by hilzoy
It’s been coming on for a while now. There was his claim that “constant naysaying” from the left has “has objectively hurt the war effort”, and more recently this fascinating prediction: “I’m beginning to think that a (non-violent) civil war is coming—and that, frankly, it needs to happen.” But now it’s finally happened: in my completely unprofessional opinion, Jeff Goldstein has come unglued.
Basically, here’s the story: Atrios wrote a snarky post about Jeff. Apparently, Tristero said something good about it — I can’t find it on Hullabaloo (the relevant time period seems to be off their main page, but not yet in their archives), but since Jeff apparently didn’t read it either, I’m not sure what it would add. Jeff apparently took offense at the fact that Tristero was commenting on Protein Wisdom while criticizing him of Hullaballoo, and wrote a bizarro comment banning him. It has to be seen to be believed, though it is not work-safe (actually, it’s pretty revolting.) In it, Jeff not only provides several different graphic (and completely gratuitous) descriptions of things Tristero is supposedly doing to or with his (Jeff’s) dog, but also the fascinating suggestion that Tristero has been fellating, not Atrios, but one of Atrios’ posts. (Is that conceptually possible?)
Jeff also says that Tristero “has the intellect of a gibbon”. This DVD, which I highly recommend, has an interview with Tristero, so you can judge his intellect for yourself. (If you get the DVD, you can also compare Tristero’s creative work to Jeff’s. I was tempted to add that that wouldn’t really be fair, but then thought: why on earth not? The only real difference I can see, other than quality, is that Jeff Goldstein advertises his artistic pretensions, while Tristero wears his so lightly that you wouldn’t know they were there.)
This was just one of those moments that’s too weird to pass unremarked.
What Tristero said is that I really am too stupid to realize how stupid I am — which is what Atrios’ post argued by way of “explaining” me through a 1999 study. I found Tristero’s eagerness to please Atrios by approvingly citing his assessment of me rather obnoxious and unfair; I further found it ungracious of him, given that he’d posted 40-50 comments on my site over the last couple weeks, and I don’t recall being rude to him, or impeding him in any way from expressing his opinions.
If he finds me to be an idiot, why the desire to engage? Or, if he’s the genius you claim he is, why is he hanging out poking us clearly inferior (both intellectually and, evidently, creatively, too) mouth breathers with a stick?
At any rate, you have much factually wrong here: first, I stopped reading tristero’s comments on my site. I had been trying to stay out of arguments in the comments sections and concentrate on posts, so I simply skipped over them. Some of the threads have 400+ comments. So I can’t read and respond to them all. That doesn’t mean I didn’t read his POST, which is what I took offense to. I did.
Second, you note the “civil war” comment but neglect to mention that my purpose, which I later explained quite clearly, was to frame it as an extension of the culture war — particularly the war for the soul of classical liberalism, which I see as being under attack from what is a pernicious brand of collectivism that shows itself in identity politics, the “diversity” movement, and a particularly dangerous, epistemologically decentering form or multiculturalism inspired by Edward Said — and I noted that I had no idea how it would happen, but that it could manifest itself in demographic shifts or certain states re-dedicating themselves to federalist legal principles and legal conservatism. Now, I realize it doesn’t seem quite so shocking put that way, but there you have it, all neatly explained.
Third, if you don’t believe the “Bush lied” meme — and other idiotic repetitions have objectively hurt the war effort — then you must believe that words carry no weight. The question becomes, if these mantras are so ineffective, why spend so much time repeating them? Do they effect public opinion, which then impacts poll numbers? If so, they are weakening the public will — and this was a strategic aim of UBL. Read his own words. Denying that words have an effect (and here’s an idea, ask a few soldiers — plenty of them comment over at my site, or read some of the work Austin Bay has done on the subject) is a way to avoid responsibility. I have had no problem criticizing what I believe has been done wrong as far as military tactics and strategy in Iraq; why should those whose rhetoric had an impact on the way the Iraq narrative has been formed and peddled not be willing to take responsibility for their efforts?
Finally, if you’re going to pimp my fiction, pick something that is at least finished. This or this might do.
Incidentally, I was asked by readers to expand my “about” section and post some of my fiction. I did this only very recently, though my site has been running since 2001. So I hardly think I go out of my way to “advertise” my artistic pretensions.
That’s all. I’m glad you have a high opinion of Tristero. Me, I had no opinion of him whatever until he decided to ingratiate himself with Atrios by taking an unprovoked shot at me.
Not that any of this will matter to you. You have your story, told to you the way you wish to hear it, and you’ll stick to it.
in which protein wisdom finds he has OTHER fans on the left
Like, for instance, hilzoy from Obsidian Wings (who, not content simply to misunderstand the entire tristero incident, gives herself license to take a shot at my creative output, as well.)
Ah! The joys of blogging!
WHO WANTS…
Now, I realize it doesn’t seem quite so shocking put that way, but there you have it, all neatly explained.
Somehow, I don’t think shocking was the word hilzoy would chose to describe the “civil war” comment. At least, not the way you seem to mean it…
But as for this:
Not that any of this will matter to you. You have your story, told to you the way you wish to hear it, and you’ll stick to it.
Then what exactly are you doing posting here?
Josh — it’s his bid for the Karnak award, no doubt. Though since he divined that I think Tristero is — a genius? I’m never sure how to use that word — at any rate an extremely good composer, as good as anyone now living that I can think of offhand, without my so much as saying a word one way or the other, he has a better track record than a lot of Karnak contenders.
Maybe being epistemologically decentered helps. Who knows?
I still can’t figure out why he kept dragging his poor dog into it, though.
Jeff, I love you man, you’re like a drunk, 10 year old literary postmodernist. With the thin skin! I never knew such a thing existed. Maybe you could go on the road as the right-wing comedy Chomsky?
Hilzoy: I think we’ve got him on the ropes. Every Keyboard Kommando launched embarrassingly over the edge is a notch in our teepee, eh?
Hi Jeff,
I don’t comment or read the comments at your place because of limited time, but look at protein wisdom fairly often, maybe 3+ times a week, and find informative and eloquent posts, plus some amusing stuff and even short stories from time to time. Thanks for dropping in. I imagine you run your household sort of like Pat Conroy’s dad did, except you are a wimpy stay at home Mr. Mom instead of a dogface. Still, yelling at a toddler for not keeping their caulk bead consistently thick and straight is something I’d like to see. Do me a favor, give Gary Farber a call some time (he’s in your neighborhood), take him out to Chuck E Cheese and immerse him in a quasi-Lileks experience. Then you can both write about it, which would be sweet, and maybe fix up the grout in the shower afterwards.
Sifu Tweety: I think he launched himself. (Maybe with a Hindrocket!)
Does that fact that UBL has also said his goal was to bankrupt the US by having it spend its treasure on fighting terrorism mean that Bush is hurting the war effort by doing what UBL said he wanted the US to do?
Just curious.
Careful, gents. You don’t know where that face-slapping extremity has been.
you’re like a drunk, 10 year old literary postmodernist
I want to frame this.
Steve: until I checked out Balloon Juice just now, I didn’t know that Tim F. chose today to wonder why everyone is picking on Jeff. And until I read the comments, I didn’t know the comment you’re referring to. What with all those face-slapping genitalia, molested dogs, even me “pimping” his writing, there’s a certain sameness to his metaphors. (Although, now that I think of it, pimping writing is sort of unlikely, in the same way as fellating Atrios’ post.)
Unlikely in the same way, perhaps, but the latter seems more prone to result in splinters.
Steve: maybe he should slap the post with the pride of his manhood…
(OT: my second favorite sentence from a trashy novel: “The glory of his manhood filled the room.”
Best of all time: “Her breasts glowed like amber melons.”
Both remembered from over 20 years ago in college; when something makes you laugh that hard, it’s hard to forget.)
A one hundred twelve “word”– epistomological– and I noted, sentence. A pernicious brand of a Goldstein record. Or something.
Second, you note the “civil war” comment but neglect to mention that my purpose, which I later explained quite clearly, was to frame it as an extension of the culture war — particularly the war for the soul of classical liberalism, which I see as being under attack from what is a pernicious brand of collectivism that shows itself in identity politics, the “diversity” movement, and a particularly dangerous, epistemologically decentering form or multiculturalism inspired by Edward Said — and I noted that I had no idea how it would happen, but that it could manifest itself in demographic shifts or certain states re-dedicating themselves to federalist legal principles and legal conservatism.
Oy.
I dunno, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything in the least interesting under Tristero’s name at Digby’s place, while Jeff (if I’m not confused) is considered by Plameologists to be one of the sharpest people in their ranks. And I would I think react rather negatively if I found out that someone commenting here in apparent good faith and civility had anything positive to say about a post comparing an ObWi PTB to people at “at the 12th percentile in tests of humor, grammar and logic”.
pernicious brand of collectivism that shows itself in identity politics, the “diversity” movement, and a particularly dangerous, epistemologically decentering form or multiculturalism inspired by Edward Said
I love this shit. String together four standard-issue rightist catchphrases, add the hated Edward Said, and toss “epistemologically decentering” in there for pseudo-intellectual spice and Goldstein thinks he’s got some grand theory of all that is wrong with left/liberal politics, “neatly explained.” Like a college freshman who got drunk instead of doing the reading so he just throws some jargon in his essay hoping to bullshit the TA into a C-.
We are now into meta-irony territory. Remember: Tristero’s sin was trying to “engage” Jeff on Protein Wisdom while bashing him on Hullabaloo. Jeff has been sort of engaging here, but on PW he says:
I feel so wounded. I think I’ll have to take to my bed and sink into a decline.
That, and irony is dead.
Jeff (if I’m not confused) is considered by Plameologists to be one of the sharpest people in their ranks.
You’re confused. That’s Tim Maguire.
Allegedly bashing, I should say. As I said, I can’t recall Tristero’s post, but bashing isn’t his style.
I’ve met Jeff a few times in meatworld. He’s nice, funny. Likes to have a beer. He’s a good guy.
Why the hate?
Robert: it’s not hate; I honestly read his Tristero comment, with the stuff about the dog, and thought: he’s lost it.
I for one welcome our new Atriot overlords.
Hi, Jeff. A few points.
“Second, you note the “civil war” comment but neglect to mention that my purpose, which I later explained quite clearly….”
She actually linked to it, so anyone who desires can read what you wrote.
“I realize it doesn’t seem quite so shocking put that way….”
I’m sure you understand that “civil war” has connotations of, you know, mass death and tragic killing and suffering. If you don’t want to arouse those images and ideas and connotations, best to choose another term; having chosen to use “civil war,” complaining that people find it a strong term seems a bit questionable.
The “objectively hurting the war effort” stuff is fraught with a number of sub-points.
I’ll try to take it one bit at a time.
“Third, if you don’t believe the ‘Bush lied’ meme — and other idiotic repetitions have objectively hurt the war effort — then you must believe that words carry no weight.”
First off all, I’m not sure what assumptions are and aren’t contained in “objectively hurt[s] the war effort.”
Does something so doing mean it should not be engaged in? Does it mean instead that it might be engaged in, but is serious enough that the value must be weighed against the alleged damage to the “war effort”? Does it mean something else?
I don’t know. I’m hesitant to assume I understand what you mean, since I clearly don’t understand a number of your points of view. If we could start by your explaining the above, that would be helpful.
But I’ll observe that it definitely seems to beg several essential political questions, such as that the “war effort” (and of course I don’t know for sure if you mean “the war in Iraq” or “the global war on terror,” or if they are identical to you, or what, precisely, you have in mind) is something there should be no disagreement about. I’d say that there are a lot of separable issues under the heading of discussing what wars we are or aren’t and should or shouldn’t be engaged in, and what said war or wars should or shouldn’t consist of and what is legitimate and acceptable to disagree about. What you find legitimate and illegitimate I don’t know, though doubtless you’ve written about this a lot, so pointers to past posts by you in response are welcome; I apologize that I’ve not studied your oeuvre, just as likely you’ve not studied mine.
“The question becomes, if these mantras are so ineffective, why spend so much time repeating them?”
Similarly, I could pick out various common utterances by Bush supporters and refer to them as “mantras” and thus rhetorically ask why they are being said, but the answer to any of these questions would be that people utter various convention opinions for a variety of reasons, good and bad, from simple belief in their correctness and aptness to lack of imagination to that they reassure themselves to that they think them wise and insightful, and so forth and so on. Why a given person utters a given statement, pro or anti war, or a more complex view, is another question, and one apt, I think, though you may disagree, to find more useful to answer.
“Do they effect public opinion, which then impacts poll numbers?”
Affect. Presumably some people say things in hopes of convincing others, certainly. This is non-ideological. Again, if you are a priori suggesting that the only acceptable discourse is that which you agree which, which is that which you define as “supporting the war effort,” then you’re pretty much disallowing disagreement over fundamental political issues. Maybe your views are correct and all who disagree with you are wrong, but if you try to put disagreement with you, or the President, on the level that questioning or disagreeing with “the war effort” is unpatriotic, then you are being fundamentally anti-democratic. Would you have thundered against those who questioned Clinton’s “war effort” in Bosnia and Kosovo? Perhaps so. Or perhaps times are different. I don’t know. In any case, wherever I’m likely misunderstanding you, please do feel free to clarify and explain, if you feel inclined.
“If so, they are weakening the public will — and this was a strategic aim of UBL. Read his own words.”
And therefore anything that “weaken[s] the public will” is… what? I don’t want to assume: why don’t you explain what it is you are intending to imply here, please.
Obviously, saying something that bin Laden happens to agree with is, you know, allowable. He favors drinking water, I bet. But people can have views that he agrees with and still not be traitorously supporting him, you know. You know, right?
And, of course, as already mentioned, there are those who would argue that various Bush policies have helped bin Laden in various ways; that might be wrong, or right, but is it debatable?
“I have had no problem criticizing what I believe has been done wrong as far as military tactics and strategy in Iraq….”
So what about if people criticize the entire idea of a war in Iraq? Illegitimate? Okay?
Is it okay to politically oppose a President during a war? Is it okay to say nasty things about the President during war time? Not?
I’m really not at all clear what lines you are drawing where: are we supposed to simply automatically agree with our President on “war” issues? Or are there specfici limits to what we should be respectably allowed to disagree with? Or what? What are you saying, exactly?
“Finally, if you’re going to pimp my fiction, pick something that is at least finished.”
If you don’t want stuff you post in public commented on, best not to post it in public, I suggest. Though saying which you think is better and worse is perfectly reasonable, of course.
DaveC: “Do me a favor, give Gary Farber a call some time (he’s in your neighborhood), take him out to Chuck E Cheese and immerse him in a quasi-Lileks experience. Then you can both write about it….”
I’ve written at great length about meeting Jeff, the one time we’ve met (he linked to it). Odds are high we’ll meet again, whenever I finally make it out to another regional blog gathering, or a party at Steve and Melissa Green’s finally, or somesuch. But since it takes me about two hours to get to a given place in Denver via bus, and then the same back again, it’s a pretty major effort me for to get there; I cancelled on the last Blogger Bash a few weeks ago when another subzero freezing spell/storm hit that weekend.
Ahh, thanks for the correction, Straw Grasper. Obviously I’m not doing due diligence keeping track of conservative voices.
hilzoy: “as good as anyone now living that I can think of offhand”
John Adams? Arvo Paert? Steve Reich?
Hadn’t read what you actually wrote, before. What you actually wrote is, of course, this:
Certainly I’m often frustrated that the meaning of stuff that I’ve written that I think is very clear isn’t read that way by others.
But “(non-violent) civil war” is an oxymoron, and people tend to misinterpret those, no matter that they perhaps shouldn’t.
“That, and irony is dead.”
No, no, September 11th was the end of ironing, not the end of irony. Graydon Carter corrected himself.
“You’re confused. That’s Tim Maguire.”
Is he related to Tom Maguire?
In all seriousness, as the owner of two dogs, I’m am concerned about bringing them up in a neo-con world where all the conservatives can talk about is man-dog sex.
That is why I homeschool.
I had so managed to repress my memory of this post.
“I honestly read his Tristero comment, with the stuff about the dog, and thought: he’s lost it.”
I don’t read Jeff that frequently, which is why I’m trying not to make assumptions, but I do believe that he’s rather a fan of the sexual metaphor and reference, and has been since he’s been blogging. I don’t think there’s anything new in that, although I wouldn’t be up on the, ah, ins and outs of his usages.
Of course, you can find an awful lot of some versions of that sort of thing at, say, Unfogged, which is generally a pretty leftish set of commenters; different folks have different comfort levels with that sort of thing.
I tend to use “f*ck” a fair amount in my writing, myself, but tend not to get into anatomical references or metaphors.
Robert sez:
Why the hate?
Why not? We’re talking about leftists here. Why breathe? It’s just what they do, when they’re not busy losing elections.
“Why not? We’re talking about leftists here. Why breathe? It’s just what they do, when they’re not busy losing elections.”
There’s a thoughtful and substantial analysis. Very hate-free.
I think this calls for another stupid open thread!
Personally, I think Jeff’s quite amusing when he’s being amusing and insightful when he’s being serious. I don’t always agree with what he says, but I don’t always agree with what hilzoy says, either. I do agree that you don’t call someone an idiot in public and then expect them to engage you in conversation, which is kind of why I’m a little torn over links here to HOCB.
Not going to psychoanalyze Jeff, because I’ve never met the guy and he can speak pretty well for himself besides. But I gather that he’s pretty much had it with the parade of Atriettes that show up and ridicule his opinion without bothering to find out what that is. And I’d guess that tristero caught it extra hard because of that.
If it were me, I’d enforce posting rules kind of like what we have here, which would tend to eliminate a lot of garbage from all points of the political compass. But that’s just me. John Cole and Tim F. have faced similar problems at their place, and are still dealing with them.
All of that said, I think it’s time for another stupid open thread!
That said, I think there’s been plenty of room for discussion between you and Jeff on issues that concern you, hilzoy, and it kind of surprises me to see this as your first dissection of a Goldstein post (that I can recall, anyway), given that there’s so much difference of opinion between you two that’s relevant to current events. If you want dialogue and debate on these points as you say, well, I’ve been kind of trying to surreptitiously fix you guys up. Maybe I should have been less subtle.
I’d be happy if Jeff would choose to show up here for some discussion; you can umpire, Slart. He could start with the questions I’ve put to him, if he likes.
Goldstein is, in my opinion, the funniest blogger on the web. Clearly, there’s some jealousy going on here — a typical PW thread garners 4 or 5 times the number of comments that see you on a typical thread over here.
You’re a player hater, pure and simple.
From far above: “…I really am too stupid to realize how stupid I am.” Reminds me of an old high school Sociology gem: “I am what I think you think I am.” Can’t we just all get along? Slarti, are you saying opposites attract? I did detect a moment or two of appeasement. Could be the start…
If I had any idea of what this meant, I might be able to figure out whether it was posting-rules compliant or not.
I always umpire. What would be different?
Anonymity and the Internet
One of the reasons that this blog doesn’t have a particularly large readership is because I do my best to alienate and deride the commenters I find objectionable. Life’s too short to deal with people I don’t like, and your…
PW does get more comments – largely from people who, at least on paper, I would NOT want to know IRL. Not because they hold different opinions, but because they hold VIOLENT different opinions.
That, and they have an unhealthy regard for authority figures combined with a unhealthy disregard for brown people and facts.
We are known by the company we keep. I don’t care for most of Jeff’s company.
Hilzoy, otoh, is consistently accompanied by the cream of the crop.
Mostly.
Jake
Sort of a guilt/innocence by association argument?
I propose a
duel. Actually, a fascinating peek into history. Lesson learned – sometimes the good guys don’t win.Guilt? Innocence? I wasn’t going there – just exposing my preferences for non-violence and truthiness.
But, yes, Jeff is tarred by his commenters.
As hilzoy is gilded by hers.
Jake
I’d prefer a debate. That’s completely up to hilzoy and Jeff, though.
Don’t we fight a non-violent civil war every four years. And when someone proclaims we have lost our way is detached from our history. No one can package what “our way” is – and it certainly won’t happen in Iraq. Hell, it won’t happen in Peoria.
The problem with Goldstein and hilzoy actually engaging on the issues is that, as hilzoy pointed out above, Goldstein would violate his own standard by commenting here. By which I mean, according to Goldstein, it is a banworthy offense to comment on a site while simultaneously slamming it on your own site.
Goldstein certainly gives the impression of having a point, but I can’t say as I’ve ever seen him engage in an actual debate over anything greater than a mere nuance. Usually it’s just a matter of dropping a steaming pile of verbiage, as with the first comment in this thread, and ho, Lone Ranger, away. And as demonstrated on his own site, one drawback of running an echo chamber is that when a dissenting view does show up, you never need to actually debate it; you can simply deliver a rhetorical Internet smackdown, and voila, 20 fanboys will show up to cheer you on and confirm that the guy wasn’t worthy of a real response anyway.
Oh, I think there are plenty of commenters that would tar hilzoy, if we didn’t clean sweep out the house frequently, and didn’t make it crystal clear that there are rules, here.
I also think it’s awfully hard to engage in debate unless you do clean house; otherwise things rapidly devolve into the slinging of feces.
Wait…Jeff slammed hilzoy? Where?
“That, and they have an unhealthy regard for authority figures combined with a unhealthy disregard for brown people and facts.”
Oh, please. Disregard for brown people? You’re the ones who didn’t think we should liberate the brown people of Iraq.
Please, let’s not go there. I haven’t noticed a disregard for brown people either here or at Jeff’s place so much as a disagreement as to what we as a country ought to involve ourselves in.
If you’re going the objectively anti-brown-people route, please spare me.
Yes, and dammit you’ll liberate them if you have to kill every last one in the process.
PS Arabs are Caucasian kthxbye.
Lets see, does liberate mean kill in the latest PW speak?
Besides, and this might more be philosophy than it is debate, I don’t actually think any county ever has been liberated by another country.
It’s sort of like faith – you have to get it for yourself. Now, when we leave Iraq, and we will leave Iraq, THEN the Iraqis will work out what freedom means to them. Right now, it means civil war with an added dollop of death by American “mistake”.
And if we were going to liberate some brown people, why wouldn’t we liberate some DESPERATE brown people? Say, the ones in Darfur? It seems to me that the oppressed people of Darfur were in much greater need than the brown people of Iraq.
Or we could have done Afghanistan right – now theres a thought! We could have finished something we started.
Slart – see hilzoy’s comment here.
Slarti, you mean to say that keeping an accurate count of how many coalition forces die in the liberation of Iraq but guessing that there might be 30k or more (like lots more) Iraqi deaths attributable to the effort doesn’t mean that we really just don’t care?
When we start keeping accurate track of how many Iraqis die, or better yet, lumping all the deaths together like they were equally important, then I’ll begin to think we actually care a smidgen.
“Please, let’s not go there”
My attitude towards this entire “controversy”. Is there anything more useless than a blogosphere-wide flame war?
Baffling. Yesterday you interpreted me absolutely correctly; today you read extra volumes into just a few words.
But to answer: no, I don’t mean to say that. What’s more, I didn’t say that.
Steve, I agree that was…well, undignified, to be terse. And I’m all about terseness.
Ok. Maybe it was the terse thing.
In which case, I abdicate and stick to work stuff for the rest of the day.
That’s pretty much why I’m all about terseness these days, Jake.
Wow, I don’t go into comment sections very often, and it’s nice to be confirmed in that. I’m trying to think of a situation where I would make references to sexual activities with dogs and am drawing a big blank.
slarti,
I do agree that you don’t call someone an idiot in public and then expect them to engage you in conversation, which is kind of why I’m a little torn over links here to HOCB.
I’d like to think that neither I nor Jackmormon has called you know who an idiot at HoCB (DaveC, well, let’s face it, he’s uncontrollable ;^). And if that’s not clear, I’ll go on the record here and say that I don’t think Charles is an idiot and the site is not a CBwatch site.
In fact, the purpose is not to holler ‘iijit’, but to have a space to analyze the rhetoric closely, a closeness that would be called an over-attention to detail if done over here. I’d like to think of it as being similar to the Japanese tradition of a ‘nijikai’ or a party after the main party. Generally, after a major party, groups break off and go to another drinking establishment to hash out things in more detail. There may be a bit of kicking and screaming, but jackmormon (and to a lesser extent, me) have said a number of times, ‘well, X is a fair point, but if it hadn’t been accompanied by this, it might have been more acceptable’. That seems like the exact opposite of calling someone an idiot, imho.
Thanks, but I wasn’t concerned about what you were saying about me, if anything. Not that there isn’t anything there to criticize. I think that there’s much to criticize about Charles, too, I’m just mentioning that I’m conflicted about having that criticism be perhaps too uncivil to take place over here whilst simultaneously throwing links to it.
This might all be me misunderstanding what y’all are doing over there; if so: never mind.
I speak in metaphors, literally.
The assorted “war(s) on” provided by the Republican Party over the past 30 years, on taxes, on government, on the culture, on liberalism, on Iraq, and now “civil war” are now to be taken as mere metaphors. But they are aimed at the Biblical literalists and the Constitutional literalists who live in a world without metaphors.
Pablo:
“It’s what they do.”
Hey, Pancho, getting a good head of metaphorical hate up for your metaphorical “wars” is actually what I do.
Is the word “traitor” a metaphor? If so, so are the words “f*ck you, suck on this concealed weapon.”
If people were banned for metaphors, whither poetry?
In it, Jeff not only provides several different graphic (and completely gratuitous) descriptions of things Tristero is supposedly doing to or with his (Jeff’s) dog, but also the fascinating suggestion that Tristero has been fellating, not Atrios, but one of Atrios’ posts. (Is that conceptually possible?)
*thinks*
Yes.
But you’ll either need a longer tongue, or a smaller uvula.
…what? It’s not like this thread was going anywhere…
“Thanks, but I wasn’t concerned about what you were saying about me, if anything.”
Errr, ‘you know who’ is not you, but Charles.
And it’s not so much that the criticism is uncivil (though it can get heated), but that if it took place over here, it would simply overwhelm discussion here.
For what it’s worth: I normally don’t think about the consequences of individual posts here, except in cases in which I am either hoping to draw attention to something (e.g., the Graham amendment), or trying to explain something (e.g., how to think about quarantine.) Had I done so in this case, I would of course have thought: oh, this will degenerate into a Goldstein snark-fest; and then I would have explicitly decided for or against creating one.
In point of fact, though, I just read his comment and thought: jeez, he’s losing it. — I might have had a more sympathetic response to that had he generally shown more generosity to the people he disagrees with, but as it was, I thought: this is too odd not to comment on, and also: since I myself normally don’t read the comments at PW, I wouldn’t have found this without the link at Hullabaloo, and I think that if other people read PW similarly, this comment is worth knowing about, so they know more about who they’re reading.
I don’t think my original post was all that snarky, fwiw.
Slarti: if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not argue with Jeff, though of course if he wants to come over here and engage, I will (not having his view of engaging in one place while criticizing in another.) For one thing, I prefer to argue with people who don’t think criticism is like slathering one’s genitalia with peanut butter and hoping Jeff’s dog will lick it off, or like sticking one’s finger up orifices normally left to the dog itself and its proctologist.
More seriously, though, I think his writing is generally marred by a kind of overheated paranoia, and by an unwillingness to engage with his opponents. He seems to have a pretty well-developed picture of “the left”, and to think that it’s an adequate response to more or less any criticism to suggest that whoever made it just is exactly like that picture. Since, as far as I can tell, he hears any argument coming from anywhere to his left as made by his fantasy creation, it’s hard to see how one would engage him.
About his comments here: I quoted the ‘civil war’ claim without going on to say anything about what I thought it meant. If he thinks that’s misleading, he should consider whose fault that is. And it’s perfectly possible to think that words have effects without thinking that they have, in particular, the effect of damaging the war effort in any material way.
Jeff Goldstein demands your utmost respect and worship. He is a god among men. He will annihilate you with mind bullets.
This whole exercise was useful if only because it produced a gleaming specimen of the Goldstein prose for which he is so devoutly admired.
Second, you note the “civil war” comment but neglect to mention that my purpose, which I later explained quite clearly, was to frame it as an extension of the culture war — particularly the war for the soul of classical liberalism, which I see as being under attack from what is a pernicious brand of collectivism that shows itself in identity politics, the “diversity” movement, and a particularly dangerous, epistemologically decentering form or multiculturalism inspired by Edward Said — and I noted that I had no idea how it would happen, but that it could manifest itself in demographic shifts or certain states re-dedicating themselves to federalist legal principles and legal conservatism.
I mean, really, hilzoy, it was awfully gauche of you to simply quote the comment without explaining that Goldstein was referring to an extension of the culture war — particularly the war for the soul of classical liberalism, which he sees as being under attack from what is a pernicious brand of collectivism that shows itself in identity politics, the “diversity” movement, and a particularly dangerous, epistemologically decentering form or multiculturalism inspired by Edward Said — and that he noted that he had no idea how it would happen, but that it could manifest itself in demographic shifts or certain states re-dedicating themselves to federalist legal principles and legal conservatism. Would that have been so hard?
Really, given that he went to such pains to convey his meaning “clearly,” the least you could have done is provide that simple explanation to your readers. I’m afraid your failure to supply any context brands you as objectively pro-Derrida.
“Second, you note the “civil war” comment but neglect to mention that my purpose, which I later explained quite clearly”
So we are all now responsible for reading all of his posts, and I mean all of them, just in case an update later on unmentioned in the original post clarifies the situation.
Apparently with Jeff, we are not supposed to take words as having meanings on their own, except when he says they do.
We used to have Trotskyist sectarian in-fighting. Now we have blogs.
Thus spake Maxathustra.
jerry: it’s all part of being epistemologically decentered, doncha know.
“More seriously, though, I think his writing is generally marred by a kind of overheated paranoia”
Pot, meet kettle.
It’s high time to pschoanalyze the likes of the whiny crybaby Goldstein. In the face of so much obvious deceit, corruption, venality , and incompetence, Goldstein’s dogged loyalty to Bush can only have its roots in an unstable emotional life. (Perhaps he wants to help destroy this country, subconsciously, to get back at someone or something?) A google search turns up an interview in which he states, in all apparent seriousness, that his musical idol is Dan Fogleberg. That suggests someone whose tastes have not evolved in 30 years and who is fearful/distrustful/suspicious/threatened by new and different things — a classic conservative trait. His amateur fiction, which you can find on his site, fails for precisely the same reasons that there are virtually no great rightwing fiction writers (Goldstein can ponder that riddle himself). And his posts are pretentious, verbose, and filled with errors in logic. Something almost certainly went very wrong in his childhood, and if he really is a nice guy who likes a beer, I kind of feel sorry for him.
“there are virtually no great rightwing fiction writers.”
What about Jack London, Celine, Flaubert, and Saul Bellow?
Seriously, why would you want to “engage” anyone as narcissistic, thin-skinned, unfunny, and fundamentally wrong about everything as Goldstein?
There, I wrote it. Happy now, Atrios?
What about Jack London, Celine, Flaubert, and Saul Bellow?
Awww. I was gonna go with Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Powerline, Captain Ed…
He said “dogged.”
Heh, heh, heh.
Celine was an antisemite, true. Was Jack London “great?” Not really. Flaubert has nothing in common that I can see with today’s Republican Party, and in fact mercilessly ridicules (albeit with compassion), in Madame Bovary and elsewhere, the French version of middle-class, conservative redstaters circa 1850.
Bellow I don’t know much about. Anyone?
What about Jack London, Celine, Flaubert, and Saul Bellow?
Hm, a possible 2 out of 4 … the adjective was “great.” Only Flaubert definitely makes the cut, from that list; but I confess to not having read Celine (isn’t he the “…” guy?).
But I’ll concur in the larger point, that it’s mistaken to suppose that there aren’t great fiction writers who are right-wing.
Dostoevsky should also fit. Tolstoy is hard to classify, but I suspect he’s more right-wing than not. Those 2 plus Flaubert should resolve the issue conclusively.
Magyar, from the letters of Flaubert’s that I’ve read, he would be blogging furiously against “moonbats” nowadays, not without contempt for the puerility of his apparent ideological compatriots.
He was friends with Georges Sand but wrote her the most appalling political comments.
What about Jack London, Celine, Flaubert, and Saul Bellow?
You mean the Jack London who wrote “Why I am a Socialist”? Real John Bircher, that guy.
Y’all are anti-Semitic. Jeff gets all this attention because he’s Jewish. If a good Christian wrote a violent, foul, dorky, moron post, people wouldn’t get all upset.
It’s like they’re entitled, whereas Jews are supposed to be all intelligent and civilized. But what if a Jew wants to break the sterotype and write dorky, moron, chauvinist posts?
Who are we to say that we shouldn’t? We should just ignoe him like we ignore all the good Christian dorks. Jeff is a pioneer.
/Hitler
Since when is Jack “The Iron Heel” London right wing? Unless you’re using the same ju-jitsu that turns nazism into a left-wing movement?
But I’ll concur in the larger point, that it’s mistaken to suppose that there aren’t great fiction writers who are right-wing.
See, if you’re going to take this seriously, what fun is it?
So we are all now responsible for reading all of his posts, and I mean all of them, just in case an update later on unmentioned in the original post clarifies the situation.
Jerry, that is God’s own truth. If you try to engage him in a serious discussion on his site, (and can ignore the feces throwing monkeys that populate his comments section), he will insist that you need to read everything he’s written on the subject. Sometimes he provides links, sometimes not.
And this from a guy who can turn a simple concept into a 200 word sentence. You would have to read reams and reams of grad student bullshit before he deems you worthy of response.
I actually tried, once, but he never links to original sources that I could find. Just back to more of his densely worded garbage.
I’ll tell you what, though, he’s convinced me he’s a former English grad student and current hausfrau.
But are there any great Bush-supporting fiction writers working today? Musicians? Actors? Painters? Dancers? Scientists?
I can’t think of a single one.
Nor do I think Tolstoy, Doestevsky, Flaubert, etc. would be fans of Bush-Cheney. At least, it’s hard to imagine.
Ah, a kind of selective inverse appeal to popularity, or guilt by nonassociation. Interesting.
Now, this is a lot better than dog proctology. I tend to agree with Magyar about Jack London, who is, at any rate, a pretty silly example of right wing, unless the claims that there is a racial component are evidence of right wingedness, which is something that I wouldn’t claim.
Celine is interesting person to claim as right wing. Certainly a great writer, but given the experimentation in his work, ‘right-wing’ would not refer to conservative, but to anti-semitic. He was also considered a Vichy collaborator, so definitely not someone you want to hold up as an example, though Leonidas’ mileage may vary.
Flaubert is another interesting one, in that he was also supremely pessimistic (the descriptions of the cuckolded husband in Madame Bovary stick with me) and pretty disgusted with society of his time. The choice of those two as being great right wing writers is therefore a bit ironic, since it seems they are right wing because they are dissatisfied with the mores of the time.
While Bellow was on the opposite pole from Mailer and the anti Vietnam crowd, I wonder if Bellow’s quote claiming there is no Zulu Tolstoy or Papuan Proust provides the main claim for Bellow being ‘right wing’.
Anderson adds Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, but Dostoyevski was famously anti-Tsarist until tortured and subsequently became conservative while Tolstoy was pacifist (he inspired Gandhi) and a proto-anarchist, which seems a bit far from right wing.
All of this makes me wonder precisely what ‘right wing’ means in this context. Anyone want to take a stab at that?
Nope. I think it’s starting to mean the same thing as neocon now does: “those bastards over there”.
“Straw Grasper wrote:
‘What about Jack London, Celine, Flaubert, and Saul Bellow?
You mean the Jack London who wrote “Why I am a Socialist”? Real John Bircher, that guy.’
Damn, you beat me to it.
However, London was also a pretty virulent racist. Maybe that’s what Leonidas was referring to?
lj: I don’t want to take a stab at defining it, but, with the caveat that most really great writers will be hard to characterize, and won’t fit neatly into boxes, I’d suggest VS Naipaul. At his best, I think he really is great, and while I think he’s incredibly insightful, his views have a rightward inflection to them that is not, imho, the most useful part of them.
Preemptively: I disagree with a lot of what he says about Muslims — I think he’s much weaker than usual there — and I also think he’s a misogynist, or at least does a decent imitation of one.
Now, this is a lot better than dog proctology.
As if there’s anything better than dog proctology.
About the Naipaul comment (more preemption): when I said he was misogynistic, what I meant was not some sort of generic PC complaint, but this:
In a lot of his novels, especially from the 60s-80s, there’s a scene in which a central female character is brutally sexually degraded. Naipaul is a good writer, so in any given novel you can think: well, I can see how the novel’s development called for this, and it’s not as though describing something is endorsing it — as though, for instance, we somehow have to read Shakespeare as pro-blinding.
But when you read enough of them, you notice that it’s basically the same scene, which finds its way into one novel after another. And that’s different, it seems to me, and requires a different explanation than “the novel’s development seems to call for it. Again and again and again.”
His writings about Islam and Muslims are, I think, marred by a sort of basic contempt that gets in the way of insight. I think one is much more likely to get interesting insights about the Muslim world by reading some of his novels about non-Muslims, insofar as some of the problems there are not at all specific to religion.
That said, I think that A Bend In The River, The Mimic Men, and A House For Mr. Biswas are genuinely great novels.
London started left and ended right (wrong). Ditto John Dos Passos and Saul Bellow.
Y’all forgot Dostoyevsky, right from the start.
Methinks some of you take this blogging thing a wee bit too seriously.
Step away from your computers, go get some fresh air, and do something more substantive with your time. Do something that really matters.
All this neurotic need to prove moral, intellectual and ethical superiorty is boring and pointless.
The blogging world has turned into a junior high locker room where all the twits and bullies run around playing “rat tail” to see who can leave the biggest welt on someone else’s butt cheeks.
How cleaver! How original! How intellectual!
Ick. A pox on you all.
Celine: anti-semite, misanthrope, and pacifist. Oh, and anti-captitalist (See Mort a Credit [Death on the Credit-System]).
Claiming Flaubert as a right-wing author is even sillier, but I’d be too tempted to go into excrutiating detail.
Where are all the great left-wing golfers?
I honestly can’t think of any.
The blogging world has turned into a junior high locker room…
“Has turned into”? Hasn’t it always been so? Gary, help me out here.
Naipaul is right-wing insofar as he is something of a cultural and intellectual elitist vis-a-vis those in the Carib who are stuck in angry post-colonial victim status.
Enough with Dostoevsky. The man was nearly executed and became virulently anti-capital punishment, making him a mushy bleeding heart to today’s manly conservatives.
“You’re confused. That’s Tim Maguire.”
Is he related to Tom Maguire?
Posted by: Gary Farber | March 22, 2006 at 03:19 AM
So far as I know, all MAG Maguires are from the same little town in Ireland, so distantly maybe, but yes.
Thank you for this moment of fame.
Be sure and leave your billing address, tim; there’ll be a small charge. Better yet, email me your credit-card number.
The blogging world has turned into a junior high locker room…
It’s been a long climb, and there is still a ways to go, but maybe we should pause a moment on this plateau ;^)
I think Naipaul’s politics are shaped by colonialism and what appears to be a right wing tendency is really a desire to conform. In that sense, it is more akin to mimicry than to actual outlook.
See, if you’re going to take this seriously, what fun is it?
Doh! Not normally one of my faults, Anarch, everyone will have to admit that.
But, LJ, Tolstoy’s religious, moral and aesthetic views would probably make him *not* left-wing, at the very least. The right wing might claim him if he weren’t too noisy. (The RCC is, if not pacifist, at least not terribly pro-war; and yet, Roman Catholics were told to vote against Kerry.)
Probably a party of one, like his wannabe Solzhenitsyn (sp?)? It’s useful to read Tolstoy’s religious writings to be presented with someone who cuts at a diagonal across our dehistoricized ideologies. Even if he was a bit daft about Nietzsche.
But are there any great Bush-supporting fiction writers working today? Musicians? Actors? Painters? Dancers? Scientists?
Ahnold
Chuck Norris
Wayne Newton
That one guy who said there isn’t global warming
But, LJ, Tolstoy’s religious, moral and aesthetic views would probably make him *not* left-wing, at the very least.
that’s interesting. I always think of left wing as having two distinct flavors, sort of a whipped soft cream nationalization and a Rocky Road anarchism. Certainly that exists on the right with the libertarians, but not to the extent that it exists on the left.
The location of the RCC is always interesting, in that you have the strong reaction to liberation theology, yet the church hierarchy seems to realize that the future for them lies in the Third World.
But I’m beginning to wish everyone were a party of one these days.
From Rosemary Edmond’s introduction to her translation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection:
“Tolstoy’s humanism antagonized his own class, whom he accused of doing violence to the little man…Tolstoy’s attempts to rouse the oppressed against their oppressors provoked opposition from the Church…”
And this:
“The ‘Doukhobors’ was the name given to a fundamentalist peasant sect whose precepts had much in common with Tolstoy’s own teaching. They preached chastity, teetotalism, vegetarianism, the sharing of all goods and property, and, above all, non-resistance to evil by force.”
Jeff Goldstein is a right-wing nihilist.
Gary Sinise
Bruce Willis
Tony Hopkins
I have to say that culturally Mr. Goldstiein is a bit confused. Certainly the followig is not an attempt to save “classical values,” but a sort of Henry Millerian flow of consciousness on airplane glue, the sort of writing conservatives usually deplore as destructive to our civilization.
on 03/20 at 11:24 PM
[deleted for profanity, and also because it…well, it sort of cut-and-pasted a post that was LINKED TO in the main post. PLEASE come out of the stone age, wouldja? – Ed.]
Anderson,
I’ll agree with magyar — Tolstoy is very nuch left wing, not right, at least in anything he wrote from 1880 on. While one can make the case that War and Piece or Anna Karenina are right wing (although War and Piece was started as a way to show in a favorable light the antecedents for the Decembrist Uprising and the view of women’s rights expressed in Anna Karenina is anything but traditionalist), Resurrection, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, Master and Man, et al. speak to a moral philosophy of equality and respect for human rights which is well-reflected in his personal religious beliefs (he himself viewed Quakerism as the closest parallel in the Anglo-American tradition). Similarly, Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and similar works show him regularly arguing against traditional values and his own upper class interests, as does his personal lobbying of the czar to free Russian serfs. And the author of Hadji Murad cannot be said to embrace a Bush-like foreign policy.
HEY! I take that comment “has the intellect of a gibbon” as a compliment! None of us Gibbons were ever taken in by boy blunders barage of batty BS.
Well, actually one was, my brother has been a big fan of a certain fat-assed junkie on radio ever since he (my bro) had a car accident & suffered serious brain damage – thats no joke.
We Gibbons are quite astute.
“”Has turned into”? Hasn’t it always been so? Gary, help me out here.”
As I’ve noted before, various people came to blogging via different paths and pasts.
I flowed into it in December, 2001 out of Usenet, and into Usenet in 1995 from writing in science fiction fanzines and “amateur press associations” (same exact thing as blog comments, but done via mimeograph and ditto machines and the like, and circulated mostly via mail, though sometimes in person, mostly quarterly, bimonthly, monthly, and bi-weekly, though there were a few daily apas over the course of a convention, as well).
Sf fanzines and apas go back to 1930.
And, yeah, there were people in the early Thirties writing “you guys take this stuff too seriously; you really need to lighten up; you’re so boring” letters of comment then.
Seen ’em all my life, since I started writing for fanzines at age 12 in 1971, and in the old stuff from the Fifties, Forties, and Thirties I once had a world-class collection of.
There are always new twists, though. Jeff has carved out a dog proctology area of his own, for example.
Here is my account of meeting Jeff, and others, a couple of years ago, by the way; it has one of my own few uses of sexual usage in a piece, though naturally it was inspired by Jeff and Steve Green; a bit of homage, if you will.
“Jeff Goldstein is a right-wing nihilist.”
No, no, Jeff is an uber-rightist.
Folks, “right-wing” and “Bush supporter” are not, technically at least, synonyms. I am not putting “What Would Tolstoy Do?” on my bumper.
His beliefs about equality, etc. are great, but there’s also a big conservative streak there. Can’t argue the point any better without some texts in front of me.
(And how did we forget Dostoevsky’s biggest fan in the White House, Laura Bush?)
Anderson,
Can you define what you view conservatism as being for this discussion? If belief in equality of all men, regardless of class born into, in an era when his country still had serfs, and rejection of middle class aspirations and upper class privleges is not liberal, I am not sure what is.
Note that I am not arguing the point of Dostoevsky’s conservatism.
Hey, man, you don’t talk to Jeff. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you”… I mean I’m no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s… he’s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
Can you define what you view conservatism as being for this discussion? If belief in equality of all men, regardless of class born into, in an era when his country still had serfs, and rejection of middle class aspirations and upper class privleges is not liberal, I am not sure what is.
Well, I was thinking of American conservatives today, who I believe are committed to all men’s being created equal. Slarti? Von?
The part about aspirations & privileges is a bit vague for me to respond to.
Tolstoy’s “equality” is a bit like the old saw about all Russians’ being equally abased before the Tsar; just put “God” in for “tsar.” He was against humanism, which I think is pretty inseparable from anything I would call “left-wing” today. On “family value,” I suspect he would be pretty reliably Republican.
Time for us to conduct a seance and settle this matter once and for all! Count … Count … are you there? Send spam to my inbox for “YES” …
(Also, serfhood in Russia was abolished under Alexander II in the 1860s, tho the freed serfs were left with rather impossible debts on “their” land for decades to come.)
Tolstoy “against humanism?”
Let us return to Tolstoy scholar and translator Rosemary Edmond:
“Tolstoy’s humanism antagonized his own class, whom he accused of doing violence to the little man…Tolstoy’s attempts to rouse the oppressed against their oppressors provoked opposition from the Church…”
Bush is an idiot.
Hey, thanks for thinking of me. The Lincoln comparison, though: a bit over the top.
As for the rest of the conversation, I tend not to classify people that aren’t doing politics or political commentary as conservatives or liberals. I can’t recall the last concert I attended where I was in any way interested in the politics of the performers. Ditto art, dance, etc.
Bush is an idiot.
I agree.
I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you”… I mean I’m no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s… he’s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now?
Blogbudsman: classic.
Hey L. Tolstoy, just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for “What Men Live by” and the other late stories.
the funniest man on the internet
Ive said it before and Ive said it again: Jeff Goldstein is the funniest man on the internet, bar none. I defy anyone to go Protein Wisdom and not find three or four laugh-out loud funny lines. Agree with him or not, the man is serious…
What rilkefan said. Long time no see, Leo. Hope you’ve read Das Buch vom lieben Gott und anderes, which is sort of an homage to you in its way.
I was a great right-wing writer once, though not of fiction. Alas, those who now call themselves ‘conservatives’ have deserted me for a band of howling Jacobins, leaving me without an ideological home.
I mourn my erstwhile comrades.
Is it being suggested that Jeff Goldstein’s methods have become… unsound?
Is it being suggested that Jeff Goldstein’s methods have become… unsound?
It is being suggested that he has method at all.
Should have said “no method at all”.
And watch out, man, those monkeys bite!
What about me?
“…he has not a shread of honor or compassion for others, their words or bodies.”
Comte, you have revealed the answer to the question, posed upthread, as to why wingnuts rarely succeed in the arts, let alone pursue them.
Okay, I’ll concede that Tolstoy was neither left-wing nor right-wing by today’s standards. “Christian anarchism” is a bit difficult to pigeonhole.
(Tho I do suspect that dropping in on us today & viewing a Britney Spears video would cause a strong right-shift on his spot in the political spectrum … just sayin’.)
Anyone on this thread has to read this. Not because it turns out that Jeanne thinks about me what i think about her, thereby threatening some sort of Star Trek-like computer-exploding regress, but — well, you’ll see.
Just go read it.
I’m getting excited.
But seriously, what is wrong with these right-wing humans?
Re: Jeanne’s post, the woman who contributed vital ingredients to the wager was photographed going into court with a rather provocative-looking book.
It somewhat shakes my faith in military tribunals that a witness felt safe going in carrying that book. Free country and all, but I wouldn’t let a witness or client carry that into federal court.
“I’m getting excited.”
I’m not sure “excited” is the right way to go.
In the “amazing things conservatives say” file:
— John Derbyshire
More Derbyshire, along the same line.
Anderson, you’re right that Tolstoy’s completely different economic context makes it almost impossible to plot along contemporary left-right spectra, but have you read his completely weird play “The Power of Darkness, or If a Claw is Caught, The Bird is Lost”? It’s a grim proto-realist tale about infanticide among the desperately poor peasantry. There are two versions of the central plot incident, one of which depicts, ob scena, IRRC, a newborn’s skull being beaten in with a brick. It’s the earliest direct depiction of infanticide I know of,* and certainly one of the most violent. He lays down so well the groundwork for why the mother feels she has to kill the child that I’m still not sure where he’d come out on a modern abortion debate. I’m willing to bet, though, that he’d be a partisan on one side of the debate or another.
* I don’t really consider the ancient Greek abandonment of babies on mountains realistic, nor is the indirect and by today’s standards totally obscure invocation of it in Wordsworth’s “The Thorn.” Anyone know of other early examples of abortion or infanticide in literature?
Oooooh … Jackmormon, my 18-mo.-old has left me utterly unequal to any depictions of infanticide. I was reading a perfectly mundane mention of a Scottish noble’s having his enemy’s baby’s brains dashed out (in Penguin’s new history of England after the Conquest, very good) and got all teary-eyed. Don’t think I’ll be picking up the play.
You are right to put your finger on Tolstoy’s eerie power of empathy; I would observe that Tolstoy could do this even (especially?) with characters of whom he disapproved. Going back through Anna Karenina lately, and his ability and willingness to get inside Vronsky, Anna, Stepan, and Alexei is just staggering.
But at the same time, it makes it very tricky to say whom T. identifies with. Agreed that he’d be a partisan on abortion, but it would depend on whether he formed his opinion on an even or odd day, I think. (Berlin’s “hedgehog wanting to be a fox,” I just realized, captures what I’m up to.)
Jackmormon: Try Psalm 147, which (I think) CS Lewis found a Scots version of, that went:
And blessed may tha’ trooper be
Who, riding on his naggie
Sha’ tae thy wee bairns by the taes
And ding them o’ the craggie
Though perhaps you were thinking only of killing one’s own infants?
Jackmormon: Try Psalm 147…
No, that would be Psalm 137. You heathen.
I don’t really consider the ancient Greek abandonment of babies on mountains realistic, …
Why not?
I was, hilzoy. I just looked up Psalm 147, though, and, wow, I certainly didn’t find any corresponding sentiment in the KJT translation. One nice thing about modernity: there isn’t an accepted rationale for killing an enemy’s children.
Anderson, my first nephew had just recently been born when I read that play, and it gave me the royal heebie-jeebies. So, by all means, don’t read it right away: it’ll still be there later.
You’re right about T’s power of empathy with a wide swath of characters. I think the same applies to Flaubert, although he always revised his empathetic drafts to emphasize the ironic view of the characters’ beliefs. Perhaps the difference between the two writers is that Tolstoy’s empathy seems possible under the Christian imperative of understanding the workings of sin, and Flaubert’s under the pitiless eye of History? I’m winging it here; no Russian culture expert, I.
Claiming a long-dead writer as a speaker for a contemporary debate is so problematic. I’m not sure which side is more guilty of it. The caricatured conservative: all wisdom is contained in Plato (or Jesus), and all intellectual production since him has been either deviation from or elaboration of him!!1! The caricatured progressive: any historical writer the conservatives think important was actually a radical and would totally been on my side today, and besides, look at this overlooked writer at the time who was even more on my side!!!1!!
Ah, culture wars.
Cited due to the footnoting, and the 30%+ exposure estimate “in antiquity”.
I thought it was the Roman practice for the paterfamilias to decide on an infant’s naming day whether to raise or expose it.
137 makes much more sense. Verse 9 (KJT):
d-p-u: largely because, in the Greek literature with which I’m familiar, that version of infanticide is described so indirectly as to be a cause for narrative only when it is circumvented by Fate, as happened in the cases of Oedipus and Romulus(?). Maybe that’s another kind of realism, one in which exposure is so culturally common that an infant’s surviving it provides an origin for legend. I’m not a Classicist, though, any more than I’m specialized in Russian culture, so I don’t know if there are many ancient Greek descriptions of infants exposed on mountains who didn’t survive somehow to become mythic characters.
It was certainly my experience in reading classical literature that the prose writers at least seemed to be on the conservative side, and I think the poets too outside of Catullus and Lucretius. But then it seems petty to call Thucydides a conservative or anything other than a historian. Maybe some of my take on the historians and philosophers was due to a general sense of otherness. I had the unexamined uninformed feeling that liberalism in writing was a feature of modernity. No doubt I wasted my time in college.
Rilkefan: experiencing otherness when reading historical authors is probably the most appropriate response. The article you linked in your 8:26 comment does have interesting footnotes–although, ye gods, its argument!–and I hope to be able to look into some of its sources soon. I’d really like to get a better understanding of what women were doing with unwanted children before history really started to pay attention to such matters.
I’m not a Classicist, though, any more than I’m specialized in Russian culture, so I don’t know if there are many ancient Greek descriptions of infants exposed on mountains who didn’t survive somehow to become mythic characters.
But it would be something of a tautology that infants who did not survive abandonment would not have legends written about them. There is little in the way of romantic herocism about expiring of exposure in the woods as an infant.
And it’s not definitive proof or anything, but I’ve always been fond of this phrase: Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
“Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.”
Maybe,
“Back in the day, kids like you would have been put out to die on the most windy broken [rocks?].”
Jackmormon: sorry about misremembering the psalm number. I’d recommend John Boswell’s book on it, here. (Not that this is my field or anything. I was just interested, at one point, and unprofessional me thought it was good.)
According to google (hey, I said I wasn’t a Classicist), the last part approximates to “crags.”
d-p-u, if all of the historic accounts of Greek exposure are of epic children who survived their mothers’ attempts to expose them, please forgive me if I stick by my earlier description of them as being “non-realistic.” It’s depictions of successful infanticides I was interested in, as morbid as that may seem.
Wikipedia says, “A practice described in Roman texts was to smear the breast with opium residue so that a nursing baby would die with no outward cause.” Not something I had learned in my studies, for which I’m grateful.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
From one of Henry Beard’s Latin books, right?
His French for Cats is a masterpiece. If you have a cat, anyway.
Wikipedia says, “A practice described in Roman texts was to smear the breast with opium residue so that a nursing baby would die with no outward cause.” Not something I had learned in my studies, for which I’m grateful.
Ewwww … I’m going home now.
“I’m going home now.”
[repressing inappropriate joke]
kinda like the emperor’s new clothes?
far be it from me to enter into the goldstein bash-a-thon (personally all his multisyllabics and erotic imagery make me quite e-shivery with e-pleasure), but i would like just like to point the intelligent comment content at Atrios seems to be approaching limit zero. thass why i read goldstein and not duncan.
and people like you and duncan and marcos, hilzoy, are the ones forcing me to swear fealty to GW. it is obvious that you have no alternative plan for keeping me safe, and you just want to rant and rave.
i loathe the bush admin’s anti-science platform with the fire of a thousand suns, but no democratic congressperson will say boo about that, because you are all gutless vote-whoring cowards and you know championing ESCR or fisking ID will lose you possible red-state votes.
YOU are making me vote republican, hilzoy.
matoko: there are rules about civility here. Also, you should consider reading some of the posts in which I write about keeping us safe. YMMV, of course.
Thanks, google! ESCR = Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
If ESCR stood for Environazi, Soveitophiliac, Commie Revolution, then I might have to defend my position!
I don’t see what hilzoy has in common with either of them, myself. At all. Look, I don’t agree with all that hilzoy has to say, but neither do I lump her in with everyone else I disagree with. That would be…well, not very smart.
Hey, Slartibartfast, while you and I are in the same thread:
Please do check out what’s been going on at HoCB. I started it to stent off the hatefulness that was clotting conversation here, but HoCB’s not been as hateful as one might assume. We’ve tried to encourage nonpartisan chat, and I’ve tried, in my dubious authority, to discourage petty tediousness (I keep threatening to make those qualities official rules for banning). For the most part, HoCB has become the perpetual ObWi open thread–so, again, welcome.
“YOU are making me vote republican, hilzoy.”
YOU are also making me cook chicken, shallots, asparagus, and farfalle with lemon and butter for dinner, hilzoy.
I just knew she had an evil streak in her.
Jackmormon, perhaps tomorrow. Tonight I have to get a presentation together that condenses the work I’ve done in the last five years into perhaps a couple of dozen charts. First, I have to remember what I’ve been up to.
I am Ozymandias, king of kings. Or perhaps I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. In any case, I hope you are all amazed by my cosmic powerz.
I think Jeff Goldstein should whip Tristero across the face with his [deleted: don’t make me come over there – Ed]. That’ll teach the Islamofascist bastard.
The essential dilemma that defines Jeff Goldstein’s life: how to be a hipster while still being a nauseating fountain of Republican talking points who would embarrass the dignitaries of the local country club? It’s not easy being Jeff.
Removed assorted naughty bits of language; please remember the posting rules.
Don’t make me pull this car over, kids.
Hey, no fair. I was merely quoting Chairman Jeff hisself, who once threatened on a comment thread to whip an enemy with his d–k, and later boasted of making this extremely gay threat on his own website.
And yes I should have previewed that comment for spelling erors.
And yes I should have previewed that comment for spelling errors.
Stop by whenever you can, Slartibartfast. Good luck on your presentation, although I’m sure you don’t need my well-wishes.
If, however, you want to proactively punish youself with others’ pet peeves about presentations in general, here is Crroked Timber’s recent thread on the subject. (Do ignore the link if you feel that your presentation prep is going well.)
linkage, please?
how was i uncivil? i spoke the truth without profanity.
slart, the common denominator is that all leftist/democrats will stand up for no issue unless they believe it will win them votes.
Ack, really ignore all of the above: at this point, get some sleep. If you aren’t prepared by now, you’ll need to be well-rested to finesse whatever you have available.
(I’m speaking generally, rather to any particular knowledge about Slart’s neurological processors.)
Matoko, perhaps Hilzoy believes “you are all gutless vote-whoring cowards” isn’t the best example of engaging in civil discussion?
I hope you are all amazed by my cosmic powerz.
I hope this isn’t taken as belittling your powers, hilzoy, but I’m more worried about the possibility of an absence of free will in the comment written by our scythian friend. I think I’m going to re-read Dennett on zombies, but I do recall that Herodotus said that the scythians were cannibals and drank wine from the gilded skulls of their enemies. Nice art though.
Matoko: sorry, your comment seemed like the sort one would write only given some familiarity with the writing of the person I was talking about. Here are a few that leap to mind:
On Iraq: here.
On ‘keeping us safe’ more generally, some older pieces are still basically valid, and they’re longer than what I;ve written more recently, since they’re where I spelled out some of my ideas to start with, and I didn’t want to repeat myself.
Nuclear non-proliferation
Homeland Security
sorry; that should be: the person one was talking about.
When this site was founded by Moe Lane, and for the couple of years after that he was still here, he’d blow his cork if anyone uttered such a generality about Republicans, and he’d be correct, because since an absolute statement couldn’t possible, remotely, be true, as is, of course, perfectly obvious. Even a single exception falsifies the claim.
rilkefan: YOU are also making me cook chicken, shallots, asparagus, and farfalle with lemon and butter for dinner, hilzoy.
Great. Now YOU are making me hungry, hilzoy — by proxy!
hilzoy: I hope you are all amazed by my cosmic powerz.
I’m amazed enough that it’s “cozmic powerz”, hilsoy.
give me the single exception, Gary, and i’ll apolo.
a democratic congressperson that will shred ID and stand up for ESCR and biotechnology research against the foul pronouncements of the odious “bioethics” council.
after the SotU all dKos could do was make humanzee jokes. You, know, you have a great opportunity to demonstrate GW can’t protect us–bioterrorism and biowarfare. How can he protect us from that? Biotech is just as distasteful to him as that nasty dirty HUMINT was to Clinton.
now i’ll go read hilzoy’s links.
liberaljaponicus, i’ve read dennett, and atran and boyer and hamiliton and fisher and wright and dawkins too.
Salmonia the sycthian was reputed (also by Heroditas) to have given the pythagoreans the secret of eternal life.
i’m an aubrey de grey fan.
nope, sorry hilzoy.
80% of that post was armchair quarterbacking and the rest, Byman’s drawdown, seems completely non-viable to me based on what i know about games theory and MENA.
Jeff is certainly right about one thing, the constant whiny armchair quarterbacking about OIF from the left is a propaganda gift to the fundamantalists, who are basically kicking our asses on both fronts of the meme wars.
i don’t really care about how awful you think Abu Ghraib was or how the intel was mismanaged.
i’d just love to see some vision from the left instead of improbable bandaids and whining..
liberaljaponicus, i’ve read dennett, and atran and boyer and hamiliton and fisher and wright and dawkins too.
That’s nice, so you must be aware of dennett’s dissection of the problems of zombies as it relates to free will (in _Brainchildren_) and I hope you can see the relation to your comment that hilzoy is ‘making’ you vote republican.
I’m also wondering why you start out as a scythian, but move to being a ‘listener’ of Pythagoras (akousmatikoi) and back to a scythian. There are some points about the school of Pythagoras that suggest themselves, but absent any other information, I will await your explanation.
Well, I come to this little brouhaha late, but still I have one observation.
If Moto can’t stand the Dems because they don’t take an principled stand and oppose ID et al, how does he justify supporting GW and his gang when they PUSH ID? With an egregiously unprincipled stand, at that.
Oh, and as for safe, GW’s record is simply horrible. It takes a concrete set of denial balls to maintain the Bush makes ANYONE safe.
Even if safety were achievable in any real and personal sense. ‘Cause it ain’t. It’s sort of like “dark” – there is no quantity for dark, only for light. In the same way, there are only degrees of risk, not degrees of safety.
Ok, that was 3 observations. I’m no god at predictions, I guess.
Jake
Jake – but not that one,
“I’m no god at predictions, I guess.”
Is the other Jake?
It’s so tempting to ask what the relevance of game theory is to my post on Iraq, but somehow I’ll resist.
Dan, it was a mistype that was too good to correct.
And, no, to my knowledge, Jake the one is no god at predictions either.
Though I’ve never met the man.
There is only one thing that I keep wondering about having read JeffG’s ranty blog postings, ranty comments, and some of his creative output. How on Earth did this guy *ever* make a living writing? At least his ‘about’ page essentially acknowledged that he failed in his career as a writer.
Tommy: He says he took time off to raise his kid. I am allergic to assuming that guys who make this decision do so because they have failed; if everyone thinks that, it just makes life immeasurably harder for guys who just really do want to take time off for their kids. So since I don’t know the details, I take him at his word on this.
Leaving aside, of course, the evidence of the writing itself, whose assessment I leave to you, our gentle readers.
i loathe the bush admin’s anti-science platform with the fire of a thousand suns, but no democratic congressperson will say boo about that, because you are all gutless vote-whoring cowards and you know championing ESCR or fisking ID will lose you possible red-state votes.
Waxman?
hilzoy writes: About his comments here: I quoted the ‘civil war’ claim without going on to say anything about what I thought it meant. If he thinks that’s misleading, he should consider whose fault that is. And it’s perfectly possible to think that words have effects without thinking that they have, in particular, the effect of damaging the war effort in any material way.
I don’t think what you wrote about Jeff’s civil war comment is misleading. His post, in which he declared an American civil war likely imminent, was about the Feingold censure resolution that pertains to Bush’s law-breaking in the NSA warrantless searches scandal. Jeff proceeded to declare all Democrats to be the tin-plated scum of the Earth, or some such, and to characterize the censure resolution as part of an effort to destroy Bush, and thereby help the enemy and see America defeated. That was all the prelude to his announcement that America has lost its way, and he predicted a (non-violent)civil war.
He was not referencing merely “culture wars.” The discussion was entirely in the context of evil Democrats in general, and Feingold’s censure resolution in particular.
(Btw- I’ve been a commenter at Jeff’s. Sometimes I’ve found him clever and amusing. But I stopped being a Bush supporter when the NSA matter came out, since I advocate an Executive that obeys the law and respects the separation of powers. So, I seldom comment there now.)
I also read at Glenn Greenwald’s. Jeff, in his post “explaining” his civil war remarks noted that he was supposed to be included somwhat favorably, as a subject in a guest blog post at Greenwald’s — Jeff asserted that Greenwald had censored the post because it said anything nice about him.
That isn’t true. The discussion of the issue in Greenwald’s comments indicates that the guest blogger deep-sixed her own post — that was calling for reasoned engagement with libertarian-leaning Bush supporters — when she read Jeff’s call for civil war in the context of the Feingold censure resolution. She felt that was so unreasonable that it destroyed the argument she was making. In other words, others read that bizarre proclamation just as hilzoy did.
Finally, about tristero. I first encountered him at left2Right, back when they still had comments. He is provocative, but overall polite. He knows a good deal about some subjects, and informed me of things I had not understood as to who funds the Intelligent Design movement. What Jeff wrote about him was truly repugnant, and entirely umerited merely because of one mildly snarky link to Atrios. That much mean-spirited really perverted filth in the context of slamming someone whom one is banning, is really gross.
Jeff: at some point, when lots of different people are telling you that you are off the deep end, and they are not buying your strained “explantiuons,” it is wise to think that maybe — just maybe — they are on to something.
Salmonia the sycthian was reputed (also by Heroditas)
Hmmm…way out of my knowledge comfort zone here, but if you’re referring to Herodotus, he’s entertaining but prone to serious errors.
I’ve been thinking this exact same thing of late, Jake. Which hearkens me back to the day when I was reading Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity.
Mona: you made my day. I keep thinking: the NSA issue surely isn’t, or shouldn’t be, partisan at all. I mean, surely most of us, or at least some significant number of us, are more concerned with our country, and the constitutional form of government that makes it great, than we are with our parties. So the willingness of (alleged) conservatives to defend the NSA program is incredibly disheartening to me — especially since a lot of the people defending it used to think that Janet Reno’s every action was just one more step on the road to tyranny.
That you don’t think that way gives me hope. Thanks.
“Mona: you made my day.”
Gee, I hope that doesn’t mean it’s all downhill from here. 🙂
So, Slarti, should I buy the book? Its 53 years old or something like that. Surely Watt’s doesn’t have anything to say to people in this new century?
(just teasing – I’m trying to figure out what other book I should buy so that I get the free shipping on Amazon)
I’m trying to figure out what other book I should buy so that I get the free shipping on Amazon
How about a book recommendation open thread, PTB?
Tolstoy is dead.
Lessee…if I recall correctly, Watts is probably interpreting Zen to something that can be understood by the average American Joe on the street. The gist of that part of the book I was remembering was that Watts was pointing out that there is no security, just the illusion of security. Probably he’s not asking why bother, but instead is suggesting that the notion that one has (for example) achieved some security in life, and the notion that that security could endure for years, even, is all just something that one tells oneself for reassurance. It’s a fabrication, and as soon as one realizes it’s a fabrication, one can get unstuck from this position of attempting to hold fast to the fiction.
Or something like that. I’ll have to pull it off the shelf and read it again one of these days.
The talk went great, although I’m unsure about whether it’s (career-wise) all that good of an idea to wind things up with a question for which you’re not even sure there is an answer.
My question was something like this: Given that in my five years or of working on this program, I’ve run into at least two quite different problems that revealed (and I’m leaving a lot out, here) errors in modeling not only of degree and kind but also in the base assumptions, is it possible to shorten the amount of time being stymied and proceed more quickly to reexamination of modeling assumptions?
It’s kind of a meta-problem-solving question: how to better solve the issue of apparently intractable problems. And of course in hindsight the solutions look so much more obvious, because we’re, in the present time, working under the new set of assumptions.
hilzoy writes:So the willingness of (alleged) conservatives to defend the NSA program is incredibly disheartening to me — especially since a lot of the people defending it used to think that Janet Reno’s every action was just one more step on the road to tyranny.
That you don’t think that way gives me hope. Thanks.
Well, not to detract from your hope, but I have always insisted that I am not a conservative. My intellectual guru is F.A. Hayek, and I reject that label for all the reasons he did, in an essay he entitled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” (Actually, a chapter in his book: The Constitution of Liberty.)
Hayekian libertarians are huge fans of the rule of law — provided only that the law is limited to protecting civil liberties and sanctioning those who initiate direct harm to others outside of the sphere of their own right to act. Our kind isn’t big on monarchs being unconstrained by a legislative body when it comes to how the govt shall search and surveille the citizenry. We tend to think laws about that sort of thing are, yanno, more than mere suggestions that the Executive should be free to dispense with.
That all said, there are self-proclaimed conservatives who are outraged by Bush’s lawless spying. Bob Barr, Bruce Fein, George Will, former FBI Director William Sessions. Even a few in Congress have been unable to hold back criticism, e.g., Lindsay Graham, Sam Brownback. (These last, of course, are failing to put country above party by not leading the charge w/ Feingold and demanding both that Bush start obeying the law, and that his manifest violations of it be investigated.)
Mona, today’s “conservatives” aren’t actually conservative, either. Brownback? Comeon, everything I read says he is working to create a defacto Theocracy.
Which doesn’t mean he is, but the perception is definitely there, and in politics, perception IS reality.
Not so in war – too bad for GW.
Frankly, I’m not sure what good it is to distinguish libertarians from garden variety reactionary conservatives. Just like the so called conservatives, you guys vote the Republican party line when the wind blows that way, then whine about the bad outcomes when it’s too late.
And them blame it all on the Democrats because they didn’t put up someone for whom you could bring yourself to vote. It’s all whine, whine, whine with you guys.
Ok, I’m being a little inflammatory. Except the whine, whine, whine part. Libertarians got that down pat.
> : )
Jake
JFTR, Jake, I self-identify as libertarian, and I have never voted for a Republican for a federal office for the 18 years I have been voting. Never ever ever. Too in bed with the theocrats for me to have ever felt comfortable doing so. I’d rather take my chances with the Democrats, who will at least listen to reason, when I’m not voting nth-party.
So, Slarti, I orders a Watts trilogy – it took 3 books to get above $25.
Insecurity
The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Become What You Are
I hope the price is not indicative of the content.
Jake
Oh, sure, Phil, there just has to be one sharp pencil in the box.
hilzoy, pardon.
i thought you were scient, and had perhaps read Atran on terrorist surrogate kinship groups and Maynard-Smith on evolution and the theory of games.
my mistake. 😉
liberaljaponicus:
hilzoy is mathematikoi here, i am aukousmatikoi. Salmonia was a slave of the pythagoreans yet also mathematikoi, a speaker.
slart:
Ahhh, but Heroditas is all we have, no?
If Moto can’t stand the Dems because they don’t take an principled stand and oppose ID et al, how does he justify supporting GW and his gang when they PUSH ID?
Jake, that is my point exactly. the left leaves me no choice but to support Bush. because they have no believeable vision.
hilzoy and drum even admit as much in the top post here.
Mato, you are delusional if you imagine that Bush’s position on ANYTHING, then or now, was or is in any way believable.
Two delusionals do not make an objective reality.
Jake
jake writes:Frankly, I’m not sure what good it is to distinguish libertarians from garden variety reactionary conservatives. Just like the so called conservatives, you guys vote the Republican party line when the wind blows that way, then whine about the bad outcomes when it’s too late.
And them blame it all on the Democrats because they didn’t put up someone for whom you could bring yourself to vote. It’s all whine, whine, whine with you guys.
Your truly don’t know what you are talking about. Myself, I didn’t vote for over ten years, until ’04. At the time, Schiavo hadn’t happened, the lawless spying was not an issue, and I hated Kerry. I also thought the war in Iraq was justified. (I spent my non-voting years on issues advocacy, primarily drug policy reform, an area in whihc both parties are awful.)
I am a Reasonoid and that bunch of libertarains was split in the last election. Now, many of us are heading Dem, to end the Bush/Frist lawless/populism. (This crowd is not mostly theocrats; they are populists who employ religion to their ends.)
Anyway, libertarians usually find much to dislike in both the GOP and the Donkey Team. If Bush were Goldwater, we’d mostly be Republicans, but Bush is the antithesis of Barry. So we aren’t.
Jake, I know how hard it is for you to imagine someone supporting anybody they disagree with, but Bush states that is a reason to support him.
Remember in 2004 when he repeatedly said, “You may not agree with me, but at least you know where I stand.”?
Of course, as polls showed, most people didn’t know where he stood on many issues and he himself changed positions more than he accused Kerry of doing.
Mato is merely echoing that same thing, which is kind of like supporting someone because he stands for something, even if I disagree with just about everything he stands for.
Aren’t NOW. Which is my point, Mona.
Even so, welcome home. You know, the prodigal story and all that.
Jake
PS – Reasonoid? Did I read that right? I mean, correctly?
Hmmmmm. I get your drift, John, even if I find the water a little shallow.
By Nov, 2004, Iraq was already a disaster. I can’t even get ny head around supporting the war in the beginning, much less continuing to support the war a year and a half into it.
It’s all too easy to wish for Camelot on the hill. One fell stroke for mankind, so to speak. But it was never more than an illusion broadcast by the delusional. Opium for the masses.
Jake
Aren’t NOW. Which is my point, Mona.
Even so, welcome home. You know, the prodigal story and all that.
Jake
PS – Reasonoid? Did I read that right? I mean, correctly?
(scratching head) Reason magazine and their Hit ‘n Run blog. As I said, that crew was split in ’04, but I think most voted for Kerry. It is simply wrong to say that, at least wrt the modern GOP, libertarians are essentially Republicans.
My sense is that at this point, the overwhelming majority of libertarians are baling on the populist GOP. See John Cole, fer instance. But give us too much leftist crap to tolerate, and we’ll go back to the Elephants.
Or you could always go to Lyndon Larouche.
Just kidding, really.
I’ve got two of those; only have read one, though.
liberaljaponicus, dennett is speaking on OSR tonight.
i am quite a fan.
I’ll let you in on a secret, Mona. I ain’t no leftist. I don’t even actually know any leftists. I think we all got lumped together when the “right” moved over into the totally corrupt and reactionary column.
I used to have a boss like that (not the totally corupt and reactionay bit). In the corporate world it works well if the lieutenants are more rabid than the chief – that way cooler heads always have the power to compromise, but those cooler heads get to start from as close to their desired position as is humanly possible. But MY boss was the most rabid person I ever knew. There WASN’T anywhere on the other side of him – no room left, at least without acheiving lunatic status, a last step I was unwilling to take. Not sufficiently loyal, I guess.
Anyway, that’s where the Republican party is today – so far to the right there is no right left, only left. Which is pretty much ALL of us, if we only knew it.
So, in that vein, don’t belittle leftists too much – you ARE speaking of yourself when you do so.
So, what polices would you characterize as leftist crap?
Jake
So, Slarti, I had a difficult time parsing your comments on the presentation. Were you saying the the assumptions were bad, so the results didn’t apply to anything, and now you were thinking about assumptions again?
Jake
dutchmarbel, Waxman is investigating incompetance. that hardly is a vote loser.
i want someone to stand up and say fire the bioethics council, fund ESCR, and censure GW for volunteering the opinion that ID should be taught in schools, instaed of trying to censure him for a legit NSA program. and don’t even start with me on that, i have work experience and the “lawless spying” is a myth.
but that won’t happen.
look at the schiavo effect.
even the bare few (two, wasn’t it?) that voted against that insane terri’s law mealy mouthed around it so as not alienate the culture of life voters. Hilary especially made me ill, as she voted for it.
cynical pandering.
aren’t you supposed to be the loyal opposition? isn’t it your job to point out that we can’t protect the nation against biowarfare and bioterrorism if we don’t do biotech?
I’ve looked at Protein Wisdom only a couple of times, when the devil on my shoulder made me click on links from memeorandum.
From those few times, my take is this: his writing is inscrutable. So, not many return trips there.
matoko: oddly, I have read game theory. Just wasn’t clear on its relevance here.
No, I’d noted that during my stint on this project, I’d spent some serious times working on problems whose solution required a serious reexamination of some key assumptions, and the process of arriving at the lightbulb-going-on moment took…well, it took a very long time.
Did I mention it took a long time? I don’t want to leave that part out. And serious, too.
“and the process of arriving at the lightbulb-going-on moment took…well, it took a very long time.”
At least the moment did arrive. I have worked for companies where it stayed completely dark in perpetuity.
Ahhhh. The old “re-examine the original assumptions” light bulb.
In my line of work, the assumptions are usually crafted to generate desirable solutions, rather than the other way ’round.
Life is much easier when you start from the answer and work back to the question.
Jake
“…censure GW for volunteering the opinion that ID should be taught in schools….”
I’d be fine with that, but do you think the majority of the country would be at present?
“…i have work experience and the ‘lawless spying’ is a myth”
You’re entirely welcome to expand on that, you know; I assume you don’t expect people to simply accept your word for the assertion, absent explanation and citation, though?
Jackmormon,
Late to the game here, but how do you see Conservatives as Platonists? I could be labelled as a Platonist, since I read Plato, Plotinus, Proclus (ahh Proclus, such a great mind suffering such unjust neglect), as well as guys like SImplicius, Olympiodorus, Numenius, and so on for leisure. I am with Whitehead that the history of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato (though we don’t agree on much else). I certainly do not see the modern Right’s thought has any relation to Plato in any serious respect, except inasmuch as they can parrot the lines and copy the rhetoric of the various sophists in the dialogs (esp. Thrasymachus, Polus, and kin). Not that the left can’t indulge in something like Protagorean sophistry. So I’d be interested to know what you mean.
Personally I agree with Plato’s Republic, and don’t think philosophers should participate in politics, except for their duty as a citizen, though for my political views, you’d find me essentially in the Peace and Freedom Party on the somewhat contrived Right-Left continuum. Most Platonists I know are similar.
“Jeff Goldstein demands your utmost respect and worship. He is a god among men. He will annihilate you with mind bullets.”
Sounds like an OT-VII Scientologist (Master of MESTtm).
hilzoy is mathematikoi here, i am aukousmatikoi. Salmonia was a slave of the pythagoreans yet also mathematikoi, a speaker.
No problem with classing hilzoy as a mathematikoi here, and the internet provides a ‘veil’ even. But I don’t imagine the akousmatikoi yelling at any mathematikoi ‘stop making me vote Republican’. (or ‘stop making me go check out the Eleusinian mysteries’ if you need a more chronologically appropriate reference)
And, with all due respect, you seem to be advocating censuring people for what they think rather than the way they act. Thus, if Bush believes in ID, he should be censured, but if he violates the law (something I think, but if you want to assert that his spying is ‘lawful’ rather than ‘lawless’, I hope you can show that), one shouldn’t. When Bush got a question in Cleveland about the current problems in Iraq being the signs of the Apocalypse, he didn’t say ‘I sure do.’ Absent some sort of memo laying out Bush’s scientific beliefs, any kind of evidence needed for censuring Bush is open to interpretation. If one believes in a scientific approach to data, one can’t advocate an approach that censures Bush for what his beliefs are believed to be.
I didn’t mean to calumn leftist Platonists! My mention of Plato was more about stereotypical methodologies of literary interpretation, and intended to illustrate a point about Tolstoy. I chose Plato over Jesus because of comments like Whitehead’s, which strikes me as a conversative position with possible unpleasant consequences for the production of knowledge and the organization of educational institutions.
It was an overgeneralization, though, and not one I can back up with a sophisticated understanding of Platonism. Consider it retracted.
liberaljaponicus: witness the Salmonia reference. i am a slave, mathematikoi, and aukousmatikoi.
btw, dennet was very good, on his new book.
do you know what wiped out the pythagoreans? politics.
lol, Gary. i’m no leaker-traitor. i value my oath. If you want to understand the minutiae of the NSA spyscandal, read Goldstein. He has the best open source analyis on the web. 😉
saaaaay….perhaps that why hilzoy jumped him? apparently the “lawless spying” myth is her raison d’etre. Could it be? Jeff has done awesome work on it. Perhaps by attacking him over this tristero fool, she believes she can invalidate his work by critiquing his writng style?
and Gary, where’s my exception?
ha ha, of course you aren’t. I expect two-person zero sum is far as you got. May i reccommmend Atran, Maynard-Smith, some exposure to the prisoner’s dilemma and evolution of cooperation?
Silly me, i thought this was a science blog.
my bad.
😉
I have no idea where you might have gotten that impression. We have a couple of lawyers, a philosophy professor, an engineer, and I can’t recall what Charles does.
Hi Jackmormon, thanks for clearing that up. I do very much agree that claiming an ancient writer as a speaker for a contemporary debate, especially a political one, is a hazardous undertaking, and leads to many difficulties. The truer the scholar you are, the less useful the ancients will tend to be for politics (though understanding them in themselves has its own inherent value). Another case of an ancient who has been turned into a sock puppet to discover ones own political views in is old Aristotle, who has been dredged up many a time over the centuries, Thomism, the Right-Hegelian infatuation with Aristotle, the U. Chicago Aristotelians, et al.
ha ha, i guess i thought that because razib linked something pretty decent hilzoy wrote on ESCR.
well, the joke’s on me.
i won’t waste any more time here.
adieu.
😉
Who is this “Bush” who Matoko thinks is keeping him/her safe? Where is Scythia?
Coincidentally, we have a President with the same name here in the US, and he fails at everything he does and lies all the time. He does blow a lot of shit up, and that makes some people feel safer dor some reason.
“lol, Gary. i’m no leaker-traitor. i value my oath.”
I didn’t ask you to reveal any secrets, of course; I asked you if you’d like to support your opinion with more than an assertion. No reasonable person would expect “because I say so!” to explain an issue to others. Perhaps you take a different view of the-argument-by-assertion.
“If you want to understand the minutiae of the NSA spyscandal, read Goldstein.”
It’s a subject that quite interests me; why don’t you give links to what you consider the five best posts by Jeff?
“and Gary, where’s my exception?”
To what?
“Silly me, i thought this was a science blog.”
It isn’t. Science topics do come up at times, though largely only in a political context, though conversation does tend to wander.
Slarti: “…I can’t recall what Charles does….”
Works for an accountancy firm?
Hilzoy is, matoko, I give away no secrets by mentioning, a professor of bioethics.
haha, hi john emerson!
how become we are on the same side at gnxp and opposite sides here?
here is a thing we say at work, do something! even if it is not perfect, at least you will have some results and some experience. 😉
you dems are too like hamlet for my taste….you should make up your minds what you want to be.
matoko: on this board, there’s a rule that we enforce against liberals and conservatives alike, and it is this: when you generalize about “you dems” or “you right-wingers” or “all liberals” or “all conservatives”, you have better be able to back it up. “All liberals are spatio-temporally extended”: OK. “You dems are (insert degree of hamlet-likeness here): not OK absent proof. Same goes if someone says that about Republicans.
You may say that you’re just writing about the people here. Forgive me if I say that you have not demonstrated the kind of familiarity with us that would license such conclusions.
Perhaps it’s just my jaundiced view here, but I don’t think your prose style represents a breakthrough in the evolution of cooperation. And if you’d like to provide some links to particularly apropos posts of Protein Wisdom, I would be grateful, but if I have to wade through sexual references to dogs, I guess it’s just my loss.
As for Pythagoreans being wiped out because of politics, well, they were exiled, which tells us that if a group is going to be completely oblivious to the political ramifications of their ideas and fail to take into account politics, they might run into some problems. And if you think that the Pythagoreans did have the secret of immortality (which I’m guessing links into the Aubrey de Grey invocation), I don’t think that is a very hard science based conclusion. Though I do like the story about Pythagoras seeing a dog getting beaten and saying ‘stop, that’s the soul of my friend!’ which brings to mind Nietzsche’s horse. Whom the gods want to punish, they first drive mad.
Gary, my exception to the “gutless vote-whoring cowards”. 😉
i’ll ask jeff which five he recommends. 😉
ta for now.
ok, hilzoy, i retract.
can i say most dems remind me of hamlet?
i feel like diogenes with his lamp, searching for that one democrat that can speak without first checking the polls.
liberaljaponicus: The pythagoreans inducted local nobles into their society and trained them to rule, on top of their hereditary rights. A noble named Kylon was refused admittance due to character flaws, Kylon with a mob of villagers attacked Milo’s house at Croton in 460 bc, killing 50 or 60 pythagoreans and burning the house to the ground.
The pogrom spread through the Italineate states, burning temples and displacing pythagoreans to greece and thebes. those who wern’t killed.
but some of those displaced to greece became Plato’s teachers.
now really, i must go.
i have write a post on wafa sultan yet tonight.
“Gary, my exception to the ‘gutless vote-whoring cowards’. ;)”
Those seem to be subjective opinions, not objective and measurable standards, so arguing over who and who isn’t one seems boring.
Adjectives tend to be uninteresting points of debate and unedifying and unenlightening.
If Jeff is so great on NSA stuff, I’d think you could point to some posts you youself were impressed by, but if you’d prefer to check with him, fine; he’s welcome to come back to the discussion here, but I understand he’s got a blog of his own (rumor does I do, as well, but I don’t feel I have to make an effort if I’m writing low-quality jabber here :-)).
Matoko,
what about Feinstein? More to the point is the case of Talent (warning, a left leaning blog post). Again, if your bread and butter is supporting life enhancement, you’ve got a better chance with Dems than with Republicans. And given that hilzoy is a bioethicist who is trying to create a supportable consensus on stem cell research, it seems like you are dealing out a lot of friendly fire.
Not interested in reading through this entire thread, but I will say that it was Mona — who posts under a different name at Greenwalds’ — who asked me for a number of links to my posts on various issues. She claimed a high degree of respect for me, and I was thrilled to help in her program for what she called rapprochement.
I sent her plenty of links. She was very thankful. And then, after reading my post about Feingold (which I explained to her in a private email was quite in keeping with the progressivism vs. classical liberalism battles I had been writing about for two weeks).
Showing up here now to offer her new assessment of me is simply stunning in its classlessness.
Congrats, Mona. And anytime I can help you with a project again, please be sure to ask!
And then, after reading my post about Feingold (which I explained to her in a private email was quite in keeping with the progressivism vs. classical liberalism battles I had been writing about for two weeks).
And then…? I think a predicate is missing here, unless you wanted to say that she read your post on Feingold and then showed up here, but that seems to be a big leap.
“And then…?”
Please let Jeff’s dog not be involved.