Excuse my ignorance, but what is a progressive? I mean, other than a liberal who refuses to be called the L word.
What are you like if you're not liberal but are progressive? Are you a radical then, or an anarcho-syndicalist, or a socialist or something? I don't think so, but I'm not sure.
My perception is that a progressive is someone who believes calling himself or herself a progressive means that the anti-liberals won't get to call him/her a communist, traitor, or god-hater. Or maybe just that moderates won't be offended by their icky liberalism.
Either way, I'm convinced that calling yourself a progressive accomplishes not very much, and that it marks you as self-hating, obsequious, and weak.
I dunno.
Anyways, I'm a liberal. Fairly moderate, but a liberal nonetheless.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Monday, March 21, 2005
Terry Crusade
I read someone describe the ongoing drama of Terry Schiavo as a thing of DeLilloesque absurdity, and I think that's about right.
Like every human tragedy/spectacle of the week, it is a perfect showcase for virtuosic foolishness of American culture, in particular its vulturelike press. There is something darkly funny about the pandering, cynicism, and abstraction of human drama on the part of the Randall Terry-and-Tom DeLay contingent here (in the adoption of near total abstraction by some of the world's more literalminded people, etc.), but mostly it's just sad.
I agree with the Christianists that Schiavo is a human being, and that's exactly why it's so sick that she's being treated primarily as a political device to manipulate prolifers. I think the humane thing would be to let this essentially braindead woman, whose cerebral cortex has been replaced with spinal fluid, to die a peaceful and natural death, instead of lingering on for eternity, an occasional football for the Christian Right.
Of all the horrible things about this ongoing spectacle, beyond tortured attempts by prolifers to characterize Schiavo as disabled, worse than televised protests featuring signs characterizing Terry's husband as "Little Hitler," is the repulsively insincere, cynical, and ghoulish involvement of the Republican congress. Beyond being very constitutionally dubious, and embodying the very opposite of the hostility-to-federal-power conservatives are supposed to stand for, it just smacks of opportunism and a pathetic pandering to prolife absolutists.
I can't help thinking, watching these red-faced politicians intone seriously about the moral outrage of letting this woman die, raising their voices in holy righteousness, that it's all an act. These people don't care about Terry Schiavo- they don't care about any of this. It's the satisfaction of play-acting outrage and moral superiority that gives this spectacle its juice. The woman at the center disappears, just a placeholder for their pious rage.
As I said, Sad.
Like every human tragedy/spectacle of the week, it is a perfect showcase for virtuosic foolishness of American culture, in particular its vulturelike press. There is something darkly funny about the pandering, cynicism, and abstraction of human drama on the part of the Randall Terry-and-Tom DeLay contingent here (in the adoption of near total abstraction by some of the world's more literalminded people, etc.), but mostly it's just sad.
I agree with the Christianists that Schiavo is a human being, and that's exactly why it's so sick that she's being treated primarily as a political device to manipulate prolifers. I think the humane thing would be to let this essentially braindead woman, whose cerebral cortex has been replaced with spinal fluid, to die a peaceful and natural death, instead of lingering on for eternity, an occasional football for the Christian Right.
Of all the horrible things about this ongoing spectacle, beyond tortured attempts by prolifers to characterize Schiavo as disabled, worse than televised protests featuring signs characterizing Terry's husband as "Little Hitler," is the repulsively insincere, cynical, and ghoulish involvement of the Republican congress. Beyond being very constitutionally dubious, and embodying the very opposite of the hostility-to-federal-power conservatives are supposed to stand for, it just smacks of opportunism and a pathetic pandering to prolife absolutists.
I can't help thinking, watching these red-faced politicians intone seriously about the moral outrage of letting this woman die, raising their voices in holy righteousness, that it's all an act. These people don't care about Terry Schiavo- they don't care about any of this. It's the satisfaction of play-acting outrage and moral superiority that gives this spectacle its juice. The woman at the center disappears, just a placeholder for their pious rage.
As I said, Sad.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Work Ethic etc.
I really like Mark Kleiman. It's because of folks like him that I'm glad to be a member of the reality-based community; he exemplifies a kind of intellectually-flavored seriousness and humanism.
So I thought it would make sense to link and briefly discuss this post of his concerning the American work ethic.
Simply put, we work too damn hard in this country for- for what?!?
This is a discussion that more people should have. There's the distinct sense in this, among the wealthiest countries on the planet, is working itself to death without really stopping to enjoy the fruits of that labor. If you ask me, one of the primary problems is that people also don't stop to think, and that the pace of modern life in part explains the cultural backwardness of large parts of this country. When people are working stressful, enervating jobs, they don't want to expend that sort of energy on their leisure, hence the unfortunately common practice of decompressing before the crap deluge of television, and the embarrassingly high American tolerance for said crap.
Kleiman also makes a point that I must repost here:
Our economic system (and this isn't and shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of any other system) has a rather incredible tendency to instill economic anxiety to the exclusion to other drives. Any idiot knows that looking at education as primarily a road to wealth is an awful and stupid, and yet that's how we tend to look at it.
I daresay that an economy in which there was a greater measure of economic security, and one where there was a greater perception of security, would allow a culture that wasn't so goddamn cheap.
So I thought it would make sense to link and briefly discuss this post of his concerning the American work ethic.
Simply put, we work too damn hard in this country for- for what?!?
This is a discussion that more people should have. There's the distinct sense in this, among the wealthiest countries on the planet, is working itself to death without really stopping to enjoy the fruits of that labor. If you ask me, one of the primary problems is that people also don't stop to think, and that the pace of modern life in part explains the cultural backwardness of large parts of this country. When people are working stressful, enervating jobs, they don't want to expend that sort of energy on their leisure, hence the unfortunately common practice of decompressing before the crap deluge of television, and the embarrassingly high American tolerance for said crap.
Kleiman also makes a point that I must repost here:
Yes, many people can't fill the leisure they now have with anything they actually enjoy. That's what keeps the networks and cable companies in business. Perhaps that would be less true if we didn't think about our educational system primarily in terms of preparing people for the workforce.
Our economic system (and this isn't and shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of any other system) has a rather incredible tendency to instill economic anxiety to the exclusion to other drives. Any idiot knows that looking at education as primarily a road to wealth is an awful and stupid, and yet that's how we tend to look at it.
I daresay that an economy in which there was a greater measure of economic security, and one where there was a greater perception of security, would allow a culture that wasn't so goddamn cheap.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Television
Overheard on television: "A new way to track your kids, tonight, after 'Wife Swap'."
I think that's just about everything that's wrong with America right there.
I think that's just about everything that's wrong with America right there.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Start the Reactor, Quaid
Scientists discover a sea of water ice near Mars' equator. No word from Kuato as to exactly what this means.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Back from the Grave
Back from the Grave
Sorry I've been gone so long. Busy keeping myself busy. This is a subject in an of itself- why is it so easy to keep oneself busy doing nothing, or at least, nothing much?
Anyways, I have this wonderful class on Early 20th century European painting. Very useful, very exciting. Not only is it informative to the subject, but the class becomes an excellent pretext for thinking hard about readings, of focusing on art in a dedicated manner, of getting the ole intellectual juices flowing, and of keeping one's instrument sharp.
But yeah- very useful. I've been convinced, through readings on Picasso, to dust off an old art project/alter ego. The alter ego is a fella called Poop Ruiz, some remote relation to Picasso. He's got all sorts of artistic delusions. The work is meant to be an ill-fitting, stunted early modernism filtered through post-postmodern eyes. It's meant to talk about artistic failure, play, the contemporary institutional structures of art, and more.
The reason I've decided to dust him off is that I've discovered that Picasso is more compelling and interesting than I had thought, that he was a figure who batted away conventions often enough with no idea what monsters might come out of it, perhaps merely because he could. Picasso's cubist constructions and collages do not comfortably fit with the modernist ideas and intentions that have been ascribed to them.
In general, we have a way of sainting our revolutionaries, of enshrining them. All revolutionaries and all revolutions are messy and so are revolutionaries. But that's a good thing! It's a disservice to saint just about everyone.{I daresay saints aren't really the saints we create for ourselves, to simplify the world and make things clean and easy} But it's doubly a disservice to saint people like Picasso, people who screwed around, and screwed up the old version of art. After Picasso, you simply can't make the same paintings. Or, if you do, it means something else. That's what the avant garde means!
That's why we should be simultaneously appreciative of our revolutionaries and exasperated. The new world can be a scary place to live. And some people don't realize what it means to live in the new world, so they try to pull back the clock- to build a world that no longer exists. And these people don't realize that they can't build a past with todays tools, you get a sick, bizarre shambles!
And Poop Ruiz is about this phenomenon, only, of course, with a twist. Today, Picasso's is an old revolution. But Picasso's revolution, on a number of levels, failed. Avant gardes are supposed to become old hat, but Cubism is simultaneously consigned to a deep past and still threateningly "modern."
Is ours not at least a modern, if not a postmodern, or post-postmodern age? Well sort of. But ask a conservative... or don't.
Sorry I've been gone so long. Busy keeping myself busy. This is a subject in an of itself- why is it so easy to keep oneself busy doing nothing, or at least, nothing much?
Anyways, I have this wonderful class on Early 20th century European painting. Very useful, very exciting. Not only is it informative to the subject, but the class becomes an excellent pretext for thinking hard about readings, of focusing on art in a dedicated manner, of getting the ole intellectual juices flowing, and of keeping one's instrument sharp.
But yeah- very useful. I've been convinced, through readings on Picasso, to dust off an old art project/alter ego. The alter ego is a fella called Poop Ruiz, some remote relation to Picasso. He's got all sorts of artistic delusions. The work is meant to be an ill-fitting, stunted early modernism filtered through post-postmodern eyes. It's meant to talk about artistic failure, play, the contemporary institutional structures of art, and more.
The reason I've decided to dust him off is that I've discovered that Picasso is more compelling and interesting than I had thought, that he was a figure who batted away conventions often enough with no idea what monsters might come out of it, perhaps merely because he could. Picasso's cubist constructions and collages do not comfortably fit with the modernist ideas and intentions that have been ascribed to them.
In general, we have a way of sainting our revolutionaries, of enshrining them. All revolutionaries and all revolutions are messy and so are revolutionaries. But that's a good thing! It's a disservice to saint just about everyone.{I daresay saints aren't really the saints we create for ourselves, to simplify the world and make things clean and easy} But it's doubly a disservice to saint people like Picasso, people who screwed around, and screwed up the old version of art. After Picasso, you simply can't make the same paintings. Or, if you do, it means something else. That's what the avant garde means!
That's why we should be simultaneously appreciative of our revolutionaries and exasperated. The new world can be a scary place to live. And some people don't realize what it means to live in the new world, so they try to pull back the clock- to build a world that no longer exists. And these people don't realize that they can't build a past with todays tools, you get a sick, bizarre shambles!
And Poop Ruiz is about this phenomenon, only, of course, with a twist. Today, Picasso's is an old revolution. But Picasso's revolution, on a number of levels, failed. Avant gardes are supposed to become old hat, but Cubism is simultaneously consigned to a deep past and still threateningly "modern."
Is ours not at least a modern, if not a postmodern, or post-postmodern age? Well sort of. But ask a conservative... or don't.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Distinctiveness, Identity, and Criticism
Category: Criticism
There is a great deal of blog triumphalism, especially on the right side, that is utterly self-contradictory and and utterly concerned with the amplification of memes, etc. For all the (in general, but not in this specific circumstance) derision cast at the MainStream Media, the mainstream media is still the effective game in town.
I think of why blogs are important to me, and I think of Billmon at Whiskey Bar. I think of how sad it is that he's no longer blogging, and I remember the reasons he gave for leaving.
What made Billmon so important was his pronounced perspective and his distinct and eloquent voice. There is no one like him. And that's the promise of blogging.
Not to get rid of the George Wills and Howard Finemans of the world, or to even replace them, but to act as a bulwark, however small, of distinctiveness and individual human identity where notions of the world are otherwise received and homogenous.
Readers of Whiskey Bar, especially when comments were alive and well, felt like part of a community of individual human minds. It was stimulating and exciting and entirely unlike the world of opinion one finds on those execrable cable news roundtable shows.
I know I'm wired differently from other people, and probably have more time than most to dedicate to such things, but my feeling upon discovering that there was this world of smart people, good writers, and interesting thinkers was very positive.
American culture is both, more often than not, homogenous and also, more often than not, tailored toward underestimating the taste and capacities of its audience. The rightwingers will often say that it's evil liberals who are to blame for the bar being set so low. I cannot say it's the rightwingers' fault, in certainty, although the very fact that George Bush, a true dullard, the very fruit of the soft bigotry of our low expectations, is my president says something. The fact is that we have a culture that encourages in every way possible magical thinking, that, despite its self-conception, is not meritocratic an any substantial way.
I am convinced that blogs are part of the solution. There are minds that would otherwise go rusty from disuse, opinions that would go unchallenged, souls that would become ever decreasingly insensitive in its absence.
There is a great deal of blog triumphalism, especially on the right side, that is utterly self-contradictory and and utterly concerned with the amplification of memes, etc. For all the (in general, but not in this specific circumstance) derision cast at the MainStream Media, the mainstream media is still the effective game in town.
I think of why blogs are important to me, and I think of Billmon at Whiskey Bar. I think of how sad it is that he's no longer blogging, and I remember the reasons he gave for leaving.
What made Billmon so important was his pronounced perspective and his distinct and eloquent voice. There is no one like him. And that's the promise of blogging.
Not to get rid of the George Wills and Howard Finemans of the world, or to even replace them, but to act as a bulwark, however small, of distinctiveness and individual human identity where notions of the world are otherwise received and homogenous.
Readers of Whiskey Bar, especially when comments were alive and well, felt like part of a community of individual human minds. It was stimulating and exciting and entirely unlike the world of opinion one finds on those execrable cable news roundtable shows.
I know I'm wired differently from other people, and probably have more time than most to dedicate to such things, but my feeling upon discovering that there was this world of smart people, good writers, and interesting thinkers was very positive.
American culture is both, more often than not, homogenous and also, more often than not, tailored toward underestimating the taste and capacities of its audience. The rightwingers will often say that it's evil liberals who are to blame for the bar being set so low. I cannot say it's the rightwingers' fault, in certainty, although the very fact that George Bush, a true dullard, the very fruit of the soft bigotry of our low expectations, is my president says something. The fact is that we have a culture that encourages in every way possible magical thinking, that, despite its self-conception, is not meritocratic an any substantial way.
I am convinced that blogs are part of the solution. There are minds that would otherwise go rusty from disuse, opinions that would go unchallenged, souls that would become ever decreasingly insensitive in its absence.
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