tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post115411667518422385..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: the tora bora conspiracyRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154223299601851432006-07-30T03:34:00.000+02:002006-07-30T03:34:00.000+02:00I find most people define themselves politically i...<I>I find most people define themselves politically in terms of what their parents defined themselves as.</I><BR/><BR/>So do I, and I've also found the most people consider that their acts of political participation aren't worth it takes to make them. A good bit comes from the infantilizing nature of a corporate-structured political system. Treat adults like puerile, irresponsible ninnies long enough and that's what they become. Those who can't stand it learn to fob off their "uplifters" with the same tricks they use to get rid of telemarketers. That leaves the pursuit of the "game" to those degenerate meritocrats you paint so well for us, Roger, and to their unpleasant, hair shirt zealot, wannabes.Arkadyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05838423612315386095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154196675274658602006-07-29T20:11:00.000+02:002006-07-29T20:11:00.000+02:00I can't BELIEVE I've missed 'Libra.' I just put a...I can't BELIEVE I've missed 'Libra.' I just put a hold on it at NYPL, also 'Cosmopolis.' Ridiculous that I've only read 'Underworld.'Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154196308169390712006-07-29T20:05:00.000+02:002006-07-29T20:05:00.000+02:00'As mythical creatures with a liking for virgins, ...'As mythical creatures with a liking for virgins, I thought they were beyond the nets of sexual norms.'<BR/><BR/>Why, I can't think of anything more Deviated Pre-vert than that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154195843224111742006-07-29T19:57:00.000+02:002006-07-29T19:57:00.000+02:00I like the unicorn addition. But do unicorns have ...I like the unicorn addition. But do unicorns have perversions? As mythical creatures with a liking for virgins, I thought they were beyond the nets of sexual norms. <BR/><BR/>But I digress... I saw leftists diverge into the paranoid style at the end of the eighties, with the ridiculous, Oliver Stoned crusade to get the Grey Ghost -- the supposed CIA network that had fine tuned everything from Kennedy's assassination to the late fees on my library books. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of political room in the good old U.S.A. for the left. In fact, to be a leftist in this country is more of a book based I.D. than, saying, being conservative, moderate or liberal - which are all legacy political positions. I find most people define themselves politically in terms of what their parents defined themselves as. And, beyond that, most people dont give a flying fuck. Myself, like many a fine American (Hinkley and Oswald come to mind), I got my political beliefs from books -- and it does excite me that there is "a world within the world", as Delillo puts it in Libra in that great beginning, when Lee rides the subways around New York City. However, I've grown old and disillusioned with the left, and recognized that I am a lumpen-bourgeois kind of guy - a West Side limosine liberal on the income of a seven eleven part time clerk. I liked the De Quincey essay because of its usual heavy lidded De Quincian logic, and because he recognizes conspiracy as essentially a literary category that ends up in the political world by bizarre and subterranian pathways. I do think people engaged on political projects in D.C. love to see themselves as conspirators -- look at the way the people around Ken Starr talked about themselves as "little elves", and actively promoted entrapping Clinton - but I don't see them through that lens when I am in my cooler, analytic mode. I see the various, predictable plays of a court society that is insulated from reality by the very structure -- that system of "meritocracy" - that is supposed to be turning out the best and brightest. <BR/><BR/>All of which is stuff for another post -- I'm digressing like mad here!Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154144469458972162006-07-29T05:41:00.000+02:002006-07-29T05:41:00.000+02:00Some of the ones at the Charlotte Street link are ...Some of the ones at the Charlotte Street link are among the most extremist about the 9/11 conspiracies (I mean the 9/11 ones--the WTC and Pentagon ones). I have found them extremely hypnotic until I fully confronted them. I know why they do it: It is a means of preserving a boldly defined left--one which has bookish but not especially intellectual people in it and literally conforms to each new contour in the Bush administrations follies by deforming in more or less exact reaction to them. Even those who do not believe the theory have such a need for a left clubbishness that these way-beyond-the-fringe types are kept (and therefore actually encouraged) on hand to repropagate the clubbishness. <BR/><BR/>None of these extreme leftists, due to where they have to arrive in order to keep their identity intact, are any less canny than their far-right counterparts--because that is all they are, the greater posturing about compassion and truth is still all about self-interest. This would stand to reason, that extremists who are very obviously screwy would need this screwiness to keep finding themselves amid the rubble, but that this would cancel out their credibility quite as fully as the more obviously coarse right-wing counterparts. It's taken me a long time to understand this, as there is truly a great hypnosis to leftist hypnosis and hysteria that I do not find with the right-wingers. It could be that there is a certain amount of mawkishness about it that makes one empathize for awhile until it becomes clear that the sincerity is merely placed in different self-interest containers, which often are merely shadowy reflections to resist the other side purely for resistance's appearance, but very often--as with wrong conspiracies emphasized--actually serving the interests of those whose power they do not have. <BR/><BR/>I definitely think the 9/11 'original' as conspiracy is of great benefit to the Bush administration: This is one case in which the crazies they call so really are the crazies (it's irrelevant that they are the crazies too, because they are still the powerful crazies until they are not; and the leftist crazies are not powerful until they are, and they are not yet.)<BR/><BR/>Excuse length and digression, but found de Quincey very illuminating as well.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154142651557033672006-07-29T05:10:00.000+02:002006-07-29T05:10:00.000+02:00Yes, now that I've been able to study it further--...Yes, now that I've been able to study it further--good stuff and very informative.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-1154119008746843152006-07-28T22:36:00.000+02:002006-07-28T22:36:00.000+02:00You're the best. I agree with all of it I've been...You're the best. I agree with all of it I've been able to absorb thus far. Of course, 9/11 spawned innumerable conspiracies. Leftists who keep harping on a Bush insider job for the Towers (they always leave out the Pentagon and even frequently forget about it completely) do themselves a disservice, but seemingly without knowing it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com