{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","uuid":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","normalized_title":"democracyandotherneoliberalfantasiescommunicativecapitalismandleftpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":229,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Democracy%20and%20Other%20Neoliberal%20Fantasies%20Communicative%20Capitalism%20and%20Left%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/search"},"page":{"printed_page":108,"pdf_page":118,"physical_index":118,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"25bea83a75b155cd8224b39f5c748b06a8b9cee313bc6bcf0ebdace35a34722c"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"Ontological Evil\n\nRonald Reagan's presidential speeches employ a radically diferent rhetoric from those of his immediate predecessors. On the one hand, the stark divisions of his cold warrior stance create, as did Eisenhower's, a fertile environment for the oppositions of good and evil, free and totalitarian, us and them. On the other hand, Reagan's speeches provide such a fertile political habitat for evil that the term rapidly reproduces and spreads far beyond the initial binary of American and Soviet. Among those itel1S Reagan identifes as evil are dim economic prospects, inflation, stagflation, tetroris!l, deaths of American soldiers in El Salvador, international drug traficking, . \"more and more government intervention;' segregation, discrimination based on race, relig�on, and sex, racisin, anti-Semitism, ethnic and religious intolerance, Hitler, and the �olocaust.40 In Reagan's speeches, multiple issues are matters of intense moral conflict. Michael Rogin thus misreads the specificity of evil in Reagan's rhetoric when he views Reagan's associative lists of evil in the world as confusing communism with terrorism and political opposition with crime and disease.41 Contra Rogin, Reagan does not locate evil in a central cause or place. Nor does he roject all that is evil outside the United States and threatening to violate its borders, again as Ragin argues.42 Rather, for Reagan evil is in the very nature of things; it's the setting of humanity's moral struggle.\n\nFor Reagan, this condition of struggle is ontological. The world itself consists of great good and great evil. Such an establishing of evil as a fact of existence changes the character of the moral judgment. When evil is a basic aspect of the world, failing to recognize it indicates moral weakness, an unwillingness or inability to face honestly the truth of our situation. Correspondingly, naming evil demonstrates moral strength, courage, and resolve. Reagan's presidential language thus blends two approaches to evil, moral an.d ontological. This blending transforms political Struggles between winners and losers into moral struggles between saints and sinners or, worse, the forces of God and the forces of Satan.43\n\n108\n\nFOUR","previous_page":107,"next_page":109}