The G20 Consensus: The Advent of Post-Structural Adjustmentism
By Quentin Albatross

The leaders of the twenty most economically powerful nations in the world met in Washington D.C. on Saturday to discuss tentative collaborative action to stem the recessionary pressures of the global credit crisis. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was pleased with the results, stating that “despite the great diversity of countries in the room for those two days of the summit, there was a practically unanimous agreement on all major topics."

Ever since the beginning of the financial meltdown, there has been increasing pressure on politicians to renounce what is known as the neoclassical economic model. Critics on the left blame neoclassicism for the ballooning economic crisis, as financial deregulation is one of its hallmark features; deregulation has taken a lot of flak as of late. Shockingly, some of the G20 leaders – most notably, French President Nicolas Sarkozy – seemed to concede to this ideological critique, and attempted to begin to form a new economic ethos for the twenty-first century.

Maintaining the tradition of French intellectuals, Sarkozy gave a rather vague lecture to the media after the meeting in an attempt to define the new economic ethos. “Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of neoclassical economics that could be called a ‘recession,’ if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of neoclassical – or neoclassicist – thought to reduce or to suspect,” he began distractedly. “But let me use the term ‘recession’ anyway, employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this recession will have the exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling.”

After speaking for roughly six and a half hours, an English translator took his place at the podium and muttered, “Well, basically, he says that everything is really complicated and we shouldn’t rely on universal models to approach diverse and unique economic problematics.”

The speech was met with the disapproval of a significant portion of those who claim to have actually understood the totality of what Sarkozy said. Those on the left argued that Sarkozy’s renunciation of a “universal centre” provided no basis for any economic action to stop the bleeding caused by the credit crisis. "Even worse," stammered an anonymous neoconservative, "the subjective nature of Sarkozy's model carries the taint of protectionist sentiment!"

The French President was unavailable for comment, but his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy pacified most of the critics by stating that she would confiscate his collection of Derrida essays and make him read some Camus or Sartre.

Breaking Down the Vote
By Quentin Albatross

The 2008 United States Presidential election set new precedents across the board. Americans voted in record numbers; many of them for the first time. President-elect Obama managed to raise more funds than he could spend, and most of it came from contributions under $200. Perhaps just as remarkable was the amount of polling and analysis provided by the media. There were almost as many polls conducted in October 2008 as there were for the entire duration of the 2004 election. And the analysis available to TV viewers on election night was stunning.

For example, CNN systematically broke down voting trends into various demographics. President-elect Obama won over the youth, while McCain won over the elderly; Obama wooed African Americans and Latin Americans, while McCain wooed Caucasians; the list goes on.

There was actually so much data that a lot of it went unreported due to time constraints. Most notably, the pollsters and pundits largely ignored the philosophical identifications of voters. The data is confusing at times and often ambiguous, but it does manage to provide some insight into the mind of the American voter.

Unsurprisingly, voters who identified themselves as existentialists voted unanimously in favour of the Democratic candidate, Barrack Obama. On the other hand, a shocking 70% of those who claimed to be advocates of Jean-Jacques Rousseau opted for the Republican candidate, John McCain. The Rousseau cohort was fairly confident that the McCain-Palin ticket would inevitably bring about a “return to nature” via further economic liberalization, as well as the prospect of war with Russia.

The post-structuralists leaned heavily in favour of Obama, but a significant portion also claimed to have deliberately destroyed their ballots. Meanwhile, Neo-Platonists, Machiavellians, objectivists and nihilists voted overwhelmingly for McCain. The former three groups cited individual liberty as their primary motivator, while the latter group stated that the name McCain “sounded cool.”

The Nietzscheaen vote was split in half, but this is not out of the ordinary given the ambiguous nature of Nietzsche’s work. In fact, this demographic might be statistically unreliable, as a recent survey of self-proclaimed Nietzscheaens found that most of them had only ever read isolated Nietzsche quotations on Wikipedia, which they took entirely out of context.

Curiously, Kantians were moved by Obama’s universal maxim of hope, but were also one of the largest cohorts of Ralph Nader supporters. Pollsters refrained from asking why this was, as Kantians are generally dull and unpleasant.

In the end, it may be the anti-theorists who offer the most insight in this demographic analysis. Perhaps the classification of American voters into demographic cohorts is unimportant, and worse yet, misleading. By reducing Americans to a collection of “isms,” one might neglect the importance of that fact that the nation has democratically elected a President who appears to be, despite the inherent limitations of his many “isms,” a fundamentally good man.

American Jobs Already Being Destroyed by the “Radical Left”
By Sally Purple

While Barrack Obama won the American election by a hefty margin on Tuesday night, a significant portion of Americans are distraught. Republican supporters worry that the President-elect’s plans will involve significant taxation, and that this will cause American jobs to disappear. But even before President-elect Obama has had the chance to begin this alleged taxation binge, Americans have begun to blame job losses on him.

Political cartoonist Ernesto Savage was laid off from one of the biggest daily newspaper firms just one day after the election. His former employer claimed that it was no longer feasible to employ political cartoonists.

“And it’s true!” Savage exclaims. “Cartoonists make people laugh by exaggerating politician’s features. What am I supposed to draw? Big lips? An afro? My career is ruined because of Obama!”

Republicans have rallied behind Mr. Savage, who has been aptly dubbed “Joe Cartoonist”.

Harper Names New Cabinet
By Sally Purple

Last Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled the new Canadian Ministry -- there were some major changes. Most notably, Canada's new old cabinet now features a significantly larger number of women, as well as more ministers from Ontario. Most of the prominent MP's from Harper's first Ministry either stayed in place or were shuffled to different jobs. After swearing their oaths and posing for photographs, the Cabinet Ministers were led to a secret underground location and were placed under lock and key. They are not expected to be heard from again, barring the hypothetical scenario in which they would participate in another Ministry unveiling ceremony at some point in the future.