"Means well but needs work"

Dear Dr. Bones,

By MWBNW, I refer to the spoofery of ‘johnd’ over on Mont Bleu:

For What It’s Worth: The Occupy Movement mark-bail | Sat, Nov 12, 2011 10:32 AM EST (...) comparisons between the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party (...)

Building on the thread-starter... (...) In the interest of something like intellectual discipline, I wonder if Mark and Deborah would agree that Occupy Everything is at least inspired by, if not rooted in, the Arab Spring movement that began in December 2010 in Tunesia. I think we are seeing a world-wide recognition and push-back against the class warfare that moneyed interests have been fighting against the rest of us for decades. In my view, it began in the Middle East — a region, not coincidentally, where the role of US multi-national corporations is particularly unsavory. The dilemma of Arab Spring has always been that while America (and our public figures) must support the clear commitment to freedom and democracy that it embodies, its targets are oppressive governments and regimes that American government and private industry have kept in power for decades. In my view, this dilemma has now come home. Occupy Everything speaks to and for the 99%. Our government does not. (...) That dissonance is inconsistent with a free republic, and if our political system has any life left, we in the 99% will change that dissonance. somervilletom @ Sat 12 Nov 11:33 AM

Maybe the Arab Spring took its lead from the Tea Party. I know ideology will force many to dismiss this idea but it is possible. johnd @ Sat 12 Nov 10:49 PM

(A) Recognizing, that one has to start somewhere ... why, even Miss Even and Mr. Newton was merely fiddlin’ with an apple one day, when ¡lightning struck! ..., and

(B) Cognizant that anybooby with a natural flair for the Crimson Art would instantly snatch up "means well, but needs work" and take a run at the New Cerberus, that A-Spring Occupation Putty that bestrides the whole world like a miasma.

A "Murdochian miasma" one might say with sound intellectual foundation (sp?) in depth or at depth: if one digs down deep enough at any point on the Johndeweyplatz in the Taxarrears subdivision of Rio Limbaugh, one hits a TV cable. McBard was whight again: "One touch of MacL@@han" makes lots an' lots of antecedently unrelated-lookin’ volks "kin." Or look like kin, anyway. or like people with kin in the game.

No. The puzzle (I presume) for Social Scientism is not that a passionate urge to see oneself performing on The T@@B exists in the first place, that, I take it, is sufficiently accounted for by the _peccatum originale_ hypothesis of Dr. Gloomygus of Hippo University in Neotunisia. The great problem is rather that the level of this selfnarcissism should fluctuate so wildly. For years an’ years, ever since the Silent Majoruty finally shut up, the tubewaves were abandoned to the (almost) exclusive discretion of Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh "highly trained broadcast specialists." Whereas lately we have had "Open Line Fryday" (twenty-four)-seven. Not much steak, mayble, but lots and lots of sizzle.

¿What hath Fox wrought? And furthermore, an' *especially*, ¿How did Fox wreak it?

These, in this keyboard's view, are the Great Mysteries of Life just at present

Comrade Poster hypothesises that those who harp on the A-String have taken their music lessons from the Tee Putty. Literally that seems to me out of the question, the mental universe of Seemighties and Muzzies having long been consciously and deliberately hostile to all influences perceived by them as emanating from the Whight Civilisation of the Western Race, also known as "Wunnerful US." The late Prof. Hourani, for example, wrote a big book called _Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789-1939_ . His title suggests that that all hope for successful contamination/enrichment of the Natives had been abandoned as long ago as Anno Religionismi 1358-1939-5699. That date, though itself flagrantly Eurocentric, nevertheless does sound about whight, though naturally one could argue that there was much less hope earlier than one particular author makes out, or that miracles remained possible much nearer our own times, even if they have not actually happened.

To travel as a fellow with Comrade Poster would require one to think *really* dimly of the Arab/Seemighty Mind. Unless oneself a complete wad, who could seriously think the Tee Putty tripe an' baloney better worth borrowing than the French Revolution (which is pretty much what Hourani understands by the Hell word)? The proposal is about as plausible as it would be to regard Colonel al-Násir as the proximate cause of Students for a Democratic Socient, and thus ideological grandfather to that Hate-’68 Movement fated in due course to star I. X. Kristol an' N. X. Podhòretz. One can say that the thing is chronologically possible, but, that said, ¿what?

However I can be more cheerful about Comrade Poster if we give up the strict _literaliter_, picturing vast hordes of Natives avidly following NewsCorp in quest of pointers on the technique of soggin’ in the street. Looking at the correlation of farces more figuratively, or perhaps simply from a greater distance that allows a wider perspective, I believe his conjecture collapses into my own. It seems intelligible enough, that is, to say "Murdoch dunnit" as shorthand for "None of this would have been happening--no Zucchini People, no A-Springers, no Tee Putty--had Television never been."

It is close to tautology, maybe too close for comfort, to announce that there is a sort of family resemblance among all MacL@@hanoid techniques of agitation and propaganda. It is also distressingly like unto the Gigaguru's own pet drool about mediums replacing messages.

At this point, I worry a little about possibly falling into Comrade Poster's sandtrap, the one labelled "ideology will force many to dismiss this idea." [1] It is extremely repugnant to me that everything Vox Pop. or the AstroTurf™baggers do on, by and for TV looks a lot like everything else done on, by and for TV, but of course it might be so no matter how much it displeases.

Happy days.
--JHM


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[1] As Heraclitus says, one can never fall twice into the same sandtrap.

I must admit that I am sneaking in a second santrap here. Citizen Poster, who is not really a comrade, I fear, was just pointin' out that most mainstream Blue Blazers think highly of the A-rab Spring; of the T-putty Sog, not so much.

That implicit analysis is true enough to be getting on with, but when Poster himself gets on with it to Blazerdom rejectin' "Maybe the Arab Spring took its lead from the Tea Party" on that account, I believe he is engaged in defensive flimflam designed to distract attention from the fact that there is really nothin' much to be said for his parallelism beyond the bare chronological possibility of it, as noted above. Or, if perchance there is more, he does not mention it. And I, at any rate, cannot guess it unassisted.

I could, to be sure, dig a sort of counter-sandtrap and claim that the citizen talks this way mostly because it pleases him to suppose that all good things are--MUST be--consequences of the AEIdeology in theory, of the Party of Big Management in practice.

In fact, it is not easy to think of any sort or condition of Lesser Breeds Without who attentively mark what America's Otherparty does, or what Heritagitarians an' Catoholics an' Hoovervillains of Palo Alto (&c. &c.) preach that the Otherparty should do, and then attempt emulation at home. Leave out the Torycomrades on Airstrip One an' their counterparts in former Brit colonies of the whight-wing Anglophoney type, and you will find, I think, hardy anybooby at all. There is lots of flat-out reaction in the world, and lots of ‘neoliberalism’ as well, but very little of it has been exported from G*d’s Country.

Otherpartisans are vaguely aware of this themselves, or act as if they were. It might be worth some credentialled social scientizer’s time and trouble to try to establish quantitatively whether Party neocomrades more frequently (A) bark that they could not care less what foreigners think, or (B) fatuously flatter themselves, along the present lines, that everybody overseas is lookin' ever towards the Party of Grant & Hoover.

My guess is that contempt is much more common than the softer sentimentality, for it is hard to get away from "¡No More Mr. Nice Guy!" amongst the neocomrades. Still, a guess is only a guess, and a generalization may be idiotic. It would be nice to really KNOW.

Meanwhile, one can be quite certain that Citizen Poster himself is no run-of-the-mill Republicanine. Were he that, he would simply never have heard of the Great Blue Hill, let alone be diggin' his little sandtraps on the slopes.