"What's the plan?" the white guy asked, likeworking-twice-as-hard-to-do-half-as-wellis something blacks prepare for, as whites cruise - "care free" - through this society built on their evil:
I don't like Noam Chomsky, and I find it sad that it could take a linguist four years to figure out what was obviously true at the time (six if you count Obama's campaign) but I'm not going to let any of that take away from his statement:
The Emperor has no clothes - and out of all the so-called smart people on the political stage, it was that idiot, Sarah Palin, who first got it.
Except for we atheists, anyone out there not sure if Satan is searching for his parka right now doesn't believe in shit,...
Hugo Chávez, he of the televised multi-hour conspiracy theory rant - and Noam Chomsky-loving, necrophiliac, socialist cult of personality in Venuzuela - is at it again. Keep in mind, this is the guy who had Sean Penn and Oliver Stone, amongst others, hooked on his every word during the Bush administration. (He famously claimed to smell "sulfur" emanating from George W. Bush, back in 2006, when Chávez spoke after him at the U.N. in New York.) Oliver Stone even went so far as to make a documentary about him, claiming Chávez is "misunderstood". See if you understand this:
Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on the planet Mars, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday.
"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.
Got that? Understand it? I do - the man runs a cult - and it's "logic" like this that absolutely proves it. I don't care how high he's risen in politics:
"[Susan] Jacoby informs us,...that she can think of no better example of why the right is never to be taken at face value in their discussion of the 60s. How does this logic work, one wonders? Would it be equally acceptable to take a claim about the 60s from a left-wing author with which one agrees and derive from its supposed truth the conclusion that one can think of no better reason to always trust the left?
Jacoby doesn’t entirely fail to criticize the left. She recalls time spent in the Soviet Union that made her understand and appreciate American liberty. She admits that the left has politicized junk science and fostered trends within academia that serve to trample over reason and quell healthy debate. She notes, in particular, certain strains of feminism. But how, one wonders, can there be a discussion of American unreason that fails to confront the wooly-headed postmodern philosophy that dominates literary theory classes and much political discourse of the left? Noam Chomsky managed to say that the British journalist and blogger Oliver Kamm’s criticism of him showed that he was complicit in state crimes — this from a man touted so often as “the world’s greatest living intellectual.” Scan the index for mention of Chomsky’s name and you’ll find nothing."
Jacoby is fond of asking how a person living in America today can know X and not Y, how they can value things so valueless while failing to appreciate the most precious — but mostly how they can fail to criticize glaring transgressions against reason and good sense. Great questions, but they might be posed to her as well: the track record of the American left in recent years has blemishes at least as hideous as those of the right, but that track record is not met with nearly the bluster that she gives to what she repeatedly refers to as “the right wing.”
The repetition of these words wouldn’t be nearly so disturbing if they weren’t so common in the text and if they didn’t so outnumber the appearances of “left wing.” One gets the sense that, for Jacoby, referring to something as “right wing” is an epithet, which is a problem for anybody hoping to approach a book like this for a sober assessment of what wrong turns America has taken since its inception as one of the grandest — and most successful — experiments of the Enlightenment. As one who is generally disowned by “the right wing” for being a snarling liberal and by “the left wing” for being a neocon apologist for imperialism, I have always taken a great refuge where category is concerned in Robert Conquest’s recommendation that, rather than beating worn-out steeds to death, we should forget about left and right and seek a United Front Against Bullshit. Jacoby’s book most certainly offers invaluable ammunition to this Front, but there are unfortunately times where it feels more like an attempt to revive those horses and ride them into the partisan sunset. In those moments, the book seems to miss its own point, leaving the Front to once again lament its frustrating dearth of firepower."
Pretty harrowing stuff, huh? And I haven't even gotten to the part where Karine declares she's a NewAge God. (A "God" who wears glasses, has a mouth full of gold fillings - and a crooked vagina! Go figure.) I'll finish it up when I get my nerves back:
I was re-living it the whole time it was being written.
I was still thinking of it all when I saw a new study that says liberals and conservatives think differently about things - that liberals "tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives". (I'll say: My reactions, in The Big Bang, should show you that.) For me, this study raises just one question:
After everything I just wrote, why would anyone want to tolerate ambiguity and conflict?
Isn't life and love crazy enough as it is?
The study's lead author, David Amodio, said "the tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing" and, in retrospect, I think that's probably what I'd been trying to do while loving Karine all those years by ignoring her nonsense. I don't know (I had no ideawhat she thought she was doing to begin with.) I mean, screwing another guy when you're married - and then hiding it, and lying about it, until you're busted - just doesn't strike me as very "spiritual" no matter how you look at it. Just like rooting against your own country in a war doesn't strike me as very "patriotic". No, nowadays, not much of liberal behavior, or claims of NewAge belief, make much sense.
And, call me a conservative if you must, but I don't want to "tolerate" it either.
In his documentary, The Enemies of Reason, Richard Dawkins's assertion that it was the questioning of MMR vaccines that caused England's first measles outbreak in 14 years - a new wage medical rebellion that lead to mass confusion and sickness - should've put the tolerance of ambiguity and conflict in it's place. At least amongst those of us that don't want much of either. I mean, understanding there's ambiguity and conflict in life shouldn't be the same thing as tolerating it being thrust on others, especially kids, which is all NewAgers seem capable of insisting on. As I've tried to show you, it's a real my-way-or-the-highway outlook. Why should anyone be forced to tolerate it - or them?
I mean, who actually wants to tolerate frauds, like the kabbalah people, in our political process, or our energy discussions, when we know they're "just like the Church of Scientology" and will cause nothing but trouble? (Can't we agree crazy Christians are enough?) It reminds me of being in France, where everyone - even the acknowledged idiots - get a say in all discussions, leaving every rational person either asleep, laughing hysterically, or walking out in disgust. That's no way to run a country.
I know what you're thinking:
They said "liberals", not NewAgers, you one-track-minded Crackpot!!
Fine - you're right, you're right - so let me ask you about just two big-name, non-NewAge, liberals who are, surely, a source of ambiguity and conflict:
Is there a good reason to tolerate the opinion of a known liar, like Michael Moore, who, on the one hand, disses Halliburton but, on the other, owns their stock? Osama bin Laden's pal, Noam Chomsky, does too - andhe works/worked for the Pentagon. Is there a good reason to believe they're sincerely helping the country decide *anything* when we know they're such open hypocrites? How does tolerating them, and their forked-tongue opinions, make anything better? Don't they - and the other people who want to tolerate ambiguity and conflict - really deserve this instead?:
Come on - if ambiguity and conflict are their thing:
It would be giving them what they want,...
But it would be better to fight smart - attack from a different angle - and the best is to roll with:
