22 June 2011

"The Republicans have narratives"



Dear Dr. Bones,

The choice of words, though, is secondary to having a narrative. The Republicans have narratives:

1. The recession was caused by over-regulation. Over-regulation, per the GOP, is always messing up the economy so of course it caused the recession.

2. Housing policies favoring the less well-off caused the economic collapse. Whenever we give stuff to people who don’t deserve it bad things happen.

3. The soaring national debt caused by spendthrift Democrats caused the recession and Democrats are just trying to make it worse.

Those are their stories. Yes, they are wrong and stupid. But they have traction. Lots of it. Simply yelling “reckless! reckless!” doesn’t undermine these Republican stories — especially when there’s a whole bunch of Fox commentators, er, candidates pushing them.

kbusch @ June 21, 2011 at 11:01 pm

_¡Qu’ ils mangeant des ‘narrations’!_

Let THEM, not us, climb up on verbal stilts to eat ‘narrative’!

If the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC, could be persuaded to behave like utter stiltheads, they would lose their "respectable Republican cloth coat" Pat Nixons and that would be the end of them.

The said Freedame of the Otherparty, complete with her dog an’ her whole WalMart-equivalent wardrobe, did not add up to even a crumby _conte_, let alone a proper _narratio_. At best, ’twas only a table of Dramatis Personæ or list of ingredients. When his Freelordship of Nixon brought his mildly personal flotsam an’ jetsam to public notice, he afforded Televisionland and the electorate a chance to wag their -- ‘our’ -- own tales.

Thus has it ever been. In 1840, General the Freelord of Harrison an’ the log cabin an’ the hard cider (¡plus the Freelord of Tyler at no extra charge!) were all very well in their way, but that way was not much like _Madame Bovary_. Or like "The Devil and Daniel Webster" either.

Ms. Poster, evidently one of our team’s Beautiful People [1], likes to have her ‘narratives’ preassembled by the servants, rather than fumble around with bits and pieces herself. Up to a point Madame’s druthers are pure _de gustibus_, but they could become an impediment to effective agitation and propaganda if swallowed uncritically. The trouble I foresee is that for every consumer of ‘narratives’ who likes the pieces put together Madame’s way, there are perhaps nineteen others who would prefer some other configuration. Though it is theoretically possible that other ‘narrative’ consumers would first disassemble [2] the work of the hired hands and then put their own paws to work creating a more congenial Narrative Object, in practice one should assume that few denizens of Televisionland will actually get up off their potatoe couches to do anything so strenuous. Almost certainly, Harry and Louise MacLuhantube will simply feel bored, deciding subliminally that Madame’s Political Action Committee does not know how to natter a good narrative -- and then maybe click their way over to Fox.

Now Madame herself takes for granted that they do these things better in Foxcuckooland. She even condescends to provide three examples, although these have been CliffsNote™d down so austerely that most of their _narratio inflata_ charm is lost. A blow-up of Exhibit B in particular can be lots of fun, with the Three Weird Sisters, Fanny Mae an’ Freddy Mac an’ Barney Frank, conspirin’ to destroy the U. S. housin’ market for ends of their own.

Exhibit C, I observe, also runs to the "for end of their own" _topos_ and, come to think of it, so does Exhibit A. Evidently _narratio foxcucuensis_ is, in a manner, pure ‘narration’ -- all story and never any plot. Rarely do the minions of Rupert explain WHY we donkeys want to cause recessions an’ housin’ busts an’ then make ’em worse once we got ’em. Though it is extremely unlikely that Firstlord of Murdoch an’ Kiddiemaster Ailes (&c. &c.) have consciously adopted what might be termed the "Erector set" view of the _ars narrativa_ just set forth, yet their reluctance to dabble in motives gives their freelordships most of its advantages. After exposure to some tolerably fleshed-out version of one of the above ‘narratives’, Harry an’ Louise retain the freedumb to fill in any motivations they like, an arrangement that is convenient indeed for the Party of Big Management and of the AEIdeology.

And not just the motivations can be filled in by the patient / victim / customer, but also a good deal of significant local colour by the way. ‘Recession’ and "economic collapse" and "soaring national debt" are very general expressions, so general as to be almost Blakean idiocies. Out amongst the couchpotatoes, these portentous cloudinesses can be cashed in for how Louise got fired, an’ Harry can’t seem to get along with his credit-card corporation these days, an’ nobody wants to buy their house at a non-joke price. Those blanks are filled in first, I presume; only afterwards do the MacLuhantubes fill in the motives of their oppressors.

Naturally the Joneses across the tracks, who, let us say, got *their* shanty as a free gift from the Three Weird Sisters, would fill in the blanks quite differently. What with Human Nature (Pat. Pend.) and _peccatum originale_ and a’ that jazz, it is quite possible that the MacLuhantubes will conclude, in effect, that the Joneses wanting to stay dry when it rains (without ever properly earning and deserving their dryness) is the root cause of recessions and housing busts and economic collapses.

At least as regards the upmarket side of the railroad tracks [3], which votes a lot more regularly, this situation ought to suit their freelordships of Newscorp to a ‘T’. Or make that "to a ‘GOP’."

At the moment, though, we are concerned with literature / rhetoric / agitprop rather than with political substance, and my chief point is that the upshot would not be anywhere near so satisfactory if the Whight-Wing Persuaders had themselves supplied the concreteness of this keyboard’s feigned Joneses and MacLuhantubes. Had they done so, the resultin’ product would have borne a much closer resemblance to the Eng. Lit. or Comp. Lit. Dept. type of ‘narrative’, but at the same time it would inevitably (I think) be a product that is easily dismissed out of hand as "merely anecdotal evidence" by those who do not like the doctrinal drift.

Furthermore, merely anecdotal evidence is dismissed merrily by dismissers who do not deny that every word of it is G*re’s Own Truth, which nobooby expensively educated demands that ‘narrative’ should be.

"Merely anecdotal evidence we just made up from scratch" is a pretty useless category of wares for the agitpropper, despite being a not very friendly but technically accurate account of what M. Flaubert and Mr. Benet and the gang were up to. Not all ‘narrative’ is MAEWJMUFS, to be sure, but some is. And not just any ‘some’ but the very _crème de la crème du genre narratif_.

Such things considered, then, I’d say ‘narrative’ is mostly spinach. [4]

Happy days.
--JHM



__
[1] "Beautiful People" _es una ma®©a registrada de_ Howard Lawrence, zeroth Freelord Carr in the peerage of Wingnut City. Used here by gracious impermission of his freelordship.

[2] Notice, Dr. Bones, how easy it would be to erect a _pons asinorum_ at this ford and turn back all wayfarers who suppose that ‘deconstruction’ -- which I take to be a sort of Stiltword to end all stiltwords -- means disassembly.

[3] In accordance with the announced Erector-set principles, it is left to the student as an exercise to cross the figurative tracks and spell out how the Joneses might come to suppose that recessions and housing busts and economic collapses largely result from the MacLuhantubes (d.b.a. "the Middle Class") specuvestin’ a little too exuberantly with their real-estate equity.

Or alternatively, from the MacLuhantubes’ pig-headed insistence on makin’ sure that the Bad Poor stay poor--assumin’, that is, they can’t just be deported.

Or whatever.

[4] "¿But what shall we eat if spinach be austerely renounced?" Well, ¿how about argument?


19 June 2011

Another Picture from The Institution


Dear Dr. Bones,

Sort of a cartoon, actually:

The Department of Education Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges

Should Washington scale back its huge college subsidies instead?


The neolearned an’ postgallant perfesser seems to have been outside strugglin’ with his two-wheeler when he should have been attendin’ the AEIdeological orientation part of the course offered by Wombschool Normal U. or St. Dilbert’s Antistate College or George Peppermason or wherever. I guess "There is nothing improper about the idea of a for-profit educational institution" was not original-intented as damnation by faint praise; all the same, if the Cramerite flame of zeal for Mammon flickered much lower, it would stop existin’.

And ¿what -- ¡I ask you! -- are the pajamaclad kiddies to make of "I really believe in the merits of a traditional liberal arts education" ? For that matter, ¿what do the Crameroid golfin’ buddies make of it?

To be sure, his Cramerian freelordship’s devotion to Lieberal Education is not unqualified -- "it needs to be done in high school, where we used to do it." Usually I flatly don’t believe the word ‘historian’ when it comes from the hired e-hands of Roger, Freelord of Simon Pajama in the neopeerage [1], but with Parteineukamerad Herr Professor Doktor C. E. von Kramer, an exception must be made: run-of-the-mill whight-wing bunksters would not be caught dead alludin’ to any bunk that far back towards the abyss. For it has been a long, long time indeed since "we used to do" Lie. Ed. at the secondary level rather than the tertiary. St. John Dewey, you’ll remember, used to complain of that situation all the time, starting in perhaps 1880. By the time he died in 195X, however, the situation had long since been rectified.

This qualification is, I fear, makes me a little suspicious. No doubt his freelordship sincerely craves to get all that useless unprofitable lumber -- "medieval French literature" -- removed from our institutions of tertiary educationalism, but, once it is safely out the door, I suspect M. le baron de Cramer would not much mind if it were just laid by the side of the road in a garbage bag for some fine, upstandin’ waste-disposal privateer to deal with quietly over night. Should it never make it sixteen blocks up the pike to Gated Hills Latin School, probably his freelordship’s grief would not be inconsolable.

But my suspicions pale besides those that his freelordship’s Party neocomrades ought to be entertainin’ of him. Especially if they, too, should happen to live in Gated Hills, that garden spot of South Central Foxcuckooland. For if GHLS does take the rubbish in, ’twill be their property-taxes pay for its upkeep. Whereas, had it been left where it was, at the tertiary level, at least part of the cost would be covered by misguided volunteers from the Secret Sector. The kiddie selfservatives are not, in general, sufficiently bestembright to entertain the idea that his freelordship of Cramer may be winkwinknodnoddin’ at ’em a little here. Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh, for example, who likes to bark ’bout how he, at least, proudly lives in ‘Literal[s]ville’, will certainly conclude that M. le baron really wants to see compulsory Old French at GHLS. ¡What Rush, who happens to be _universitätsrein_ himself, will bark ’bout his freelordship in conjunction with *that* nifty scheme, I leave to your imagination, O Bones!

Probably M. le baron is just muddled, but it is just possible he is a stern _Klassenkämpfer_ unafraid to stand up for his own country-clubbers even against nominal Party neocomrades from the "respectable Republican cloth coat" mob.. That is to say, the Gated Hills Latin School is not for the neoproles down in Rio Limbaugh, who retain perfect freedumb to dispose of their local property-taxes for instruction in matters a little less upmarket-ornamental than _Le Roman de la Rose_.

To judge from noises emitted by the Three Weird Sisters of Boston [2], every neoprole takes for granted that education was decreed by Father Zeus to insinuate Dr. Limbaugh’s "young skulls full of mush" into well-remunerated employment in the Secret Sector as quickly as possible. There are serious reasons for doubting that everythin’ inculcated at the Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie Regional High School in fact works towards that end, but, as far as I can make no, no disagreement worth mentionin’ that that is what RL-PSLRHS *ought* to be doin’, apart from a comparatively minor fringe of cultural studies designed to make sure that the neoprole kiddies know exactly which athletic an’ ideological teams they are required to cheer for. [3]

But probably M. le baron is just muddled. Examine his last paragraph, sir: plainly his freelordship does not want to see ‘his’ taxes wasted on the Bad Poor, marchin’ in lockstep with the whole phalanx of Party neocomrades on this, the most crucial, point. However the freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial Class cannot make it on its own, She [4] requires a continual supply of scabs to keep down the Union thugs an’ Tee Putty to turn out on election days. This continuin’ supply of fresh neoblood has to come out of the arteries an’ veins of the holy Homeland™’s educational system somehow. Wombschoolin’ in the narrowest sense -- homeschoolin’ -- is not a viable option on the scale required. Even at Gated Hills, to be "privately educated" like a (probably) non-phony aristo from two or three centuries ago is so expensive as to be insignificant for the _Klassenkampf_. Dick an’ Jane (and Spot) will certainly have to be sent out somewhere to acquire their booklearnin’. Given the inertia of social constructions, it is not likely that they will soon be sent anywhere radically different from the sort of institutions currently available. [5]

The freelordly bottom line

Stacked up against this grim reality, the abuses on display at America’s for-profit colleges virtually pale in comparison

is a pretty example of a kissin’ cousin to "‘¡Shut up!’, she explained." His freelordship would much prefer to discuss the neofact that far too many Bad Poors waste their time an’ his freelordship’s Class’s money hanging around in schools, a preference that has almost nothin’ to do with the displayed abuses. Here the figurative freedame does not explain that we ought to fall silent altogether, only that we ought to allow her freeladyship to know best what to talk about.

Still spinach, though, ¿is it not?

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM



____
[1] An’ ¡¡World’s Greatest Yaleodrama™ist!! ¡Never forget that, sir!

[2] WRKO AM 680; WXKS AM 1200; WTKK-FM 96.9.

[3] I presume it would not be fairembalanced to complain that this sort of icin’ on the cake is ‘useless’ or ‘unproductive’. After all, when -- nowadays, if -- Master Wally Wingnut gets admitted for a job interview, provin’ to the Personnel Department that he is a thoroughly orthodox kiddie selfservative may well be of the highest utility.

If Wally were tryin’ to get in the door at ScroogeBank or enlist with the Goldman-Saxon hordes, that sort of thing would not much help and might even hurt, but we all know, Dr. Bones, that the alumnuses of Gated Hills Latin hold a near-total monopoly on the juiciest secret-sectorian plums. Not (I think) so much thanks to their mastery of Old French, as to their parents’ ability to shell out for the archaic kind of pædagogy that stars Old French and the like.

(( Though off-topic here, ‘archaic’ is interesting and important. ¿Did I ever mention that study of Secret Sectoria back in the heydey of glass-and-steel-box architecture? It was the corporate proles who got all the benefits of Modern Times. For themselves, the Big Managers preferred wood panels and upholstered furniture and Century XVIII all across the boardroom. Plus naturally when one has made it really big up at Gated Hills, one immediately pretends to go into agriculture an’ pastoralism -- horses especially. Polo is even better than Old French, statussymbolwise. ))

[4] As it happens, _classis -is_ really was feminine in very early Old French. I think, though, that this particular She would ought to be a Her in any case.

The same applies to _La civilisation occidentale_, the Western Sieve ideoproduct of the Ziocomrades an’ of a few scattereed dummies an’ _dhimmís, set up as hopefully an object of love an’ devotion an’ rallyin’ ’round generally. When one only means to refer to the intellectual history of Western Europe _wie es eigentlich gewesen_, ‘it’ will do nicely, but when when spoofin’ those wunnerful neofolks who seriously expect one to cross one’s heart an’ hope to die for themselves under the WC label, only ‘She’ will do.

[5] If the kiddies’ Destructive ©®ea™ionism product worked half as well as advertised, I daresay we could start over at once with what the Freiherr von Kramer an’ other neocomrades seem to require ideally, namely a revival of the apprentice system. ScroogeBank and WalMart and the Goldman-Saxons and the Warbucks Widget Trust Intergalactic LLC would train an’ indoctrinate all their hired hands in house from kindergarten through graduate school, ignorin’ the vast wasteland of American Educationalism as if it did not exist. Dick an’ Jane could get a far, far better education from the Serene House of Warbucks, after all, than they could ever hope for at the house of their own Mom an’ Pop. (Spot I dunno about.)

As regards tertiary educationalism specifically, surely this would be a far more sensible way for Daddy Warbucks an’ Uncle Scrooge y Tio Ruperto and all the rest of that branch of the family than to set up subsidiaries to specuvest an’ investulate in "for-profit colleges" that probably won’t be so very profitable in the long run. His freelordship of Cramer -- clearly no œconomist -- speaks blithely of "tens of thousands of dollars in student loans that will eventually be cleared only when they die of old age," which would be lovely for Scrooge & Co. if they could get it. But of course they cannot get it: well before middle age, Dick an’ Jane, the shameless ratfinks, will have defaulted on their freelordly creditors-- and there will go most of those "for-profit college" profits, in all likelihood.

One scarcely needs an M.B.A. from the H*rv*rd Victory School to notice *that* locomotive racing down the track at one. Those from the freelordly Class who do actually dabble in such specuvestments certainly appear to have noticed -- that is why they want Uncle Sam to co-sign the notes with our nieces and nephews.

There exist Party neocomrades at the Tanks of Thought, Catoholics an’ Heritagitarians an’ brand-name AEIdeologues, who (pretend to) think that Sam’s signature on a note is not worth much more than Spot’s would be, but this idle chatter of hired hands is contradicted by the behavior of authentic Freelords of Finance, who take for granted that Sam will pay as promised. At least pay our obligations to themselves -- if they can think of a way to welsh only on what Sam owes to the heathen Chinee and/or the Ponzi Security Administration, I think they might go for it. But it is not easy to imagine what that way would be.

18 June 2011

¡Chickitawbut Mountain RULES!



Dear Dr. Bones,


Increasing the individual campaign contribution limit . . .

. . . may be an indication whence fundin’ for the _Herald_ angels’ specific level an’ quality of agitation-propaganda procedes.

Really serious Hoovervillains (say, those at _The Wall Street Jingo_) will much prefer to see fewer Luddite restrictions on CORPORATE generosity to our statespersons. Individual organisms were OK citizens for their time, but that time has now passed: "Farewell, a sad farewell, O ye slide whips and buggy rules!"

The best that mom-an’-pop (so to say) contributions can buy nowadays is, I fear, a political arm rather like the Republican Party of Cabotlodgestán. Or rather, not quite that good, for the minoritarian kiddies tend to pick up a certain amount of bucks out of alien carpetbags. Few whight-wing aliens much care about supportin’ this or that provincial candidate in the boondocks of Worcester County, yet bucks are fungible.[1]

The _Herald_-fundin’ parochial class tend, I suppose, to be *nominally* corporate: there will be a "Chickitawbut Mountain Shed and Window Company, Incorporated" (for example). Yet a very little digging around will discover that this is really just Daddy Joe an’ Mommy Matilda plus maybe Cousin Kevin with the (nominal) M.B.A.

With paymasters chiefly of that small calibre, ¿what could be more natural than that the _Herald_ angels should pipe first of "the INDIVIDUAL campaign contribution limit"?

Moreover, their editorial beatitudes doubtless piously believe all the malarkey about petty business that circulates nowadays: "The Fortune 500 an’ ScroogeBank NA an’ the Goldman-Saxons do not create jobs, ¡’tis Chickitawbut Mountain that creates jobs!" Conceptually, and more importantly -- for it is hormone-basers of whom we speak -- emotionally, the BH ideal of pettybiz might as well be Master Horatio Alger presidin’ over a lemonade stand in person with no icky paperwork anywhere in sight. The angels’ patients or victims or customers like that line too, because if that is what it takes to be a Titan of Industry, well, ¿why not you an’ me an’ Kevin? [2]

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


___
[1] Such fungibility is in itself a good example of the superiority of the (noble, cuttin’-edge) Corporate Citizen over the obsolescent-to-obsolete zoölogical ditto. I sometimes think of the splendid Cause for which I now bark as a matter of making it less onerous for dollars to vote.

*

[2] To adorn this year’s Silly Season, Party Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh has resolved to set up what appears to be a slightly glorified lemonade stand, http://www.twoifbytea.com/.

The appearance is bound to be a little deceptive, though: betcha this _shtyk_ has been been shystered an’ accountant-ed almost to death even before bein’ properly hatched.

(( Also arguably deceptive is Paul Revere an’ a’ that -- ’tis not the Taxachusetts economy that Himself proposes to stimulate with his flavored water. ))

*

17 June 2011

Dr. Cuteless Goes Social-Scientistic


Dear Dr. Bones,

Axiom I. "People tend to do what other people say they should do"

(( Just look at Citizen Wiener of NY, shamelessly pandering to popular demand ))

Axiom II. "Political people think of ‘other people’ as the other party"

Dr. Cuteless evidently takes my own view that Psociology is half journalism and half rubbish. She puts her former into Axiom I, savin’ the hard stuff for Axiom II, which is, of course, Holmesian drool.

If you are a hack pol in the _Heimatland G*ttes_, the pertinent Others are the CCC, Campaign Contributin’ Classes. _Sine quibus non_.

Now admittedly Hill City City and the Commonwealth of Blue Masses are atypical of Father Zeus’s Country as a whole insofar as the aspirin’ local _Kontributionsmeister_ has only one party and about a tenth to benefact.

In some ways the Otherparty of Massachusetts looks like a lot more than a tenth, but this misleading appearance largely depends on a steady (?) influx of funds in carpetbags. Abandoned to themselves, the neoscalawags would be exclusively the Party of Adams (P. A.) an’ Fattman (R. X.) [*], untroubled by the comparatively patrician likes of M. Willard, second Freelord Romney in the peerage of Foxcuckooland. The piously G.O.P. sector of the CCC simply cannot afford any better product than the Adams-Fattman line. Poor unemployed Mitt, I understand, wound up fundin’ the whight-wing CCC in these parts rather than vice-versa. A nice arrangement when they can get it, no doubt, but ¿how often is that?

Truly, our MA is not like the others. [**]

Dr. Cuteless is not much better with facts than she is with Principles. ¿How often does one catch America’s Otherparty actually exhortin’ the selfservative kiddies to "get all judgmental and vindictive"? Or find us donkeys formally preaching "¡Go thou and get busy and do what you feel like!"?

Cuteless appears in fact to be maintainin’ that Otherpartisans feel some sort of mysterious obligation to behave the Elmer-Gantry-cum-Torquemada way we good guys like to present [***] them as typically behavin’, whilst Lieberals and Demoncrats keep trying to live down to "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" (as subsequently amended), to what the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom , a limited-liability Company, have always supposed us unrespectable to be like.

There is no mystery here, of course, only evidence that stereotypes are often not without a good deal of empirical support.

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


___
[*] Hey, ¿what’s with This video has been removed by the user " ?

Though I trust the video was thoroughly incriminating, were I the Freijungherr von Fattmann I’d certainly get rid of that self-portrait as well: ¡talk about "not because you were an Eagle Scout"! Even that thing the _Worcester Telegram_ got hold of would be less unsatisfactory. It does not make his freelordship look any older or wiser, or not much, but at least there is the buddin’ promise of a truly Republicanian set of jowls.

The student of neocomradology may wish to compare and contrast this freejunker’s self-presentation before the boondocks of Worcester County with a similar example involvin’ a national figure, involvin’, indeed, the Otherparty’s current ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ hearth-throb. Nobooby can have compelled The Smirk of Janesville to make himself look like that on his freelordship’s own Fedguv website.

I infer that the CCC must rather like what we may call "the Eagle-Scout look," at least for their junior hired hands. Later on in life, the jowls an’ that pasty-white apoplectic-lookin’ complexion -- Judge Baker of TX , say, or Dr. Limbaugh of EIB -- become more attractive. Though opposites from a medical point of view, morally the William Howard Taft look an’ the Eagle Scout look are much of a muchness, both indicatin’ a resolution to march forth an’ service one’s Party Paymasters without stint or limit. (The smirk appears to be optional.)

*

[**] Some real political Psociology about the exact identity of MA neoscalawags with money to burn on their Adamses and their Fattmen would be worth reading. My own informal notion is based on those of them who advertise their corporations on the Three Weird Sisters of Boston squawk radio, a subgroup bound to be unrepresentative.

Even at the highest level, though, small-town Chambermaids of Commerce such as I conjecture to be the chief consumers of the Adams-Fattman(-Ryan) product are very important for the Anatomy of the Elephant. The Poujadist or "small business" element don’t actually *run* the Party of Grant and Hoover -- or even come very close to runnin’ it -- but they do tend to be, as it were, the "respectable Republican cloth coat" in which the real Party paymasters like to wrap themselves up before addressin’ Televisionland and the electorate. To persuade the latter to sympthize with the misfortunes of ScroogeBank NA, or H*rv*rd Buzzard Health Partners, or NewsCorp, or the Warbucks Widget Trust (&c. &c.) would be almost impossible, but fortunately the good folks on the potatoe couches don’t know beans about money on anything but the smallest scale and can therefore often be jollied into vaguely supposing that "American business" means the Bailey Building and Loan Association from It’s a Wonderful Life .

¡¿Surely Jimmy Stewart would have advertised on WRKO an’ WXKS an’ WTKK-FM if they had been available in 1946?!

*

[***] I think ‘present’ and not ‘perceive’ is the just verb here. Not because anybooby on either side is consciously insincere, but because so much of the stereotyping is far more an intramural ritual than a serious fresh attempt to see and describe what the class enemy is actually like.


14 June 2011

Aristotle, John King, John Dickerson


Dear Dr. Bones,

Newt Gingrich likes "American Idol." Tim Pawlenty is a Coke fan. And Mitt Romney, demeanor notwithstanding, likes it spicy. These tiny gleanings emerged at the first major Republican debate, when moderator John King asked whimsical this-or-that questions before the commercial breaks. The two-hour forum raised a few of those types of questions itself: Current field or Rick Perry? Obamneycare or Minnesota mumbles? Michele Bachmann or Sarah Who? Is it me or is it hot in here?
(...)
Like all early debates this was not a night for soaring visions of America. There were the usual bromides, of course, but the candidates mostly focused on the nightmare of the Obama presidency. After two hours it was a little repetitive and dreary. If the next moderator asks sunshine or rain, candidates who aspire to follow in Ronald Reagan’s optimistic footsteps have to find a way to do more than bemoan the clouds.

Q. ¿Clash of Titans, or parochial eyeglazer?

A. Must be the latter. Not just here at Fox-on-15th-Street [1] but all around WWWonderland, it looks as if everybooby who stayed up late for the humanoid event went to bed afterwards -- or possibly during -- without touching a keyboard.

Meanwhile the insomniac or duty-bound Neocomrade J. F. Dickerson dances nimbly on the _gravitas_ of it all. To prioritize Form over Matter as he does here is in principle critical and even philosophical, though we might have been spared the pot shots at Mr. King, who was, after all, himself doing more or less the same thing.

¿_Quien sabe_, maybe they [2] will let J. F. Dickerson preside over the next one?

Nameless editorial hirelin’s of the F-15 Squadron [1] have headlined "Romney’s strong performance is helped by his opponents’ reluctance to attack him," which we can probably take to be the consensus of the Banî WaPo. And presumably we may further take it that their freelordships are rather pleased than otherwise, inasmuch as Neocomrade Governor Th. X. Pawlenty is of no visible utility from the F-15 angle. All he does is dim the lustre of Neocomrade Governor W. M. Romney, who is not -- ¡face it bravely, o para-Foxies! -- all that lustrous, not even on a good day with all the editorial winds behind him. The sooner the field is reduced to one single Respectable surrounded by seven, or seventeen, silly-lookin’ lawn-garden dwarfs charmin’ly moulded out of Tee Putty, the better.

Neocomrade J. F. Dickerson shows certain signs of possible unreliability that I would look into, were I a para-Foxie. ¿Should F-15 operatives be permitted to say things like
Pawlenty did not have a great night. In addition to introducing themselves to a wider audience, candidates need to impress the people they’re going to be calling asking for campaign donations. That’s the audience he has to worry about and they matter for the next 16 days—the amount of time left before the reporting period ends for this quarter
out in public, where everybooby may overhear, an’ somebooby hostile might even attempt to use against?

The neocomrade at _Slate_ has those wunnerful folks they’re gonnabe callin’ on the brain, it appears:

Boasting about a big FUNDRAISING number sends a signal that you are a viable candidate. And debates matter, because a common FUNDRAISING tactic is to call donors afterward and brag about your candidate’s great performance or send around a clip of a pundit praising a big moment. It’s ephemeral and sometimes silly, but it gets CHECKS. (...) Pawlenty gave strong answers on a question about labor unions.... But [what] they buzz coming out of the debate was about how he flinched. Buzz is fortunately meaningless in a lot of cases, but not to the people who write CAMPAIGN CHECKS. Pawlenty can recover with voters (...), but he’ll need MONEY to keep going and to compete. His pitch on the phone for the next two weeks is going to be harder after the debate performance.

The Muses and you, Dr. Bones, and I naturally like that because of the Aristotelianism, the superordination of the Form of a Media Debate over mere substantial matters like who was present with Mr. King last night an’ what she responded when he questioned with forkèd tongue. At the same time, I am not sure Neocomrade J. F. Dickerson is fully in compliance with the Form of a Media Debate Review.

If I am dubious, I’d expect a top-drawer Foxcuckoolander or WaPoCo-class fellow traveler to find Neocomrade (?) Dickinson alarmin’. Assuming, as one always ought to when possible, that one has to do with the most bestembright of the class enemy, I imagine the employers / deployers of JFD findin’ it not at all desirable that he should wash the secret-sector laundry of the Campaign Contributin’ Classes out in the middle of a public way. ’Twere far better the "small people" should never be put in even the slightest danger of botherin’ their cute little fair-haired heads about what the CCC are up to in their corporate capacity.

To put it in The Master’s terms, the perfectly sound maxim "Form trumps matter" does not imply that agitation-propaganda in the path of Party an’ AEIdeology an’ "fiscal responsibility" is always best conducted by putting one’s _formaliter_ foot foremost. Most of those couch potatoes out in Televisionland and the electorate are not exactly philosophers. Not inexactly either.

On that basis I conclude that some kind ideobuddy should take J. F. Dickerson aside an’ persuade him to keep such pearls as these to himself in future. She should also look into whether he really *is* an ideobuddy to the neorégime on Fifteenth Street, not a mere chunk of thoroughly dispensable flotsam an’ jetsam left over fron the bad old days.

But Rupert knows best.
--JHM


___
[1] A. k. a. The Washin’ton Post Company

[2] "¿Who," you ask, "is ‘They’?" An interesting question, to which the theoretical answer is clear enough: obviously it is up to the village elders of MacL@@hanopolis to decide who presides at tribal fêtes. In self-promotional practice, naturally, one needs a list of particular names of _posteriores ad quos applicandos_.


12 June 2011

First thing we do is shoot "The Middle Class"


In certain places, capital can’t (as) easily replace labor:

* restaurants
* retail
* live entertainment
* the movies

Know who doesn’t go out 20% more if they have 20% more money? The rich. Know who does? The middle class.

If you want to maximize job creation, you put cash in the hands of people who will spend it quickly — those who have little cash in the bank. They’ll spend a little bit of it at a time, spread out over their community… but there’s a lot of “they” there. Before you know it, restaurants are hiring, as are their suppliers. All those folks who work at stadiums, arenas, etc are hiring, as are their suppliers. And so forth.

Rich people choose to spend money based on lots of factors not related to exactly how much money is in the bank right now, since there’s enough money in the bank that they won’t feel the impact of this shopping trip. The middle class, however, dramatically changes how much we buy based on how much money we have left after paying the mortgage, student loans, utilities, groceries, and for our kids’ activities. Give us more money, and we’ll spend it… creating lots of jobs right here in our own communities.

stomv @ June 11, 2011 at 4:22 pm

Like a million others before him, Mr. Poster drags in the usual All-Wunnerful and Best-Deserving Ones as _The Key to All Political Mythologies_

Unlike most of the muzzy-minded, however, he does give a rough idea where he sits -- where, that is, the Centre of the Middle of the Heart of the Homeclass is really and truly located. I still like the traditional Texas account better -- "right next to the yellow stripe and the dead armadillos" -- but to define TMC as "worriers about ‘how much money we have left after paying the mortgage, student loans, utilities, groceries, and for our kids’ activities’" may do, if one drops the ‘utilities’ and the ‘groceries’, which, after all, even the Bad Poor must worry about at least a little.

To qualify for Mr. Poster’s Class, then, the candidate must have had at least part of a tertiary education, own his-and-his-bank’s own domicile, and -- this may be the true Ground Zero -- expect that the next generation of mediocrity will do the same. [*]

Being crude and hasty, this keyboard first mentally turns that into something like "Percentiles eighty-one through ninety-seven of the income-and-wealth distribution" and then compares it with a similar reduction already in hand of what adherents of the Party of Grant and Hoover mean when *they* burn incense to TMC. Percentiles 91-98, that one has been tentatively fixed at, though with some suspicion that the lower threshold maybe ought to be a couple of points higher.

Though considerably more liberal than the G.O.P.’s, Mr. Poster’s middle remains a long way from what a Martian mathematician would come up with (#34-#66) A long way from it in the upmarket direction.

However, the student should bear in mind that (almost) everybody who relies on cant about "the middle class" has two completely different notions of the thing. Everything so far refers to the "middle class" that the mediocrats (belong to themselves and therefore) think wunnerful and wanna see get all their just deserts and then some dessert as well.

There is also, however, a sort of "external middle class" [**] of use mostly for agitation and propaganda. This ghostly entity consists of approximately percentiles six through ninety-six, regardless of the party or ideology of the agitpropper. Pretty well everybody, that is. These good folks are -- one scarcely needs to spell it out -- the supposed beneficiaries of whatever crank panacæa is being vended. The real beneficiares, of course, are that "internal middle class" of which the speaker fancies herself in the midst. [***]


___
[*] I take "our kids’ activities" to be basically H*rv*rd-admission-oriented, excluding those activities which scions of the Nobility, or brats of the Bad Poor, are equally prone to as irrelevant for this discussion.

[**] Though the conceptions differ, I borrow the terminology from the late Prof. Dr. Toynbee, inventor or discoverer of the "external proletariat."

[***] More strictly, the agitpropper’s own Classmates are the *intended* beneficiaries. _Errare est humanum_, however, and sometimes others benefit unintendedly.

Notice, by the way, that I speak here only of sincere and honest cranks and self-servicers. Those who spout economic voodoo incantations for consumption by others that they would never dream of takin’ seriously themselves are a separate topic. Were "The Middle Class" always a flat-out lie, it would matter far less than it does _quâ_ muddle.


06 June 2011

The Foxcoats are comin'! The Foxcoats are comin'!



Dear Dr. Bones,

Golly! [0]

The _Herald_ angels have sure found "the cuttin’ edge of societal" freedumbin’-down:

Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”

A thoroughly worthy servant of John Silber Antistate College is Neocomrade Prof. Doc. B. X. McConville. Though I agree with our friend Paddy in wishing this ingenious Party neomechanism’s ethnicity were a bit less prominent.

Even in darkest Foxcuckooland, however, there is the occasional glimmer of _éclaircissement_:

McConville said he also is not convinced that Palin’s remarks reflect scholarship. “I would call her lucky in her comments,” McConville said.

(( DIGRESSION: Nobooby’s perfect, not even Master Brendan. Obviously Neocomrade Governess S. L. Heath-Paling of AK-49 is more, not less, to be admired because her freeladyship relies upon Fortuna rather than Eruditio, or Virtus, or any such shabby an’ Cinderella-like drudges of allegory. America’s Otherparty has always aspired to be The Happy Band of Winners, and the highest common factor of all winners is that Ms. Fortuna has smiled on them. Ms. Clio and thou and I may wish that ‘scholarship’ guaranteed one a smile, but obviously

’That is not the way the world really works anymore. WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality. And while you’re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- WE will act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. WE are history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what WE do.

(( Karl, Freelord Rove, did not explain in so many words who it was that made THEM a reality-creatin’ Empire now, yet his freelordship hardly needed to: _aut Fortuna aut diabolus_ is the only possible answer. The inferrer can infer, by the way, from this really central passage, The Key to All Neocomradology almost, that his Imperial freelordship does not have a great deal of respect for ‘scholarship’, even if he probably considered Mr. Ron Suskind, to whom this oracle was vouchsafed, not much better than a journalist.

(( So when Neocomrade Prof. Dr. B. X. McConville goes to cash in his own lucky lottery ticket (sc. bein’ called on by Neocomrade Ch. X. Cassidy of _The Boston Humbug_ to lead the parade of Experts [who] back Sarah Palin’s historical account), he should avoid the window behind which Freelord Rove or some known Rovan client sits. America’s Otherparty is not *all* Philistines, though it would be silly to pretend that many of their freelordships make ‘scholarship’ the rabbit’s-foot of choice.

(( And in future, the neocomrade perfesser might do well not to go on about ‘lucky’ out loud where he may be overheard: the Band of Happy Winners would, for obvious reasons, prefer to keep to themselves exactly what it takes to qualify for admission. END DIGRESSION. ))

***
Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”

‘Alaskatise’ I suggest judæochristen this latest ... ahem ... dingalingery, the postgallant an’ neolearnèd practitioners thereof bein’ ‘wasillasperts.’ [1]

Like any other infant scientism, Alaskatise can not reasonably be expected to slay all its dragons in the first ten microseconds. Specifically, the PG&NL wiseguys are still faced with two closely related problems to the one so brilliantly solved:

(A) A really full proof would establish that Mr. Revere and Mr. Dawes were NOT simply trying to warn every last woodchuck and rhododendron bush in Middlesex County (or world wide) either (A) about Governor Gage and his armed Torycomrades [2] or (B) about the MAHANGTIAM [3] attitudes of the Massachusetts Bay Live-Free-or-Pay Association.

(B) More urgent is to find a way to ease Party Neocomradess M. M. Amble-Bachmann off her freeladyship’s self-swallowed hook. Presumably these cited wasillaspurts are aware that what is now ME was part of MA under the prudent (and Pserious and generally paulryanesque) Gov. Gage. Also that the town in New Hampshire now called ‘Concord’ was then ‘Rumsford’. Also that Benjamin Thomson, born in No. Woburn, achieved whight-wing apotheosis in his day as _Reichsgraf von Rumsford_. [4]

Finally, ¿is not Peter Peterson the zeroth Freelord of Concord in the neopeerage of Wingnut City, thanks to his freelordship’s zeal for Gage-Thomson-Ryan-Bachmann-Paling family-financial values? ¡Of course he is!

Admittedly I don’t quite see, myself, exactly how to squint at that little heap of erudition so that it fully vindicates the Freedame of Amble-Bachmann, but if I could, we wouldn’t need specialists in baked and half-baked Alaska Tease, now, ¿would we? And since we remain still under the dark wing of the Crawford Crash, sir, we ought to welcome the birth of whole new perfessions and hope as many now disemployed folks rush into them as soon and as quickly as possible.

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


---
[0] Gol - ¡LEE!

[1] Perhaps a Yoo in the last syllable would be better? Or maybe "Wasilla spurts" would sound a little disresepctful of our Neobetters?

[2] "Mad as [a moonbat] an’ not gonna take it any more"

[3] The chances are very high that our now Tee Putty an’ Party neocomrades an’ unaffillitted kiddie selfservatives would have preferred fiscal responsibility in 1775 at least as ferociously as they do in 2011. Moreover, it goes absolutely without barkin’ that they would never have countenanced that vandalism incident of 16 December 1773. "History is bunk," revealed to them Their Ford. Rather a rash generalization, I’d say, though nobody can deny that it gets bunkier real fast once Rio Limbaugh an’ the _Boston Humbug_ start attendin’ to it.

[4] True, the Empire in question tottered to its fall only fifteen years later. This, however, was scarcely his freelordship of Rumsford’s fault.

05 June 2011

The Case against "Thirst for Knowledge"



Dear Dr. Bones,

Picqued, but not silent, in Darien is Yaleocomrade D. X. Miller (’63).

If there exists any "education bubble" at all, naturally you and I would take for granted that the uppuffin’ thereof began _anno religionismi_ 1112-1701-5460, being ... lemme see ... three hundred and ten solar revs ago a week from next Wednesday.

I imagine the chagrin felt by ex-President (as he already was [0]) Mather on hearing how far Neohaven was pushin’ its neoterroristity. I imagine his scion, taking one eye off the Invisible World for a moment, remarking "¿You mean to tell me, Daddy, that those boondocks hicks out there want another option when they already have Wunnerful US? ¡Maybe The End really is nigh!" [1]

Moving whight along, I believe I told you about the spread-ego Homeland™er of about 1273-1857-5618 who advised some vagrant Old Euro "England has two universities; Prussia eleven. In Ohio, however, we have sixty-eight thousand, four hundred and twenty one." [2]

***

One trouble with free-lance scabs for Party an’ AEIdeology is nicely illustrated by the yaleocomrade: DXM-63 is only vaguely on the proper page. The neomechanism can find a market for its higher school-bashin’ because the big Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters of its faction definitely want some such bashin’ done just at the moment, yet the mechanism does it its own way, or possibly Frank Sinatra’s way. We get past the theme "Too many kids go to college" safely enough, but then the yaleopiper wanders off into dissonant variations of its own willful ivy-tower devisin’ not at all suitable for AstroTurf™baggin’ purposes.

Especially notice the bit where the oboes and bagpipes wail "To spend four unproductive college years only to be spit out at the end with no more thirst for knowledge than upon entry is a waste."

¡As if those wunnerful folks who give us wombschoolin’ an’ freedumbin’-down, MurdochNews an’ yellow-pajama ‘journalism’, are likely to be interested in helpin’ to inflate a Thirst-for-Knowledge Bubble!

Plainly the sort of pipin’ Daddy Warbucks an’ Uncle Scrooge _y Tio Ruperto_ have in mind to fund on this subject is quite different. Too much booklarnin’ is to be discouraged because Wally an’ Cindy Wingnut are gonna find themselves neo-appalled one of these days when Wally Junior comes back from St. Dilbert Antistate College havin’ larned nothin’ in particular that will get him a good job an’ get it for him _pronto_. [3]

"Thirst for knowledge" is not even neutral, Dr. Bones. From the Scrooge-Warbucks-Murdoch-Strangesimon standpoint, it is positively deleterious. Suppose the personnel manager somewhere down the Great Chain of Corporation slips up an’ actually engages a thirst-crazed Wally. Suppose the thirst extends to knowin’ how Black Helicopters Dogmatic Slumberware Inc. (let’s call the subsidiary) works, and who makes it work, and who they make it work for -- and so on, and so forth. Next thing you know, very likely, Wingnut Jr. will be foregatherin’ with Union Thugs, or ambulance chasers, with "community organizers," even, to try to make BHDS work different -- to make it work what Wallyboy would call ‘better’ or ‘fairer’, but Big Management is far more likely to call "flat-out theft an’ Bolshevism."

I don’t claim that this needless tragedy is bound to happen in every single case, but it does happen in so many cases as to have become a cultural cliché out at Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie. Panamá is even farther out than that; perhaps the yaleocomrade is simply unacquianted with conditions that have developed in the _Heimatland G*ttes_ since he emigrated hence.

The neomechanism itself may have that excuse, but I cannot think of an excuse -- off-hand, anyway -- for Roger, Freelord Strangesimon, who has opened his blog to this manifest subversive.

It can hardly count as a proper excuse that his freelordship has perverted to Party an’ AEIdeology only recently an’ may not yet have fully grasped all the implications. ’Tis not a recondite implication, after all, that "thirst for knowledge" must be a permanent menace to keepin’ the Secret Sector secret. [4]

_Señores las indocumentadas y los indocumentados_ have an apopthegm _Saber es poder_, "knowledge is power." Though not, in my judgment, 100% accurate, there is enough in that to cause Strangesimon an’ Scrooge an’ Warbucks _y Tio Ruperto_ serious alarm, ¡were they but aware! Wingnut Minor is a stick of dynamite even if it has never (yet) crossed the overeducated little laddies’ mind that he might conceivably be thirstin’ for a swig of the hard stuff, not just Saber Lite, but El Poderoso Añejo.

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


___
[0] ¡Oops! Big LEW says "On June 27, 1692 he became the President, a position which he held until September 6, 1701."

Chronology corrected, the possibility appears to arise that the Birth of Ed Bubble was itself the cause of the termination of Mather Minor. However I am quite sure that if that was the case, I would have read about it long ago. Unless I have forgotten my Perry Miller altogether, at least half of Hill City City hated the prototype of Neocomrade President L. H. Summers (’##) for more or less Larrysommersville reasons, lots of chickenshit politics that did not rise to the dignity of Dogmatic Mythology.

**

[1] I imagine the substance of the speech only, the magnaliaquence of that young (as he then was, probably, sorta) man’s style being well off my scope.

You might, by the way, consider the whole business a subtle joke by Father Zeus at the expense of Master Cotton’s gran’daddy: "You want to call your brat ‘Increase’, eh? Well. EYE shall grant him some increase that will not soon be forgotten!" Especially funny would be if one of the Salem Village coven freedames had put the ed-bubble idea into Himself’s head in the first place.

***

[2] I won’t go to the stake for the exact numbers, which do not matter to make the point.


***

[3] That is the cause that the Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters want their agitproppers to bring to the attention of Mr. & Mrs. Wingnut. They themselves have, of course, other an’ loftier corporate reasons of their own to deprecate overschoolin’ the lower orders, reasons which had better be kept in the comfy shadows of the Secret Sector than exposed naked for us lieberals an’ demoncrat donkeys to probably use against.

***

[4] Though Strangesimon is far from bestembright enough to play such a game, a really fiendish Kiddiemaster might conceivably hire Wingnut Minor, "thirst for knowledge" and all. His freelordship would then procede to tantalize the poor boob for a while, keepin’ him on the payroll as long as he’ll stay, but never, ever, lettin’ him near even the smallest scrap of _poder_, no matter how much _saber_ he comes by.

Plainly Don Gradgrindo would have to be very secure against data theft to attempt this.

Or maybe not -- were the Don a throroughgoin’ _entrepreneur_ an’ devotee of Destructive Creationism™, he could perhaps engage Master Wally (junior) as a sort of canary for his mine, carefully watchin’ Wally attempt to slake that Millerite thirst an’ thus find out whether there are any information leakages his freelordship’s regular unthirsty peons have failed to notice.

If there are, I suppose Wally will have to be dismissed when he finds them. Which would probably make him a conscious bolshie ever after.

Though even this is not absolutely certain: I can imagine a pscenario in which the Don makes Wally one of those unrefusable offers Dons like to make, maybe even lettin’ him marry the daughter an’ hope to inherit the widget mine in the traditional Horatio Alger way, PROVIDED Wally carries all his knowledge with him to the grave. To the grave of Don Gradgrindo, if not necessarily Wally’s own.

But obviously I am gettin’ fantastic fast. In practice, Don Gradgrindo should just glance at the lad’s résumé and then give instructions that calls from that direction should not be returned. ¿Why take chances?

His freelordship might also arrange to be spared personal interviews in future with anybooby else recommended to him by Don Danielito Miller de Darién y Neohaven. ¿Why waste time?

04 June 2011

"At the cuttin' edge of societal" humbug

Dear Dr. Bones,

The TEA party GOP got elected by promising jobs, jobs, jobs.

Even a more constant an’ loyal weeder of _The Boston Humbug_ than I might find that news a little surprisin’. Yet there it is, way up at the top of the list of cracks from the peanut gallery when sorted on "Highest Rated."

(A) ¿Shouldn’t the first four words be accounted oxymoron? My own impression is that those wunnerful folks who fund Tee Putty America would prefer everybody to think of their patients as bold, independent-minded lemmin’s with no particular Party affiliation. ¿Have the AstroTurf™baggin’ Classes really given up all pretendin’?

(B) Furthermore, anybooby with half a brainpan to hold her dittoes in ought to have foreseen that the real promise of a Von Böhner/Von Kantor Ascendancy was never "job, jobs, jobs" but more like "gridlock, Gridlock, GRIDLOCK." One campaign promise richly kept -- or wouldabeen, had the _hochwohlgeborene Freiherren_ of Party an’ AEIdeology but promised this happy paralysis to the selfservative kiddies out loud.

Once Willard Mitt, second Freelord Romney in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, has been ‘immaculated’ [*] as POTUS of us all, things will be very different. In late January 2013, the dams will suddenly burst, an’ "jobs, jobs, jobs" will trickle down like

... lemme see ...

well, like molassess in January.

But not till then. ¡Be patient, O disemployed kiddies! Rome was not wrecked in a day.

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[*] Our thanks hereby to Party Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh for inventin’ the alone _mot juste_. (( Dear Rush, The royalty check is in the mail. As ever, JHM. ))