Lapid's publications on the billboards come with a comment on "sane", especially as opposed to the right • This lost pattern of thinking cannot be detached from political racism • Opinion
Cacted orange for thought.
Lapid billboards
Photo:
Joshua Joseph
The orange dot on the billboards that Lapid has adapted to and from its list - a graceful orange supplier, a shining sun supplier - does not arrive without some remark about "sane".
"Sane government" or "restore sanity."
It mainly stands as an opposition to the right-wing bloc, with all the ultra-Orthodox, the settlers, the extremists - hereafter insane.
Voting for the right in Israel has been marked as an irrational act since at least the 1970s.
In the elections held immediately after the Yom Kippur War, the party's publications warned against a "vote of rage," explaining that "anger is a bad advisor."
The "wrong" choice, meaning not to vote for us, has been officially marked as an impulsive, sentimental, and mostly unwise act.
This is the classic Fukuyan distinction: this is how Western culture is, and more precisely: this is how the agents of shaping its consciousness draw a line between the culture of the "center" - the intelligent and the sane - and the "other", the crazy and the unintelligent, who must be banished from human society.
Some power is inherent in the authority to distinguish between "intelligent" and "crazy."
True, political participation, in elections or in protest, involves a wide range of emotional activation.
In political sociology, emotional rewards are presented as a crucial motivator.
People gather at a party convention or participate in demonstrations, among other things, for adrenaline, a sense of meaning, social belonging and strengthening self-confidence.
This is not to say that at the same time, they do not believe in the content of the signs they wave, just as a ballot paper reflects an orderly worldview, or alternatively - a strategic consideration.
But voting for the right, and for the Likud in particular, has always been marked as something that moves on an emotional axis between a mass flare-up and revenge for old insults.
Wisdom is not part of the political story of the right-wing, and to illustrate this, poor analogies are called to the flag, from "battered woman" (devoted to the beating man) to "martyrs," meaning herd loyalty devoid of critical thinking.
These are not theses of old Mapainiks, but young and fashionable commentators
In the Israeli socio-political context, these losing patterns of thinking are inseparable from political racism, especially when they are merged to emphasize the right-wing leanings of Mizrahis, the lower class and the uneducated.
It's already beyond Foucault - it's Orientalism.
It should be emphasized that these are not the moldy theses of older Mapainiks. You can find them in the statements of some of the most young, energetic and fashionable political commentators from the Haaretz dialect. In the past year, they have also received seemingly scientific backing, also in Haaretz, as a health expert. The psyche published detailed theses, almost psychiatric diagnoses, in which the Mizrahis' "magnetic connection" to Netanyahu was defined as a symptom of post-trauma that needed to be cured, and Netanyahu himself was described as a mental abuser (gaslighting), that is, a rank below the psychopath.
Against the backdrop of the psychopolitical setting, Yair Lapid's orange ball shines as an insanity pill on its own, reflecting the bourgeois, seven, white need to resolve the painful dissonance between his self-perception as the embodiment of reason, and his status in public opinion.
Who is the other of Yair Lapid, the middle-class, secular, Ashkenazi, the (seemingly) educated?
Let us banish him and his representatives from the company of the worthy man.
There are also countries where crazy people are not allowed to vote.
An orange dot for thought.