June 15, 2011

It’s an eclipsing full moon and I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d blog some bits and pieces

Gettin’ Real in the Whole Foods Parking Lot
Since they are building one in my ‘hood, this is likely my future. In addition, this was sent to me by the brightest and most wonderful woman I know: RebL, my lovely daughter. Also, I’m cheesed at Whole Foods because work there has shut off one of my rat-in-the-maze routes down Grand Blvd. at Flip’s and narrowed Western south of 63rd, making that intersection gridlock-ish. Grrrr.

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If this doesn’t piss you off, you’re likely going to vote Republican and I don’t want to know you.

Chart of the day

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All the GOP folks who are thumpin’ the Bible and praising “Atlas Shrugged”? Suck this:

“[T]o be a follower of both Rand and Christ is not possible. The original Objectivist was a type of self-professed anti-Christ who hated Christianity and the self-sacrificial love of its founder. She recognized that those Christians who claimed to share her views didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.

Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism. Stalin was against the Nazis because he wanted to make the world safe for Communism. Likewise, Rand stands against collectivism because she wants the freedom to abolish Judeo-Christian morality. Conservative Christians who embrace her as the “enemy-of-my-enemy” seem to forget that she considered us the enemy,” – Joe Carter.

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This is especially for my friend Oz, but I thought everyone would enjoy it

Dripped: Jackson Pollack

Dripped from ChezEddy on Vimeo.

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In politics, there was the so-called GOP debate put on by CNN in New Hampshire. Whatever possibility for debate there was, which was slim, was extinquished when Pawlenty refused to back up his “Obamneycare” comment on the Sunday talk shows. He’s rightly being called a wimp, IMHO. Meanwhile, Michelle Bachman (R-MN) won the debate by getting the headline for announcing the filing of her presidential committee papers with the FEC, being the only woman on the stage and for not having her head explode with all the cognitive dissonance. Here’s a little info on Ms. Bachman:

Michelle Bachman

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Meanwhile, on Fox, the blind squirrels find a nut:

Fox News stumbles upon Wisconsin truth

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Just a personal word: I’m so sorry Kim is dead. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know when the funeral will be. Much might be said, but I’ll say this: she was there for me when I was in the hospital and when I was sick at home and I’ll always be grateful for that. She is in my prayers and I hope others will join that. Rest in Peace, Kimberly.

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Blogblah!

4 thoughts on “June 15, 2011

  1. Araquin

    It might not make your day, but then again, maybe it will: That pseudo-intellectual moron Ayn Rand is completely unknown in Europe. And quite rightly so.
    What I find intriguing is the question why on earth this intellectually negligible creature achieved such prominence in the US of A.
    B

  2. laocoon Post author

    Dearest B,
    If I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t attempt to answer your question.

    You see, you have a singularly difficult obstacle: critical thinking skills.

    I know, I know, it’s embarrassing and I likely shouldn’t have been so public about this disability of yours. Poor thing, you actually read and understand. How effete! How European! How utterly Un-American.

    Americans have romanticized and mythologized a kind of “uber-mensch” we see in the movies. From the John Wayne figures in the cowboy movies of the 1950s to the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry of the 1970s to the more recent Matt Damon Jason Bourne of more recent vintage, young American, testosterone-filled males have looked up to and idolized and identified with hero figures who are capable of solving all problems wholly on their own.

    We have no history in America and what little we do have, we have never read, understood nor remembered. Thus, the late 19th Century Spencerian Social Darwinism myths once thought smashed by progressivism still live on in Christian evangelical circles in which it is believed that a very few people get filthy rich by divine right and blessings.

    Mix in a good bit of propaganda paid for by some inheritors of great wealth that disguise simple greed as patriotism and — voila! — Randian libertarian idiot fringe political movements that grow like insidious virus.

    Of course it’s poppycock and you with your guilty dirty little secret ability to actually dissect that nonsense and see it for what it is find it hard to understand our devotion.

    Hope that helps, but if it doesn’t, just drink far too much of that good Viennese beer and sing the Horst Vessel Song until you are almost passed out; in the few minutes before oblivion, screech “Zeig Heil” a few times and just as you pass out, it will make perfect sense.

    In the succinct words of Gore Vidal, it’s crypto-fascism, pure and simple.

    John, not the superman JohnX one, but the other one.

  3. Araquin

    Good answer!

    Yeah, I fear that you are right. There is this right-wing mythical streak in US society – as there is in Europe, of course – but in the US it’s not been challenged by a left-wing mythology at least for half a century, not since the McCarthy years. All that was buried when FDR died, I guess.

    As an ex-US-diplomat (actually a Republican) once remarked in Vienna during a heated debate when the Iraq war started: The difference between Europa and America is that even without knowing it themselves (i.e. easily 80%), practically all Europeans have been exposed to Marxist thinking which goes against the worship of the Übermensch who can fix it all and looks at the division of power in a society and at the question of class, while most Americans have not been exposed to it.

    I wouldn’t be worried about this streak in US society if it hadn’t been transported massively to Europe via Hollywood movies. Election results lately suggest that European youths, particularly less educated disenchanted males, are beginning to find the easy fix via a “strong man” very attractive as well.

    B

  4. laocoon Post author

    B
    There are a couple of things about all this I find particularly troublesome.
    1. These Randian, Ubermensch heroes rarely outsmart the villain a la Sherlock Holmes (or Thomas Crowne and his affair in the Steve McQueen original). Massively so, these self-reliant heroes and anti-heroes ultimately solve the problem by having the biggest and baddest firearm and the casual ability to kill other human beings without flinching.
    2. America’s history of electing as president military heroes dates to our first man on a white horse, George Washington. Ike, the hero of WWII, was a massively popular president and thank the flying spaghetti monster he was not inclined to autocracy. JFK was a military hero and so was George H.W. Bush. As has been noted by a better man than me, if dictatorship comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag — and the equasion of the far right of the Republican Party with patriotism (see, e.g., Sarah Palin) has done an effective job of precisely that.

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