest with ourselves — they never will. What are we going to do? Vote Green? Vote Republican? Issue primary challenge after primary challenge to run the warmongering bastards out? No. It was tried once, and now Joe Lieberman is more powerful than ever as the Democrats’ swing vote. For their efforts, the Lamont boosters were excoriated as Stalinesque purgers, partisan fanatics willing to stab one of their own in the back for the minor heresy of enthusiastically supporting a criminal and inhuman war. It’s not fucking worth it, friends. The Democrats aren’t our cowardly and meek representatives that need a good kicking to get back into fighting shape. As an institution, as a party, they are wholeheartedly behind the program of American imperialism, corporatism, and exceptionalism.

Britain’s in the same boat as we are, but at least they have the moral fortitude to fight for the oars.