Ahhhhh, yes. "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
Unless, of course, I can't UNDERSTAND it...
I'm not sure which is better... being linear and coherent and getting routinely slapped around by it in a rather less than civil manner, or getting all whimsical (and obviously amusing any number of posters, judging from the responses) and immediately having my civil rights suspended by moderators with no sense of humor whatsoever.
No, no, what am I saying? It's ALL good.
'Growing luminous by eating light' apparently does not include whimsy, and I'm guessing Geeks Need Not Apply, either.
'No hyperspeed?'
'It's not my fault!'
T-girl,
'right' and 'wrong' are always subjective. Is it the broadcast or the antennae? I've got a brain, a super brain... and we're all doomed to die a horrible death.
Somewhat non-elliptically, when Captain Clarity gets his ass kicked, Wingman Whimsy must take command.
As to persuading you or anyone else of anything, hey. As Lapis Lazuli once said, I'm always right here, but sometimes, you go away.
Or maybe that was Lorelei Lee. Like nearly everyone, I get them confused.
Wait. I'm confused. Dubya didn't really say that last part, did he? Because 'inconveniencing' seems like an out of character word for him. You made that up, right?
That's what I like: little things, hitting each other.
Eh eh eh. Very good! 'Hamming' it up indeed. I laugh while I can, Monk E. Boy. As for not being able to make a robeson, Swiss family or otherwise, in the first paragraph {he said, giggling madly}, as with the secret lab behind 314, sometimes there's no there, there.
As to the so-called crimes of van Lunt, I'm not sure it's more than a misdemeanor to launch an unlicensed space vehicle without adequate ground clearance first.
The dialectic may sprout with the fury and fervor of genetically modified corn stalks, T. But if the seeds are sterile, whereof doth it profit us?
You may think I babble like a brook, but bear in mind... Theodore Marley was one fine lawyer when he wanted to be.
Cornelius van Lunt, faced with unrelenting attacks by a particularly intransigent law enforcement agency on one hand, and an extremely hostile takeover led by rival executive factions within his own corporation on the other, took a novel tack to resolve his problems.
Luring both law enforcement officers and representatives of his own rebellious executives to a shabby, little used business facility for a meeting, he waited until all his opponents were within the structure... and then launched it into space. The run down warehouse in a secluded section of New Jersey was, in fact, a disguised short range space vessel (amazingly, none of van Lunt's enemies had noticed the massive tanks of liquid oxygen as they drove up).
While the mind boggles at speculating as to exactly what van Lunt had originally spent billions of dollars constructing a spaceship that looked like a warehouse FOR, ultimately, one cannot deny he found a profitable purpose for what many would have pointed to as a ridiculous economic white elephant.
If we want a fully funded space program, perhaps someone should point out to the current Administration the possible uses for such in terms of disposing of 'enemy combatants' and other undesirables.
Meanwhile, liberal and progressive media gadflies may well want to exercise wariness as to exactly what old, shabby structures they enter at the invitation of Republican operatives.
Some think political memoirs are like eating ice cream from a blind man's eye sockets. Others say it's just senseless ideagrams scribbled in oil soaked sand by a jaded, faded mandarin.
Ends may justify means, but what about averages?
There are ways. There are means. There are committees to discuss them. But when the big black stretch limo drops us off down the block, exactly which block are we on?
All wind, no lass. All spirit, no link. All an, no imus. It's the inside of things that matters, but the outside of things that sells. We all know this. We are all humbled by the knowledge. Yet in that humility we find the strength to simply quit.
For what good is any of it? The anthracite remains in our sullen veins, and simony rejoices as our drug of choice. Our atmospheric culture has been poisoned by the ever billowing smoke stacks of left handed instinct and hollow eyed reason. Where is the glamor in an Imperial gladiator dying of a simple respiratory infection?
Your ass, my hamster.
Alan:
You're right, of course, there have been times (usually at 3 a.m.) I've walked into Wal-green's, picked out what I wanted, paid for it while chatting at leisure with the cashier, and walked home again. Nonetheless, I stated that this was just the first example that came to mind of what I've observed of a 'group impulse' or 'herd instinct' in humans, and it is. I have many, many more. They don't operate all the time; people obviously don't live in some Madeline L'Engle nightmare WRINKLE IN TIME world where we all do exactly the same things at exactly the same times. I do think, however, that the herd instinct is well enough established that city planners and marketing firms exploit it profitably pretty much all the time.
You are, however, correct, in that we look at patterns and we interpret them, and if there is an objective truth, it can easily be lost beneath our own subjective bias. Perhaps that's what's happening with me here. But, to get back to my original point:
ALL human cultures, not just Germans in the early to mid 20th Century, have a tendency to kowtow to authority. SOME human individuals have just as strong an inbuilt resistance to authority and any sort of structure being imposed on them from without. This isn't anything to be proud or ashamed of; it's largely inborn. Americans may indeed give themselves airs as being 'more free' and 'more individual' and 'more liberty loving' than other tribes, and it's nonsense, just as any sort of oversimplification applied to a vast mass of people will be nonsense.
My conjecture, which PNH stomped on because... well, for whatever reasons he stomped on it... was that this is because humans are, largely, herd creatures. This is not my analogy; I've read it in many, many other places and generally it seems to be an accepted one. Humans dwell mostly in herds, we respond to alpha males, our males compete for leadership of the herd or choose to live in relatively peaceful obscurity, our women for the most part are content to be competed for (and very much prefer the attentions of the alpha male) and every once in a while, a 'rogue' is born who is not comfortable in the herd and prefers to dwell outside it.
We are all, at this point, I note quite cynically, nodding our heads and going 'yep yep yep, that's me, I'm the rogue, I don't like the herd, I think for myself'. Of course you do, comrade. And so do I. And so do all the millions and millions of other non-conformists...
Patrick,
Wow. You really don't like me, do you?
I get this a lot, so I'm not surprised, really, but you just seem generally more reasonable than that. ::shrug:: Oh, well.
For what it's worth, my quote was actually "The vast masses of people who have Bush bumper stickers on their cars are stupid, or if not stupid, then they are obtusely ignorant because they prefer to be that way."
This is a sweeping and subjective generalization, I grant you (much the same as your entire blog consists of), but it's not quite as sweeping as your (deliberately?) out of context quote makes me look. And, of course, if you're going to pull fifteen words out of a several hundred word post and merely comment on them... something most of your posters seem to tend to do, thanks for setting such a good example of honest, open discourse... you are, by definition, taking me out of context.
I don't know why I expected better here, yet, oddly, I did... at least, from the guy running the blog.
Now, you seem to think that, for some reason, your subjective judgement (they ain't dumb, they're just plain damn WRONG) is in some way superior (I don't know, intellectually or morally or something) to mine. In other words, you're just absolutely right, and they're just absolutely wrong, and somehow, this is a more reasonable statement than mine, which is that they are either stupid or being willfully ignorant, because they like that better than actually thinking about things.
If you really think your label for those who disagree with you (just plain frickin WRONG) is a more reasonable one than mine (stupid or obtusely ignorant) well... it's your blog. I personally think that that statement is the kind of sweeping generalization (and truly narrow minded judgement) that I myself got smacked around in the top comment thread for just a minute ago, and that all us liberals jump all over conservative commenters when they make.
As to a seemly humility, there may be something to be said for it, but you are not exactly a poster boy. Non illegitimus carborundum is a sign you should post prominently over each comment thread link on your blog, it strikes me... although that's an inaccurate generalization. I simply don't know the Latin for 'don't let The Ornery Bastard who runs this thing grind you down'.
PNH gives me, rather idly and without much effort, the back of his hand:
"By the way, Darren, "kowtowing to authority" may or may not be "a human thing," but explaining it by saying "We are, largely, a herd creature" is close to meaningless. Primates are "herd creatures" insofar as they tend to hang out with other primates of their species; in this they are similar to most other large mammals--except, um, when they don't. In other words, saying that we're "herd creatures" is one of those assertions that sounds very authoritatively scientific ("Quant suff!"), while actually saying almost nothing."
Hmmm. Apparently everybody here must back up every statement they make with actual examples, unless PNH is in a good mood when he reads their posts, or just kinda likes them anyway, in which case, they can simply declare, in vast sweeping tones, thesis statements like:
"Of course, as we all know, America is the land of plucky defiance. Don’t Tread On Us. And Europe is where they just don’t get it about that freedom stuff. Anyway, that’s our storyline and we’re sticking to it."
That humans are herd creatures strikes me as obvious, and I will, if you like, back it up at tiresome length with observations from my own life (such as the fact that if four different people walk into Wal-green's at four different times, spaced anywhere from two to four minutes apart, they will, nonetheless, completely independently to all observation, proceed to the cashier AT THE SAME TIME; I've seen this over and over again in my life), but nonetheless, in my post, it was a thesis statement. I was saying (and I'm a good writer, and everyone here is quite intelligent, so I'm sure y'all got it) that humans, for the most part, have an instinctive tendency to conform; it has to do with our biology and our evolutionary make up, and Americans should not pride themselves on being anything different from every other tribe of human, because we are not, and if we were, we would be some sort of non-human, which might or might not be something to be proud of (different discussion)... but we are not, and we should simply accept it.
Now, I don't know what I did to get the PNH Bitch Slap, at least, in this comment thread... I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person on this blog to state something I believe to be true, and that I believe is obviously true, without endlessly extolling examples of why I think it's true... but, if I did do something to deserve a casually contemptuous rawhiding from PNH, well, still... how is it, exactly, that 'of course, as we all know, America is the Land of Plucky Defiance'? This strikes me as one of those jingoistic pop culture assertions that sounds very authoritative, while actually saying almost nothing. Perhaps I could have an exhaustive list of examples showing that, indeed, 'we all know, of course, that America is the Land of Plucky Defiance'?
I suspect there are many many in your audience, Patrick (that would be the 'we' who 'all know') who 'know' (which is your ironic way of saying 'take for granted' or 'fervently believe', I think), no such thing. Yes, us native born Yanks like to think we sneer at the rest of the world, and... um... gee... hasn't the liberal intelligentsia been smacking America around considerably over the last several years for, um, sneering at the world? So... how is it that we all know we are the land of plucky defiance? And if we all know this, how is it that we aren't, actually, the land of plucky defiance?
I think it's, well, uncivil (as in, a potentially ludicrous violation of any kind of social contract) to point at one person's generalization and sneer contemptuously at them for not backing it up exhaustively, when this is something that pretty much everyone does when trying to communicate a complex idea in a tiny little text window.
But if you're annoyed at me for something, Patrick, say so. If you don't think I'm quite up to the level of discourse here, well, I don't either, but I'm enjoying it anyway. Even when you take me out behind the barn (in full view of the entire audience at home, of course) and kick the living crap out of me for not much at all.
Kowtowing to authority isn't an American thing, or a French thing, or a Polish thing, or a German thing. It's just a human thing. It's part of the human race. We are, largely, a herd creature. We do, largely, take the path of least resistance. We will, for the most part, happily graze behind fences if the pasturage is lush enough.
Americans, by and large, like to believe that we're different. Sinclair Lewis summed that up, ironically, with his book title IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE... which for all that it was published in the mid 1930s, is still a frighteningly credible dangerous vision today. But it can happen here, and as I've said several times in other chat threads on this blog, it is happening here. Americans are just as susceptible to the Following Orders Syndrome as any other humans... there's a comfort and a safety in delegating one's free will to some trusted authority figure; it seems counter intuitive that anyone should ever have to accept blame for simply doing what they were told by someone in a uniform. And, as Lucy van Pelt once taught us, having a document that absolves one of all blame is very comforting.
"Handsome" is what I call myself on my blog, because of the name of the blog ("A Brown Eyed Handsome Man", something suggested by an Elayne Riggs blog post at the time, it's a thing) and is meant to be somewhat ironic, just so everyone knows.
And Kevin J. Maroney sweeps in and says exactly what I meant to and should have said the first time, in far far less wordage than I have ever managed. Thank you, Kevin.
As to conservatives being stupid: their leaders aren't stupid. The vast masses of people who have Bush bumper stickers on their cars are stupid, or if not stupid, then they are obtusely ignorant because they prefer to be that way. The Republican Party deliberately chose Bush as its candidate this year with great calculation; they wanted someone who did NOT seem like an 'egghead' but rather like a 'real man' (yahoo style) and who could thus pull votes away from Gore, who definitely came off as an elitist college perfesser type (if Gore had a political failing for America, early 21st Century politics, it was that he completely lacked a Bubba factor).
I live out here amongst the Bushies, and perhaps it's my agnostic bias speaking, but I've yet to meet a conservative who isn't also a good church goin' God fearin' man or woman, and honestly, those people are stupid sheep and they will vote the way their pastor, or Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O'Reilly, tells them to every time.
Yes, they think they're doing the right thing, but their 'right thing' comes from a different place than that of liberals and, well, those of us who actually try to think about stuff. Their 'right thing' comes from a pride in doing their duty as Americans, from a sense of warmth and belonging they get from being part of a team, from subsuming their individual will into that of a vast Republican cheerleading animal. They call it patriotism and decency and, I don't know, family goddam values, but it's all just the same old endorphin release that all we herd dwellers get when we're stomping our feet and clapping our hands in unison with the rest of our tribe at a concert. And it's okay to do that at a concert or public rally; it's NOT okay to do it en masse at a voting booth.
I honestly don't think I'm a bigot. I had, and continue to have, a very hard time believing that a candidate like Bush could even be viable, much less grab 40 million more or less honest votes. That's my own particular prejudice; I want to think everyone else out there understands that it's not a good thing to vote someone who is stupid and short sighted and greedy into high office simply because they have a nice smile. But most of them don't, and I've had to come to accept that.
However, when I say that I doubt democracy (or whatever you want to call our electoral process, Rush) actually works in America any more, I am pointing to the fact that Bush is in office and did not get elected, and as I have pointed out in detail in past posts, his party now has more than enough tools in their hands to guarantee that they will not be voted out of office if they don't want to be and are willing to be sufficiently ruthless. We liberals are, all of us, simply hoping that the game rules have not changed... that when the results of the election comes in in 2004, if Bush loses by enough that we avoid the morass we fell into in 2000, the Republicans will gracefully step down. I'm saying, I think the game rules have changed much more fundamentally and permanently than y'all are willing to acknowledge. I think the current junta in power is ruthless enough that, democracy is only going to work if it works for them. If the majority of votes go somewhere else for them... well, then, they're going to try something else. But they are not going to let Democrats get back in office just when they're about ready to start up a permanent state of war (which, in their eyes, will neatly solve so many economic and social problems) and establish a steadily expanding Imperial America. This is their wet dream, the shining toxic depleted uranium-cored vision that has empowered them since they were tiny little Reagan Youth, and it's within their grasp now and they aren't giving it up.
Now, as Sean Connery once inquired dryly of Kevin Costner, 'what are you prepared to do?'
Hey, I saw the fnords. Doesn't that mean I'm supposed to be enlightened now?
anyway, while I'll believe in secret conspiracies to control the economy and police our very thoughts, I simply cannot bring myself to the point where I'm willing to accept that some secret power group is responsible for Carrot Head.
Humanity cannot be that evil.
Xopher,
Thanks for the props, but there seems no point in denying I was wrong. I was, utterly, and in print. I suspect I'd try to squirm out of it if I could... perhaps I could hire Bobby Donnell to argue that in fact, in a social/subjective continuum, there is no 'right' or 'wrong', and anyway, how can any of us really know what happened in 1933, when none of us were there?
But, no... within the accepted game rules ('written history must be accepted as valid unless arduously proven invalid') I'm wrong and must 'fess up. I often shoot my mouth off emotionally and think I know what I'm talking about as far as facts, and then find out I don't. It happened a few weeks ago on my blog, when I shot my mouth off about the Lynch rescue, opining that it was ridiculous to state that M-16s needed a special attachment to fire blanks, only to have someone come back and say, well, they do, on full auto. And I had based my statement on my own experience, in Basic Training, firing blanks from M-16s! If your own experience can mess you up, there's little hope... other than to bite the bullet (gee, lot of testosterone in my metaphors tonight) and admit it when you get caught flat dead wrong.
However, honestly, I've never been someone who's into the whole 'I never make a mistake' thing. I've known people like that; they're very very annoying. If I learned anything from long term experience to my college mentor, and short term experience to his, it was that it's okay to admit to it when you've made an error... and I learned it from how exasperated I got when they wouldn't, under any circumstances.
Wow. I seem to be the first commenter on the Digby stuff.
Which is scary and brutal and probably correct.
Nonetheless, I will continue to live on dream time and cast my vote for whoever I personally think will make the best President. Just like I did in Florida in 2000 for Ralph Nader.
No, I will not tell you where I live.
Er... okay... I was wrong. I apologize. We're certainly NOT Nazi Germany in 1933. We have a long way to fall to get that far, and hopefully, we won't.
I say, hopefully.
Thanks, Reimer, for the unsettling enlightenment.
Uh... my initial post was meant to be humorous, however heavy handed I was when I wrote it. I realize Jerry Falwell lacks the vision, sense of humor, and proportionate self perception to realize exactly how similar what HE wants for America is to what the mullahs want for the Middle East... (and, well, for America, too, when they can get that far...). I was simply trying to point out, in a satirical manner, that repression is repression, regardless of what god or government's name is on the label.
Scott,
Calmly and with utmost respect:
I became angry because you, and one other person, went after one line in my first lengthy post, took it entirely out of context, and then presumed exactly which point in Nazi Germany's lengthy history I was speaking about, and based on your presumptions, beat the living hell out of my entire post. This annoyed me, and I responded with a personal attack, and I continue to apologize for the attack, but not the annoyance.
In my original post, I was very careful to state, at some length, EXACTLY why I was comparing where America is right now to Nazi Germany (and other tyrannies). You chose not to respond to those paragraphs. You chose not to respond to the essence of the post, which was my growing horror at discovering I am a citizen in a police state which becomes more and more like tyrannical and repressive and corrupt and internationally, well, EVIL, every day. You simply went after me for the Nazi Germany comparison, based entirely on your presumption as to what point of Nazi Germany's existence I was comparing our current social devolution to.
That struck me as self-indulgent on your part, at my expense. So, I became angry. Anger never solves anything, but, still, I feel you made self serving error in judgement and set out to make me look foolish because of it. I shouldn't have called you a fool, I should have simply pointed this out as admirably as Tuxedo Slack did. I should also have pointed it out in my original post more succinctly, but since I wrote about a hundred words detailing where we were in America now and why I thought so, I felt the obviously erudite folks in these chat threads could draw those conclusions themselves.
You say that we are not currently living in 1933's Nazi Germany, and go on to speak very optimistically about our chances of purging this crap from the way we as a country do business. I want to point out that when I said 'I woke up in Nazi Germany this morning', I followed it with a list of what my nation has done lately, and is continuing to do, to illustrate exactly what I meant. Your statement that you believe I am wrong, and your continuing statement of hope, is wonderful, but competely unsupported. WHY isn't America 2003 directly comparable to Nazi Germany a year or so after Hitler took power? No, we're not cutting people's heads off for leafletting, I grant you, nor have we reached the stage where we are spitting on certain hated ethnic minorities on the street or forcing them to walk in the gutters... but the French have had a pretty bad year. No heads are getting cut off, but houses and businesses have been vandalized and I believe still are being boycotted, and frankly, while again, this is a step down from the sheer horrors of Nazi Germany, it's chillingly similar, and it scares hell out of me. The Dubya-ites recent attempts to mobilize patriotic citizens into an unpaid domestic spy force also terrifies me, and again, strikes me as horribly similar to the Gestapo's techniques (among many others, historically and in fiction) to really want to avoid pointing out.
These comparisons are very easy to make, and therefore, as I said before, we seem to have created a rule against making them. I say, if we wait until Homeland Security troops are actually building internment camps for suspected Al Qaida infiltrators (anyone in America of Middle Eastern descent and Islamic religious beliefs, and what the hell, let's ship the homos off to the camps, too, they're probably in on in it with those towelhead terrorists, too, the worthless fags) to start pointing fingers and drawing parallels, well... it will be a little bit too late.
I want to believe your optimistic paragraph, I really do. I'd just like to see you support it. How anyone but Dubya is going to win the next election I do not, at this moment, see... all my fellow liberals seem to be deliberately blinding themselves with obtuse, starry eyed hope that democracy can still work in America (when we know otherwise, but never mind) and even if democracy DOES work, that the country I myself described in my own initial post, and that we all wake up in every day, could feasibly re-elect anyone except El Jefe.
I long to join your bandwagon and thump a drum, I really do. I just can't see it. Liberals, in my experience, always always ALWAYS have trouble taking conservatives seriously, because, well, they're generally stupid and seem so ridiculously narrow minded and troll like, we just have to see them as walking caricatures and absurd living jokes. But what we don't understand is stupid unthinking emotional bigots are often more powerful in democratic elections than those of us who think carefully and make reasoned choices... because the unwashed idiots will vote the way their authority figures tell them to.
We liberals, on the other hand, stubbornly insist on doing what we think is right, and you're right now reading the words of a Florida resident who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and is still truculently unrepentent about it... he would have been a MUCH better President than any of the other people running, so I voted for him, and those who think I gave the White House away to El Jefe are making a fundamental error in logic, and overlooking two salient facts: (a) I didn't vote for El Jefe, that was about forty million very foolish people doing that, and (b) El Jefe didn't win the election, anyway, so what the hell, dude.
Now, as to my 'self denigrating crap'... most of the people in these threads, I'm willing to assume, are smarter than I am and certainly better credentialed than I am, and obviously, are more knowledgeable of history than I am. I'm a geek, I type fast, I write very well, I have a lot of opinions, I enjoy sharing them. However, I make blunders nearly every time I sit down to write something, and I write a LOT. I could do careful research before setting my fingers to my keyboard (coming up with the real facts about Germany and Hitler's rise to power took about five minutes of Google searching) but I tend to do my commenting on these blogs for my own personal pleasure, because I enjoy the discourse, and I'm perfectly willing to own up to the fact that I'm not perfect, don't know everything, and I make mistakes. That's all my 'self denigrating crap' was about. I don't feel any need to present a picture of perfect rectitude in public (or private, for that matter) I'm not ever planning on running for office.
If I do make mistakes and people point them out, I'll do my best to verify that and if it's so, I'll apologize and presumably be a better human being, so that's okay. However: America 2003 has many many parallels to Nazi Germany shortly after Hitler took power. Also, I suppose, to what it must have been like living in the Empire during or after the Clone Wars, as Tuxedo points out. If my using a Nazi Germany reference continues to enrage you, I can only shrug and say, this is how I see it. Our democracy, and the citadel of liberty and human rights that America has, at least, always striven to be (however flawed our performance, historically) has precipitously devolved over the past three years into something that horrifies me, something that I think we've seen in history prior to this.
Are we as melodramatically, openly evil as Nazi Germany was? No. No one is ever going to be again. If Big Evil has learned any one lesson from Hitler, it's to for God's sake be a little bit more subtle. But just how many people do you think there are in America right now who would proudly go out and register as Homeland Patriots, or something equally vapid and terrifying, if Dubya asked them to? Who would wear armbands and walk the streets watching their neighbors, truncheons in their hands? Who would take pictures and make notes, and, if they were told to do it by someone they considered to be authoritative, put on hoods and head out under cover of night and break windows and set fires and even drag suspected 'terrorists' or 'enemy combatants' off to 'unofficial interrogation chambers'?
I think there are tens of thousands of those guys out there right now, and I think after the media spun the Homeland Patriot movement in a positive light for a week or so, there would be millions.
Of AMERICANS.
This ain't Pleasantville, Scott.
But I appreciate your continuing civil tone and apologize once again for my momentary lack of civility. I wish I shared your optimism and sincerely hope you are correct in it.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 27 |
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