You would think that one the internet would do would be separate the knuckle draggers from the somewhat more evolved. After all, one has to be literate and moderately coordinated to type words into a browser. However, a simple perusal of the comments section of the Washington Post articles will disabuse you of that notion rather quickly.
Racism, long vanquished in many quarters to private homes and (homogenous) neighborhood bars, is in full throat in the comments section. It's one thing to have to explain to your integrated co-workers and other parents at your kids' school events and extracurricular activities why you keep a dog-eared copy of The Turner Diaries in your car and a photo of Hitler in your wallet, let alone your swastika tattoo; it's quite another to copy and paste blog posts from Stormfront on some public news forum under an assumed name (hey, I'm not dogging assumed names...I'm just suggesting that it's a bit more comfy being a racist when no one can call you out in person).
Of course, it isn't only racism. If only it were that simple. Conspiracy kooks of the first order hang out on these sites. Look, anything can be true when the burden of proof is that someone saw a youtube video showing how to knock down a building using magnesium shavings filed from a bicycle frame.
You people are morons.
And I'm sick of it.
I'm sick of having to explain the difference between registration and confiscation, and how slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies.
I'm sick of having to demonstrate that you can't compare a Watergate scandal that took two years to develop to impeachment level, with clear paw prints leading straight to the Oval Office, to last week's news, especially when it doesn't lead anywhere yet, and maybe never will. In other words, talk of impeachment is rather premature. Yes, I'm looking at you, George Will.
And I'm damn sick of people posting links to nutcase sites and claiming they "prove" anything other than that the person who posted the link is information illiterate. I spend a good chunk of my time trying to teach students the difference between scholarly sources and junk sources. If you have a link to a site purporting to have the inside scoop on Benghazi, and the site you've linked also has a story about how the moon landing was a hoax and crap about Hitler actually being a leftist, then you've failed the information literacy test.
And while I'm at it, let me talk to my besties on facebook. You may think it's clever to share pictures that match images of Obama with Nixon and claim Nixon was impeached for using the IRS for political ends, but then again you probably think the Civil War was actually a battle over states rights.
And seriously, stop posting twenty picture-slogans in a row. It's damn tedious.
Showing posts with label anti-intellectualism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-intellectualism. Show all posts
04 August 2011
In which I imply yet another way to lower federal spending on unproductive areas...
The Post has an article today on Texas Governor Rick Perry's desire to destroy what remains of education in the state of Texas. Perry's argument, which is really couched in economic terms, is more of the same lament coming from cultural conservatives for at least the last thirty years and going back even further if you really care to dig around.
The complaint, in cultural terms: humanities and social science programs are turning out people who hate America.
The complaint, in more economic terms: humanities and social science programs are turning out people who don't agree with global corporations' priorities.
However, it's always useful if you can make this a purely economic issue, and therefore claim that ideology has nothing to do with it. So Rick Perry has determined that universities cost too much because they're filled with unproductive majors and programs (e.g. humanities and social sciences) and really the place needs to be run like a business.
Perry, who at Texas A&M was a "yell leader," which is what the insecure-in-their-masculinity powers that be at Texas A&M call what most people in the country call a cheer leader (if, albeit, a specialized one), is taking direct aim at one of the few institutions in Texas with any credibility, the University of Texas.
Look, I can understand his envy. He went to a third-rate school and, like many Americans, doesn't like "high falutin' thinking." So what better way to exact revenge than to turn Texas higher education into glorified trade school? The University of Texas is in fact the only thing that makes Texas bearable. It is, if you will, a flower growing in an otherwise barren and inhospitable landscape.
Take away the University of Texas and most Americans wouldn't give a rat's ass if Texas left the Union, aside of course from those people trying to get from Louisiana to New Mexico who would now have to go around the third world country.
The complaint, in cultural terms: humanities and social science programs are turning out people who hate America.
The complaint, in more economic terms: humanities and social science programs are turning out people who don't agree with global corporations' priorities.
However, it's always useful if you can make this a purely economic issue, and therefore claim that ideology has nothing to do with it. So Rick Perry has determined that universities cost too much because they're filled with unproductive majors and programs (e.g. humanities and social sciences) and really the place needs to be run like a business.
Perry, who at Texas A&M was a "yell leader," which is what the insecure-in-their-masculinity powers that be at Texas A&M call what most people in the country call a cheer leader (if, albeit, a specialized one), is taking direct aim at one of the few institutions in Texas with any credibility, the University of Texas.
Look, I can understand his envy. He went to a third-rate school and, like many Americans, doesn't like "high falutin' thinking." So what better way to exact revenge than to turn Texas higher education into glorified trade school? The University of Texas is in fact the only thing that makes Texas bearable. It is, if you will, a flower growing in an otherwise barren and inhospitable landscape.
Take away the University of Texas and most Americans wouldn't give a rat's ass if Texas left the Union, aside of course from those people trying to get from Louisiana to New Mexico who would now have to go around the third world country.
26 July 2011
The always classy Glenn Beck...
Apparently not understanding just how irrelevant he is beyond the reason-addled adherents of the Tea Party and white supremacist fringes, Glenn Beck decided that the Norway killings would be a good excuse to bring up Hitler yet again.
However, it wasn't the white supremacist killer that Beck had in mind when making his comparison. No, it was the murdered children whom Beck compared to adherents of Adolf Hitler, likening them to a sort of "Hitler Youth."
Sure, it's disgusting to anyone who can think straight, and sure, Beck's idiotic ramblings eventually got him kicked off Fox News (now there's some food for thought: the home of Sean Hannity couldn't stomach the Beck hate parade...well, more accurately they couldn't stomach the falling ratings and loss of advertising revenue), but Glenn Beck still draws a significant population of under-educated voters, who are very visible reminders that the US education system has a long way to go to develop critical thinking skills in its curriculum. Unfortunately, with the high-stakes testing regime ushered in by George W. Bush and enthusiastically nurtured by Barack Obama, we are going in the opposite direction.
However, it wasn't the white supremacist killer that Beck had in mind when making his comparison. No, it was the murdered children whom Beck compared to adherents of Adolf Hitler, likening them to a sort of "Hitler Youth."
Sure, it's disgusting to anyone who can think straight, and sure, Beck's idiotic ramblings eventually got him kicked off Fox News (now there's some food for thought: the home of Sean Hannity couldn't stomach the Beck hate parade...well, more accurately they couldn't stomach the falling ratings and loss of advertising revenue), but Glenn Beck still draws a significant population of under-educated voters, who are very visible reminders that the US education system has a long way to go to develop critical thinking skills in its curriculum. Unfortunately, with the high-stakes testing regime ushered in by George W. Bush and enthusiastically nurtured by Barack Obama, we are going in the opposite direction.
14 February 2011
The internet flattens distinction.
If you ever want to get depressed about the state of the world, spend some time reading comments on articles on the internet. Now on your regular sites like CNN, you expect a certain amount of stupidity, because most of the people commenting there are stupid. Sorry, but they are. They couldn't think through anything more complicated than a value-meal menu at a drive-thru.
You can call it smug elitism if you want, but when Glenn Beck is a highly-rated talk show host and best-selling author, I'd call it something closer to the truth.
On your more esoteric sites, like the Chronicle of Higher Education, you might expect the comments to be more thought-through. However, you'd be horribly, horribly wrong. The magic of the internet is that a mere link can join us together, and so it takes only a small piece of html code to direct knuckle-dragging half-literate asshats, whose main connection to higher education is that they once went to a party at the college where their second cousin was enrolled, to the Chronicle of Higher Education articles and comments.
Take the recent article on Francis Fox Piven, the professor of political science and sociology whose currently in Glenn Beck's rhetorical doghouse. The article went up on February 10th and comments are now closed, I suspect in part because of the absolutely useless nature of the "dialogue" that the 75 comments represent.
From these comments, I have "learned" the following:
1. Piven is really the bad person here, because she advocates violence. Apparently, calling for mass mobilization is advocating violence because her examples, like the Greek anti-austerity protests, have resulted in violence. In other words, if violence is a possibility, or if violence has ever occurred as the result of mass mobilization and civil disobedience, then you are an advocate for violence, which pretty much makes every single mass movement a violent movement.
2. If someone uses a word in their organization's name, then they must adhere to the meaning of that word. Since Beck is so prone to bringing up Hitler, it was only a matter of time before the name of the Great Evil One was evoked in the comment section, which led to the incredible claim that Hitler was in fact of the Left. Here, "physicsprof" supplies the analogy, while throwing in a little dig at the social sciences:
3. It's often best simply to repeat what someone says and act like you've made a point:
Besides, repetition is a tactic often employed by my five year old against my ten year old. It's effective largely because it posits no position and is irritating much in the same way that a poorly wiped anus becomes irritating.
Now one of the real lessons that should come out of all of this perusing the comment board at CHE is that many commenters have no actual association or familiarity with higher education. They may have graduated from college, but they certainly don't know anything about the professional culture of universities or the academic culture of departments and disciplines. One moron even spoke of the "simple French philosophers." I'd like him or her to point me to that one, because I have yet to read a French philosopher who was "simple" in any use of the word (although right wing -- and even analytic philosophy's -- caricatures of figures such as Derrida for instance would make his work appear simple-headed...but that comes from not reading very carefully or not at all).
So they are trolls. They have no interest in higher education other than to see it cohere to a lockstep point of view (something they accuse the Left of doing...because the Left apparently is so well organized) in which their history of America is the only valid history. It can be summed up in a statement made by Rick Santorum at the recent CPAC get-together that America is perfect (which if you think about it is quite a proud statement from one who supposedly believes in the concept of Original Sin and we are all sinners etc.). To point out areas where the U.S. perhaps made errors or didn't live up to its promises is to of course hate America. Although, the best response to Santorum's statement might be to ask, "If America is so perfect, why are you so angry with it?"
For these souls, history was given. It wasn't a site of contestation, but sprung fully-formed from the head of Reagan. Or Goldwater. At any rate, for these people living in the eternal present, America is perfect because we no longer have slavery and we no longer allow children to work the mills, etc., and forty years from now, these same hate-filled bigots -- having learned the same lesson their present day counterparts have learned about race -- will stand in front of crowds and talk about how perfect America is because we no longer condone the lynching of homosexuals.
This post is already very long, but just imagine another few paragraphs on the interesting rhetorical moves that the Right employs to turn their hatred and intolerance back at the Left. It generally goes along the lines of "every voice is equal," thereby employing the rhetoric of equality to suggest for instance that repeated studies and the considered weight of scientific research and opinion is equal to Glenn Beck saying "no it's not" on the subject of climate change, or in this case to suggest that somehow there's a level of equality between the academic and intellectual credentials of Noam Chomsky and Rush Limbaugh. Where do you even start with such ridiculous assertions?
You can call it smug elitism if you want, but when Glenn Beck is a highly-rated talk show host and best-selling author, I'd call it something closer to the truth.
On your more esoteric sites, like the Chronicle of Higher Education, you might expect the comments to be more thought-through. However, you'd be horribly, horribly wrong. The magic of the internet is that a mere link can join us together, and so it takes only a small piece of html code to direct knuckle-dragging half-literate asshats, whose main connection to higher education is that they once went to a party at the college where their second cousin was enrolled, to the Chronicle of Higher Education articles and comments.
Take the recent article on Francis Fox Piven, the professor of political science and sociology whose currently in Glenn Beck's rhetorical doghouse. The article went up on February 10th and comments are now closed, I suspect in part because of the absolutely useless nature of the "dialogue" that the 75 comments represent.
From these comments, I have "learned" the following:
1. Piven is really the bad person here, because she advocates violence. Apparently, calling for mass mobilization is advocating violence because her examples, like the Greek anti-austerity protests, have resulted in violence. In other words, if violence is a possibility, or if violence has ever occurred as the result of mass mobilization and civil disobedience, then you are an advocate for violence, which pretty much makes every single mass movement a violent movement.
2. If someone uses a word in their organization's name, then they must adhere to the meaning of that word. Since Beck is so prone to bringing up Hitler, it was only a matter of time before the name of the Great Evil One was evoked in the comment section, which led to the incredible claim that Hitler was in fact of the Left. Here, "physicsprof" supplies the analogy, while throwing in a little dig at the social sciences:
The difference between Newtonian mechanics and political science is that the former is an exact science while the latter is open to interpretation (=BS). Surely the left would like to disown Lenin and Hitler and would readily twist the evidence, but the facts are simple, both parties had exactly the same name (NSDRP vs NSDAP, with R and A standing for the same word, labor, written in Russian and German) and carbon-copied programs. [comment 36]Ah, so their acronyms are very similar and in fact the words based on the acronyms are similar. I see. Apparently, to disown Hitler, the Left has to twist evidence. Evidence like Hitler taking over the NSDAP and removing or killing any of the actual socialists involved in the party or maybe evidence like Hitler imprisoning or killing leaders of socialist and communist parties. But it's all in the name...you see, the Nazis really were Leftists because they used "Socialist" and "Workers" in their name. In much the same way, the German Democratic Republic was in fact a democratic republic.
3. It's often best simply to repeat what someone says and act like you've made a point:
Beck lacks much in the way of common sense, but acknowledging his past and background it makes sense. He can be thankful that he lives in a democracy that allows him to spout off his stupidity. [comment 67]
(followed by...)
Fox Piven lacks much in the way of common sense, but acknowledging her past and background it make sense. She can be thankful that she lives in a democracy that allows her to spout off her stupidity.Well, of course it's too easy to let someone else do your thinking for you. We call it plagiarism in my freshman English courses. However, I'm not blind to the underlying point #69 was trying to make, but trying to make a point and actually making one are two different things. Beck is a moron with very little understanding of history, and what he does know proves the maxim that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. He consistently fails to account for changing contexts, cannot understand that a multitude of factors impact events and actions, and is prone to equating nearly everything with Hitler. It's easy to make #67's statement about Beck; it's not so easy to see it applicable to Piven.
Too easy. [comment 69]
Besides, repetition is a tactic often employed by my five year old against my ten year old. It's effective largely because it posits no position and is irritating much in the same way that a poorly wiped anus becomes irritating.
Now one of the real lessons that should come out of all of this perusing the comment board at CHE is that many commenters have no actual association or familiarity with higher education. They may have graduated from college, but they certainly don't know anything about the professional culture of universities or the academic culture of departments and disciplines. One moron even spoke of the "simple French philosophers." I'd like him or her to point me to that one, because I have yet to read a French philosopher who was "simple" in any use of the word (although right wing -- and even analytic philosophy's -- caricatures of figures such as Derrida for instance would make his work appear simple-headed...but that comes from not reading very carefully or not at all).
So they are trolls. They have no interest in higher education other than to see it cohere to a lockstep point of view (something they accuse the Left of doing...because the Left apparently is so well organized) in which their history of America is the only valid history. It can be summed up in a statement made by Rick Santorum at the recent CPAC get-together that America is perfect (which if you think about it is quite a proud statement from one who supposedly believes in the concept of Original Sin and we are all sinners etc.). To point out areas where the U.S. perhaps made errors or didn't live up to its promises is to of course hate America. Although, the best response to Santorum's statement might be to ask, "If America is so perfect, why are you so angry with it?"
For these souls, history was given. It wasn't a site of contestation, but sprung fully-formed from the head of Reagan. Or Goldwater. At any rate, for these people living in the eternal present, America is perfect because we no longer have slavery and we no longer allow children to work the mills, etc., and forty years from now, these same hate-filled bigots -- having learned the same lesson their present day counterparts have learned about race -- will stand in front of crowds and talk about how perfect America is because we no longer condone the lynching of homosexuals.
This post is already very long, but just imagine another few paragraphs on the interesting rhetorical moves that the Right employs to turn their hatred and intolerance back at the Left. It generally goes along the lines of "every voice is equal," thereby employing the rhetoric of equality to suggest for instance that repeated studies and the considered weight of scientific research and opinion is equal to Glenn Beck saying "no it's not" on the subject of climate change, or in this case to suggest that somehow there's a level of equality between the academic and intellectual credentials of Noam Chomsky and Rush Limbaugh. Where do you even start with such ridiculous assertions?
17 June 2010
We are clearly sinking.
I love America, but I'm not so sure I like Americans. Or let me put it another way: I am not very comfortable identifying as American the vindictive, fearful, xenophobic, half-literate, and ignorant comments that seem to proliferate on this supposed messianic medium called teh internets.
I am very close to agreeing with the Right on the proposition that the United States education system has failed. Here's a headline from cnn.com:
Look, we all know the United States is an anti-intellectual nation. However, this minute analysis of exactly how stupid we are as a nation goes a long way to explaining the continued existence of an audience for the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter. In fact, it explains the continued existence of both the Republican and Democratic Parties in their current forms, and it sure as hell explains completely the Tea Party movement.
So America can't handle being talked to at a high school graduate level? I wasn't aware we were a nation of dropouts, but if that's the bar that we as a society have agreed to accept, then lots of luck to us in the future bagging lunches and making beds for whichever nation or culture actually takes education and progress seriously and decides to buy us up.
I am very close to agreeing with the Right on the proposition that the United States education system has failed. Here's a headline from cnn.com:
Language guru: Obama speech too 'professorial' for his target audienceApparently, the issue is that Obama's speech was written at a -- gasp -- 9.8 grade level. So speaking at a high school sophomore level (let's round up to 10th grade) is too "professorial." Great. Let's just chuck it all right now and go back to the tough decisions, like paper or plastic. Here's another brilliant quote from the article:
"A little less professorial, less academic and more ordinary," Payack recommended. "That's the type of phraseology that makes you (appear) aloof and out of touch."So Obama should follow his predecessor's example and speak in a series of grunts and monosyllabic meaningless feel-good phrases.
Look, we all know the United States is an anti-intellectual nation. However, this minute analysis of exactly how stupid we are as a nation goes a long way to explaining the continued existence of an audience for the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter. In fact, it explains the continued existence of both the Republican and Democratic Parties in their current forms, and it sure as hell explains completely the Tea Party movement.
So America can't handle being talked to at a high school graduate level? I wasn't aware we were a nation of dropouts, but if that's the bar that we as a society have agreed to accept, then lots of luck to us in the future bagging lunches and making beds for whichever nation or culture actually takes education and progress seriously and decides to buy us up.
19 April 2010
The not so great era of online media.
I've taken to almost completely ignoring comments left on newspaper articles, youtube videos, etc. They're beyond useless. The concept is great: open up the articles for immediate and unlimited commentary. Unlike the traditional letters to the editor (which still exist of course), these comments can appear seconds after the article has been posted (and by seconds, I mean, quite literally, that many comments appear to be made without any sort of knowledge of the originating article), and you don't have to worry about column space. Additionally, in keeping with the fine internet age, we can all comment without attaching any of our real names (yes, I know, my entire blog is based on that premise...but at least I put some thought into my posts).
Essentially, these comment spaces have become nothing more than arenas for confrontation between two blandly predictable opposing camps. Very little thought is required to anticipate the content of the comments section -- far from liberating, they are in fact constricting. No one takes any sort of time to read an argument, so very few people take time to write one. Instead it's invective, sound bites garnered from talk radio, and rehashed political party talking points. Additionally, for all the complaining the right wing does about the Washington Post, and the threats that "they'll never read that rag again" or "no one reads the Post anymore" or some such bullshit, the right wing loons are clearly reading the Post.
It's my belief that right wing loons (for instance, the Freepers -- and I follow long-standing policy of not providing links to racist or fascist organizations) actually see it as their mission to patrol message boards of prominent media outlets and swamp the comment pages with their own irrational arguments and position statements. It could very well be that the left does the same, but I haven't seen it (unless the conversation has been pushed so far right that you have to define "left" with the idea that the government has the right to exist).
However, the Post isn't the best place to see this insanity at work, because it's too mainstream (not used in the bogeyman sense that critics on right and left seem to deploy it, but rather in the "general audience" sense). The best place to look for this phenomenon is on the comment pages of specialty media outlets, like The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle (which can be nefariously abbreviated to "CHE," showing off, I'm sure, its true socialist leanings) is a leader in its field, but its field is very small. You don't see back issues sitting around the dentist's office, like you might see Car and Driver or Sports Illustrated or Ladies Home Journal. The Chronicle is aimed at highly educated people (and administrators) who work at or with institutions of higher education, and its content therefore concerns such earthshaking issues as graduation rates at community colleges, bad writing and bad thinking, and a police raid on a student newspaper. Now these are important issues and they do touch at times on larger cultural hot buttons, but so also does the latest research in physics deal with important issues that have ramifications for our larger culture -- yet the pages of the Journal of Applied Physics do not overflow with fools arguing that Obama/Hitler/Stalin has threatened to eat all the children of white gun-toting patriots (OK, first I exaggerate, and second, the Journal of Applied Physics, like most scholarly journals, doesn't have a comments section).
Getting back to my point, I'm convinced that Freepers or some organization much like the Freepers trolls the CHE boards spouting off nonsense. I'm not suggesting that there's a policy decision anywhere saying, "let's assign five people to watch over Board X"; I simply think that a few members probably see it as their mission in life to bring their level of ignorance to the higher education community.
As an example, I cite "adamreed," on a comment left on Mark Bauerlein's "Brainstorm" column (for those who don't know Mark Bauerlein, he's a right-leaning professor at Emory with whom I don't agree much if at all, but who at least employs rational argumentation):
Essentially, these comment spaces have become nothing more than arenas for confrontation between two blandly predictable opposing camps. Very little thought is required to anticipate the content of the comments section -- far from liberating, they are in fact constricting. No one takes any sort of time to read an argument, so very few people take time to write one. Instead it's invective, sound bites garnered from talk radio, and rehashed political party talking points. Additionally, for all the complaining the right wing does about the Washington Post, and the threats that "they'll never read that rag again" or "no one reads the Post anymore" or some such bullshit, the right wing loons are clearly reading the Post.
It's my belief that right wing loons (for instance, the Freepers -- and I follow long-standing policy of not providing links to racist or fascist organizations) actually see it as their mission to patrol message boards of prominent media outlets and swamp the comment pages with their own irrational arguments and position statements. It could very well be that the left does the same, but I haven't seen it (unless the conversation has been pushed so far right that you have to define "left" with the idea that the government has the right to exist).
However, the Post isn't the best place to see this insanity at work, because it's too mainstream (not used in the bogeyman sense that critics on right and left seem to deploy it, but rather in the "general audience" sense). The best place to look for this phenomenon is on the comment pages of specialty media outlets, like The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle (which can be nefariously abbreviated to "CHE," showing off, I'm sure, its true socialist leanings) is a leader in its field, but its field is very small. You don't see back issues sitting around the dentist's office, like you might see Car and Driver or Sports Illustrated or Ladies Home Journal. The Chronicle is aimed at highly educated people (and administrators) who work at or with institutions of higher education, and its content therefore concerns such earthshaking issues as graduation rates at community colleges, bad writing and bad thinking, and a police raid on a student newspaper. Now these are important issues and they do touch at times on larger cultural hot buttons, but so also does the latest research in physics deal with important issues that have ramifications for our larger culture -- yet the pages of the Journal of Applied Physics do not overflow with fools arguing that Obama/Hitler/Stalin has threatened to eat all the children of white gun-toting patriots (OK, first I exaggerate, and second, the Journal of Applied Physics, like most scholarly journals, doesn't have a comments section).
Getting back to my point, I'm convinced that Freepers or some organization much like the Freepers trolls the CHE boards spouting off nonsense. I'm not suggesting that there's a policy decision anywhere saying, "let's assign five people to watch over Board X"; I simply think that a few members probably see it as their mission in life to bring their level of ignorance to the higher education community.
As an example, I cite "adamreed," on a comment left on Mark Bauerlein's "Brainstorm" column (for those who don't know Mark Bauerlein, he's a right-leaning professor at Emory with whom I don't agree much if at all, but who at least employs rational argumentation):
13 September 2009
Do you take one cube or two on your planet?
Well, if the teabaggers have made anything clear, it's that they're not only confused on the whole idea of what communism or socialism (oh, and yes, Virginia, they are different) might be, but they're as a group motivated by racism.
I'm not going to circulate the image popular among the "concerned" citizens whose dinky-by-DC-standards 30K rally was described as "massive" by CNN. Suffice it to say you only have to do an image search for Obama and a witch doctor to get at the heart of the teabagger movement.
Let's take a quick look at teabagger rhetoric:
Some of the traveling charlatan teabaggers also seem to think that they speak for the armed services. In some really creepy and disgusting pronouncements reminiscent of Walter Sobchak's schtick in The Big Lebowski about "not watching his buddies die face down in the mud," a teabagger speaker pukes out this strained bit of hyperbole to her clueless audience:
You've slipped the orbit and are now lost in space.
I'm not going to circulate the image popular among the "concerned" citizens whose dinky-by-DC-standards 30K rally was described as "massive" by CNN. Suffice it to say you only have to do an image search for Obama and a witch doctor to get at the heart of the teabagger movement.
Let's take a quick look at teabagger rhetoric:
- Use of Nazi symbols, check.
- Use of Communist symbols, check.
- Understanding that fascism and communism are two opposing ideologies, um not so clear. Apparently teabaggers don't actually know anything about either system except that the symbols are scary.
- Use of racist imagery (usually in combination with either a swastika or hammer and sickle), check.
Some of the traveling charlatan teabaggers also seem to think that they speak for the armed services. In some really creepy and disgusting pronouncements reminiscent of Walter Sobchak's schtick in The Big Lebowski about "not watching his buddies die face down in the mud," a teabagger speaker pukes out this strained bit of hyperbole to her clueless audience:
"The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House," asserts Deborah Johns.No, technically, they haven't fought and died for any particular party or ideology to be in the White House; they've presumably fought and died for democracy, a concept Johns has trouble understanding. However, when you're so hopelessly out of touch with reality that you think Obama is a communist, there's really little point in anyone trying to bring you back to earth.
You've slipped the orbit and are now lost in space.
11 November 2008
What would a socialist Presidency look like?
With all the fearmongering that John McCain and company did over the last legs of the campaign about Obama ushering in a socialist, communist, or Marxist government (really, the fact that McCain's core followers can't distinguish these forms of government/economic practices from each other should speak volumes to how little they should be trusted near complex machinery, computers, or children), I got to wondering how it might look if we actually elected a socialist -- not even a communist -- President.
First of all, the President might try to nationalize the banks, maybe by buying up large ownership stakes in the firms.
The President may also try to nationalize the natural resources and distribute profits from the appropriation and exploitation of those natural resources to the people; if so, he could look to Alaska for a model of how to do it.
In league with his fellow travelers in Congress, he may rig the system so that -- on a state level -- we follow the Marxist creed of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," and use the tax system and federal budget allocations to redistribute wealth from productive, successful states to less advanced areas of the nation.
What a world it might be.
First of all, the President might try to nationalize the banks, maybe by buying up large ownership stakes in the firms.
The President may also try to nationalize the natural resources and distribute profits from the appropriation and exploitation of those natural resources to the people; if so, he could look to Alaska for a model of how to do it.
In league with his fellow travelers in Congress, he may rig the system so that -- on a state level -- we follow the Marxist creed of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," and use the tax system and federal budget allocations to redistribute wealth from productive, successful states to less advanced areas of the nation.
What a world it might be.
31 October 2008
You'd think they'd be happy about the end times coming...
I love this little quote from the Washington Post story on Liberty University's politically active students (I'd say "activist" but that's a bad word among the Right):
I'm unaware of any laws in this country that keep people from being as "biblically Christian" as they so choose. However, I think what Ms. Allen -- sorry, Miss Allen -- means is that she wants a government that can't enforce anti-discrimination and equal access legislation, though what that has to do with being "biblically Christian," I don't know. I also enjoy the fact that for a supposedly "Christian" school, the students seem to belittle the idea of religious training. I suppose that means they don't really believe that claptrap about the meek inheriting the earth and their reward being in heaven and it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven...silly stories for their foolish friend looking to enter seminary.
Ayendi and Allen playfully dog one of their Liberty friends for wanting to go into the seminary.
"If you want to get anything changed around here, you have to go through the courts," Ayendi says. "You gotta be a lawyer."
Totally, Allen agrees. "My goal is not to make laws Christian but to make government as small as possible so you can be as biblically Christian as you so choose," she says.
I'm unaware of any laws in this country that keep people from being as "biblically Christian" as they so choose. However, I think what Ms. Allen -- sorry, Miss Allen -- means is that she wants a government that can't enforce anti-discrimination and equal access legislation, though what that has to do with being "biblically Christian," I don't know. I also enjoy the fact that for a supposedly "Christian" school, the students seem to belittle the idea of religious training. I suppose that means they don't really believe that claptrap about the meek inheriting the earth and their reward being in heaven and it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven...silly stories for their foolish friend looking to enter seminary.
30 October 2008
Rhetoric to nowhere.
I really want to take a break from politics, but politics won't give me a break.
Now Sarah Palin is out there acting as though Obama has a whole network of "radical" or "terrorist" professor buddies who will be running the White House from their Ivory Towers, claiming that Obama's a "political ally" of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi:
In Palin's world, of course, even knowing someone who's a professor or worse yet a professor at one of those elite liberal unreal America universities is bad enough, but when that professor also calls into question US policy toward Israel and Israeli policy toward Palestinians, then it's beyond the pale. Except that there's no evidence that Khalidi was ever a spokesman for the PLO and there's no evidence that he and Obama are ideologically aligned on Middle East matters -- in fact, there's considerable evidence to the contrary.
Apparently, though, being neighbors -- whose kids attended the same schools -- and colleagues at a university aren't supposed to lead to any sort of relationship at all, in which case, I'm completely screwed because I happen to do things with my neighbors and colleagues...even ones I disagree with...and god knows I've managed to put up with lots of unsavory associations for the sake of peace with my kid's soccer and baseball teams...Not to mention that a whole host of my best friends from back home are conservative to greater or lesser degrees.
So, yeah, I'm screwed from all these friends and neighbors I have who aren't ideological mirror images of me, but I suppose that means my friends and neighbors are just as screwed as I am for associating with me.
Professor Khalidi is a prominent and respected scholar in his field. He is one of many scholars who question existing relationships and attitudes, analyze the results of Middle East policy, and advocate for changes. It's called research. Within his field, I'm certain, there are several other scholars who challenge his conclusions and disagree with his approach. They are also engaged in research. They probably meet at conferences and either avoid one another or catch up over the old times; they may be personal friends but scholarly opposites. That's how fields of knowledge develop, and that's how professors live: holding divergent opinions but in an atmosphere (most of the time) of collegiality and shared inquiry (which is not to sugar-coat all the nastiness that can go on intra-departmentally, etc: some of your worst enemies are your everyday colleagues and some of your best friends are your ideological opposites).
Unfortunately, in Palin's world view the questions are already settled, Israel is always right (a view not shared by the way with many Israeli civil rights groups, but let's not complicate Ms. Palin's simplistic rendering of complex political, historical, and geographical questions), and scholarly inquiry is Un-American.
Now Sarah Palin is out there acting as though Obama has a whole network of "radical" or "terrorist" professor buddies who will be running the White House from their Ivory Towers, claiming that Obama's a "political ally" of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi:
"It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years," Palin said at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio.
"This is important because his associate, Rashid Khalidi ... in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he's a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization."
In Palin's world, of course, even knowing someone who's a professor or worse yet a professor at one of those elite liberal unreal America universities is bad enough, but when that professor also calls into question US policy toward Israel and Israeli policy toward Palestinians, then it's beyond the pale. Except that there's no evidence that Khalidi was ever a spokesman for the PLO and there's no evidence that he and Obama are ideologically aligned on Middle East matters -- in fact, there's considerable evidence to the contrary.
Apparently, though, being neighbors -- whose kids attended the same schools -- and colleagues at a university aren't supposed to lead to any sort of relationship at all, in which case, I'm completely screwed because I happen to do things with my neighbors and colleagues...even ones I disagree with...and god knows I've managed to put up with lots of unsavory associations for the sake of peace with my kid's soccer and baseball teams...Not to mention that a whole host of my best friends from back home are conservative to greater or lesser degrees.
So, yeah, I'm screwed from all these friends and neighbors I have who aren't ideological mirror images of me, but I suppose that means my friends and neighbors are just as screwed as I am for associating with me.
Professor Khalidi is a prominent and respected scholar in his field. He is one of many scholars who question existing relationships and attitudes, analyze the results of Middle East policy, and advocate for changes. It's called research. Within his field, I'm certain, there are several other scholars who challenge his conclusions and disagree with his approach. They are also engaged in research. They probably meet at conferences and either avoid one another or catch up over the old times; they may be personal friends but scholarly opposites. That's how fields of knowledge develop, and that's how professors live: holding divergent opinions but in an atmosphere (most of the time) of collegiality and shared inquiry (which is not to sugar-coat all the nastiness that can go on intra-departmentally, etc: some of your worst enemies are your everyday colleagues and some of your best friends are your ideological opposites).
Unfortunately, in Palin's world view the questions are already settled, Israel is always right (a view not shared by the way with many Israeli civil rights groups, but let's not complicate Ms. Palin's simplistic rendering of complex political, historical, and geographical questions), and scholarly inquiry is Un-American.
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"adamreed" is commenting on the current NEH "civility tour" that Bauerlein objects to. To sum up Bauerlein's argument, the lead objection (which we should also read, if we were Freudians, as the "manifest content") is that the civility tour oversteps NEH's jurisdiction and mission, while the real objection is that NEH Chair Leach is "politicizing" the NEH in ways Bauerlein doesn't like (interesting conclusion, given the Lynne Cheney years of hyper-politicization). But back to "adamreed," who apparently objects to taxation and believes he's being extorted at gunpoint to pay his taxes. He obviously has either not read Thoreau or simply didn't understand him.
Whether you agree with Bauerlein or not about Leach's civility tour (and it seems Bauerlein most likely objects more to the content of Leach's speeches and not the tour itself, despite his initial argument), it's clearly not something "adamreed" even knows how to engage with. So instead of offering a useful commentary either in keeping with the column itself or the 23 comments that precede his, he offers his soundbite libertarian objection to taxes and the canard that Obama is a socialist (again exposing his ignorance of either Obama's policies or the definition of socialism...I'm not sure which).
There are other gems in the comment section for this particular Bauerlein column, but this post is already too long as it is. The bottom line (and believe it or not the "adamreed" comment was downright coherent as opposed to others I've read on that site) is that tools like "adamreed" certainly aren't reading the Chronicle because they are involved in higher education; they're actually pretty much incapable of maintaining a straight line of reasoning or supporting their sound bite arguments. So what the hell is "adamreed" doing reading this somewhat esoteric weekly, and more importantly, what motivates someone to insert themselves into arguments that they have no ability to follow? It'd be just as silly for me to jump on the JAMA website and opine on the latest medical research.