Designers and the End of Liberalism
blogDesign and Liberalism are so tightly intertwined that when a designer confesses to being right wing, no one really knows what to do or what to say. It’s like Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, where the kid is only right wing because he has a small tumour in his brain. Right wingers are either mad, bad or not in possession of the full facts. As such, the Liberal’s first reaction is to try and help them. We all know people who are racist or homophobic, but don’t for one minute think that they have any access to the truth. Indeed, we explain away such views as ‘ignorance’.
So when Andy Rutledge, a well-respected, much-read web designer published a piece of obscene anti-Obama propaganda, the web design community assumed it must be satire. When they had a closer look and saw that it was so vitriolic and lacking in any ironical nuances, they started calling him names and/or disowning him by unsubscribing from his RSS feed. From my perspective, the reaction was risible. The purpose of the design was to wind people up and in this he succeeded. No one attempted to engage in any debate with Rutledge, because Liberals can’t imagine that any sane individual wouldn’t agree with them. Indeed, there was a whole book by Fukuyama devoted to the idea that Liberal Democracy was the be all and end all. What a joke that was!
People who think that Obama will change anything are as deluded as those who think McCain will make things any worse: both are consumed in short-termism, vacillating to the whims of the moment, incapable of comprehending the enormity of the challenge humanity faces if it is going to survive beyond the 21st century. Whether we will be able to do what is necessary (reduce human numbers, work together on a global basis, stop eating so much methane-producing meat etc) when the problems of peak oil, food shortages and climate change really kick in remains to seen, but I doubt it.