16 November 2010

Logic "schlepped to Baghdad"!



Dear Dr. Bones,

I'm not sure if I understand your logic. If one opposed the invasion of Iraq, that did not make one a partisan for Iraq.

Ah, and who shall tell Mr. Poster of the Logicke of Hyperzion?

Well, let us take a stab at it. We can but bellyflop . . . .

The particular neologician poor Poster goes up against fails to fully to exemplify those intellectual/civilisational talents with which The Greatest Demographic is notoriously endowed to a unique degree, for there is here a distinct whiff (is there not?) of "You’re another!"[0]: the Freelord of Cantor may advise his favorite parcel of alien pols how to interfere at Washington City without drawin’ any legitimate flak BECAUSE somebody or another once upon a time "schlepped to Baghdad to show progressive fealty to S[addám] Hussein."

What kind of a BECAUSE is that, sir? I ask you!

I conjecture that Hasbara House distinguishes a number of different product lines, with this one well towards the downmarket end. Such inconsequent shlepware would (I guess) sell well enough at Pajama Junction [1] or Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie, partly because the selfservative kiddies an’ neokiddies out there already hate everythin’ that their honourable and gallant Kiddiemasters label ‘progressive’. And partly because "You’re another!" is about the way your typical PJM/RL-PSL kiddie neoreasons for herself, should she ever attempt so disagreeable a task. [2]

Around TPMC, the presumption of witless hostility certainly fails, and I should be happy to believe that most café lizards can detect the inconsequence of Dr. Schleppes, not so clearly as to be able to mark up his paper with a red pencil as the Muses and you and I can do, perhaps, yet with a fairly strong instant conviction that his cheaper brands of neoärgument are unsuitable for consumption by decent political grown-ups.

Happy days.


___
[0] A.k.a. "Two wrongs don’t make a rite."


[1] Neocomrade R. L. Simon, Freelord and Kiddiemaster Padjaama in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, is celebratin’ PJM’s fifth anniversary today. Presumably they’ll be hittin’ what Jesuits used to call the "age of reason" (seven years, was it?) over there any day now. "And the sooner, the better," say I.


[2] This is no place to recapitulate Neocomradology 101, Dr. Bones. But you must remember our tentative hypothesis that havin’ hated School explains a lot about run-of-the-mill wingnutettes an’ wingnuts.

Now, what could be more like School -- and less like Fun! -- that gettin’ lectured/hectored about how the misbehaviour of Mr. George Galloway, M.P., can have no significant ethical -- or even much ‘logical’ -- connection with the neodoin’s of a Neukamerad Bundestagsgesandte Erich Iwan, Freeiherr und Kindermeister von Kantor?

And a true, redstate Kiddie Selfservative would be at least equally bored should her tormentor start spoofing her crew’s ever-immortal Balance ’an Fairness (®) product by pointing out that there is at least a little something to be said for the Foxcuckooland side of this question. As for instance, say a sayer were to say

Loyalty, like Logic, has always had a certain standing with the traditional moralists of Old Europe. Not usually so lofty a standing that it becomes the ethical ace of trumps and takes every trick no matter what other cards are presented (which seems to be what Von Kantor and Hasbara House and Team Zhabotínsky [would] have in mind [if they thought their own selfservicin’ stuff through], but definitely SOME standing. And some INDEPENDENT standing, as well, for a solidarity that has not gone to Lady Logic and "asked for permission to be solid," as it were, is nevertheless a legitimate moral factor, for most of the dead Old Euro males of moralism. Kant would not allow it, but most of the rest of the DOEMM pack would.


Though on the selfservative kiddies’ side (more or less), that tune can be counted on not to appeal to them, simply because of the way it is orchestrated and made to "sound like school."

To be sure, I have laid the Old School Sound on pretty thick to make my example.

Moreover, a few of the neocomradely señoritos are capable of noticin’ that I was not being one hundred percent straightforward in my exemplification, inasmuch as the Republican Party base an’ vile are not (I fear) really all that gung-ho for Loyalty.

When one relabels the Ethical Geometry textbook diagram for a pop quiz by calling loyalty ‘solidarity’, there has been, obviously, no change in substance. Nevertheless the flavor of the thing changes, especially for the Wingnut City or Wombschool Normal University palate. ‘Solidarity’ is for Union thugs -- everybooby knows that!




Speaking of pop quizzes, sir, here is one for you:

When Jewish Statists do ‘solidarity’ or ‘loyalty’, the proper name for what they are doin’ is _____________


If you can fill in *that* blank confidently (and with a common noun not starting in 'Z', please!), you are far ahead of me.

In any case, let me know what you think.


13 November 2010

On Granting "special protection"



Dear Dr. Bones,

Sir, this morning your colleague Baker writes,

Insofar as Harshaw objects to ... questions being raised about Bowles and Simpson he is asking that they be granted special protection. That is a request that does not deserve to be treated seriously.

This looks to me like a failure to understand the rôle of the blue-ribbon commission in American demoplutocracy. "To think structurally, please, gentlepersons!"

If such an extraordinary assembly of the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom LLC as that presided over by the Freelord of Simpson and Citizen Bowles does not possess "special protection" -- special IMMUNITY might be the better wording -- there is no sound reason for it to happen at all. Why, one might as well let Congress handle our legislative requirements! [1]

I cannot tell whether Comrade Dr. Baker would endorse that dotty plan, or whether he merely dislikes the Concord Coalition snake oil recommended by B. ’n’ S.

His own pet notions are so far removed from all respectable Wisdom and Virtue that even a vivid imaginer might be at a loss to imagine any means, however ir- or neo-regular, of obtaining them. Under those circumstances, it is understandable, but not ideally admirable, for him to say nothing about institutional end-runnin’ as such.

We, however, as disciples of The Master, can allow ourselves no such informal laxity. We must begin by declaring against all blue-ribbonism (and equally, all referendumbmongerin’) formaliter, no matter what the DVSW (LLC) or Cleon may be up to materialiter. When the substantive results we crave are unobtainable by the mechanisms which Mr. Madison and the Gang of Eighty-Seven proposed, and to which our civic ancestors agreed on our behalf, we ought to do without them. [2] Period.

As simpson as that, it is, really.[3]

Happy days (through affordable health care!)

___
[1] Perhaps not Congress utterly without extra- or superconstitutional run-arounds, though. That love for the plebescite or referendumb that flourishes in CA and MA and other dark corners of the realm is basically another scheme for getting irregular results via dubious processes. The matter of the irregularity is usually different, some folkish or neofolklike measure of which the DVSW (LLC) would gravely and ‘bipartisanly’ disapprove. Furthermore, referendumb groupies can count (usually) on nobody darin’ to be as disrespectful of THEMSELVES, THE PEOPLE as Comrade Dr. Baker is of E. B. Bowles and of his freelordship.

Nevertheless, it comes to much the same thing formally or structurally: a quest for irregular results via dubious processes. For "end runs," as the kiddies say about one of their kiddie games, I forget which.


[2] Or formally amend the mechanisms, of course. (But everybody knows how impossible that is!)


[3] Well maybe not quite. I am arguing, sir, that she who can swallow the whole camel of blue-ribbon-panel neoregularity is only being silly to object to so slender a straw as according a neoregular degree of respect and deference (naturally including utter noninvestigation by hirelings of the New York Times Company) to the Lords of the Ribbon.

As often, what is inadequate straight up would have been admirable if intended as spoof. If, that is, Comrade Dr. Baker had been trying to get rid of this quasi-institutional neoregularity (in all cases, not merely this one) by pointing out that superpartisan panels of DVSW (LLC) won’t work well unless everybody piously tugs our figurative forelocks to the likes of the Freelord of Simpson -- and even to the likes of E. B. Bowles, M.B.A., by golly! -- in a manner scarcely consistent with what used to be called "republican simplicity."

I can see no hint of that, however. Can you? Dr. Baker sounds to me like he is not kidding, and as to the man Harshaw, how many virtual peasants can show such a splendidly tuggable and well-tugged forelock nowadays?

(( Comrade Greenwald of Salon has written well on the modus operandi harshawensis and how it consists in always bein’ very solemn an’ upper-case-‘S’ Serious. Plus insinuatin’ relentlessly that if one disagrees, one ain’t Serious at all. ))