Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Teresa and hopefully, Patrick, you can get some rest, too.
Mitch, Ethan, Abi...
Aw shucks. Tah.
I would de-lurk more, but see what happens when I do? Not to mention my two-year-old daughter (or _nutjob_ as I lovingly call her) allows me to type maybe three words when she's not sleeping.
Mythago @ 169: Love the Greenspan patch. I tried it for a while. The cost kept fluctuating so I just went cold turkey.
It is unfortunate that Miss Rand (nee Alice Rosenbaum, later changing her name after her Remington Rand typewriter...see, I know way too much about this) never had children; I'm certain her perspective would have been different. Her own parents were extremely instrumental (like selling their jewelry and ensuring sponsorship for her) in getting her to the U.S. It is too bad, well, actually, tragic, that this type of respect for deserving parents and love of children was pitifully lacking from her work.
In spite of her many flaws--flat characterization, florid prose, alienating almost anyone with a will of their own despite her philosophy of free will, and the awful affair with Nathaniel Branden, who is still alive and still an idiot--I would love to expound upon the genius of Rand's philosophical breakthroughs in the areas of metaphysics, epistomology, and consciousness. But I am only allowed one hour of Rand a week as a condition of my rehab.
Oops. I meant "Rachmaninoff" Not "Rachminoff" Damn Russian names.
*De-lurking*
[Sigh]
Hi. I'm a recovering Randite. And I've been clean now for almost ten years.
I had my first Rand at the tender age of twenty-two. I started on the easy stuff: Fountainhead, Atlas, then progressed to We the Living, Anthem, Night of January 16. Little did I know these works were but the gateway pieces to the really hard stuff: The Romantic Manifesto, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism--the Unknown Ideal, and the Black Tar bad boy of them all: The Ayn Rand Lexicon.
It wasn't enough for me to do Rand every day in the privacy of my own home. I started copping for Rand on Mozilla (AKA, the Internet), seeking out other Rand-users. Most of them were men, most of them wore 1940's trench coats with their hair slicked back and an unnatural obsession for trains and steel and Rachminoff. Most wanted to be architects or self-made business men or, at their worst, fiction writers. And they all agreed on one thing: Thomas Jefferson was a hero who made it okay to do as he said and not as he did.
The more I used Rand the more distant my non-Rand-using friends grew. They didn't like the Rand parties I threw, the countless nights I made them stay up late as I shamelessly performed John Galt's three hour speech, over and over, until my tongue was raw and my eyes bloodshot. They didn't like that every time they knocked on my door I made them say, "I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine." Soon, they'd had enough. But I didn't care. I smoked Rand. I snorted Rand. At the lowest of my lows, I did Rand in the raw: I injected a photocopy of her handwritten manuscript straight into my book-line. I was tweaked for days. I think I even began to speak a little Russian. I began to sell Rand, again starting with the easy stuff, the gateway works. I worked my way up the philosophy chain until eventually I was selling the serious stuff that capitalists were willing to drop serious Benjamins on: ITOE, OPAR, The Ayn Rand Letters. I used my Rand money to buy gaudy gold chains with diamond-encrusted dollar signs.
Not long after this, my Randiverse began to change. I started noticing the chinks in the armor, but I didn't want to admit that the woman I had tattooed on my stomach was anything less than a goddess (an atheist goddess, of course, or perhaps a Greek Goddess, since Rand only allowed Greek Mythology to pervade her stash). It was worse in the mornings for me when I'd been up all night Randing with my Randites. I'd wake up with the cold chill of sobriety threatening to melt my brain. It started with swearing. I couldn't say God-damned anymore because I didn't believe in God anymore. And Lord of All Trade was already taken by a Libertarian author, and if there's one thing a true Objectivist hates, it's Libertarians. Besides which, my Randites didn't approve of stories that weren't set in a very strict 1940s environment.
I started dating men who had marble fireplaces so I could steal into their house, do some Rand, take a firepoker and crack the marble. One time I whipped a man with a sex toy (because I couldn't find a horse-whip) and told him to have his way with me. At the end of it I fell at his feet and told him if I believed in a God it would be him, but instead, I believed in him as my hero, as my maker, as my everything that gives me validation for being the strong and independent woman he said I could be. The pool guy was very confused.
The friends and family that were still talking to me finally staged an intervention. One by one they went down the list of how my Rand use had effectively killed their interest in anything philosophical. They went through her prose, line by line, circling her convoluted sentences that were peppered with 20's dialogue and a punishing overuse of em-dashes. They made me look at my life, at the Rand-addicts I called my friends (who had, at this point, abandoned me for Bill Gates), and they asked me: is this the kind of person you want to be? You really think it's nice to be Dagny in the Valley while someone like Reardon (the only character with any development in her literature) is frantically searching for you in a plane and you just sit there, unfazed and unwilling to bend the rules while John Galt takes you to piano recitals?
I had hit rock bottom. I'd become a Rand-ho, pimping my soul for that sweet taste of thought control.
I'm in a support group now, taking it one day at a time. I still do Rand from time to time. She's not the kind of thing you ever really get out of your system; some scientists claim that once she's in you, your body chemistry is forever changed. Before I turned into an addict, Rand had actually given me something I never would have found from my religious upbringing of Original Sin and self-sacrifice: she gave me hope that I could be me. And throughout all of it, I finally did find me . . . I just had to go through the philosophical ghetto to get there.
Why on earth would you sit and listen to an hour-and-a-half lecture?
Well, first of all I had no way of knowing the lecture was going to last that long. But most importantly, because she's the wife of a dear friend, and when you're a woman who treasures her guy friends, you know that with some friendships one bad word from the wife can make you lose all that...so you respectfully put up with crap sometimes because the value of keeping a friendship is sometimes worth the occassional lecture. Doesn't mean I can't bitch about it later, though.
And honestly, when you're pregnant with your first child, no matter how old or young you are, there's a whole lot of overwhelming going on (am I going to kill my baby before she's born, am I going to be able to keep my baby alive after she's born, will I be able to keep from killing my teenager when she turns into a nightmare, and please don't let me outlive my child...) You sort of fall into the trap of thinking maybe there's something of value in this sermon only to realize that's an hour and a half of your life you'll never get back. Live and learn, I guess.
jax.
Steve,
My doctor basically told me the same thing. As long as your temp doesn't get above 102 and you don't feel faint you're fine, and that's riskier in the 1st tri. You'd think these drive-byers assume you've never read a book, never talked to a doctor, basically never stepped foot outside your cave of ignorance to experience this strange thing we call reality.
If only these people really knew how much a mother-to-be (and I'm sure how much a mother) worries about anything and everything that could possibly affect her child.
jax.
What a great thread!
I've been remiss in my blog lurking lately because I've been busy trying to finish my ms. by July, the 23rd being my due date for our first child. Mad told me about the topic so I thought I'd check it out. I'm so glad I did.
And let me say, the drive-bys for pregnant women are enough! I'm *not* looking forward to drive-by mommy advice.
So far, I've had unsolicited tummy rubs, lectures about how the half a glass of wine I'm drinking (usually to get my mind off of searing pain from sciatica or my failing knees) will unalterably retard my child, how I shouldn't stick my legs in a hot tub for the 5 minutes that I do after swimming, how bacon's going to give my baby cancer, and how lying on my back will kill my child. I get *nasty*, and I mean *nasty* comments of shock when I confess I've been getting my hair highlited during my pregnancy (I'm 20 weeks along), and if all that's not enough, I get pre-parenting advice from people I could give two shits about.
The worst of this advice came from the wife of an ex co-worker. The co-worker I know well, we hang out now and then, I'm like one of the guys. The wife I barely know, but she's got four kids and *the* right method for raising all of them. So, the story goes: I'm instant messaging with my buddy (co-worker) and I tell him I'm pregnant. Not two minutes later do I get a call from his wife congratulating me. And the next HOUR AND A HALF I spend on the phone listening to a lecture about how all the popular methods of raising a child are wrong and how I need to never let my child cry, never put her down (yes, it's a girl), have her sleep in the family bed (with me and my husband) until she's a teenager, and breast-feed until she's 6 or 7; how my husband should only play with her and I should only nurture her, and blah blah blah...until I wanted to runaway to one of those homes and have the baby in secret, bring her home and never tell anyone we have a child. (Note, I'm not knocking *anyone* who uses the above method with their children. I'm just knocking the imposing of that method on me)
My neighbor and her newborn are constantly getting parental drive-bys. One in particular struck me. The baby was crying in a crowded restaurant with TVs (read: overstimulation) and the drive-by comes up to her and says, "Have you heard of the Shushing method?" You know, like Shhh, shhh, shhh.
So, to combat the drive-bys I'm considering some comebacks of my own:
Pregnancy Drive-By:
Drive by: You shouldn't be drinking, you know.
Me: Yeah but it's the only thing that helps with the shakiness I get from crystal meth.
Drive by: [Unsolicited tummy-touching] Aw, a baby!
Me: Actually, no, it's a tumor. The doctor says it's contagious.
Drive by: You shouldn't be eating that [bacon, soft cheese, etc]
Me: Oh, I know, but I'm part of this new Stanford study of pregnant women who eat nothing but carcinogens and unpasteurized cheeses. They're paying me *a lot* of money! I just missed out on the opiate study. [Mad contributed to this one, I think]
Drive by: You shouldn't be putting your legs in a hottub!
Me: Well, I got really faint after having been in the steam room for so long and I had to sit down, but I also had to pee, and the hot tub was right here, so I figured two birds with one stone...come on in, it's warm.
Drive-by: I can't believe you're getting your hair colored. All that bleach can hurt the fetus.
Me: [I'm blonde] Like, oh my gosh, are you, like, serious? Cause, like, the Vetriginarian that I talked to said it was, like, totally OK.
Parenting Drive-By:
Drive-by: Have you heard of the shushing technique?
Me: Is that like the breathing technique? Cause I'm just not a fan of either.
Drive-by: [About crying baby] Maybe your baby's hungry? Have you fed her?
Me: She had some beer earlier. It's pretty filling, I gave her a stout.
I hope to have the guts to use the comebacks because it seems to me there's no stopping the drive-by, so why not at least have some fun with it.
jax.
Just did a bit more research on the prison beatings in Abu Ghraib, so I'll ammend the first part of my previous post where I thought the deaths occurred from escape and one from heart attack. The viciousness of the beatings would most certainly make it possible to bring about death and as I've said before, those responsible should be punished to the full extent.
The rest of my previous post, however, is the same.
Teresa,
Thanks for your post. (And thanks for the original post...it's been an interesting learning experience).
I'm sure I won't be popular when I say this, but when you say we are killing people at Abu Ghraib, how have these deaths occurred? In the bit of research I've done, my understanding is the deaths have been few, some due to attempted escapes, and one as a result of a prisoner so intimidated by the guards, he had a heart attack and died.
I hope this isn't the only paraghraph that people read, but I accept it sounds a bit inflammatory.
None of this is meant to excuse *any* of the deaths. The Abu Ghraib prison is a terrible example of the worst planning and execution. General Karpinski was the person they put in charge of the prison, but she had absolutely no experience running any kind of military prison, and she made such sexual and physical abuse as happened possible.
All people responsible for the degrading, inhumane and torturous abuse of these prisoners (as well as the holding of people long after they were determined NOT to be threats) should be duly, strictly, and mercilessly punished under the laws of our system.
But, I'm afraid I still have to disagree with how this resembles, even remotely, the German concentration camps. I do not believe this is a fine distinction. If I did, I wouldn't bother saying anything. The purpose of Dachau and Auschwitz and other such camps *never* started out innocent, they never started out, even, as military prisons during wartime. They were soley to herd (i.e., concentrate) any enemy of the state into one place and systematically murder them, after various torturous tests and experiements were performed on them. While they may not have begun gassing people in Dauchau until the 40's, it is well documented that they intended to do so all along because they already built the gas chambers masquerading as showers in 1933. They didn't convert the existing showers in the 40's when they decided to gas prisoners; they were always there, they were always part of the plan.
This is a tremendous distinction between the two types of prison camps we're comparing here. My understanding about how the Abu Ghraib story broke was military personnel at the prison itself could not support what was happening and testified accordingly, as well they should have. This is another large distinction. The fact that a good portion of the nation was and is outraged at hearing the news is another difference.
As I've said before, if I thought we were talking about fine distinctions, I wouldn't have bothered bringing anything up. And I'll repeat again, what happened at Abu Ghraib was a gross display of the abuse of military power and should be punished in the most severe manner. Those responsible for deaths or murder in the prison should be tried for such (this kind of behavior, unfortunately, happens in regular American prisons, too). But it just isn't the same as building a camp in which the government plans and almost publicly announces all along to kill its prisoners.
I'm not really hoping to convince anyone on this. But, it's something I feel strongly about, and something close to home for me, so I felt the need to speak up.
Thanks again for this thread, and thanks much to Andy for that amazing site.
CHip says: Is our situation today like the first stage Niemoller wrote of? xeger may be exaggerating -- but you should consider a sling for your jaw.
CHip, you're right. I do need a sling for my jaw, because it keeps dropping from posts like yours.
In Germany there were some pretty big red flags to indicate a complete loss of all individual rights preceeding the Holocaust:
"Chancellor Adolf Hitler...appeared...on February 28, 1933 in the Reichsgesetzblatt Nr. 17 (Legal Bulletin of the Reich No. 17). The Order included the following:
"§1
"Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution are invalid until further notice. Restrictions on the freedom of the individual, the right to free speech, including freedom of the press and the right of assembly and the right to form groups, infringements on the secrecy of post, telegraph and telephone communications, house searches, confiscation and limitation in property ownership over and above the previously legally specified limitations are now permissible."
This is a FAR cray from any executive order we have today.
And, in response to your theory that Dauchau didn't gas the prisoners until the 40's, well, perhaps you're right that they didn't use gas, but they did *murder* them (from the same site):
"By the first of May, 1933, there were 1200 inmates in the camp; mostly political prisoners from Munich. These were comprised by "...members of the Social Democratic and Communist parties, many Catholics and many Jewish doctors and lawyers." Guards began murdering inmates from the very first days of the camp's existence."
Gas, bullets, starvation, beating to death--different methods, same result: death. Do you really think this is happening now in Abu Ghraib?
As I've said I don't know how many times, I am not indifferent to the injustices being perpetuated by our American government. But this isn't even the beginnings of a Holocaust, for even in its infancy, the Holocaust differed by two really big points: no individual rights for *anyone* and murder.
What America has in common with the Holocaust is the way in which some of our people view these injustices: either they turn a blind eye or they claim they never knew, thus encouraging the very injustices they wish didn't exist by their inaction.
And this is terrible enough on its own without having to turn it into how it's somehow exactly what happened in the infancy of the Holocaust. I don't need this to be more tragic than it is. It's tragic enough.
Unfortunately it's a bit more than just being pulled out of the line at airports.
You're right. But this was the example you yourself gave, which I refuted. And, while they are being unlawfully detained, they are NOT being carted off to the gas chamber. I am not trying to minimize the injustice being committed here. But there are degrees of injustices and that is why we have a different penalty for murder than we do for burglary: both of these are gross violations of one's rights...one of them is irreversible, and they are certainly NOT the same.
...you don't notice the errosion when you're in the middle of it.
Well, that's not entirely true, is it? Obviously we notice it because we're talking about it. Obviously *you* notice it. And I notice it, too. I campaigned heavily in my neighborhood to vote against Prop 69 (the DNA prop). Everyone--when I told them that this meant even if you're wrongfully arrested and never charged with a felony you are subject to DNA testing--reacted positively by voting against 69, but it wasn't enough, unfortunately. But what this DID show was that in this particular case, the small sampling of strangers and neighbors I talked to were not of the "I don't care what rights are being eroded, I want to feel safe!" mentality. It's more unfortunate that most people who voted for 69 didn't understand what they were voting for because they only read this, "Should collection of DNA samples from all felons, and from others arrested for or charged with specified crimes be required with submission to state DNA database? Provides for funding." And they missed the part about only being arrested. Some people didn't even read that far. They saw DNA collection and voted for it.
There's certainly a doctrine of "do your patriotic duty by not questioning the government" going around - as well as censorship and terrorism (specifically "fear of" being used to manipulate opinion).
Agreed. But a doctrine does not a policy make. We should do everything we can to promote the alternate doctrine (i.e., yes, always question the government), but we are not being terrorized by our government (no matter how idiotic our president is) and the press is still free.
And, regarding the idea that there are hints of censorship in the press...if this were true, we'd only have one news channel and not the access to every single media organization in the world. The day my Satellite TV shows me a black screen of CNN with a statement that the government has blacked it out...that's the day I run to Canada.
not just a 51% majority of people in favour of such oppression...that's a red herring.
Actually, I wasn't referring to the election. I was referring to a bare majority compared to a near 100% mass evasion. And I didn't understand what you meant about the wife beating question, so you might need to clarify that if you want me to get your point.
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity...that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic...
Yes, and if the current Constitution (+ ammendments) and laws of the United States said anything about how free speech is illegal and how individuals don't have rights, I would agree with this, but you've actually proven my point by quoting the oath of allegiance: it pledges to protect freedom.
I am not proclaiming our country is blissfully strolling along the street of freedom and liberty and vigorously fighting any form of right infringement. I am saying we are NOT a police state, not even close. We are not a 99% majority of people willingly turning a blind eye to injustices. And the evidence for that is this very forum, the very fact that so many people protest, openly. With or without fear of being carted off somewhere, you haven't been paid a visit from the CIA yet and you haven't been *charged* with treason for simply expressing a view.
I'm not advising we all wait until we're in jail before acting. That's ridiculous. I'm saying we're not in jail. We're not Nazi Germany. When you take the Holocaust of one country and state the same thing is happening (not 'about to happen' or 'could happen') in another when clearly it isn't, you've lost the meaning of Holocaust.
xeger wrote:
... and this is different from being searched at airports and federal buildings, being pulled out of line for having the wrong colour skin, feeling the need to call friends when you enter a federal building, and tell them to make quiet enquiries if they don't hear back from you later that day, in what respect? What about the variety of people who've been held without charges or bail simply for having the wrong name - they've certainly been carted away, leaving their community in fear...
You'll excuse me as I type this. I'm still trying to pick my jaw up from the floor.
The short answer: Yes, the injustices and grand scale oppression of the Holocaust is different from the injustices in contemporary United States.
The other short answer: Differences: While "wrong-skinned" Americans (or visitors) are being pulled out of line at the airports, they are NOT being sent off in crowded trains to their deaths, their personal property is not being stolen and redistributed among the authorities, and they are not being forced to live in ghettos.
The fact that we can and are writing about such topics in a public forum without fear of ourselves being carted off to concentration camps is yet another proof of the difference. The fact that the press can report freely on such injustices, still more proof.
As I alluded in my first post, the United States could well end up like Germany, but a great many monumental things would have to happen first: mass censorhip, *true* totalitarian government, declared allegiance to the state over anyone else, a complete loss of individual rights, the elimination of any kind of free press, and most importantly, not just a 51% majority of people in favor of such oppression, but a near 100% sanctioning of such a thing, either by ignoring its existence or actively participating in it.
I understand the spirit of what you are trying to say when you compare the true injustices of the infringement of individual rights such that they are happening in the US now (and I'm just as disgusted with this as anyone), but to actually draw an equal comparison between the mass sanctioning of the slaughtering of a race and what is happening now is to cheapen and desecrate the meaning of the word, "Holocaust" as well as the victims who died in it and those who survived it.
I believe that was Teresa's point.
Yeah, that was my read, too.
Mad! How could you not tell us your birthday was coming up...I'd have brought our celebratory singing birthday candle to the meeting Saturday! Ah well, I'll make the kuchen in your honor, then.
Regarding the "we never knew about the Holocaust" theory, I think if comparisons to America are being made, the full context of the situations would be good. A major consideration when comparing Nazi Germany and contemporary America is 1930s-40s Germany was not free; America--at least for now--still is. We still have individual and 1st Ammendment rights, most notably a free press.
So when we talk about what a human being would do in a given situation (such as participating in or denying the Holocaust, or evading or taking a stand against terrorism in a post 9/11 era) keeping the context of the era in mind is crucial.
Teresa said it's an error to believe people would see things differently if only they knew the truth. And I agree with this, but I'd like to qualify that. People can see the truth all day, but if they refuse to allow that truth to integrate into their lives in an honest way, they may as well be seeing whatever acid trip takes their fancy. But there's a difference between seeing the truth and experiencing it.
I experienced 9/11 like most Americans...from a distance. On 9/12 my country was still free, my house still standing, my loved ones still alive. My greatest fear on 9/12, in fact, was whether or not I'd be able to get married in the Bank of America building in San Francisco on 9/16, which I'd been told was closed due to its potential as a terrorist target. And, at the time, this was a huge consideration for me (think crazed bride). But my city hadn't been bombed and the only planes flying overhead were the American F-16s protecting our borders. It wasn't until I got on a transcontinental flight on 9/17 for my honeymoon that 9/11 really sank in for me. But still, the experience of that truth is probably much padded compared to how New Yorkers experienced the same truth.
1930s Germany, I think, experienced the truth of fascism at a much deeper level than most Americans experienced 9/11 because everywhere you went in Germany was a physical representation of loss of freedom, propaganda, fear tactics, and anti-semitism. You saw your neighbors getting carted away either for being Jewish or harboring Jews, or not being German enough. Your children were forced into Hitler Youth on their 10th birthday and no matter how much the parent objected, the child, now a willing and happy subject of the Furher, thought he was morally right by saving the country from the evils of Jews and Communism. As such, when the popular culture of Germany chose to ignore and/or participate in the Holocaust, they did it knowing full well what truth they were chosing to modify. The children and young adults were at a disadvantage because they'd been indoctrinated / brainwashed with nazism most of their lives. The adults aren't so easily forgiven.
There's a telling scene in the HBO series "Band of Brothers" when one of the American soldiers discovers a concentration camp near a German city. The soldier turns to a group of German city dwellers who claimed they had no idea and says, "couldn't you smell the burning flesh?" And the Germans are speechless.
An interesting book on the subject, Hitler's Willing Executioners, examines this subject.
So, my point, I guess is most Americans really don't know what it is to have their freedom threatened, but even when they do have the full knowledge and experience of it, people ultimately chose their own reaction. The more extreme the experience, the more extreme the reaction (i.e., Nazi Germany and her citizens). But Americans haven't had decades of fascist or [insert oppressive ideology here] to prepare us for the kind of group evasion required to foster a Holocaust.
Unfortunately, we're not immune to such an experience. Given enough terrorist attacks, we might all have the opportunity to experience a loss of freedom and the unfortunate and destructive reaction (closing borders, regulating press, loss of privacy and personal property) such an experience could breed.
NelC wrote: Plus, I have to say, Buffy's "We'll do it my way because I'm right" attitude at the time was a little bit unpalatable to me. She needed a bit of a shake-up, IMHO, though the vote of no-confidence probably went too far.
Yeah, I agree with you that she needed a wake up call, but having her sister stand up to her in such a ridiculous and unnecessary manner went too far. The gang essentially turned their backs on her when they would have done better to simply tell her they weren't going to follow the game plan until x happened. Which would have set Buffy brooding and possibly exiting anyway, but it wouldn't have been the ungrateful banishment it turned out to be. JMHO
On the Buffy/Xander morality.
I just realized that I think there are a few takes on this, depending on what characteristics you're judging.
I tend to be more on Buffy's side with this. First, I think Buffy was more consistent with consequences. She didn't use magic or her powers for the wrong reasons and she understood the smallest of tweaks could have dire consequences in the universe. Remember Xander's love spell that nearly got him and Cordelia killed? And then in "Once More (again?) With Feeling" it turns out Xander was the one who used the charm to call the music demon (or whatever he was). Those might be small examples, but they show Xander didn't always think through conseqences like Buffy did (or, had to because of her mission). I don't recall Buffy ever seeking out the easy, less moral way (I could be wrong on this so I'm sure I'll be corrected if I am).
On a larger scale, Xander's treatment of Anya at the altar has already been mentioned here and could be offset with Buffy's self-destructive treatement with Spike in Season 6, but when Anya becomes a vengeance demon again and later in season 7 decides to slaugher an entire fraternity, Xander can't understand that Buffy has to kill Anya (rightly so, just like she had to kill Angel). That's the only time, by the way, that it comes out that Xander lied to Buffy about Willow trying to reinsoul Angel, but that sort of goes right past Buffy. Not only does Xander not understand it, he basically condemns Buffy for being spiteful. So his hatred (and jealousy) of Angel and Spike is okay and somehow just and Buffy's responsibility to slay Anya is somehow wrong (according to Xander) and spiteful?
The biggest you-people-are-crazy moment for me was toward the end of season 7. I know a lot of people don't consider BTVS exists beyond season 5, but the way it ends is just as important as the way it ran. Here we have Buffy, teenage girl/young adult, who has died twice, been shot, had her ass kicked from here til Sunday, and saved every single person in the scooby gang more times than anyone could count...and the first bad idea she has in defeating The First is met with...shunning her? The people she loves the most, the people she's saved the most (Giles, Willow, Xander, and that whiny, squealy, annoying Dawn) kick her out of HER OWN HOUSE because she's no longer "part of the team." Only for Faith to replace her and do exactly the same thing. And, what bothered me about that is that one-eyed Xander now has apparently forgotton his previous we-all-owe-Buffy-our-lives speech and jumps on the get-the-hell-out-of-your-house bandwagon by not putting a stop to the mutiny. I would have understood if they simply refused to go along with her plan and she sulked off somewhere to think about things, but the uneeded drama of kicking her out of the house was, well, uneeded.
The show isn't called Buffy and Her Gang of Vampire Slayers. Without Buffy, the gang wouldn't be. And that they could forget that so easily (even her own sister kicking her out of the house...god, I just want to strangle Dawn!) because Buffy's decision caused harm/death to some of her crew (who would ALL be dead anyhow if it weren't for her protecting them up until that point) is beyond me.
Oh, well, uh, there's my rant. I'll just go check on my Thanksgiving pies.
"...hostess editing our comments with her red and blue pencils."
There's blue pencils? Is it worse if we got red marks on our ms? Is there a blue pencil standard we should strive to achieve?
Dolloch wrote: He insisted that it was a construct of the ruling class to identify themselves as different from the so-called uneducated masses. He reasoned that it was in their best interest to insist on keeping grammar as is rather than let it develop naturally.
Interesting and perhaps true, but maybe just because it's true about the ruling classes doesn't make it the only truth, or even the only reason. Correct me if I'm wrong but if we kept grammar as it was, we wouldn't be using punctuation (since that only came about when language began being written and the punctuation was necessary for pauses, etc), and I imagine we'd still be talking in Old English (ye, thy, thine, etc).
I know that's a vocabulary and punctuation example, perhaps, rather than pure grammar, but my point is a language develops with a culture's necessity and advancements. It doesn't surprise me that it's a tool for higher classes, but I think it's a tool for every class now.
You asked: At what point does creative expression and style run into illiteracy?
My take on it is language was invented to communicate more effectively than hand signals and chest pounding (though sometimes one hand signal is worth a thousand insults). I suppose when the language serves to confuse more than it does to clarify or communicate, it borders on illiteracy, or at least, it ceases to be effective.
JMHO
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 2 |
| 2007 | 3 |
| 2005 | 3 |
| 2004 | 16 |
Total: 24 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jax:
Show all comments by Jax.