Writerous said: "Or, that is, at least half a brain that isn't already medicated into numbness by trash TV and video games. The bread and circus of modern times."
As opposed to talkies and novels, the bread and circus of earlier times? Or shakespeare's plays or minstrels, the bread and circus of even earlier times?
"The U.S. cannot be a beacon to the world if we allow ourselves to be dragged down into that muck."
So the US can only serve its function as a good example as long as we make sure that everyone else suffers in comparison? If we grant others access then there will be no untouchable stronghold of virtue for the masses to gaze at yearningly as they are ground down into the muck? Convincing!
Keir said: "I don't think that 25% of the US population are sociopathic. For one thing, I wouldn't know enough about both sociopathology and the American populace to judge one way or the other. I was merely pointing out that it would only be one quarter of the population which would be sociopathic, which, while implausible, is not merely laughable, as claiming that half of all Americans are sociopathic is."
"Merely pointing out" that statistically implausible voting patterns could conceivably allow percentages as low as a mere 25% of the American public to be sociopathic is an implicit endorsement of the assumption that only sociopaths would vote for Bush. Rhetorical sloppiness is hardly a convincing excuse.
Not even to mention your strange claim of ignorance regarding sociopathy from someone who is busy extolling the ease of finding information. According to Wikipedia "approximately 3% of men and 1% of women are thought to have some form of antisocial personality disorder." Claiming that a quarter of Americans are sociopathic is just slightly less laughable than claiming half of them are.
Oh, and when I say "politically liberal," I mean politically liberal.
j h woodyatt said: "Describing as "tarring and feathering" how even the least forgiving of us say we should treat such people is a bit over the top, don't you think?
I don't know, you be the judge. I was responding to these claims: "Anyone who voted for Bush the second time around and is a "convert" only now has made clear by their own actions that they have no principles other than "win the next election"" and "if you are so naive that you believed all teh things the administration said about the war then your stupidity is inexcusable based simply on the destruction you brought down upon the world without so much as a "really?"" and then Keir claiming to think that a quarter of the U.S. population is made up of sociopaths. Who is being over the top again?
Keir: To look around from where you are standing, as a savvy user of technology, no doubt politically liberal before Bush, and excoriate others for not having the same advantages you have is about as convincing and morally fair as a twenty-something IT consultant ripping into an eighty-year old woman for being taken in by a phishing scam. Things that are obvious to you are not obvious to everyone else.
"`Measures, not men.' Is that what you are saying?" Precisely right. Unless you think we ought to be executing the horses that run over a pedestrian rather than the driver?
Greg: Do you understand how the arguments that you make in your last post are entirely different than the arguments you were making before? Do you understand how saying 'they have no principles other than "win the next election"' is different than saying "people who think all abortion is murder felt that making abortion illegal is more important than some distant war?" The difference between "so naive that [they] believed all teh things the administration said about the war" and "so terrified of the possibility of gay marriage that they would have voted for Hitler if Hitler promised them he would veto any law supporting gay marriage?"
There is a big difference between not having any morals and having effed-up morals. There is a difference between being stupid and being afraid. Being amoral and stupid aren't problems we can solve. Messed up morals and fear are. That's a big difference.
Keir: "The poor Americans, hoodwinked, like the French, the Germans, the New Zealanders--Wait! Those countries knew that Bush wasn't being totally honest, and didn't join the invasion of Iraq.
Yes. Isn't having a more-or-less functional media nice? Wish we had one of those.
"Come on. You can't say, with a straight face, that there was no way to know that Bush was lying."
That's not what I'm saying. A reasonably determined person with access to the internet could have, in a few days, no doubt put together a rather frightening picture of Bush. A lot faster if they happened upon dailykos, or myDD, or any of the other early liberal blogs. But how many Americans do you think had that kind of access and time and motivation? Very few, I think.
Speaking of motivation, wouldn't a quick google search have been a good way to make your point about voter turnout? But that would've required effort, wouldn't it?
Mock the lazy at your peril. We are all guilty of that sin.
To be honest, people who are having trouble admitting they were wrong about Iraq need to grow up. Iraq doesn't have the time to let Americans have those self-indulgences.
You're right, Iraq doesn't have time for American self-indulgence. Which begs the question: who is being more self-indulgent, the former hawks who want to switch sides quietly and without fuss and bring Bush down, or the liberals who want to rub their face in their mistake? Which do you think will help get us out of Iraq faster and safer?
Talking about how dumb the policies were loudly and repeatedly is absolutely necessary and has my wholehearted support. Tarring and feathering any and all who didn't oppose the war from the get-go is another thing altogether. Discrediting the idiots who embraced the war will only get them replaced by new idiots who think the same things--an army of little Benjis. We need to discredit the policy, not the people. Once that is accomplished, anyone who touches the policy will discredit themselves.
Greg:
Let's try to differentiate between ignorance, stupidity, and sociopathy, shall we? Not being politically aware isn't the same as being stupid, and being taken in by an incredibly sophisticated and well-funded con job isn't the same as being calculating and vicious. Do you really think that "even a hermit knew" that "knew about the sliding reasons for invasion, knew the "coalition of the willing" was code for "unilateral action," knew the cost estimates for the war were grossly underestimated," etc.? Remember, it was around that time that 70% of Americans thought there was a direct link between Saddam and 9/11. They were lied to, and are being lied to. Us early adopters of alternate information technology can't really fault them for not having access to the same facts and perspectives that we have.
If you really think that everyone who voted for Bush understood how bad the Bush administration is, then you are buying into a theory that half this country is sociopathic. That is clearly not the case, as Bush's tanking numbers demonstrate. The American people were lied to, and they are slowly figuring that out. Shockingly slowly, it's true, but it is hard to admit your mistakes when you have been taken for as much as they have. It will take a while. Some of them will never be able to admit it.
Again, I am not making excuses for the pundits and cognoscenti who fawned over Bush from the get-go. They are paid for their (theoretical) political savvy, and they should have known better. They deserve no pity.
"anyone who voted for Bush the second time around and is a "convert" only now has made clear by their own actions that they have no principles other than "win the next election"
I don't necessarily agree--I think there are plenty of rank-and-file republicans who simply didn't have the time to look at the Bush administration's actions with the kind of skepticism that was needed to realize how terribly incompetent and cruel it was. Let's remember the media climate of 2004: if you weren't hooked into the blogosphere, how were you even to know what was going on?
I am willing to make that presumption of innocence for the rank and file. For the pundits just now seeing the light, I think you are absolutely right.
Then you hear the poem as Neil upbraiding some brain dead chick for waiting for him to call??
On my first read, since I knew it was by Gaiman, I imagined the narrator was male. However, I can imagine it being a female narrator criticizing a rather brain-dead guy like, say, me. It's a pretty gender-neutral poem, in my humble.
(about 14th-century Muslim intellectual life) "At this time it is as impossible to explain the growing conservatism of Muslim intellectuals as it is to explain the increasing creativity of European intellectuals....Another element is that fact that Muslim philosopher-scientists required the patronage of rulng families for their economic support, whereas, by the 12th century, European scholars were beginning to organize into autonomous universities. European scientists and philosophers enjoyed legal protection as communities of scholars. They benefitted from the exchange of ideas and the criticism that came from belonging to a faculty, and they could respond to threats to their livelihood by going to court. Muslim scholars, however were attached individually to the palaces of ruling dynasties....If their ideas were criticized by local religious leaders or by public opinion, the patron usually found it expedient to dismiss them."
-Egger, Vernon O., A History of the Muslim World to 1405
It is the very idea that things can or ought to be true in any way other than "This fits my pre-existing view of the world" that is under attack, and the institutions that support and defend that idea.
Francis:
"NeoCons aren't Conservative, they're Reactionary - i.e. want the status quo to leap backwards to A Better Time™ (probably 20 years ago in the case of the US case - ours (Britain's) seem to prefer Queen Victoria)..."
I'd guess American neocons want to go back to the 1920s or '30s, myself. Pre-New Deal, monopolist's paradise that it was. I'll bet they get weepy-eyed thinking about all that cheap, desperate, Okie labor begging for work. Right here in America, too! Didn't have to outsource to Asia back then. Good old days indeed.
Graydon:
"[1] Yes, it is. Politest fascist movement yet recorded"
"I'm not calling anyone a fascist. I'm noting that the movement in question had a lot of the characteristics of fascist movements."
Fascism has a lot of elements in common with other nationalist movements. It's hardly like fascism has a monopoly on the charismatic leader meme, after all. The elements that you describe could be as easily applied to almost any nationalist movement in history. Fascism is a much smaller, more particular subset of nationalism.
From Wikipedia: "...fascism opposed laissez-faire economics, socialism, Marxism, and liberal democracy....Fascism is typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic." This doesn't sound like what you are describing. From what you and others have said, the Quebec separatist ideology all sounds very nationalistic, certainly, but not quite fascist.
Lin - "Bought" assumes that the media have free will--that they could choose not to be bought. This is not the case. The media are companies, and companies are owned. They are not free agents, and they do not make their own decisions. Their autonomy is an illusion that is carefully fostered, but an illusion none the less.
Individuals working within the system can attempt to be agendaless and fair, but when agenda descends from on high it is often a choice between doing what you are told and working retail. This is rarely as hard a choice as we would hope.
Chris: "We have never had a "war" on a tactic or ideology before,"
What would you describe the Cold War as, then? I've always thought the parallel was rather clear--shadowy, incomprehensible villians from across the world, with just enough actual conflict involved to justify any damn thing the government wants to do. Constructing a new Cold War has always been one of the ideas guiding the Bush administrations actions, I've long thought.
"The Great Pacific War and Hitler's War both properly count as World Wars, at least in as much as both involved more widespread fighting than the Great War did."
I think that says more about the Eurocentrism of calling the Great War a "world war" than it does about the separateness of the Pacific and European Theatres. The world is an awful big place: from China, I doubt that the Great War seemed terribly great. The same cannot be said about WWII--it was, quite literally, a global war.
On race in genre fiction:
"I know I didn't start reading it that day. But I was deep into it before the week was out. And because Le Guin snuck up on it, let us thrill with Sparrowhawk as he made his way, the Revelation came as a shock. I do remember bursting out into tears on the living room couch when I understood what was going on. And the tears flowed again when Mom came home from work and I showed her the book while trying to explain. Sparrowhawk is brown. I think he's like an Indian from India. And Vetch is black like from Africa. There's a bunch more and they have real power. Not the girls, though. But still they are also the good guys. It's the white people who are evil. And Sparrowhawk is also Ged, and he's going to be the most powerful one of them all, ever."
From an essay by Pam Noles. I thought people might be interested.
jhlipton: I hope that Jobs kicks Coldplay, and any band that employs simular measures, off iTunes (where the future lies). But I doubt he will.
Given how thoroughly DRM is implemented in iTunes, somehow I doubt it. Or have you never tried to burn a song you bought off iTunes onto an mp3 CD, or tried to play said song on another computer?
Cute Overload has destroyed my mind adorably. Though it does make me happy to think that among all the less savory activities the internet has enabled, it has also given people the ability to share cute pictures 'round the world.
Dave Luckett: Something similar could be said about art in general, and yet people criticize art on any damn grounds they please. That it has meaning besides pure aesthetics is not, to my mind, a defense. How successfully it communicates that meaning is also rather important.
Shawn: A team? Oh boy! Do we have uniforms? If not, can I design the color scheme? ;D
Why would you need a uniform? You have your shoelaces for easy identification at a distance.
My criteria for flags always went something like: Can a kindergartener draw a recognizable version of it?, Does it look good when done really small next to the names of Olympic athletes?, and Would I be embarassed if this flag represented my nation to the world? See, I always had a rather high opinion of Brazil's flag, because I had only ever seen it drawn very, very small and I thought the starscape thingie in the middle was just a blue circle. Now that I know, it violates criteria one, and, sadly, criteria three.
Shawn:
Neon orange and neon yellow, you say...? Hm.
Enemy of an enemy and all that, I suppose. Welcome to the team.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 16 |
| 2005 | 32 |
| 2004 | 4 |
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