In A World
...where opacity stands in for sophistication, ennui for enlightenment...I especially like the Sunstein piece. You get the feeling that there's a certain frisson accompanying his fears of a Wednesday Night Church Supper Putsch.
...where politicians fiddle while their soldiers burn...
...where the disconnected coastal urban elite fears that the Wednesday-night bowling leagues of the shepherdless subliterate proles in flyover country are hotbeds of fascism...
24 comments:
Best comment on the Sunstein piece: "I guess the lesson to be learned, then, is that when disadvantaged populations start to accumulate social capital, it's best to destroy that capital, lest it threaten the interests of the entrenched elite, of which Professor Sunstein is a part." -RyanGosling_yep_its_me
Nahh, I think Sunstein jumped Godwin's shark there.
I always find the 'everything is meaningless, nothing matters, and i'm clearly more special than you for having figured that out' argument hilarious. That Franzen/Kraus piece was highly amusing. I always love watching the people who first come into self-awareness and somehow think this makes the, transcendent, enlightened, and absolutely better than everyone else because of it. Being in University right now makes it very easy to spot them. I stay entertained.
Sunstein absolutely nailed this one. It's the echo chambers of the various "Harvard Clubs" and media associations through the Northeast, for example, that give rise to the evil notion that women should entrust their personal safety to the government, not a weapon of their choice. Harvard should be abolished.
The Scribbler,
I ain't much on fancy book-learnin'... ;)
It never ceases to amaze me that all these brilliant (just ask them, they'll tell you) elitists know so much, and still manage to FUBAR the nation into the crapper every trip of the train....not that I'd do any better, but I don't claim infallibility....
An a study of why folks joined the communist party in the Soviet Union and the PRC showed....(crickets).
Gerry
I kept hearing this song while reading the Sunstein piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDB9oCgVHGw
"Douche" doesn't even begin to describe Sunstein.
Kids, this is the results from parents doing massive amounts of hallucinogenic drugs and having sex in a hippy commune while passing around STDs like a joint.
Don't let this happen to you.
Wow, Susnstein has dicovered that "joiners" tend to join groups, especially up and coming groups.
Huh. Who knew? [/sarc]
To really appreciate Kraus-Mencken you must sit in a Viennese coffeehouse for hours and just read the papers as your little demitasse grows cold, all the time wishing you were in Rome or even Argentina instead.
But Franzen is just wanking.
I'm really starting to think James Cameron's script writers had it right.
Huh. I had always thought of National Socialism as the group that the middle class went to that were seeking a Third Way between the crazy Red revolutionaries and the ineffectual Weimar ramshackle coalition. Of COURSE it would be a normalizing influence to find out that the local deacon, judge, mailman, or tavern owner was a member. It was still very socialist, mind you. I remember a quote about a new party member who had formerly had his room adorned with a picture of Lenin, a red banner, and all the other Red-chic decor. Not a month later, it was covered by swastikas. He saw the ideology as being similar, but he didn't have to give up patriotism.
Once Hitler wrote his little book and took the movement out of the Beer Halls, it gained wide spectrum acceptance. Among the party planks were an old-age pension system, agrarian and educational reform, break up of large stores and the helping of small businesses (Dirty Jewish Walmart!), and the abolition of income not derived from work. As well as a host of ethic and national solidarity points of order. Though distasteful in some of the items it stressed, there were many points to draw in regular middle-class Germans, not just the whackadoo-fringers. Plus, the Nazis were so darn determined to do things Together. Whether it was exercising, meetings, Hitler Jugend, or what have you, solidarity through shared communal experience was a major aspect of the National Socialist lifestyle. In fact, like some modern Democratic voters, there was a strain among those who didn't vote Nazi, that it wasn't that they disagreed so much as they just didn't want to associate with THOSE type of people, the Lumpenproletariat.
Where's Don LaFontaine when we need him?nb
Sunstein should fear us proles in the PTA out here in flyover country. My Gawd, we have actual potluck suppers where we serve actual comfort foods like green bean casseroles and cheezy tater tot bakes! The horror! The horror!
Even worse, sometimes we have large gatherings where we wantonly eat breaded and fried bull testicles and drink beer! Will the torture never cease?!?
Too bad, I liked both Franzen books I read. But it's expecting too much, I suppose, to like everything he says. And there was quite a lot in that article not to like, even before I turned away due to tl;dr, something I'm sure Franzen would leap to point out is a symptom of a modern ailment, someone blissfully unaware they are under the Titan-induced spell of the purveyors of techoconsumerism who rely on our attention deficit while profiting on our despair.
I can agree with at least one thing Franzen said: Kraus is very difficult to read, even beyond a first reading.
Am I the only one who read Sunstein's piece and could only think of left wing groups as contemporary examples of groups susceptible to this process? I don't think he's quite as far off as some in this thread intimate, he's just looking primarily in the wrong direction.
It is amazing the degree to which the modern left is blinded by the many left wing origins of National Socialism.
Not so amazing, Micheal. After all, Stalin himself told them that the NSDAP were the enemy, and they of course took that to heart.
But Satyanath and his co-authors reveal another possibility: that such associations can facilitate the spread of extremism, ultimately laying the groundwork for >>serious challenges to democracy itself.<<
Good..Good. Democracy had it's chances and it blew them.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.cz/2008/01/how-i-stopped-believing-in-democracy.html
Why, when reading the Sunstein piece, I had Mel Brooks in the "Producers" singing
"Hey you don't be a smarty
Come and join the Nazi Party"
floating in my head?
Or was that Michael Moore's "Bowling for Buchenwald" that I was thinking about?
Steve- it was Stalin's little puppet show that inspired the whole '1984' memory hole thing.
1938: Stalin-"Nazis bad!"
Leftist-"Grrrr Nazis!"
1939: Stalin-"Nazis good!"
Leftist-"Yay Nazis!"
1941: Stalin-"Nazis really bad!!"
Leftist- "Grrrrr Nazis!!"
Wednesday Night Church Supper Putsch
I must go to the wrong church events on Wednesday night.
I dunno. Friday night bowling demographics in the heartland could teach something to the hoi-poloi--Most ethnically and economically diverse group I've seen.
I can't think that our bowling nights could be deemed a gateway league to Nazism.
Of course I can't speak to the Wednesday league, specifically--they might be a bunch of skinheads. But I doubt it.
RKN, I had the same tl;dr problem with the Franzen essay. And I think you're right that the author would blame the problem on anything other than the fact that it wasn't worth reading.
gvi
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