Duplicitous Politics Isn't

 

Duplicitous Politics Isn’t

Peter Schultz

 

                  That is, duplicitous action in the political arena is a way of making politics and political questions disappear, transforming them into personal questions so that politics is identified with, reduced to the personal.

 

                  For example, consider the questions of whether George W. Bush acted duplicitously to get into the Texas Air National Guard and whether he acted duplicitously by going AWOL once in. As one author has noticed: “While the media thinks it is reporting an electoral contest with Madison Avenue gloss, something deeper and more insidious … is going on, largely unexamined.” [Baker, Family of Secrets, 464] Namely, “the political process has been subverted and the public sandbagged.” [ibid]

 

                  So, what has been happening is that duplicitous politicians, like the Bushes, have, via their duplicitous politics, subverted politics and made political questions disappear. The questions of George Bush’s military service, or lack thereof, displaced questions about the Vietnam War and about American foreign policy generally, whether America’s war in Vietnam and American foreign policy generally were imperialistic. And “the result [has been] a government that in essence was not unlike those of third world oligarchs – a vehicle for military dominance and bountiful favors for supporters and friends.” [466]

 

                  When duplicitous behavior becomes the focus of political discourse, then the political order, even though oligarchic and militaristic, goes unexamined. Duplicity masks the political with the personal and, ironically, protects the duplicitous politicians and fortifies the status quo, no matter how imperialistic or oligarchic. Exposing a politician’s duplicity does not represent a fundamental personal threat insofar as the politician in question supports the existing political arrangements, i.e., is patriotic. However questionable Bush’s behavior may be shown to have been, those questions did not subvert his legitimacy because he supported the existing political order. And, of course, by focusing on his alleged – and easily deniable – duplicity, the status quo goes unquestioned, being accepted as fundamentally sound and even praiseworthy.

 

So, even though Bush were to be deemed personally disreputable, the existing order would retain respectability. Status quo sustained, even fortified. Ironically, duplicity works even when it is exposed. And, hence, the great appeal of cover-ups.