La question de l’existence de la postérité

Let's have something pretentious, for a change, Dr. Bones, shall we?

Almost any passage in Senator Kerry's native lingo ought to do the trick, and this one happens to fit in with a couple of recent schoolboly scribbles in the holy Homeland's Fishwrap of Record :

À Diderot pour qui l’artiste est mû par l’amour de la postérité, s’oppose un Falconet pour qui la postérité n’existe pas. Et si l’on considère que la postérité d’une œuvre d’art commence avec sa réception, alors pour Diderot la création artistique est un acte d’amour pour le public des lecteurs spectateurs ou auditeurs, alors que pour Falconet l’artiste est seul et ne crée pour personne. En définitive, à travers la question de l’existence de la postérité c’est celle de la réception des œuvres qui est posée : pour Falconet l’œuvre d’art est sans réception.

Meanwhile, back at the NYTC, this morning's schoolboy, call him (Tweedle) ‘Dee’, is all agog to worm his way into Princess Posterity's good opinion. Master Dee's plan to that end goes like this

The Wrong Side of History Critics storm that health care reform is “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” Ads in 100 newspapers thunder that reform would mean “the beginning of socialized medicine.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.” All dire — but . . . . . . . John Taber, a Republican representative from New York, went further and said of Social Security: “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers.” In hindsight, it seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? ... Similar[ly], ferocious hyperbole was unleashed on the proposal for Medicare. President John Kennedy and later President Lyndon Johnson pushed for a government health program for the elderly, but conservatives bitterly denounced the proposal as socialism, as a plan for bureaucrats to make medical decisions, as a means to ration health care.

That's enough to indicate in which direction Master Dee’s crystal ball considers the Absolute, bless Its heart!, to be self-developing just at the moment. But we had better have the laddie's peroration, whwewrin it turns out that he does not insist that Princess Posterity admire ALL of us:

It’s now broadly apparent that those who opposed Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965 were wrong in their fears and tried to obstruct a historical tide. This year, the fate of health care will come down to a handful of members of Congress, including Senators Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. If they flinch and health reform fails, they’ll be letting down their country at a crucial juncture. They’ll be on the wrong side of history.

The Muses and thee and me must already be in like Flynn, then, for *we* are most assuredly neither blue dogs nor egomaniac Hyperzionisers! And it sure looks as if Master Dee abandons the red-state goats to Her Highness's displeasure not only tout court but also en masse. Why, there is not even the briefest ejaculation for the salvation of Neocomrade Senatrix O. Snow of ME!

It is unguessable exactly what scraps of Homelandic lore a jackdaw like Master Dee may have picked up, but pretty clearly "We’ll ALL [emph. add.] go to Glory when we go" is not likely to catch his roaming eye. Indeed, an absence (or severe shortage) of militant extremist Republican partisans could easily be part of Master Dee’s undisclosed criteria for ascertaining which side of History is to be labeled ‘right’.

Which leads to the greatest deficiency of the effusion at hand, which its not its uncharitableness, but its cocksureness about what Princess Posterity wants from us humble who are now active in the world. When it comes to knowing for sure what Her Highness wanted from ‘us’ fifty years ago, Master Dee has but to look in his heart and write. For of course Master Dee is somebody's posterity himself -- I trust the poor clueless critters honoured their Judex Venturus properly in advance! But when it comes to la postérité considered as what the bozos of Chicagonomics might call "a demand-side commodity," well, who knows? Why on Gores's green earth should anybody suppose that Master Dee knows?

I presume those in the reactionary community too near senility to have been properly wombschooled and neo-downdumbed and chicagoficated will point out with glee that the Lenin-Gorbachev Racket, R.I.P., was very fond of defending itself in Dee-like terms. To be sure, the Bolsheviki had inherited a vast epic of historiosophy to that effect on a silver platter, high-quality mitteleuropäische Romantik, good stuff that a crude and practical Slavic mob of workers and peasants would never in a dozen centuries have made up for themselves, but which they never could bring themselves to part with voluntarily. Palaeocomrade I. Suslov and Neocomrade F. Fukuyama need hardly be distinguished by those who consider it vain to anticipate Her Highness's privy judgments.

Which brings us to schoolboy number two, (Tweedle) Dumb. Master Dumb is, of all things, an avowed flat-earther! Also a shameless charlatan, as one glance at the facial hair establishes. But like his colleague kiddie, Master Dumb scribbles as if he has received a pre-publication copy of The Secret History of Times To Come. Especially fun is that the gruesome twosome do not often seem to be talking about the same book.[1]


Healthy days!

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[1] It would offend against the very Zeitgeist of the NYTC parlour game if I were to pay more attention to yesterday's neomasterwork than today's. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that none of Master Dumb's opinions are his own, they all come from somebody celebrated or self-celebritorious with whom Dumb had lunch a couple of days ago.

Master Dee is, I presume, a jackdaw by nature and by inadequate education: the poor lad just can't help himself. Master Dumb, though, jackdaws it on purpose. "With malice aforethought," even, he jackdaws it. (Yuck!)

But watch thee's step, Dr. Bones, hereabouts. Though yuckworthy, would it be at all amazing if the authentic Secret History of Times to Come turns out rather like an abandoned outhouse full of faded fishwrap cuttings from some long-forgotten "Thomas L. Friedman"? As St. Jack said somewhere, we would all wish Life to be tragic if it can't be what we really want.

Yet with ruthless disregard of what we want, Life the Unfair is perfectly capable of being an indecorous mess. Who knows, sir? By 2059, Princess Posterity may have been, as it were, altzheimerated into the spittin’ image of Little Tommy Wobble with the big moustache. Her Highness's Court annalists will, accordingly, keep comin’ up with ten new and completely contradictory secret histories of How We Got to Where We Are annually, not counting the bonus selections. My latest health insurance coverage will be good from 1430 to 1700 hours on alternate Thursdays. As long as there is nothing seriously wrong with me, naturally . . . .