kindergentlermachinegunhand

asininus redevivus

2006-11-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

Oh boy.

This should be interesting.

Maybe I noticed this one word because I don't really speak their language anymore

2006-04-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

http://wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/iraq-a27.shtml

Just for auld lang syne I went to "World Socialist Web Site," a place I used to go all the fricking time when I was young and irresponsible and talked juvenile smack as if I were president of a one-member Khmer Rouge chapter.

Reading along, okay, a little shrill but still inside the pale. Then this caught me (subtly at first, then with growing creepiness). Emphasis added:

"Maliki was an ally of Jaafari and is reputed to be a religious extremist, who zealously implemented the "de-Baathification" program that saw large numbers of Iraqi professionals expelled from their posts for serving under the old regime."

Well. Since we're evaluating intensity ("extremist,") what's with that vague, all-encompassing "professionals?"
Granted, I'm sure plenty of innocent folk got swept out by the de-Bath broom. Teachers. Agronomists. Customs inspectors.

Still, that the thing that wrote this could frame the issue like this without thinking about all the less ... savory people caught up under that term "professional." I guess anyone is a pro in a way.

Either he doesn't understand what the BP was, or he doesn't care. Niether is acceptable. Boom, bam, now more than ever I'm done with this shit and I ain't never coming back. Anyone who at this date thinks "world socialism" is going to solve all of this is either braindead or a nazi, as far as I can see. The movement's done gone rancid and the idealism's too stoned.

Quibble

2006-04-27T00:06:00.000-07:00

I have great respect for Morris Dees.

Although he doesn't know me from Adam, a (late) relative of mine (by marriage) is commemorated on the sundial/waterfall memorial outside his office in Montgomery (which is more moving than most memorials manage to be).

No matter where I am on the political spectrum from year to year, I'm always mindful that civil rights, whatever constructions are sometimes put on it these days, used to have very concrete meanings in this country, that people were tortured and/or killed over. (My relative died in the north, by the way. No part of our country is entirely free from this sour legacy).

The SPLC does the Lord's work, which is why I was chaffed to see Ace use them as the butt of a "liberal whiners" joke recently.

Still, Dees' "Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat" (pub. 1996) seems sort of quaint now. Haven't heard much out of these kooks lately. Maybe they've re-joined the fold of normality now that we're Letting the Eagle Soar. Or maybe (despite Oklahoma City, as callous as that sounds) the threat was exaggerated.

It's an interesting book, though, and it works the different events (Ruby Ridge, Waco*, Freemen) into a narrative well. Creepy stuff ... if, as I said, sort of quaint. (Watch the next attack be from some yahoo in Sagebrush, instead of Al-Qaidal. It'd serve me right for shooting my mouth off like this).

Anyway, the quibble is this (p. 75):

"[The NRA] called Waco the opening salvo in the war ... [to] strip Americans of their God-given right under the Second Amendment to bear arms."

I don't own a gun. Closest I've come to them is a pistol shooting class for gym credit - haven't touched one since. So, don't worry, I'm not going to start shouting about my cold, dead hands.

My quibble is this: I don't think anyone suggests that the *content* of the constitution is divinely inspired or protected.

What is held to be divinely mandated is that a people has the right to choose its own form of government.
The Constitution is what we've come up with through exercising this right.

(By syllogism, anyway: the rights to life liberty pursuit come from god; to protect these rights, we use governments; in order to be just [which god presumably would like us to do], these governments must be based on consent; ergo, consensual, non-arbitrary government is god's true plan. This doesn't mean that our *particular* system of government is based on god's own private rulebook).

In theory, the Second (or, for that matter, the First) Amendment could be repealed.
Should that day come to pass, some people might say this was ungodly - that self-protection is in fact one of those creatorally (not a word) endowed rights. There's a particular NT verse they coul
d use, in fact, for those to whom such evidence is dispositive ... but that is beside the point.
This is a distinction that seems to elude people. Their opponents could respond by reading recipies for apple crumble, if they want. You don't have to believe in Jeebus if you don't want to. You can find it creepy if others base political arguments on WWJD? (I'm normally not a fan of this type of speechifying myself).

But they wouldn't magically get to put the amendment back in by quoting scripture; they'd have to get the votes. They could solicit those votes BY quoting scripture.

The Second Amendment's only relationship to God, even in the eyes of hairy-knuckled believers who love them some rifles, is that it was ratified under this process which we established exercising our yadda. That we have the right to write these amendments does not guarantee we won't write stupid ones. It just means you should repeal them the same way you done made them. When supermajority consensus nationwide decides they don't like 'em, they can yank those bad puppies right out again. God's invoked for the process, not necessarily the content.

Okay, I'm making insanely much of this. Dees is just poking mild fun at the NRA, not engaging their philosophico-constitutional is. But it still gave me pause.

* I felt a twinge including Waco in this list. While the Branch Davidians had waaay too many guns for my comfort, they still got the rawest of raw deals.

Progress

2006-04-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

Plato: People should do what is good.

Aristotle: People should do what fulfils their nature.

Liberalism: People should do what they want.

But what should they want to do?

Whatever they want.

So people should want to do what they want to do?
That's setting the bar high.

Nothing New Under The Sun

2005-11-21T00:31:00.000-08:00

"Now bad men, when their parents or country have any defects, look on them with malignant joy, and find fault with them and expose and denounce them to others, under the idea that the rest of makind will be less likely to take themselves to task and accuse them of neglect; and they blame their defects far more than they deserve, in order that the odium which is necessarily incurred by them may be increased."

Plato
Protagoras, transl. Jowett
346a

As Good As It Gets

2005-11-15T03:15:00.000-08:00

All leaders are going to cheat, and feather their own nests.

The best we can wish the wretched of the earth is that one day they'll have leaders who are merely crooks, not crooked sadists.

Mostly Say Hooray For Our Side

2005-09-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

So outside the building they are yelling with microphones. Each of them in turn is very angry, and some of them urge what sounds an awful lot like violence.

I'm far from the disaster area. (So's the rally outside). We've donated fifty dollars, and probably should give a lot more. I feel guilty about this on reflection, and will do it tonight.

Doubtless these yellers' trajectory is more selfless; one cried his imminent program to tour a Traveling Revolutionarie Revue down in the BEZ. And I'm sure those my hastily amplified earphones drowned out went on to (loudly) tell people to donate money and time to rebuilding (after dehydrating) the redneck riviera. Sure as sugar.

It's that time again

2005-04-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

Yes. The urge to post, or rather the nagging sense that I really should either write SOMETHING new, or else scrap the whole site, has come upon me.

Republicans suck.
Democrats suck.
Everyone sucks but me wife and me and I'm not so sure about me.

Thoughts on what's been going down:

(1) No, the Pope is not a Nazi.
(1) (a) Yes, he looks like Nosferatu. But with kindly grandpa eyes.

(2) John Bolton is probably not a nice guy. This probably isn't reason enough to Bork him.
(2) (a) The mustache might be.

(3) Depending on whom you ask, Iraq is either poised on the brink of total collapse, or a nice place for a holiday. Not being there, I don't know. Two completely distinct pictures of what's going on are available. I'd normally say the truth must be somewhere in between but that doesn't really seem possible in this case. Rather, the truth is probably at right angles to both scenarii.

(4) I know the Hitchikers' movie will suck, and yet I'm going to stand in line, possibly in a Marvin costume, to get tickets. If there is a line. Which there won't be.

The End, By Me.

Mona Lisa, men have named you

2005-03-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

So Madame Secretary was on Lehrer tonight.

Her trademark scowl was nowhere to be soon. She was positively perky. Kind of scary to see a woman my mother's age with such a sparkle in her eye.

Lehrer didn't ask the $64 billion question. As a fuddy-duddy (though a loveable one), he's probably old-fashioned enough to find it way too early for such discussions. But enquiring minds wanna know.

WILL SHE OR WON'T SHE?

p.s.
When Mark Shields is going off on a mini-rant, David Brooks gets the funniest expression on his face - eyebrows peaked, half-smile with tongue slightly protruding.
A much sincerer version of Buckley's wonderful fake-polite-interest raised-eyebrow look.

If Shields were to retire, who could replace him? He sings from the old-school (not to be confused with "classical) liberal playbook so tunefully ... who under 50 can pull that off?
Not to hymn him overmuch, but Shields makes liberalism seem warm, human, appealing. All traits that got thrown overboard somewhere along the way.

Sigh.

They say "blog what you know," so ...

2005-03-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

Or if they don't say that, they should.

Seeing how often the up-and-coming strivers in the 'sphere, not to mention the Big Blawg Dawgs at the top of the heap, update their sites, I get chest-constricty-type panics. We had a good thing going on Thinkateria for a while back there 'round election-time, but

(a) there were like six of us
(b) nothing that exciting (please god) will come along for another four years.

This is why I don't blog: if one wants to truly Run with the Pack, hourly postings are recommended, thrice-daily is pushing it, and only the truly brilliant can get by on one or less posts per diem.

Not that I do anything with my time anyway. But my stack of libra legenda rises taller than my wife standing on my shoulders.

ANYWAY:

Here follows my attempt to blog what I know.

I live in Berkeley. The university, like all good a/o large ones, has a student-run daily paper. Today there was an interesting juxtaposition of headlines.

In the upper left corner:
Students Rally for Diversity
("They say Jim Crow, we say Hell No!")

Upper right:
Senators Say Appointee Hid Conservative Affiliations
(basically, she produced content for the campus conservative journal, and neglected to mention this. the others are, of course, horrified to discover a rightie in their midst).

Diversity is a many-splendored thing. I'd like heaping helpings of both racial and political diversity, which is why I probably won't ever get a job in administration.

This reminds me of a car Macrina and I noticed just down the block, while hot-footing it to the train to catch the plane to take us to Seattle for Thanksgiving.

It had only two bumper stickers, which is fairly restrained for this town.

Left side:
NO ONE IS FREE WHEN OTHERS ARE OPPRESSED

Right side:
NOT EVERY SPERM DESERVES A NAME

does not compute ...

Anyway, that's what I know.

1992 BBS Mentality, 21st Century Technology

2005-02-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

This is officially the lamest, most gawd-awful compelling can't look away 82-car pileup of a left-right blogswarm bitchslap throwdown.

C'mon, people now ... smile on your brother!

Aznar

2005-02-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

for Secretary General.

Well met would he be, with Bush and Blair. Talk about yer third way.

How embarassing

2005-02-17T03:14:00.000-08:00

It's been so long that I forgot my password. Which is just about the biggest screw-up imaginable in today's modern lifestyle.

Been building (in the conceptual stage) my early nineties time capsule to store away for the edification of potential progeny.

The Simpsons - but just seasons four through seven. Maybe three and eight also - but only like Apocrypha, as an appendix.

Kids in the Hall - all five seasons.

Get a Life didn't hold up as well over time as I was hoping. Darnit.

Will everything henceforward be retained? As the cost of storing and reduplicating approaches zero, will every krep show be filed away somewhere for recall at one's whim thirty years later?

* * *

Berkeley is gloomy tonight. Rained all week so far.

I'm Always the Last to the Party

2004-11-20T23:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm 2.5 years late to this. Nevertheless, it deserves recognition of its own.

The cosmetics thing at the beginning - i'm sure my unimaginative office neighbors would see this as western cultural imperialism, or false consciousness or SOME shit, but that just means they don't read enough. Prettification is a truly universal human instinct, for all genders - and only Viva La Muerte! a/o Akbar! psychos (and now, apparently, their v. special confluence, the ba'ath [who by the way have metastasized to Paris - c'est apropos, non?] would try to stamp it out.

Now, Aerik and others will surely object that this has nothing to do with Iraq.
And for large parts of the country you may be right. But Fallujah was apparently a Revlon-free zone as well.

"How depressing was it," asked Anna Quindlen in a December Newsweek column, "to see Afghan citizens celebrating the end of tyranny by buying consumer electronics?" Apparently, if you’re somebody like Quindlen -- who confessed in the same column that "I have everything I could want, and then some" -- the spectacle was pretty dispiriting. Liberty itself descends on the land, and the best thing its people can do is go shopping? It was just too vulgar.

Read ze 'ole, 'ow you zay, 'zing?

P.S.:

Okay, one more bite. Now go read it.

What, then, is the appropriate cultural path to democracy? Barber told the Post that if the U.S. must export culture it should at least export its "best." There’s an obvious problem with the list Barber offers, since many of his examples of cultural quality -- jazz, novels, Broadway theater -- were themselves assailed as intolerably vulgar by contemporary critics who were disgusted at their appearance. But Barber surely realizes that, so we can assume he’s getting at something else. He’s singing in praise of culture that doesn’t pander, of culture that teaches and leaves us thinking, of visionary art that lifts us morally and makes us better by challenging us. In short, he’s a champion of what might be called contemplative art. That is not an art of commerce; it is an art of patronage, of enlightened taste. If you can imagine those Afghan video smugglers loading their mules with fewer copies of Titanic and more dubs of PBS programs, then you can imagine Western liberal critics being more optimistic about the prospects for Central Asian democracy.

Is Barber right? He is about one thing: The issue here is taste. But taste in this case has nothing at all to do with perceived quality. To approach it that way is to run an endless round of Hell’s nine circles, only to arrive back at oneself. Thus Barber concludes that what the world should do now is attend his favorite plays.

Meow.

*** BIG, SPLATTERY MONEY QUOTE ***

The point of the various musical countercultures under the Soviets was not simply to hear music. What the authorities never understood, and what many cultural critics in the West similarly don’t understand, is that the fans who inhabit such "vulgar" and disruptive subcultures are not being exploited. It is the fans who are using both the music scene and the paraphernalia that surrounds it for their own expressive purposes. If there is no one to sell them the paraphernalia -- the clothes, the imagery, the recordings -- then the members of these subcultures will not go without it. They will create it themselves.

There was simply no way for the Soviet system to come to terms with this and remain true to its authoritarianism. In the end, it wasn’t the musical subcultures that were delegitimized but Soviet authority. The inability of such a system to allow its citizens to construct their own cultural identities -- that is, to meet their "consumer demands" -- was a major factor in robbing communism of credibility among its own populations.

Isn't that inevitable in Iran etc. also?

The Green Swastika

2004-11-13T23:08:00.000-08:00

Them's Fightin' Words

2004-11-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

Fear and Loathing

2004-11-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

CNN's exit polls have Kerry at 61-38 among white males.

That was the Nixon/McGovern split among the whole electorate.

Kerry, all things to all people. Including George McGovern, apparently.

This ain't mine, but I'm-a steal it

2004-11-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

"Bruce Reed and many other Democrats want to blame their loss on an inability to communicate with religious conservatives. To me, that seems as silly as Republicans berating themselves over not being able to communicate with Berkeley professors. I don't think that trying to fool the other party's base into voting for you represents a reality-based election strategy."

- Arnold Kling, today, I guess. Forgot to grab the URL. Too lazy to hunt for it again. Sorry, Mr. Kling.

Maybe I could help the Republicans talk to Berkeley professors ... ?

Where do we go from here?

2004-11-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

TO THE THINKATERIA COLLECTIVE
MEMO
COMMANDER KNEMON
RE: TIN SOLDIERS AND RUMSFELD'S COMIN'

The scariest thing, to me - and I know you agree, Aerik, and I'd be interested to know what everyone else thinks - is how the two lobes of America's brain, i.e. conservative and liberal intelligentsia, have entirely split apart and rolled off into opposite corners of the room.

There are now two parallel realities - from the ground-floor of news-gathering and quote-collecting (the right is finally muscling into this in a big way), all the way up to Shields and Brooks.

Look at, say, littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog and dailykos.com. If you read the former, you dread worldwide Jihad, and you're afraid of the bubbling lunacy on the left. If you read the latter, your dread is directed inward - at the Rethuglikkkans.

[This, on a side note, is why I have to end up siding with the former, if they're my only choices. They are at least looking for dangers internally and externally. The latter sees danger located only in the GOP. Plus Israel. Think I exaggerate? Hang out on their comments board for a week].

Okay, both these sites are massively popular "forum" dealies, where a scattering of interesting and substantive posts bob among a sea of grunting. So let's look a little further up the intellectual chain.

Take instapundit.com and talkingpointsmemo.com, run respectively by Glenn Reynolds and Joshua Micah Marshall. Both smart guys, both relatively honest. Marshall is much more of a *party* hack, Reynolds more an *ideological* one, if you see what I mean - Marshall is very much a Clintonista by temperament if not employment (don't know his history except that he's got a PhD in it - history, that is. I think. Could be poli sci). Reynolds is a registered Libertarian who voted for Al Gore (as did the littlegreenfootballs guy, and rogerlsimon.com).

They just aren't speaking the same language. They have completely different concerns. Part of this is natural, since Marshall is the standard-bearer for those out of power, and criticism comes more naturally; Reynolds risks becoming a jingo. But again, this frees Reynolds somewhat to see the forest for the trees.

When these gods o'net, or even we humble but fairly info-hungry mortals, come to polemical blows, we inevitably end up in stalemate. Sure, on factual questions we can be proven wrong all the time (though even that rigid empiricism is fading, not due to either "side" but due to technological/information evolution),

but on questions of strategery, it becomes Link Fu, and the 51-49% grind on the macro level comes down to the micro of us going at each other, all like a fractal, and prevents the argument from ever terminating in conversion of one or the other of us.

Politics is no longer in the streets (and thank god for that - Germany, anyone?), but plays out increasingly through words. Look at cable news - not just a market evolution, it also provides a safety valve function, like monkey grooming-talk to curb nervousness.

This is the Dark Night of the Logos, when sophist rhetoric and professional wordsmiths sieze so big a space in society that a culture goes schizo by simultaneously

a)questioning and critizicing itself relentlessly, if selfishly and navel-gazingly
b) asserting its superiority and trying to Save the World.

Oho, what's going to happen to us - not Roman imperial decadence. Rather, Athenian imperial fragmentation - an Oedipus or Pentheus played out on the world stage.

Gentlemen, welcome to 430 BC. Enjoy your stay.

****

At the base Fear-ridden root of it, isn't it a leap of faith either way. A choice to buy into one narrative or the other. No, I don't mean Creation Science vs. Darwinism, or even "right vs. left" in any other sense, since I reject the post-1968 hijacking of the Democratic party re: the use of military force (though Bubba did his best to reverse that). I'd love to be a Democrat, if they'd get their act together on those issues.

I mean the narrative that 9/11 was a "tragedy." That the best defense is first responders. That since we didn't find a picture of OBL signed "BEST FRIENDS 4 EVER" in any of Saddam's palaces, Saddam was just some run-of-the-mill Pinochet with a penchant for bizarre outfits, who could continue to bubble on the UN's back burner (with ample skimming of of le jus, no? oil-for-whaa?)

This is stupid.

But the alternative, that we are Chosen to Save the World and End History, is not stupid - it's crazy.

[again - I'm not talking about who we voted for. It cuts across that - or rather, *almost* everyone who voted for Bush is on one side of this, and the Dem.s are more split. Which does not bode well for their medium-term prospects].

Stupid vs. crazy. What a fun choice. And by not choosing, you have chosen to be stupid.

(Vidal! can hopefully tell us: is this kind of like what Kierkegaard was on about?)

That's what I'm talking about

2004-11-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

Old but worth a read

2004-11-07T02:34:00.000-08:00

How did YOU spend Wednesday night?

2004-11-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

And then there were 4

2004-11-05T13:47:00.000-08:00

(quick context here)

Israel, India, us - and now Holland.

It's not the biggest coalition in world history (that'd be Gulf War I, the Virtual War), but it's a start.

Even though I criticize Andrew Sullivan, I'm not above shamelessly stealing links from him:

"I know for sure that you, Oh America will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Europe, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under."

Aerik, we need your historical knowledge: how were the original Hashish'ins stopped?

And why, again, should I be disappointed that we're not going to get to experience JFKII's "fresh start" approach to this fun-loving bunch of guys?

Right now they're in the freaky-mystic Pan-Slavic international terrorism network - priority one has to be preventing them from taking root in host nations. Afghanistan was like that. Iran and, apparently, Sudan? (please clarify based on your recent research) are now.

If we fail in Iraq, that's what we'll be left with. But surely your position is now reduced to agreeing with George H. W., or Kissinger - Saddam was a useful barrier beween the soft Gulf underbelly and the howling Borglike fundamentalist Next Stage of History beyond. Keep the lid on, because if we take it off it'll blow up in our faces.

We cannot act like this. If we fear rather than hope, we watch horrified as this ideology spreads and gains power. This is, of course, happening anyway, and the longer we chase it around without definitively defeating it, the worse the overall picture becomes.

Maybe we can't defeat it. If not, and I regret sounding like a broken record, get ready for another century like the last one.

This is the Russo-Niponnese war of 1905. What's next?