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.) propose their multiple, elaborated and refined analysis,Ssomebody must assume the simple and for that very reason most difficultact of transposing this complex multitude, where for every reason for&there are two reasons against, into a simple Yes or No - we shallCattack, we continue to wait.This gesture which can never be fullyRgrounded in reasons, is that of a Master.It is for the experts to presentIthe situation in its complexity, and it is for the Master to simplify it into aTpoint of decision.ISuch a figure of a Master is needed especially in situations of deep QUcrisis.The function of a Master here is to enact an authentic division aEdivision between those who want to drag on within the old parametersand those who are aware of the necessary change.President Obama#is often accused of dividing the American people instead of bringing1them all together to find broad bi-partisan solutions but what if this,precisely, is what is good about him? In situations of deep crisis, anauthentic division is urgently needed a division between those whowant to drag on within the old parameters and those who are aware of thenecessary change.Such a division, not the opportunistic compromises,is the only path to true unity.Let us take an example which surely is notproblematic: France in 1940.Even Jacques Duclos, the second man of theFrench Communist Party, admitted in a private conversation that if, atthat point in time, free elections were to be held in France, Marshal Petainwould have won with 90% of the votes.When de Gaulle, in his historicact, refused to acknowledge the capitulation to Germans and continuedto resist, he claimed that it is only he, not the Vichy regime, who speakson behalf of the true France (on behalf of true France as such, not only onbehalf of the majority of the French !), what he was saying was deeplytrue even if it was democratically not only without legitimization, butclearly opposed to the opinion of the majority of the French people& AndMargaret Thatcher, the lady who is not for turning, WAS such a Mastersticking to her decision which was at first perceived as crazy, graduallytheir dignity: instead of openly admitting that they were acting under US pressure, or pretendingthat they simply followed the law, they justified the grounding on pure technicalities, claiming thatthe flight was not properly registered in their air traffic control.The effect was miserable Europeannot only appeared as US servants, they even wanted to cover up their servitude with ridiculoustechnicalities.32 Slavoj %7ńi~ek elevating her singular madness into an accepted norm.When Thatcher CRwas asked about her greatest achievement, she promptly answered: TheINew Labor. And she was right: her triumph was that even her politicalSenemies adopted her basic economic policies the true triumph is not theIvictory over the enemy, it occurs when the enemy itself starts to use yourSlanguage, so that your ideas form the foundation of the entire field.&So what remains today of Thatcher s legacy today? Neoliberalhegemony is clearly falling apart.The only solution is to repeat Thatcher sCgesture in the opposite direction.Thatcher was perhaps the only trueRThatcherite she clearly believed in her ideas.Today s neoliberalism, onIthe contrary, only imagines that it believes in itself and demands thatTthe world should imagine the same thing (to quote Marx).In short, today,Icynicism is openly on display.Recall again the cruel joke from Lubitch s QUTo Be Or Not to Be: when asked about the German concentration campsEin the occupied Poland, the responsible Nazi officer concentration campErhardt snaps back: We do the concentrating, and the Poles do the#camping. Does the same not hold for the Enron bankruptcy in January12002 (as well as all financial meltdowns that followed), which can beinterpreted as a kind of ironic commentary on the notion of risk society?Thousands of employees who lost their jobs and savings were certainlyexposed to a risk, but without any true choice - the risk appeared tothem as a blind fate.Those, on the contrary, who effectively did have aninsight into the risks as well as a possibility to intervene in the situation(the top managers), minimized their risks by cashing in their stocks andoptions before the bankruptcy so it is true that we live in a society ofrisky choices, but ones (the Wall Street managers) do the choosing, whileothers (the common people paying mortgages) do the risking&As we have already pointed out, one of the weird consequences of thefinancial meltdown and the measures taken to counteract it (enormoussums of money to help banks) was the revival in the work of Ayn Rand,the closest one can come to the ideologist of the greed is good radicalcapitalism the sales of her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged exploded again.According to some reports, there are already signs that the scenariodescribed in Atlas Shrugged the creative capitalists themselves goingon strike is enacted.John Campbell, a Republican congressman, said: The achievers are going on strike.I m seeing, at a small level, a kind ofprotest from the people who create jobs /& / who are pulling back fromtheir ambitions because they see how they ll be punished for them. Theridicule of this reaction is that it totally misreads the situation: most of33 The Impasses of Today s Radical Politics the gigantic sums of bail-out money is going precisely to the Randian CRderegulated titans who failed in their creative schemes and therebyIbrought about the meltdown.It is not the great creative geniuses whoSare now helping lazy ordinary people, it is the ordinary taxpayers who areIhelping the failed creative geniuses. SThe other aspect of Thatcher s legacy targeted by her Leftist critics&was her authoritarian form of leadership: her lack of the sense fordemocratic coordination.Here, however, things are more complex thanCit may appear
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