31 May 2010

Concerning True Poorblindness



Wingnutettes and wingnuts, the most desirable of demographics from Fox-on-15th-Street's point of view, are well known to suppose themselves personally to be colourblind, which condition, far from being any sort of defect, affords the unafflicted endless opportunities for self-gloatin’ that if, perchance, there are still some remnannts of a racial problem in the United States, all least that fact has nothin’ whatsoever to do with wunnerful them.

Since this ploy has worked -- and keeps tight on workin’! -- so well for the ploysters, Neocomrade R. J. Samuelson and other movers and shakers of Rio Limbaugh might want to consider extendin’ it to the problem discussed this fine holiday morning: why don't they just proclaim themselves ‘poorblind’ as well?

"Some folks," R. J. Samuelson might neo-orate, "can perhaps never see a stranger without instantly classifyin’ her economically. But, ¡thank Father Zeus!, I am not like that! Dives an’ Lazarus are all the same to me!"

Needless to say, once poorblindness has become the prefered self-saucin’ for Neocomrade R. J. Samuelson and the F-15 crew and all their ideobuddies, it follows ineluctably that all the neocomradely community’s Uncle Sam must be poorblind as well. Anythin’ else would be unconstitutional. Obviously.

Not quite so obvious, perhaps, are the policy implications. I may be wrong here, but I believe on the whole they would be just what Neocomrade Dr. P. G. Peterson, Freelord and Kiddiemaster Concord, might have ordered: the Fedguv must be conducted on a strict fee-for-service basis.

PROOF: Sam can set prices for his services because to do so requires knowing only his own expenses. But even flat-taxers err against poorblindness insofar as they must demand to know what Neocomrade R. J. Samuelson’s income is in order to charge X.Y% of it for services (supposedly) rendered.

Hence a really strict "don't ask, don't tell" attitude towards wealth and poverty, that is to say, True Poorblindness, forbids anythin’ so un-American as taxation, in the sense ordinarily given to that word.

Q.E.D.

This plan may be rather too good to flourish in the real world, yet anybody who considers that a significant objection to it ought to find the True Colourblindness of Wingnut City and the G.O.P. almost equally problematical.

Such lieberals and demoncrats as doubt the latter to begin with should notice that in neither case do the neocomrades have to be *literally* blind to anythin’ at all. OF COURSE our Betters will know very well who is rich and white as opposed to poor an’ black-or-tan. The ‘blindness’ consists only in Their promisin’ never to make decisions, outside the secret sector [*], on such invidious bases as pigmentation and credit rating.

And who would venture to disbelieve promises made by Betters?

Healthy days.

___
[*] Delineating the boundaries of the secret sector is itself a well-known can of worms.

In conjunction with the True Poorblindness Plan (Pat. Pend.), the immediate point is first to rehabilitate Neocomrade R. Paul of KY and then to comply with his unfashionable oracles. Individual entrepreneurs who waive their Zeus-granted secrecy rights to the point of operating, for example, a greasy spoon into which anybody may walk and maybe even sit down, cannot decently be required to pay no attention to whether they are dealing with Lord Dives and Kiddiemaster Peterson (not to mention well-salaried agitprop neocomrades from Fox-on-15th), or only with lazy Lazzy and Joe the Hobo and the occasional Mother Teresa.

The Panera Intergalactic Trust LLC seems to be attempting, misguidedly, to apply poorblindness in a secret-sector context, but I anticipate that the attempt will break down sooner rather than later. In a way, that attempt broke down even before it started: the Baní Panera feel obliged to suggest sandwich prices to the unimaginative.

That breakdown may point to the general solution, however. Let every customer exhibit her proposed payment to obtain admission to the sanctums of commercial secrecy. A twenty dollar banknote in hand ought to do the trick at Panera, and even Mother Teresa might accidently happen to have such a thing as that from time to time. In any case, there need be no *general* inquisition into anybody’s poverty or unpoverty: Dives and Peterson would not get in on the basis of how expensive their suits look or what their chauffeurs drive; they, too, would have to have the cash in hand. Should they find that prospect humiliating, well, they can always have lunch at the Union League Club or the Burnin’ Tree Club, refugia magnatum conducted in full compliance with the Randpauline regs.

(But Mammon knows best.)

30 May 2010

"I don't play golf."


Dear Dr. Bones,

Hidden here amidst the weekly (daily, hourly, minutely, ... ) neo-re-standardizin’ for purposes of Party and AEIdeology lurks an Eternal Truth: "I don’t play golf."

A golfless Neocomrade & Kiddiemaster Prof. Dr. Rear-Colonel Victor D. H. Blimp? Egad!

’Tis easy to see how His Serenity may find it difficult to get out to the links much lately, for, obviously from this neosabbath morning’s sermonette alone, he must spend many hours aloft workin’ away at the paradigm that goes ego - mei - mihi - me - me. [1] Pluggin’ things into holes on the ground (or out at sea) would only be a distraction from more geistlich concerns, after all. [2] [3].

Nothing is more suitable, surely, than that V. D. H. Blimp should abstain from golf. After all, he has not properly earned the right to it. The gold stand of such right, politically considered, must of course be Dwight David XXXIV, who was a real militarist before he became a real golfer. Blimp bein’ only a virtual militarist [4], let His Serenity autowaft no farther afield than virtual golf; seemliness demands it.

Though Blimp does not do (what I believe the gamesters in question call) ‘slice,’ he is a dab hand at ‘spin’. Thorougly wrapped up in his own neoself [5], His Serenity does not mention the Great Game as mere gossip. Naturally not! He mentions it because "in the spirit of live and let live, I also never cared much for deconstructing the game in terms of culture and sociology."

Far more interesting than golf is that little self-exuberance. Prescinding straightaway from the part that features the good rear-colonel pattin’ himself on His Serenity’s own back [6], I rush to suggest that probably he does not much care for the deconstruction products generally available, which run, more or less, to the tune of malefactors of great wealth accompanied by cigars (possibly even by Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh -- talk about "a great way to wreck a walk"! ) as they make their conspicuously consumptive rounds. All that is largely out of date, to be sure.

On the other hand, it is by no means completely out of date. At a time when the War against the Wetbacks rages furiously, golf will still do as being an example of the sort of activity that one does not, with some confidence, expect to find the Bad Poor engaged in. Or that José and Juanita violate the sacred perimeter of the holy Homeland™ in desperate quest of opportunity to pursue.

Perhaps a year ago, as General Motors was succumbing to the impact of the Crawford Crash in particular and the vast sweep of G.O.P. economic genius more broadly, I recall certain wingnutettes and wingnuts raisin’ a howl about certain Union thugs™ setting up a country club for their members. One may take for granted that, had the shameless boondoggle been a bowling alley, not even the most militant and extreme of Republican Party class warriors would have bothered about it.

And the moral of that is, I guess, that there is still some mileage to be gotten out of golf as culture and deconstruction and sociology, perhaps especially if deployed on behalf of TopPercenterdom and the Blimpoid Classes rather than against them as hitherto.

Golf is doubtless not the best such weapon of Party and AEIdeology. Neocomrade R. H. Limbaugh, who after all is no mere idiot, brandishes the Sports Utility Vehicle for essentially the same polemical and symbolic purpose, and (from outside the monkey house, of course) I think the Doctor of Demoplutocracy is wise to prefer it to golf. Though the Bad Poor do not actually possess, as I conjecture, more SUV's than mashies and niblicks, it is far, far easier to imagine them wishing to possess the former. An angry mob of B.P. breaking into an automobile dealership and helping themselves is a topos that a Kiddiemaster V. D. H. Blimp could work up rhetorically and present to readers and cruisemates in a fashion so plausible as to be heart-chillin’ and even wallet-threatenin’.

The idea of José and Juanita, and the Revs Wright and Sharpeton, and the superintendant ghost of Mr. Saul Alinsky, summoning Roxbury and Dorchester and Everett and Framingham [7] to sack THE Country Club is a good deal less plausible.

At the opposite extreme from SUV’s (and much remoter from them than golf) stand artefacts of culture and deconstruction and sociology like Attic Greek and classical music. Blimp is known to retain traces of his Greek, at least, but it has been a long time since that attainment made him (or anybody else) gentry eo ipso. The likener who likened it to lace was right on, for if His Serenity were to dress up like this tomorrow, his kiddies and his kruisemates would only wonder if their neoguru supposes Memorial Day to be identical with Halloween. [8] Mobile vulgars demolishing (or perhaps squatting on, sitting in at) THE County Club is conceivable, though hardly likely. The Loeb Library, by contrast, may be pronounced perfectly safe.

Josquin and Boccherini and Dvorak would make an even better example, since a taste for such antiques is much easier to simulate than a reading knowledge of Thucydides and Pindar. Unfortunately, our good rear-colonel and Coriolanus wannabe has not yet exhibited that particular war (?) wound in the Forum: I have no idea whether he cares, or professes to care, for so-called classical music.

In any case, the chances that any particular specimen of the Bad Poor cares can be estimated at zero, despite the product being vastly easier to get at than Greek. If, however, the specimen should happen to found Microsoft (or win some other similar lottery), it would be odd, almost an impropriety, if it did not feel obligated to start faking an enjoyment of Mozart. [9]

***

To generalize, perhaps idiotically, Dr. Bones: it looks as if Neocomrade Rear-Col. Blimp has managed to dumb himself down into a tolerable facsimile of the pre-1929 North American college professor, the sort of "genteel" target Mr. Mencken and Prof. Veblen loved to bang away at.

Healthy days.

___
[1] The vernacular body count is EYE (‘I’) 26, ME 8, MY 1 in appoximately 1,265 words of autoblimpification.


[2] Furthermore, that magisterial Serenity one always admires as Blimp drifts by overhead, borne on the Winds (wings? wingnuts? windnuts?) of Faction, may take a bit of a beatin’ when this or that particular hole fails to get plugged. But Ike knows best, golfwise.


[3] As you know, Bones, this coarse and illiterate keyboard tries to stay as far away from idols and icons and cartoons and Planet MacL@@han as possible. That means that its judgments about the visual may be worthless. Nevertheless: would not a literal blimp, weapon of War and Hucksterism , trying to emulate Charles I Stuart or Mr. Woods of Tigergate defeat almost any crayon or pencil?

The notion reminds one of a certain bicycle-mad fish, nicht wahr?


[4] And a former virtual militarist as well, for practical purposes. But hush! Mr. McCloskey’s general theory of V. D. H. Blimp has already been expounded rather too frequently. Let us take it for granted and attempt to move on.


[5] The eyeball-locked-on-omphalus business that His Serenity is so good at may explain why the kiddies and neokiddies and Conservative Tours pseudogentry put up with Blimp so readily.


[6] Also a bit tricky to picture this scene with a literal blimp. (( Remember Mr. Scarisbrick’s "exquisite anatomical tautology," sir? ))


[7] Pardon my Boston, sir, but in pscenariomongering one should stick to the concrete and avoid flabbinesses about nameless ghettoes and barrios and other dark corners of the realm where the B.P. hang out.


[8] I should myself assume that VDHB had just encountered the expression "Decoration Day" and made a very natural mistake about hermeneutics. (( The Goodyear blimp decked in lace makes another good unpicture, no? ))


[9] The culture / deconstruction / sociology gets a little complicated at this point, however. A lottery winner like Mr. Warren Buffet can cash in backhandedly by NOT pretending any fancy pretence about Wolfgangus & Co.

Possibly His Serenity’s "I don't play golf" was aimin’ at thet sort of effect?

Veblen knows best.

28 May 2010

Apologizin’ for Bee Pee



Dear Dr. Bones,

This morning you may watch a cub agitpropper flounderin’ , sir.

Its intended patients or victims are NOT to think ill of Party Paymasters and the AstroTurf™bagger classes -- that general proposition goes almost without sayin’ inside the well-gated neocomradely community.

No system of gatin’ can ever be absolutely perfect, however. "Things leak," one might idiotically generalize, and such leakage can produce neoideologically unsatisfactory situations like "76 percent of respondents disapprove of the way BP has handled the spill." Not to mention a holy Homeland™ awash with crimmigrants and criminaliens leaning ever inwards.

The cub fears that this dreadful three-misguided-citizens-in-four mob may include a few upstandin’ kiddie selfservatives and Party base an’ vile who really ought to know better. Not even Foxcuckooland -- not even National Review itself! -- is 100% gleichschaltet as yet, and indeed, they presumably never will be, given the perfluctus originalis, the inherent Original Leakage of all mortal things. Father Zeus alone can keep a really tight pipe.

Some of the weaker siblin’s, then, of Party and Ideology seem to the cub, or, much more likely, to its cubmasters, to be likely to deviate from GOPT®F, the Republican Party brand (®) True Freedumb product. The success of P&I wombschoolin’ has brought with it the problems of success [1], one of which is that wombscholars and downdumbees cannot be relied on to handle hard or marginal cases well. Wally Wingnut and Cindy from Wasilla have never been allowed to look upon GOPT®F bare, after all. They are quite clear that they ought to cheer for GOPT®F, and doubtless they wish to cheer for it even harder in this oil-black hour of apparent need. But what are the kiddies to cheer, exactly?

The correct textbook answer is easy enough to accomodate to the meanest intelligence of kiddie selfservatism, say,

Bee Pee! Bee Pee! / Leakin’ Oil is Liberty!! / RAAAAH!!!

Of course you must see how that won’t quite do the trick, Dr. Bones. But let us be clear about why not. Or rather, about the various levels of reasons why not.

(0) Master Wally and Mizz Cindy won’t be cheerin’ that cheer or anythin’ equivalent because they really and truly do not grasp that GOPT®F entails it. For reasons too obvious to discuss at length, wombschoolers and invigilators at the various hatcheries deliberately inculcate the notion that GOPT®F has somethin’ nontrivial to do with the rank-and-file Party base and vile. To expect Wally and Cindy to fall on their wallets for the Hayward classes with full awareness of what is actually goin’ on would be absurd. The ideological neowomb must spare them THAT awful realization, perhaps more than any other single glimpse of the former Real World.

Hath not Comrade Frank of Kansas explained all these things?

The Frank explanations are necessarily general, however, and do not of themselves indicate what the Party of Grant & Hoover operative is to incite Wally and Cindy to holler just at present. That is where a Neocomrade (j. g.) M. X. Patterson ought to come in. As you can see, the cub gives it a college try, so to speak, but loses a couple of yards on the play.

(1) MXP is a doubtful juvenile neospecimen, but we can assume that most full-grown PG&H agitators and propagandists more or less know what they are doin’. Accordingly, they find themselves temporarily in basically the same plight that their Party Neocomrade Rand Minor of KY is in all the time: honesty is by no means the best policy when it comes to defendin’ Freelord Hayward and Bee Pee (or the Planet Dilbert theory of public accomodations and the Wicked State).

If all the world were Foxcuckooland and everybody in it sincerely addicted to GOPT®F taken straight up, no defense would be necessary. The divine right of Big Management to bigmanage would not be questioned merely because of a little perfluctus originalis from time to time. Kiddies and weaker siblin’s might grumble against GOPT®F from time to time, the same way Wally and Cindy might grumble against a thunderstorm when they happen to want to have a picnic, with a very tame grumblin’ that certainly does not mean that the kiddies have started thinkin’ unorthodox thoughts about the Omnipotence™ and All-Benevolence™ of Father Zeus, Compeller of Clouds.

I daresay life would be far easier for the Party-an’-AEIdeology apologist if kiddie selfservatism could just be converted into old-fashioned Enthusiasm and Superstition wholesale. That little trick once accomplishes, Freelord Hayward and the crew at BP would qualify for all (or at least most) of the special allowances and double-thinkin’s and special pleadin’s presently accorded Dr. Ratzinger and the VC crowd without anybody batting an eye. M. de Rome is not Father Zeus in person, but rumours about a special relationship between the two of them are quite sufficient to check and balance pretty well everybody this side of Party Neocomrade Ch. X. Hitchens.

Alas, the AEIdeology radically does not lend itself to vaticanisation. The whole P&I m’gillâ" would have to be rewritten, from the Gospel of St. Adam all the way down through the Cocktail Napkin Apocalypse, to accomodate the (now) utterly heretical neodogma that particular persons can enjoy a Zeus-Ratzinger-like special relationship with Mlle. de la Main Invisible.

Of course in one sense those who win the lottery are Her favorites and Freelord Mammon’s. Verbally, one could call lottery-winnin’ a "special relationship" with Their Freelordships Above. Even, maybe, speak of the "divine election and predestination" of lottery winners. But such borrowed verbiage and plumage signally fails to smoothe over the crack in the ontotheological [2] wallpaper. If the words really meant the same thing in the AEIdeology as in the former Christojudæanity -- that is, if Mme. de la Main Invisible be reconceived as havin’ individual pets as opposed to a generic class of pets -- then obviously the fix would be in and one could speak of a ‘lottery’ or ‘market’ only out of courtesy, genuine or sarcastic.[3]

When Her Freeladyship Above’s apologists and seconds and bottle-washers have happier narratives than the Bee Pee Saga to chant, they can and do appeal to this radical secularism and un- or anti-religionism of the AEIdeology. Master Wally and Mizz Cindy are extremely unlikely ever to win big at Le Grand Casino des Événements Humaines, yet it is not absolutely impossible that they might. Such has ever been the burden of Schlesinger Minor’s Whig pastoral. That is what Mr. Arnold was making sport of when he spoofed -- spoofed just a bit too much, as usual -- about “Ever remember, my dear Dan, that you should look forward to being some day manager of that concern!"

But what avails that thoroughly traditional snake oil now? Imagine Wally Wingnut checkin’ the number on his bettin’ slip and discoverin’ that he has just won a license to pollute the Gulf of Mexico without stint or limit! Unless the prize is transferable and he can sell it to somebody like Freelord Hayward, I doubt poor Wally would think he had won anythin’ much to brag about.

Pari passu, the trouble for Party-an’-Ideology spinsters like Neocomrade (j.g.) M. X. Patterson is that Wally and Cindy will not much care whether Bee Pee and Freelord Hayward possesses such a license or not. Such concern of that sort as they can muster (for I assume their wombschoolin’ will have wired in at least some tendency towards a disinterested pity for poor little rich corporations and the Big Managers thereof) may not manage compete successfully against a deluge of pictures of oilslicked birds &c. &c.

Our junior birdman for GOP & AEI does not expressly notice the oilslicked bird menace, an omission that I incline to attribute to incompetence rather than the reverse. Had the cub thought of that angle, he would have tossed in some steel-claptrap-minded boilerplate against bleedin’-heart environmentalist whackos. ’Tis a mere accident that a past master of the Goebbels School curriculum would probably not mention it either, havin’ calculated that it would be better the dupes and marks thought about concrete and picturesque details of perfluctus originalis as little as possible. [4]

However the great difference between somebody competent and Neocomrade (j. g.) M. X. Patterson is unquestionably that the former would not have offered Cindy and Wally two completely different distractions from what Party and AEIdeology want theor base and vile distracted from. The kiddies should be set to thinkin’ EITHER ’bout "the dangers and complexities ... [required] to bring forth the lubricant that greases the gears of our civilization" OR ’bout the Bartlettisms that cluster around that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns

Neocomrade M. X. Patterson, the neosorcerer’s apprentice, as it were, wants to work both these spells at once. That is overreachin’, and ’twill serve the cub right if he gets no results at all.

¡Healthy days!


___
[1] Perfluctus originalis at work before our very eyes, Dr. Bones, is everything implied by that little phrase "problems of success."!

(( You’ll have to bear with me this morning, sir, if I seem a lot more interested in my own stuff than in the shoddy wares of Neocomrade (j. g.) M. X. Patterson. Trying to work out how a competent alumnus of the Joseph Goebbels School of Agitation, Propaganda and Public Diplomacy would set to work on behalf of Hayward et al. is vastly more fun (and at least a littl more valuable) than wading though M. X. P.’s sophomore blue book with a redstate pencil.


[2] That unnecessary coinage is so silly and so unnecessary that I wish I had thought of it myself.


[3] The only objection I can think of to myself off-hand is that famous apology or self-panegyric of Freelord Rockefeller Major, "The Good Lord gave me my money."

Sed respondeo that his freelordship did not even begin to speculate WHY the grant in question was made. Furthermore, had somebody from the lamestream media of 1929 asked whether his freelordship would agree that all lottery winners were entitled to say the same, I betcha he would have acknowledged that they are.

But Mammon knows best.


[4] Perhaps the comrades over at Media Matters will examine RupertNews contra mundum as regards pictorial representation of what Bee Pee hath wrought in the way of oilslicked flora and fauna? I detest Planet MacL@@han and the Y@@ T@@B far to heartily to do it myself, but somebody ought to.

22 May 2010

Fugiat Impius, et Nemine Persequente



Dear Dr. Bones,

Time to head for the hills, sir! -- the green hills of Venezuela , I guess.

After ninescore years, the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom (LLC) -- whom I shall here refer to as "the hicks" in honour of this morning’s honourable and gallant (and ever-so-neolearnèd!) specimen of yalodrama -- have finally figured out what makes us Demonocrat Party fiends tick.

Some ratfink must have whispered our whole agenda to the hicks:

  • (1) Expand the Wicked State!

  • (2) Hand the expanded Wicked State over to Nà-Ní, the Manchurirsupial Candidate [1] !

  • (3) Smash the Violence Profession, as not being sufficiently wicked and statist!

  • (4) Never give a Colourblind an even break!

  • (5) Do nothing except through Union thugs, not even in the former C.S.A.!

    Union thug


  • (6) Ask all the Blacks and Tans of the world to drop by and visit for a few centuries!

  • (7) Snatch corruptible youth out of DVSW (LLC) wombschools and downdumberies and hand them over to the Big Sisters of St. John Dewey!


But perhaps I had better not summatorialize in my own words.

According to the report that espionage most sneaky made available to Daughters of Wisdom and Sons of Virtute, incorporated or not, we tick like this, verbatim:

The nation’s ultra-liberals and leftists have made Arizona the focus of their anger. Why? Let’s examine this. Beyond advocating [1] an ever-expanding [2] nanny state, working to [3] undermine the nation’s military, [4] defending racial preferences, and [5] maintaining Big Labor as the Democrats’ political machine, only two other issues are seen by leftists as issues worth waging nationwide battles over.

[6] Immigration and [7] indoctrination (through identity-based high school and college classes) are these two other causes. Arizona has just thrown down the gauntlet against these two pet causes of the left.

Before you rush to the airport, though, you might wish to compare the above with your copy of the Elderly Protocol dated 13 ’Irháb al-’Awwal 1492, the one containing the famous Ibn ‘Alinskí "Secret Speech." I believe you will notice that the hicksy (¿hixy?) spy has missed quite a few tricks, presumably out of an Arizonacentricity that may be in need of clinical attention. The hicksy spymasters may, in some cases, be señoritos of neocompetence in their chosen path of Party an’ AEIdeology, but when it comes to sneakin’ around closed doors listenin’ through keyholes, well, of course even Hicksians must take what they can get, even a ’Zona zany.

I need scarcely point out to you, Dr. Bones, that it was decided at the Shúrá of Elders, 9 Dhú l-Fitna 1542, that if we Union thugs must dispense temporarily with selected parts of the Union, the LIFO, "last in, first out" principle is to apply. Hence HI-50 would be first to get the boot -- though Hawai’i we have well in paw at the moment so the question should not be arising -- and then come AK-49 and AZ-48, two very dark corners of the realm indeed. But also thoroughly peripheral and, in a pinch, thoroughly dispensable dark corners.

In any case, the low tool of Hicksianity appears to have been uninterested in swipin’ secrets with no obvious AZ connection. Not a word about plans to holocaust Hyperzion, for instance, though Ibn ‘Alinskí droned on about that topic almost endlessly, cf. B(2) §13.5 in the 9.XIV.42 protocol and its 23 (!) addendumbs. [2] You were fortunate to have been sick that day, sir. Ibn ‘Alinskí was a great hero, a Guide to all humanitarian progressivity, but even Guides and heroes might photocopy their stuff and hand it out for ten minutes of silent reading by the Learnèd Elders instead of an hour and a half of sitting there like stones whilst being read at. (I‘A even insisted on reciting a couple dozen assorted addendumbs from his draft!)

Apart from her omissions, the Hicksian spy’s arrangement of her neobooty is peculiar. Even apart from the great 5-2 divide marked above that I shall get to in a moment. Naturally we fiends prioritize Education first rather than last, and Lady Logic demands that any group of statespersons whatsoever address the violence profession issue before founding (or neodemolishin’) any particular instantiation of The Wicked State. "War is the health of the damn thing, after all," said L.E. Randolph Ibn Bourne as long ago as 1336.

The 5-2 scheme itself eludes me: first time throigh, I thought the scribbler meant that we fiends had supposedly achieved the first five objectives and now have only two more to accomplish before the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom (LLC) are bound down forever in a worse-than-Freddy-von-Hayekian serfdom. But that makes so little sense that even a complete Party-an’-Ideology dingaling can scarcely be accused of believin’ it. At Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh the DV an’ SW (most of ’em) chuckle with glee at how clean a neosweep kiddie selfservatism will make next November. IQ-challenged though the kiddies undoubtedly are, they must grasp that winners are winners and that losers are not: sweet puppies of Redarkenment who cannot get that far must find all their own yalodramas and other Foxcuckoo entertainments unintelligible, whereupon they no doubt go extinct rapidly from sheer boredom.

Maybe--I’m just guessing-- the Hicksite spy supposed that until she brought the present memorandumb to their attention, her superiors at Foxcuckoo GHQ supposed only five of the Seven Great Abominations of Demonocracy and Lieberalism seemed to be at stake in AZ? Whereas their neoöperative and Jane Bondess, has now discovered in the nick of time that "Immigration and indoctrination (through identity-based high school and college classes)" are important too?

No, that is ridiculous: even Señorito Jonás de Goldberg-Steinberg [3] itself must have noticed that the AZ fuss has at least a little somethin’ to do with "immigration and"!

I give it up.

As for the rest of this scribble, although enough has been discovered to make sure that I am off for the Mountains of Orinoco by Monday at the latest -- and I again urge you to join me -- Jane Bondess seems to have padded her report with a mere haphazard series of anecdotes suited to neocomradely tastes of the less exclusive sort. [4]

’Tis a pity, though, not to have been provided with an actual example of "Aztec math." Plus, ideally, a compare-and-contrast with Rio Limbaugh math, the kind where 41% is greater than 59%.

And I wish you, Dr. Bones,
Happy days through affordable healthcare (somewhere down around Atabapo)

___
[1] The hicks’ chosen instrument may have been a little hard of hearin’.


[2] One of Foxcuckooland’s ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’ is bound to work out a nifty parallelism of Tucson and Tel ’Avîv sooner or later. (You heard it here first!) There is G*re’s plenty of agitprop fodder ready to hand, no? Lots of very dry land in both; Blacks and Tans as the obvious enemy in both; issues about the efficacy of erectin’ Bar Maginot Lines; Natives knocked on the head and then the autoëlect get to ‘inherit’ ; ....

I daresay I could think of more points easily enough, did not my conscience already torment me for blatant digression.


[3] Or whichever Wingnut City celeb you account dumbest of all.

[4] (( I see I posted to the pajamatarians with this note omitted. Tusk, tusk! ))

Bein’, as I said, IQ-challenged, many kiddies and even some neokiddies do have a definite tendency to fancy they are provin’ somethin’ somehow when they are in fact only spinnin' anecdotes and ‘narrative’. This, however, is no fit objection to be brought against the report of a secret agentess.

19 May 2010

Wally Wombschool for Congress!



Dear Dr. Bones,

Wally Wombschool can probably coast through life easily enough by becomin’ a Dan Quayle brand Coach Potatoe (®) and reposin’ all his faith--what’s left after he’s laid aside a very safe store for future believin’ in himself--in the balance and fairness of the Foxcuckooland Ministry of Customer Management.

Such outstandin’ qualifications do not suffice to make Wally a plausible pol, however. Not a mainstream Party-of-Grant pol, anyway. Perhaps if the R. Paul dingalingism catches on, weekly neostandards will be even lower in a few years, but that time is not yet.

Meanwhile, if Wally, here spotted doin’ business as "Party Neocomrade (j.g.) A. X. David," seriously wants to move to Washin’ton City and get whipped into line by Eric Ivan, Freiherr und Kindermeister von Cantor[1] et al., he will have to unlearn what he learned at the knee of Karl, Reichskindermeister von Rove, WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality!

Whatever the RKM may have original-intented to convey to Mr. Suskind, it can not have been that every rank-an’-file Wally an’ Cindy should go build themselves a Rovan Empire out back behind the garage of their McMansionette in beautiful neoëxurban Rio Limbaugh. Lesser neobein’s like A. X. David have to make certain concessions, rovanempirewise.

"Concessions to reality," we say outside the monkey house, in a language unintelligible to the inmates. But that unintelligibility does not matter, sir, because I should never dream of telling Master Wally and Cindy from Wasilla and all their freelords and all their kiddiemasters what to do. I am only discussing with you what it might be advisable for the monkey-house crew to do with themselves, individually or collectively. Since we do not give a hoot what becomes of them, collectively or individually, we cannot be said in idiomatic English to be ‘advising’ them. (Can we?)

But to the point: the particular reality on which the particular monkey A. X. David has stubbed its factious toe happens to be one of those happy days for Terry Gaudens and us when kiddie selfservatism gets hoisted by its own petard. The august and ever-immortal Five of Nine have recently vouchsafed an oracle very much in favor of the kiddies’ Party an’ Ideology by most accounts. It proclaims that the secret-sector business corporation is to possess free speech rights under Amendment I comparable to those of a lowly zoölogical organism. No doubt the militant extremism of the G.O.P. will soon be demandin’ that the intriniscally superior entity should have far more and much better rights, but they ought to be happy enough for the moment.

But not Wally Wannabe! No sooner was this franchise granted (or re-recognized and restored) to Citizeness Apple of Cupertino CA, then she, the secret-sector business corporation, turned Liberty into License by deploying it against poor feckless Wally! Under the circumstances, Ms. Apple can hardly have been unaware that little Wally was proposin’ to become a Republicanian hack pol, and therefore by definition a stalwart defender of secret-sectorianism all down the line. Hence it would not be crazy to headline this yaleodrama something like

APPLE TO HOOVERVILLE: DROP DEAD!

Ms. Apple has her detractors for other reasons, some of whom surface as peanut-gallery peanuts here. Open-source software is not entirely irrelevant to Wally Wannabe’s personal comeuppance, but to elucidate that connection is more than any of the peanuts attempt.[2] Insofar as they think it open-sourcin’ a Jeffersonian self-evidence, they are fodder just waitin’ for some Paulista Party or AstroTurf™Bag Bloc to come along and chomp ’em down. (Hopefully they will have a very long wait indeed. Time to grow up and get over their physics envy problems &c.)

Meanwhile, no regular Republicanian with any empathy for the spirit of her Party as exemplified by Gen. Grant and Col. McKinley and Dr. Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater and ... and her now contemporaries, can fail to be tempted to Just Bark ¡NO! at open-source notions. I daresay one can unearth a couple of ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ señoritos at the kiddie selfservatives’ Tanks of Thought who have performed some strenuous AEIdeological calisthenics allegedly showin’ that the GNU is not that bad an animal after all. But they are utterly unrepresentative: 99.527% of G.O.P. geniuses would side with Citizeness Apple on this one, were they unaware of the factional background. "I know Miss Apple, and she is no public utility!," might they bark an’ bellow.

Pajamatarian Peanut #4, though almost certainly a spoofster, is to be commended for noticin’ this aspect of the matter, which is surely the most important aspect, short of tertiary-educationalist Pol. Phil. discussions about the really fundamental differences between Planet Dilbert [3] and the Party of Grant.

***

The NCj AXD neoünit’s autoblurb is of some interest. The unit’s great qualification for replacin’ Mr. Waxman appears to be simply its not bein’ Mr. Waxman, which seems a bit skimpy to the present keyboard.

Mais que sçay-je?

Less controversially or de gustibus, the AXD unit is definitely no lawyer, as I had guessed from its throwin’ around great chunks ripped out of a reference book for the shyster community Nonwombscholars invoke dictionaries rarely, and would never do so in a case like this one, where it is plain to the meanest intelligence that Citizenness Apple is not bound by any such tin-foil legal chains as Party Neocomrade A. X. David would like to shackle her corporationship with.

Miss Appy may turn down Wally Wannabe without giving any reason at all, or alternatively, WITH giving any-reason-at-all. "It is defamation to claim that (Henry Waxman believes that) the earth is round" would make an admirable example of an any-reason-at-all, though some of Master Wally’s are admittedly not bad either. The only trouble is they have no more to do with the case than the wingnuts that bloom in the spring, tra-la.

Healthy days!

___
[1] His freelordship’s parents had a really wicked sense of humour -- unless ‘Erich’ is just ‘Ari’ in mufti, that is. That question I cannot resolve at the moment because I seem to have mislaid the Crackerjack box that contanins my LeoStrauss brand Secret Decoder ®ing.


[2] About the verb "to advise," Dr. Bones: peanuts who offer detailed suggestions for the NCj AXD unit like "make the app for the Google Android open source operating system" are primâ facie on the Party-an’-AEIdeology side politically and sincerely want to obtrude the said unit into the Fedguv Congress. They are therefore ADVISIN’ their neoguy when they talk like that. (As I am not.)

It is possible, though unlikely, that the point of the scrap quoted was rather to drum up market share for G@@GLE than to benefit Party Neoomrade A. X. David. Even so, the peanut would be at least pretendin’ to advise his dupe. (And that is not me either.)


[3] "Dear Rio Limbaugh, / "Planet Dilbert" is H*rv*rd Élitist for what you good folx call ‘libertarianism’ in Greater Texan. / As ever, / JHM

As to the deep-structure differences, dilbertarians tend to find find the GOPT®UF™ product -- Republicanian brand (®) True Freedumb -- unsatisfactory because the G.O.P. geniuses seem so transparently insincere about it. If they really believed in their own GOPT®UF, they would not bat an eye when Miss Apple big-manages her own affairs her own way rather than the way Massa Tom Donohue of the CCUSA prefers.

As usual, decent political grown-ups have a parallel problem, rhe old clash between the Form of Democracy (hurrah!) and the merely material fact (boo!) that most of the population does not want what theoretical democrats wish they wanted. As sound Aristotelians, the Muses and you and I, Dr. Bones, must of course take the formal side, which implies, I guess, that we ought to like dilbertarians better than regular Republicanians. My own spontaneous reactions are not in line with that particular ‘ought’, as it happens, but please let’s nor talk about me.


18 May 2010

"... abstract knowledge ... and imaginative methods ...."



Dear Dr. Bones,

Another day, another dolourous (and dollarous) kiddiemaster wannabe! [1]

(( Though I believe this particular neofish has floated downstream past us once before. How often does one get stumped by a John Hancock [1] like "Arnit Ghate' that obscures the gender of a neospecimen and its ethnicity simultaneously? Strictly, one should speak of "its former ethnicity," the racial or tribal quiddity of a neospecimen prior to its presumed recent removal to Arizona Major, where all us albino dhimmies, at least, are déracinés alike. ))

However bad this renewed affliction may prove considerrd in isolation, nobody can sensibly complain that it wastes our time or its own neotime addressin’ peripheral topics. Nothin’ could be more central to life at Rio Limbaugh as we know it than the topic of which AG burbles, for consider: if "unearned income" ain’t real income, why, then probably "life after death" will prove not to be real life, and ... and so on down the slippery slope from there. Father Zeus forbid that the Muses and you and I take a single unnecessary step in that direction, sir! Far be it from!!

So far, so good, but you must have noticed that things never (well, hardly ever) stay good for long with kiddie selfservatives in the back seat hollerin' "Why the R**g*n aren’t we THERE yet?"

One should bear in mind, Dr. Bones, that right down until September 2008 when the Crawford Crash became undeniable, and even G.O.P. geniuses like the late Bennett of UT felt called upon to wrap themselves into a TARP about it, the KSM kiddies more or less thought the WERE there yet. True, the Social Ponzi Administration could not be put out of its misery, yet if kiddies and neokiddies even half-believed in the numerical tripe and baloney that Party paymasters and AEIdeological AstroTurf™baggers slung at them, its doom could not be far off. [2] The good ship ‘Wingnutette’ had almost arrived in the safe harbour of The Speculation Society (also known in the Language of Gods as "The INVESTMENT Society") , when suddenly, lo!, a cloud no large than a man’s hand swelled and swelled and ....

Oh, dear, What Went Wrong? , Neorabbi Bernie?

Well of course Freelord Kiddiemaster Lewis is no economist. More to the point would be to consult that other neo-Bernie, Citizen Madoff, but at the moment it is difficult to communicate with him.

In any case, Neocomrade (Fifth Class) A. X. Ghote is stuck with neodefendin’ a proposition that is under a bit of a shadow just at the moment. Despite the headline on top of his scribble, this proposition is not exactly that bucks and doits and sh'qálîm and euros procured by the speculative sweat of one’s brow constitute "earned income." The banner around which the Kiddie Selfserative Movement must now urgently rally is better conceived as bearin’ the inscription "She also serves who only sits and e-speculates." [3]

NC5 AXGh suffers from a slight (?) case of swollen brainpan, bein’ neobound an’ determined to fight things out mano a mano with the late Dr. Marx:

Certainly physical labor is often required to convert the raw material of nature into the specific forms we need to live. Yet increasingly, productivity stems from our abstract knowledge of the world (science) and our imaginative methods of putting this knowledge to use (technology). The value of inventing a transistor or discovering a polio vaccine simply cannot be measured in labor units. But this doesn’t mean that the years of dedication and the unyielding independence of spirit that such accomplishments demand should somehow be discounted. On the contrary: doing so is patently unjust.

Not very neo- is that ideoproduct, I fear: you can let AEIdeologues and Heritagitarians and Catoholics run until the tub overflows with such stuff, should it happen to be your preferred wallow.

To be sure, this is the first slave of Lord Mammon I ever came across who expects a pension for his "unyielding independence of spirit." Unfortunately, the reason why the rest of His Lordship’s apostles and visionaries and seconds and bottlewashers never talk like that is that it is flagrantly inconsistent with the Mammonite system as a whole. I believe I might invest, say, 28.12½ USD to back my guess that NC5 AXGh is not just a wannabe but a notgonnabe in addition.[4]

You have heard of "vulgar Marxism," no doubt. Neocomrade A. X. Ghote may conceivably be out to flog a new ideoproduct that aspires to be worthy of the monnicker "Vulgar Antimarxism." Which strikes me as much like that proposal to patent a gizmo that turns clean knives into dirty ones -- but never mind me, sir!

At the moment the thing is to see if we can’t help the poor little rich lad out of the sandtrap he has dug himself into. Look at the peroration, or "bottom line" in the language of Gods. Evidently the spirit of his shtyk was original-intented to be somethin’ like "Mind is to matter as Viagra Falls is to that stupendous cataract at Crawford TX.

Now in that conjunction, is not the obvious plan to point out that nowadays very little that can be badmouthed and swiftboated as ‘material’ or ‘physical’ happens this side of China. Here in the holy Homeland™ have we -- ¿‘we’? -- not become so thoroughly neodevoted to Ghotean "abstract knowledge ... and imaginative methods" that all of Arizona Major looks like a resort spa?

Wherefore we mun alle singen, "Better fifty op-eds of Rio Limbaugh than a ’cycle from Cathay!"

And I wish you, Dr. Bones,
Happy days through health-care affordability!

___
[1] Our common friend Paddy is keening in the fœtal position behind me as I keyboard. Perhaps I was unduly blunt when I explained to him why one cannot replace the generic "John Doe" and "Richard Roe" and "John Hancock" with something more misty and Pseltic like (his suggestions) Andy O’Sullivan or Piggy McNoonan.


[2] ’Tis tempting to suggest that Wally Wombschool and Cindy from Wasilla take SSA checks for the TRUE "unearned income." Though true in a general way, I think, one must qualify the proposition a little to achieve better accuracy. Wallies and Cindies younger than (approximately) thirty-four years five months, those hatched in the year of religionism 1395/1975/5735 or before, can mostly be classified as proposed.

Their older siblin’s and neosiblin’s, however, have been robbed at bayonet point of enough FICA funds to start reflectin’ that after all it is their own money that Uncle Sam Ponzi has swiped, and so they’d like to have it back, preferably at once and with thirteen percent interest patriotically compounded on a lunar-monthly basis.


[3] The Gods would say "invests on line" or the like. That unpleasant S-word on which I keep harping is scarcely to be found in the neovocabulary of the Godly -- except when They fall out intramurally. In that case the verb is irregularly conjugated as follows:


We invest
You speculate
They [*] *&^%$#

[*] E.g., Ch. Ponzi and B. Madoff. Plus naturally The Wicked State most of all!

Very incidentally, I was tempted to formulate the Ghote Neodogma (Pat. Pend.) as "She also serves who only sits and clips coupons," which wording would involve the sliderule-and-buggywhip type of anachronism, even withou a ‘neo-’ around to make things even worse (as neos generally do).

Similarly, over at Fox-on-15th’s Slate.com, prose-challenged patients or victims of Prof. MacL@@han are expected to take their idols and icons for Finanzkapitalismus from the board game Monopoly, first consigned to the tender mercies of Mlle. de la Main Invisible "some years after" "1903." Before top hats went out, obviously. Long before.

I doubt NC5 AXGh stands high in the inner councils of Hooverville, but those Gods who do are to be commended on Their neocleverness at first swipin’ the iconography in question from Lefty, and then stickin’ with it whole decades and generations after the "use by" date came and went. This is not quite as good a trick as that of H. R. H. the Prince of Darkness -- "La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas." -- yet to convey a false impression that one’s own species of predator must have gone extinct long ago is bound to put one’s mark-and-dupe species at a considerable disadvantage. Pretty nifty!

It follows that if NC5 AXGh is anythin’ like reasonably bright and better, he will never let any of his brokees catch him more than semidressed. I mean, how could a guy with ugly legs who insists on wearin’ shorts and flipflops and that flashy-trashy Hawaiian shirt possibly be out to con you? He does not look the least bit like the Parker Brothers idea of Daddy Warbucks and William Howard Taft.


[4] Really makin’ it in the agitprop line requires (he speculated) that the maker not fall for his own spin as soon as he spins it. Presumably the minor pajamatarian neocomrade has noticed how his Party-an’-Ideology betters prefer almost infinitely to talk about the GOP Brand True Freedumb (®) product -- ¡GOPT®UF! -- rather than about Finanzkapitalismus. Obviously NC5 AXGh is attemptin’ to imitate them, but the trouble is, he does not fully grasp what he apes.

Miss Stein thought It is so flattering to have a pupil [E. M. Hemin’way] who does it without understanding it, but I believe she was pretty nearly all alone in so thinking. At any rate, I am not with her.

Notice, moreover, how if one reckons this infelicitous amateur’s neoïnnovation in conjunction with the rest of his stuff, the part of the Ghote Neodogma (Pat. Pend.) mainstream Mammonites and Hoovervillains do in fact bark an’ bellow all the time, it makes itself look even worse. One can imagine the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in the fable wanting, once the spillage had been capped and mopped up, to be commended at least for his "unyielding independence of spirit." (It would take a lot of that just to ask Merlin for a report card, under the circumstances!)

But for the little laddie to expect any bonus points for "abstract knowledge of the world and imaginative methods of putting this knowledge to use" would be laughable.



16 May 2010

Blimp Shoots Neoself Down in Flames!



Dear Dr. Bones,

A blimp is a terrible thing to lose!

(( I mean, if you can lose a whole blimp, what is there that you CAN keep track of? ))

And when that blimp you just lost was you, your ownneoself!

Think of the yaleodrama of it, Dr. Bones! Le Chagrin et la Pitié!! "Brother, can you spare an obol for Belisarius?"

Alas, poor Victor! he’s played the kiddie selfservatives’ Destructive Creationism™ game way too long and far too well. Startin’ out as the the only geistlicher Militärist in captivity, Party Neocomrade V. D. Hanson, Freelord and Rear-Colonel Blimp in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, comes down at last to this, all gasbags shredded, all dignity gone with the helium, down, down relentlessly, all the way down to the level of Neocomrade (Fourth Class) H. L. Carr and "You can trust me; I’m not like the others."

Blimp in ultimate neodesperation -- or maybe it’s just Alzheimer’s? -- sets up to pander to the kiddies and the neokiddies and the wombscholars and the downdumbees as bein’ the tertiary-educationalist who will reveal to them from the inside why tertiary educationalism sucks. Their Neocomrade Herr Prof. Dr. Fu’ád al-‘Ajamí of the Johns Hopkins University performs this same function for one major cohort of Natives overseas; their Neocomrade Assistant Justice C. X. Thomas, for a ditto of the Bad Poor here in the holy Homeland™.

Blimp ain’t a bit like them other perfessers, Dr. Bones: for one thing, he shills for America’s Otherparty. More importantly, Blimp really CAN park a bicycle striaght. Should you invite him to address your local chapter of the Vast Whitewing Conspiracy , sir, I betcha Blimp would be happy to demonstrate his vehicular neocompetence -- provided you suppy the bicycle and increase his dishonorarium a couple hundred.

This self-dishonourin’ is so acutely distressing that I can stand to contemplate it not a nanosecond more.

***

So let’s talk more generally about why the Party of Grant and Hoover an’ Goldwater ’n’ Atwater & ... should demand such self-sacrifices from their dhimmies.

Foxcuckooland subjects who really belong to the WASP God Folk (or who cannot be reliably (85%) distinguished from True Belongers at twenty paces in bright sunlight) get a free pass, but if anybooby can see at a glance that you are not a Freelord Horsa or a Kiddiemaster Hengist or a sound and vouched-for Party Neocomrade G. F. Babbitt from the Zenith chapter of the VWWC, you must go through that Howiecarrite TM-INLTO fandango to be admitted to that Big Tent that the G.O.P. geniuses and their agitproppers get such a kick [1] out of alludin’ to. ’Tis the moral equivalent of a strip search, begorrah! of taking off one shoes at holy shrines like mosques and airports.

What on G*re’s green earth makes America’s Otherparty behave like that, sir? At least a few ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ señoritos know enough mathematics to work out the long-term consequences: 110% of the ‘America’ that looks like Oilslick Dick Cheney’s family Exxonmas card plus two or three percent of everybody else is not likely to prove a winnin’ strategy in the 2048 elections, especially when the TM-INLTO shtyk is bound to infuriate more than a few of the residual ninety-odd percent who fall in various subpigeonholes of the Bad Poor.

I see I have just written that as if nobody whom the Kiddie Selfservative Movement has honoured with a mention on Rupert’s List were anythin’ but poor. Obviously it is not so, one need look no farther than the good rear-colonel, who may, in his present autoneodegenerate condition, feel it incumbent upon him to disassociate himself from Faculty Club badness, but whose dynasty has owned half of Death Valley (or whatever) since they grabbed it from the drybacks (as they then were) fair an’ square back in 1848 (or whenever). [2]

Well, OK, ho gegrapha, gegrapha. Stet!

For I really do start by assuming that the TopPercenters -- all those freedames and freelords and kiddiemistresses and kiddiemasters of the Party of Grant, the paymasters and AstroTurf™baggers of the KSM -- have sold themselves to Lord Mammon. Naturally they never actually signed a parchment in their own blood as if they were Dr. Faustus. For that matter, their own pet neomythology makes such a proceedin’ unimaginable: neogentry who think of His Lordship, their Owner, as Mlle. de la Main Invisible are not likly to notice that anybody owns them, let alone have a document to prove it.

Allegorice, the Party-an’-AEIdeology neogentry (as I figure them) have a hard time thinkin’ anythin’ but poverty really bad, though they do recognize a second-order badness of the sort which Rear-Col. Blimp here struggles to purge huimself of, the ancillary badness of a Little Master Victor, rich enough himself, supposin’ that there exists some other sort of good an’ bad in Foxcuckooland than Lord Mammon’s sort. Master Victor was extremely eccentric (and interesting) back when he supposed that Mars and Bellona might preside over a superior set of values.

His second self-treason is far less remarkable, but treason it remains, because it can scarcely be supposed that Blimp all along understood bein’ a perfesser to entail no more than doin’ vocational trainin’ for His Lordship. Or even just credentializin’ up-and-comin’ Big Managers. If Blimp did not at some point in his ruinous career believe in the Rev. Mr. Newman of Oxford’s Knowledge its own end, then feel free, Dr. Bones, to address me as "Marie of Roumania." [3]

And I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare.

___
[1] Definitely a non-sarcastic kick. As almost always in politics, Party-of-Grant dingalings believe in their own dingalingery with full subjective sincerity. They really do account that Otherparty bigtop of theirs BIG. If anythin’, maybe it is too big.

And so it is, historically speaking: imagine (say) Neocomrade Speaker N. L. Gingrich tryin’ to explain to the martyred General Hamilton down in [exp. del.] how the Otherparty -- prescriptively all of them the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom (LLC) -- has degenerated into a miscellaneous riff-raff that includes even folks like _________. Not to mention ________! Plus now the TopPercenter Party barks an’ bellows against l’élitisme en Amérique in season and out.

If the alternative had been to live three centuries and see what the Otherparty racket would turn into, St. Alexander the Beastslayer might consider that Mr. Burr did him a big favour.


[2] OK, sure, I make up my facts. Wanna make something of it? Freelord Blimp is definitely a hereditary landlord ("agricultural entrpreneur" in Hooverspeak, I guess) of some sort.


[3] As a garlic milkshake to Count Dracula, so is stuff like

I am asked what is the end of University Education, and of the Liberal or Philosophical Knowledge which I conceive it to impart: I answer, that what I have already said has been sufficient to show that it has a very tangible, real, and sufficient end, though the end cannot be divided from that knowledge itself. Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward. And if this is true of all knowledge, it is true also of that special Philosophy, which I have made to consist in a comprehensive view of truth in all its branches, of the relations of science to science, of their mutual bearings, and their respective values. What the worth of such an acquirement is, compared with other objects which we seek,--wealth or power or honour or the conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of trouble in the attaining.


to Lord Mammon.

(( BTW, if little Master Victor had really been the Horatio Alger sprout that he must now think that he ought to have been, surely he would never have joined the late Perfesser Nietzsche in the Class. Phil. swindle?

(( But Apollo knows best ))


12 May 2010

POTUS Ike and SECWAR Gates



Dear Dr. Bones,

Any second- through ninth-rank publicist and/or tertiary educationaliser who happens to approve of liberalism and democracy--possibly even of "the Democrat party"--is likely enough to make a fetish of burning candles to St. Ike. "After all, jennies and jackasses, General Eisenhower was one of THEM, but he ADMITTED that" et cetera, et cetera.

So here’s an unexamined notion crying out "Examine me!" -- no doubt about it. Even better, it is OUR unexamined notion, at least if one does not scrutinize the pronoun usage too rigorously. Picking on ourselves is better sport than picking on even the best militant extremist Republicanians currently functional, not to mention almost infinitely better sport than picking on the Kiddie Selfservative Movement.

Kiddies and neokiddies perhaps scarcely come into play, though: they will either have been so successfully wombschooled that they scarcely know who St. Ike was, or else they will have been trained to write him off in a flash as just another obvious R.I.N.O. Indeed, should Wally Wingnut and Cindy from Wasilla first hear of the Crusader in Old Europe for the very first time the day after tomorrow, they are bound to write him off in a flash with two distinct knee-jerk responses inculcated by their trainers:

(1) "Never apologize, never explain": anybody who even seems to suggest that the Party of Grant & Hoover (and Goldwater an’ Atwater ’n’ ...) might possibly have erred grievously cannot, eo ipso, be the real McCaughey. She (the apologizatrix, I mean, who claims the inferior generic pronoun by right) may not be a ""conscious, dedicated agent of the ... Conspiracy" such as the John Galt Society had discovered in Gen. Eisenhower himself, but she must be some kimd of Fifth Columnist all the same, wittin’ or witless.

(2) "That was Then, this is Now"[1]: expecting the kiddies and neokiddies and G.O.P. geniuses of 1431/2010/5770 to attach any importance to ‘their’ Gen. Pres. Eisenhower after fifty years is as silly as to expect them to feel the slightesr urge to defend their Col. Sen. Frémont after 154 years. Gone with the wind is all that! Or call it "destructively creationized."

So much for kiddie selfservatism.

As to ourselves, I believe there are three distinct issues involved here. To disentangle them in order, from the most peculiar to the most general:

(1) Is the individual publicist/educationizer correct when he presents U.S. Secretary of War R. M. Gates as chela to Eisenhower’s guru? Does the incumbent WARSEC really disapprove of a supposed "military-industrial-_____ complex" of any sort? Of the precise sort that St. Ike forewarned against? Of the sort or sorts of MIXC that decent Democrats traditionally prefer to imagine that he forewarned against?

(2) Did the general himself indeed forewarn against what most Democrats have taken his MIXC to be? Mighn’t he have meant something rather different, something less obviously convenient for good-guy political purposes?

(3) What intrinsic validity does this "Even THEY have had to admit that XYZ" shtyk possess? In the ideal case, that is, the case in which THEY do not simply shrug XYZ off as Mediæval History or neoëxcommunicate the admitter of it as nothin’ to do with THEMselves. [2]

***

At the moment I feel more live refining questions than guessing at answers, but, briefly:

(1) The peanut-gallery peanuts seem mostly to doubt the Secretary’s Eisenhowerism, and I incline to suspect they are right.

(2) If I thought this business worth a research project, which I do not, seeing that the militant extremist GOP are not go’n’ta give a hoot no matter what the facts were, I should try to confirm or refute the conjecture that Gen. Eisenhower worried first and foremost about a MIXC that would corrupt his beloved violence profession. That he was what WARSEC Gates calls "a low-maintenance leader of simple tastes, modest demands, and small entourage" because he thought such austerity the best plan for successful crusading. Having been born as long go as 1308/1890/5650, Eisenhower might very easily have thought that to march into battle trailing a long train of Persian apparatus was to ask for Persian military outcomes, like Marathon and Salamis and Platæa and the various unhappy collisions with Alexander III of Macedon.[3]

(3) A genuinely hard question, it seems to me. Perhaps the place to begin is by insisting that we are not automatically responsible for what other good guys may choose to admit or ‘admit’. Unless we know more than simply that so-and-so has ‘admitted’ such-and-such, what is his admission to us? At best, only a strong suggestion that we ought to go look up what he said and decide whether or not we care to admit as much ourselves.

That proposed scheme has nothin’ at all to do with how militant extremism behaves, naturally. But it would be remiss indeed to consider that we have done our intellectual and ethical duty by simply being no worse than Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh are. Far be that from!

Happy days.

__
[1] Referring to neoterically indoctrinated kiddies from within the holy Homeland™, one naturally give the current version of their Party-an’-Ideology soundbite. Writing for an audience of Martians or Ruritanians, though, who had never heard of such strange creatures before, one would have to give the original of it, that is, Their Ford’s ever-immortal rulin’ "History is bunk."

By the way, sir, St. Ike is unquestionably more ‘history’ than anything else for the present keyboard, in the sense of "beyond living memory." I recall watching him show off his "prairie French" to Televisionland at the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, hardly a political event. The U-2 fuss of 1960 I vaguely recall, but without any definite Eisenhower connection. Retrospectively, of course, that affair pretty well nails poor Ike’s coonskin to the wall for a wimpy apologizer, thoroughly unworthy of Party an’ AEIdeology. They shoulda gone with Taft!

But Father Zeus knows best.


[2] The advanced student may, as an optional exercise, discuss how ‘we’ feel about the shtyk in question when we have to take it rather than dish it out.

There is an awful lot of that going around just at present, as it happens. Ms. Student might start from Glenn Greenwald of Salon, who has a list as long as your arm, Dr. Bones, of things that he takes President Summers and Mr. O’Bama to have -- very injudiciously, in Mr. Greenwald’s eyes -- admitted that the vile Busheviki were right about all along.


[3] Back in the good old pre-wombschool days, these so-called ‘classical’ human events would, I presume, have been familiar enough to bear mention in a public and political context. My own particular favorite in this venerable Persian-bashing genre would have been moderately obscure even then, though. It goes like this, Xen. Ages. I 28:

Moreover, believing that contempt for the [Iranian] enemy would kindle the fighting spirit, he [Agesilaus, king of Sparta in the early fourth century B.C.] gave instructions to his heralds that the barbarians captured in the raids should be exposed for sale naked. So when his soldiers saw them white because they never stripped, and fat and lazy through constant riding in carriages, they believed that the war would be exactly like fighting with women.



11 May 2010

TM-INLTO for Dhimmies



Dear Dr. Bones,

(( Please make a memorandumb of the acronym TM-INLTO as elucidated below and place it in the "Exceptionalism, Self-, (of neocomrades)" dossier for possible future deployment. ))


Sir Tristan -- that’s Neocomrade (Fourth Class) T. X. Yates to you, sir -- professes to be in like Flynn with his ostended deity, Lord Mammon. For pajamatarian and yaleodramatic purposes, Sir Tristan is represented as "a management and investment analyst."

Over chez soi , where, by the way, the sky happens to be a profoundly regrettable [1] shade of purple, the discoverer may discover the "Yates Management" neocorporate person, a "[c]onsultin[’] company" which "focuses on analytics, process, and project management" and blurbs itself as bein’ "just like all of the other management consulting companies except for two things. We actually have people with management experience, and we actually study management."

Plainly kiddie selfservatives and other intellectual or ethical cripples can trust Sir Tristam, for he is not like the others !

Myself, I always wonder a little what those badmouthed anonymous ‘others’ have to say about this self-servicin’ antithesis, so worthy in almost every way of your honourable-&-gallant knight of Party an’ AEIdeology. Except, perhaps, that TM-INLTO is not very -comradely. Indeed, it eats the very Hell out of TopPercenter solidarity, TM-INLTO does.

On the other hand, the kiddies targeted have been successfully wombschooled and niedergedümmt and foxcuckooed to the point of not noticin’ anythin’ fishy about neogents like Sir Tristan assurin’ ’em that the incomparable and ever-immortal [3] Freelordly System -- only an enemy or enemy-useful idiot would speak of Finanzkapitalismus in any language -- is the best of all possible Systems, even though pretty near everybody in it, present company once excepted, is more or less a crook.

I daresay that, too, is an old song. Or reasonably old, insofar as Century XII/XVIII/LV seems to have been full of palæoboobs and protowingnuts who really did believe devoutly in what M. de Voltaire intended as travesty: "This is the best of all possible worlds! And furthermore, everything in it is a necessary evil." [4]

In addition to these generic doubts about the Round Table of Mammon, I have some reservations about Sir Tristan in particular, whose neocredentials may not be entirely in order. Especially worrisome is a passage like

We elected our officials to solve our nation’s problems, the foremost of which is the weak economy. They asked us to give them these responsibilities so that they could exercise their leadership and judgment. In the course of their workday, they meet with government officials, captains of industry, and foreign leaders.

Would a bonâ fide kiddiemaster talk like that, sir? Or even one of the true kiddiemasters’ hired hands at the Tanks of Thought? Is not this paragraphette pervaded by a naïveté unlikely to afflict either an actual practitioner of Freelordly Systematics or the sort of ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ señorito who takes money for preachin’ in the abstract and without personal hands-on experience what Lord Mammon wants preached?

Possibly I attach too much importance to the small phrase "captains of industry," which is comparable to "Twenty-three skidoo!", up-to-date-in-Kansas-City-wise. Plus it sounds like the late Miss Rand of Petersburg havin’ one of her St. Teresa (or Molly Bloom) moments about John, Freelord Galt. "Captains of industry," forsooth!: fancy Citizen Blankfein of the Goldman-Saxons talkin’ about himself -- or even about his tribe’s competitors -- like that!

But the naïveté of Sir Tristan runs far deeper than his gush, for the neogent is pleased to expose his whole theory of the Wicked State, and it is not a theory that takes well to exposure. Sir Tristan sounds, to the present coarse and illiterate keyboard, like Clarabelle the clown expoundin’ the dark insights of Party Neocomrade R. B. Cheney, Freemaster Halliburton and Viceroy to George XLIII of wretched memory. As every nonwombschoolboy knows, Cheneyanity consists essentially in executivitarianism [5], a neodogma which can, I suppose, be loosely described as "give them responsibilities so that they can exercise their leadership and judgment" without positive inaccuracy. A writer less loosey-goosey than Sir Tristan would add expressis verbis that the transfer of responsibilities is irrevocable, that Big Management is not to be impertinently cross-examined about what it does with the powers entrusted. Once duly empowered by the batrachian community, King Stork is answerable to nobody, entirely irresponsible and not to be held to account by any mechanism much short of tyrannicide.

That is a pretty silly neodogma, and I have spoofed it as such myself before now, pretending that Cheneyanity is exactly what one would expect from alumnuses of the H*rv*rd Victory School[6], because your typical secret-sector business corporation has a very obvious Executive Branch with scarcely any hint of a legislature or judiciary. That was spoof when I proposed it. When Sir Tristan proposes it, it is what I have already labeled ‘naïveté.’

’Tis not, however, his wannabe freelordship’s most flagrant naïveté. That prize must be reserved for his notion that the holy-Homelanders™ have actually agreed to be ruled as if they were shareholders and as if the United States of America were a sort of Acne Widget Trust LLC writ large.

I doubt not that Sir Tristan sincerely believes his own stuff, but let’s face it, Dr. Bones, to believe stuff like that makes one a dingaling. Even by Foxcuckooland’s very forgivin’ standards, I fear, such stuff is dingalingery.

(( Flat-out gossip and ad hominem are fun too, but I’ll be brief so as not to look like Ione that wallows in self-indulgence. I betcha Sir Tristan does not actually bigmanage anythin’ much except other people’s portfoliettos. THAT is the ‘industry’ of which our knight of lucre is a ‘captain’. As the proverb says, "Paper will stand anything," and there is nothing I know of to prevent Clarabelle the clown or, say, the late Citizen Madoff, or anybody else, from settin’ up to take five percent from dupes and marks in return for tellin’ ’em what to do with the other ninety-five percent.

(( Nice work if you can get it, I guess, but to tart it up verbally as Industry, as if one were a John D. or an Andy Carnégie? Kindly include me out! ))

And I wish you, sir,
Happy and healthy and affordable and tristanfree days.


___
[1] Dear Rio Limbaugh, / I don’t know much about your Picture People values, but one does not need to be Perfesser MacL@@han to know what one no sooner sees than detests. / As ever, / JHM


[2] Notice, Dr. Bones, that my picking up the "Trust me! I’m not like the others" shtyk by that end implies that Neocomrade (Ninth Class) H. L. Carr, whose shtyk it is -- or at least H. Louis holds the TM-INLTO franchise for Eastern Massachusetts -- really is a little different from the rest of the neolemmin’ly pack.


[3] The Freelordly System is ever-immortal ex hypothesi for those who feign the hypotheses of Neocomrade F. Y. Fukuyama, Freelord and Kiddiemaster Stopstory in the peerage of Wingnut City. I have been told that Master Frankie has changed his mind about it, but the woods are still full of weaker siblin’s who remain loyal.


[4] If one looks back much beyond the imperishable glories of A. R. 1100/1688/5448, Pangloss disappears from the history of thought in Old Europe almost without a trace. Presumably as long as hereditary Superstition and Enthusiasm were still hitting on all cylinders, the was no noëtic niche available for the optimism product. But Father Zeus knows best.

I do not recall off-hand any writers of the Éclaircissement who expressly exempted "present company" from the taint of evil necessity. But perhaps the self-dispensation went without saying, given peccatum originale?


[5] Those who (pretend to) believe in this snake oil refer to it in a more dignified way as "the unitary executive theory."


[6] The former Allston (Massachusetts) College of Chirurgy and Barber Science.


08 May 2010

"... energy, water, cheese, mineral resources ..."



Dear Dr. Bones,

Hannibal the Clown writes

"[F]uture conflicts will involve wars among nations and alliances of nations waged by powerful armed forces for regional power and influence; fights for energy, water, food, mineral resources and ... wealth"

One can guess why such views might be popular at the Officers Clubs of ChristoKorea, Dr. Bones, or better, why they *would* be popular, were the estimable CK’s in any position to pay for an establishment of the violence profession. [1]

Surveying Foxcuckooland as a whole, however, that vast mental wastecontinent that stretches from sea to whinin’ sea, and of which the tiny province (reservation, almost) of ChristoKorea is almost the least of backward corners, one must proclaim Hannibal badly out of step with the market he proposes to break into.

There is, to be sure, a war most of our holy-Homelandic™ wingnutettes and wingnuts would like to fight, but, alas!, it is much more like what Hannibal’s bureaucratic enemies at the U. S. Department of Aggression are accused of cravin’, "light forces designed to operate from fixed bases", that, an’ crappy Petræo-MacNamaran COIN an’ assorted other such wimperies, old and maybe sometimes new.

Were Hannibal the Clown to consult his proposed customers, those whom devotees of Mlle. de la Main Invisible have memorably declared "always right," he would be wastin’ his retirement time tryin’ to help them wage their War on Wetbacks (Pat. Pend.). Though not identical with what Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. H. Petræus of Princeton and West Point has been up to lately somewhere out east of Suez, the contemplated WoW product will be far more like it that like the daydreams of Hannibal.

The biggest difference, as it seems to one who admittedly never soared higher in the firmament of Mars and Bellona than SP-5, is that mainstream kiddie selfservatives propose precisely to defend a fixed position, viz., to keep the Spaniard rabble from takin’ away the kiddies’ own already existin’ cheese, not to sally forth and snatch somebody else’s. Indeed, south of Lesser Texas, there is not much cheese worth grabbin’ that I know of.

Hannibal the Clown’s dreams of neoglory point rather towards some such nifty scheme as annexin’ the west shore of the Gulf of Petroleum so as to keep the shifty Natives from swipin’ any more of our fossil fuel. As far as I can tell, kiddie selfservatives are quite incapable of seein’ anythin’ wrong with the Hannabalic sort of niftiness, but still, not to object is far from being the same as a positive endorsement.

What would it profit a Party-an’-Ideology neocomradess, after all, to gain the whole neo-Levant but lose "her own country" in the course of doin’ it? [2]

Alas, poor clown! in all probability, his paths of neoglory lead but to ... to fadin’ ... away ...... like ......... Corncob Doug . . . .

And I wish you, sir,
Happy and healthy and affordable days.




___
[1] Rumor has it that the CK’s are havin’ trouble just keepin’ America’s Moonpaper afloat. But Father Zeus knows best.


[2] Quid enim proderit homini, si lucretur mundum totum et detrimentum faciat animae suae? [Ev. Marc. VIII:36]

07 May 2010

Yaleodrama for Dhimmies (rough notes)



Dear Dr. Bones,

Friday being accounted a neosabbath amongst the Abraheemics, or EMM Folk, Eastern Mediterranean Monotheists, let us honour it a little for a change and lay off their politics and even off their Pharoahsee self-religionatin’. We shall lay on some kulchur and lit. crit. instead, OK?

Neocomrade (Fifth Class) R. X. Owens comes in handily for my e-picnic plans, because, as you can quickly verify for yourself, his scribble of 1,104 words contains not more than the odd four words of politics and/or religionism. Exactly what the other eleven hundred words may be is more than a little mysterious, but that is a mystery eminently suitable for investigation by us Geisteswissenschaftler, is it not?

And just to provide a jumpinng-off point, like, let me propose that what sits there and sogs in front of our keyboards is a specimen of yaleodrama.[1]

As every wombschoolboy ought to know by now, Neocomrade R. L. Simon, Freelord and Kiddiemaster Padschaama in the peerage of Wingnut City, is the world’s foremost yaleodramatist. Furthermore, His Freelordship may well sign the paychecks of hired hand NC5 RXO -- signin’ ’em naturally on behalf of whoever does the real heavy liftin’ around these e-parts, AstroTurf™wise, for one can hardly suppose that the Kiddiemaster pays for all these splendours of redarkenment out of His Freelordship’s own private- or secret-sector means.

(...) What’s that, sir? (...)

No, I think you are just wrong. The kind of nanoœconomics I have been touching upon, sir, very definitely does fall within the remit of literary criticism. But perhaps I should have made clear that I am not interested in working through one particular junior birdnut’s scribble with a red pencil, but only in using the scribble as a sort of trampoline upon which to bounce a discussion of yaleodrama quâ _genre_. Look, Dr. Bones, if you were to tell the learnèd historians and evaluators of Italian opera that they must not discuss how the expenses of it were met, they would write you off as an obvious Philistine operating in overcorrection mode.

Closer to home, don’t you think even Stephen von Greenblatt of H*rv*rd would deign to write about (hypothetical) documents that prove Lord Verulam, though never writing any drama himself, put the man Shakescreen up to it, and made lots of kibitzing suggestions, and, above all, enclosed banker’s draughts for exactly £28/12/6 in letters dated in seventeen different months scattered between October 1597 and January 1612? Such mammonical background considerations could be of critical interest in the narrowest sense. If nothing else, they would let poor Herr von Greenblatt off the hook a little by not requiring that he defend the incomparable and ever-immortal lustre of absolutely every three words running that his client ever ‘penned’.[2]

I rest that case.

Back at Rancho Pajama, I was about to make the point that yaleodrama resembles opera and melodrama and farce (&c.) in requiring far more than a bare script or scenario. In addition to strictly literary values, there are so-called "production values," and this is where Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschaama interacts æsthetically as well as financially and sentimentally/‘ideologically’ with the likes of NC-5 R. X. Owens.

Now the Muses and you and I, sir, who must view our yaleodramas not merely from cheap seats, but from folding chairs placed well outside the monkey house, would be rash indeed to suppose we can always distinguish what was original-intented in a yaleodrama by Kiddiemaster Padschaama or other Titan of Neogenius and what was stuck in by some mere producer or director or maybe an even merer stagehand. The latter class of critters have often been known to "play to the crowd," as they say. And of course when the crowd played to happens to be the base and vile of the Party of Grant and ... an’ Atwater ’n’ . . . !

Pardon my politics, sir. The critical problem is not the nature of those pandered to, but whether the panderin’ was in the yaleodramaturge’s Urtext, or stuck in subsequently by some lesser production-valuer.

I have already given away that I believe somebody is panderin’ in the scribble at hand. As almost always around here, Wally Wombschool and Cindy from Wasilla are only too clearly expected to feel even better about their neoselves after such a performance than before. [3] In a general way, it is impossible to suppose that Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschaama does not original-intent that this be so.

This makes His Freelordship doubly vulnerable to inferiors tamperin’ with His yaleodramas: in addition to panderin’ to the kiddies, a Neocomrade R. X. Owens can "get the hang" of some freelordly and kiddiemagisterial script, and then hold the pedal down, so to speak, while performin’ from it so that Wally an’ Cindy "cannot possibly miss" what His Freelordship so very "obviously had in mind." Unfortunately, even when a NC5 RXO mechanism guesses 100% correctly what was original-intented by its betters substantially, the fact remains that the pedalissimo effect was not. The unsolicited overemphasis need not necessarily wreck the yaleodrama as conceived in the mind of the Neotitan, but it certainly might.

That would be a misfortune at and for Rio Limbaugh and Port Ste. Lucie, naturally. Our own misfortune, as critics of yaleodrama and, to some extent, as students of neocomradology, is essentially that there is no way for us to tell exactly what is goin’ on inside the monkey house. With the late Bill Shakescreen, we possess folios and quartos and whatnot that will have had at least a little to do with what happened on stage during Hamlet. But when a NC5 RXO puts on a neoshow based on talkin’ points provided by Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschaama, one can only guess what even a bad quarto would look like.

Worse yet, the Kiddie Selfservative Movement (KSM) bein’ what it is, pretty well everything that happens on stage over there in the lunatic asylum is bound to look like overexaggerated panderin’ to a decent political grown-up who must watch the neoproceedin’s through a figurative chain-link fence.

A very few scribblers of Party-an’-Ideology operettas and farces and melodramas and yaleodramas do insist so ferociously on

Speake the Speech I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you trippingly on the Tongue: But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do, I had as liue the Town-Cryer had spoke my Lines: Nor do not saw the Ayre too much your hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie Torrent, Tempest, and (as I say) the Whirle-winde of Passion, you must acquire and beget a Temperance that may giue it Smoothnesse. O it offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Pery-wig-pated Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings: who (for the most part) are capeable of nothing, but inexplicable dumbe shewes, & noise: I could haue such a Fellow whipt for o’re-doing Termagant: it outHerod’s Herod. Pray you auoid it.

that their wishes get complied with. But when this happens, Dr. Bones, we do not detect the event through any critical acumen of our own, but rather by half the KSM groundlin’s booin’ and hisssssin’ and barkin’ "R.I.N.O.!" at whatever poor Neocomrade Half N. Half they blame for so disgraceful and wimplike an exhibition.[4]

***

I suppose I should say at least a little bit about the particular neospecimen, as opposed to its genre.

Most striking is that it appears to aim at a subtle effect that most of the sweet puppies of Redarkenment are not, perhaps, likely to appreciate. Is not Freelord Kiddiemaster Padschama here invitin’ the PJM dupes and marks to complain that -- of all neothings! -- their enemies for once, and not themselves as always, do not get enough quality time on the Y@@ T@@B?

Only plainly self-discrediting persons named on Rupert’s List [5] are solicited to apply, no doubt. Even on those terms and conditions, however, can Master Wally and Miss Cindy be counted on to shift their gaze away from their own omphaluses long enough to notice? [6]

Finally, as with anything the present coarse and illiterate keyboard may say about media criticism and "production values" and so on, the bottom line, written or implicit, must read as follows:

¡But [Marshall] MacL@@han knows best!


___
[1] "Dear Rio Limbaugh, / The ‘E’ in ‘yaleodrama’ is silent. Pronounce the word in four syllables with the first stressed, as if it were the name of an Hibernian of distinction, say 'the late lamented YAEL O’Drama of Poormouth in County Dongbat.' / As ever, / JHM"


[2] I assume, possibly rashly, that Mr. Von Greenblatt of H*rv*rd is human enough to have a few private reservations about the merits of this and that and the other barded by the Bard. Even if he is not, some lesser light from the Other Place, like Prof. Dr. Harold Bloom, would be pleased as Punch to rush in and pick the bad bits of Bacon out of the porridge.


[3] In practice, the needle on the selfwunnerfulometer of most kiddie selfservatives must have been jammed at the high end for years, since Impeachmentgate ’98 if not before. Still, I suppose it might drop back at little without constant pressure. Father Zeus knows best.


[4] I believe I am warranted in taking for granted that P&I wind-up mechanisms with serial numbers like NC5RXO never muck about with production values in such fashion as to render what was original-intented LESS pandersome and loud-pedalled than the talkin’ points furnished them specified. To be sure, since the talkin’ points and yaleodrama scenarios are inaccessible to us, we can never claim to know this beyond all possibility of being mistaken.

Nevertheless, I, at least, cannot imagine how a neocritter with traits like that could long survive, let alone flourish, in any œcological niche in all of Foxcuckooland from sea to whinin’ sea. But perhaps you can think of a for-instance, sir?


[5] "Dear Rio Limbaugh, / ‘Rupert's List’ is the (feigned or existin’) consolidation of ALL the enemies cherished by ANY wingnutette or wingnut. / As ever, / JHM"


[6] This is a real question, Dr. Bones, not a rhetorical one. If you have any inkling of an answer to it, please let me hear from you about it.

06 May 2010

Pagin' the New Limboviet Man!



Dear Dr. Bones,

Today’s specimen of pajamathink, graciously outgassed by Neocomrade (Fourth Class) J. X. Lileks, raises the old issue between us of whether even some future perfection of Party-an’-AEIdeology wombschoolin’ and Niederdümmung can ever hope to produce the ideal neolemmin’ -- The New Limboviet Man, as it were -- who really and truly believes such stuff before settin’ out to talk the rest of KSPAC into belief.

You have pointed out cogently that a neospecimen like NC4 JXL is but a hired hand vis-à-vis the real Shockers an’ Awe-ers of self-neotericity, in this case Freelord Roger, Kiddiemaster Padschama.[1] "Why," indeed, "should a paymistress care whether or not her operatives believe in the operations that they are financed to perpetrate?"

It is a valid question, Dr. Bones, by which I mean, partly, that it is NOT a rhetorical question, and therefore not one to be posed in that "Hey, betcha can’t answer this one!" tone of voice of yours.

The general answer is Zipf’s Law , which you may have heard of under the dubious rubric of "the principle of least effort." Wally Wombschool havin’ been hired to flog Coca-Cola, it is easier for the poor lad, not the brightest bulb on anybody’s Exmas tree, to hold with full subjective sincerity that Coke is better than Pepsi. ‘Objectively’ better, even -- though ’twere wiser not to open a can of worms by going into Master Wally’s Wombschool Normal U. notions of what objectivity is. This impeccable (?) honesty is compatible with the lad never actually drinkin’ anythin’ but Pepsi except when he thinks he may be under bigmanagerial surveyance.

Just turn Mr. Forster inside out when you think of Wally, and Cindy from Wasilla, and (probably) Neocomrade J. Ks. Lilex and all their PAC, sir, until proven otherwise: assume that they go by the motto "Only disconnect!" and you will be nine-tenths of the way to an analysis with quite enough predictive power to be getting on with.

As follows: whenever a decent political adult is aghast and mutters "But even a Kiddie Selfservative cannot genuinely believe THAT!", the first thing he should do -- unless he is attending a pep rally for the good guys, in which cast aghastness, plus maybe a little contempt, is all that is required, dulce est desipere in loco -- is to take refuge with M. Pascal and travailler à bien penser about his own aghastness. He should ask himself, "Why, exactly, does sincere belief in this latest wingnuttiness strike me as incompatible with being a rational creature?"

The usual result of this critical enterprise will be that wingnuttiness W1 is incompatible with something else, either W2, some other nuttiness that all the lemmin’s and neolemmin’s frogmarch and goosestep under the banner of, or else P1, some proposition that scarcely anybody sane would venture to deny, except possibly for special technical purposes over in the Philosophy Department.

I.e., Wally Wombschool would be a clinical case if he were sincere about W1 and W2 (or W1 and P1) simultaneously. Once the student of neocomradology has got as far as that formulation, the rest is plain enough and signposted with my "Only disconnect!" Or rather, "Just assume that Master Wally thinks disconnectedly."

Asked, for example, "Do you think Coca Cola tastes better than Pepsi Cola?," the little laddie puts first things first, superordinates his not becomin’ an unemployment statistic over mere de gustibus and self-gossip, and stoutly barks "I sure as [exp. del.] do!" [2]

(...)

After preparing that long second note, I have decided to let Neocomrade (Fourth Class) James Ks. Lilex off the hook pending further provocation.

To apply the generalities advanced below to the particular scribble is what The Master supposedly used to speak of as being "anybody’s business." Not to mention De minimis non curat lex.

And I wish you, sir,
Healthy and affordable days.

___
[1] I see [http://www.pjtv.com/v/3509] that his freelordship has traveled way down south of the border to Lesser Texas for the weekend. Today being but Thursday, one must conclude that his freelordship keeps hours that would have made a banker blush in 1930.

Still, the longer he stays there, the better chance that Lesser Texas will re-secede as threatened and then, hopefully, intern his freelordship as an enemy alien.


[2] Should his tormentor ask "Do you REALLY think Pepsi tastes better, boy?", it seems to me that Wally is even more likely to emit the aghast-striking response.

This is by way of an epicycle to my main thesis, Dr. Bones, and I am admittedly a little less sure of myself in proposing it. In a thoroughly misguided and wingnutty way, though, I think our straw puppy really does fancy (or act as if he fancies) Pascalian bien penser: to think about a matter even MORE disconnectedly and scatterbrainèdly than usual is, as I tentatively hypothesize, what Master Wally and Miss Cindy and (most of) the rest of their PAC understand by "really thinkin’ ’bout somethin’".

Perhaps it does not quite constitute practicing political Freudianity without a license to pursue this diagnosis by observing that the wombschooled neopuppy’s response would not be out of place had the stimulus been slightly different. If the sadist in our little scenario had asked "Are you on Team Pepsi or Team Coke?", there would be no occasion for aghastness at all, even with a complete knowledege of Wally’s drinkin’ problem on the part of Dr. Cruel.

To generalise that kiddie selfservatives respond to almost all questions as if they had been asked about their team affiliation instead of about the ostensible subject-matter would probably be the sort of move that Mr. Blake stimatised as idiocy. Far be that from!

But still, Dr. Bones, you must have noticed how the "Wally loves Wally; that is, I am I" syndrome keeps cropping up at Rio Limbaugh and Port Ste. Lucie. Also at Pajama Junction.

Perhaps one may venture that, although the puppies and neopuppies are not altogether without interest in remote and ‘objective’ subject-matters, few of these are ever realised in the space between the ears with the vividity of "¡My name is Wally Wombschool and I play for Team Pajama!" As to exactly what happens, on that hypothesis, when Dr. Cruel asks about some tedious and far-off and dimly-envisioned matter like a bomb scare in Manhattan, perhaps one of the ‘association’ psychologists of century XII/XVIII/LV might have something analytically helpful. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona -- and trick cyclists before St. Sigmund of Vienna, too, by G*re!

But Father Zeus knows best.