Archive Listing
June 8, 2011 - June 1, 2011
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
An Old Comment Made New
Not
my arm. Or Billy's.
FOLLOW-ON. After a post on anti-semitism, the world falls silent. That's not an editorial remark, just a fact. So I went back to an earlier IP post and discovered a comment that seems curiously relevant today. Billy Oblivion objected to my provocative assertion that we are "all bigots." I meant it, of course, in a satrirical sense, but Billy's reaction and explanation is worth reading again right now.
Billy
Oblivion 2009-08-29 05:47:00
To recognize a difference, and to have tastes (as opposed to Taste) is not bigoted.
I don't care for football. In fact almost all professional sports bore me. Partially this is because I don't care for participating in the amateur version of them. Partially it is because the lessons they have to teach I'm either deaf to, or learned long ago. Those who like Football, or fast cars, or vacation cruises are not "other", they are merely people with divergent tastes. For that the term is not bigot but rather snob.
If you wish to call me a snob of sorts, I cannot argue. Drink, Music, food, I've got my preferences and some I'll defend on philosophical grounds (after all, aesthetics is a branch of Philosophy, even if we don't recognize it any more) others are indefensible (there are times I prefer a mass market blended bourbon to a single cask, or even a good scotch. I know, but we all have our foibles).
However bigotry has an implication of superiority. I no longer consider myself superior to others *merely* because they would babble about baseball or hotrods, while *I* prefer to discourse on the relative merits of this firearm or that motorcycle. Some prefer fine German Pilsners, some Red Wine. Others prefer a coca-cola. There's no accounting for taste. Or budget. There was a time, but it's long gone.
Another implication of bigotry is that it is merely the otherness of the person that causes the divide. That the skin color or mode of dress of the Muhammadan, or the name he gives God is the cause of the separation.
I realize this is difficult for those of you on the coasts to realize, but we DO have rather heterogeneous communities out there in Fly Over Country. There were Jews and moslems in my town, even in my classes (though not many of the latter). We had a couple temples, and a mosque--though being raised a Catholic (rather poorly as this was post-Vatican II) I never saw the inside of them.
I am not bigoted against Southern Baptists [responding to an earlier comment], I am ill disposed to *idiot* Southern Baptists. One of my best friends is an utterly brilliant man who is also a fundamentalist southern baptist of one sort or another. He is kinder and more open hearted than almost any man I've ever met.
But he is not an idiot.
If you wish to accuse me of being bigoted towards idiots, then we have a semantic argument on our hands which may take a while.
As to "knowing Jews". I knew kids of Jewish parents. Most were more liberal--aka "non-orthodox" jews. One of the people I keep most constant contact with these days--a good friend of mine, and a Philadelphian is of Jewish decent, though he does not practice the faith (this is the case with many Jews I've met).
To say one "knows" Jews is to say one "knows" Christians--which is to say nothing at all because the faithless son of a west-coast Jewish Mother, neither of which have been to synagogue in a decade is very different from knowing the kind of Jew who would shut down is web E-Commerce site from Friday evening to Saturday evening Personally I have a HUGE amount of respect for someone who executes their religious convictions with that level of detail.
Do I know every detail of the various and sundry Jewish tribes? The difference between orthodox, reform and the rest didn't stick. No, my mind is more like a hurricane fence than a fine mesh. Lots of stuff blows through before the detritus builds to a sufficient thickness to hold details, and consequently much I could have learn is lost like the c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate.
But the same is true of just about everything I know, think I know, think I don't know, or don't know I don't know. I'm sort of a poly-arithmetic.
I have my prejudices, I'm not claiming otherwise. I have my preferences, opinions and causes. But it's not the color of a mans skin, the tongue of his mother or the name of his god that gives me pause, it IS the content of his character, his relationship with the world and it's diverse peoples that matter.
Which brings us to "why NYLs [New York Liberals] now think it's okay to hate the Jews".
Understand first that I draw the distinction between a Liberal, who would never hate the Jews, and a Progressive, who has never not [hated the Jews].
I think to the degree that one can conflate hating Israel as a state actor with hating Jews the answer is a long propaganda effort by the progressives. Israel has been put in an impossible position and they are responding just like the last few fighters in Mila 18 did (did I mention that I loved that book?) They have their backs to the sea and are fighting as vicious a fight as their morals will let them. This bothers modern Liberals who really are good hearted souls who believe that there ARE essentially no differences between people (which is clearly untrue).
So more clearly maybe, I don't think that a NYL *does* hate The Jews. I think that if you're talking to a self-described Liberal who hates Jews you ought to ask them which takes primacy, the State or the Individual.
Then you have your answer. For the one thing that the Progressive CANNOT ABIDE is someone who puts something else ahead of the general state (they may not put it thus, they may talk of class unity (communists) or purity of culture (old-school Nazis) or "the community" (communitards) or whatever, but the idea of an allegiance other than to some sort of corporate entity (not like a business corporation, but a group) is bad, but even worse is the allegiance to a group that is NOT theirs. Jews have been a whipping boy for Western Culture (along with Gypsies etc.) for a long time, and they're a useful one since unlike the Gypsies they have CLEARLY uh...damn I hate it when a word won't come. They've profited and grown over the years, largely through their OWN industry, thrift and cleverness proving that one DOES NOT need the state. One CAN take care of oneself, ones family and ones community members w/out the theiving hand of the state.
Either that, or some people are just assholes.
The Mormons will eventually get the same treatment. But unlike the orthodox Jews, they wear the funny clothes on the inside.
Bigotry and prejudice are different things. So are preferences.
I don't know the truth. I suspect it, but people who were demonstrably a LOT smarter than me have argued all sides of various questions, so while I'm absolutely certain that some things--slavery, child abuse, wanton cruelty and body paint and foam fingers at professional sports events are wrong on a deep moral level, other things merely make running a society difficult.
It is the lack of questioning that stagnates cultures. It is the questioning of ideas, especially the profane questioning in the areas of science and philosophy that push our society foward, that have given us what to our Greek or Roman forefathers would seem to be closer to a heaven on earth than they could have imagined. We *have* to tolerate the other because THEY MAY BE RIGHT. We don't know. We think we know, but as Feynman once observed "Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong."
To recognize a difference, and to have tastes (as opposed to Taste) is not bigoted.
I don't care for football. In fact almost all professional sports bore me. Partially this is because I don't care for participating in the amateur version of them. Partially it is because the lessons they have to teach I'm either deaf to, or learned long ago. Those who like Football, or fast cars, or vacation cruises are not "other", they are merely people with divergent tastes. For that the term is not bigot but rather snob.
If you wish to call me a snob of sorts, I cannot argue. Drink, Music, food, I've got my preferences and some I'll defend on philosophical grounds (after all, aesthetics is a branch of Philosophy, even if we don't recognize it any more) others are indefensible (there are times I prefer a mass market blended bourbon to a single cask, or even a good scotch. I know, but we all have our foibles).
However bigotry has an implication of superiority. I no longer consider myself superior to others *merely* because they would babble about baseball or hotrods, while *I* prefer to discourse on the relative merits of this firearm or that motorcycle. Some prefer fine German Pilsners, some Red Wine. Others prefer a coca-cola. There's no accounting for taste. Or budget. There was a time, but it's long gone.
Another implication of bigotry is that it is merely the otherness of the person that causes the divide. That the skin color or mode of dress of the Muhammadan, or the name he gives God is the cause of the separation.
I realize this is difficult for those of you on the coasts to realize, but we DO have rather heterogeneous communities out there in Fly Over Country. There were Jews and moslems in my town, even in my classes (though not many of the latter). We had a couple temples, and a mosque--though being raised a Catholic (rather poorly as this was post-Vatican II) I never saw the inside of them.
I am not bigoted against Southern Baptists [responding to an earlier comment], I am ill disposed to *idiot* Southern Baptists. One of my best friends is an utterly brilliant man who is also a fundamentalist southern baptist of one sort or another. He is kinder and more open hearted than almost any man I've ever met.
But he is not an idiot.
If you wish to accuse me of being bigoted towards idiots, then we have a semantic argument on our hands which may take a while.
As to "knowing Jews". I knew kids of Jewish parents. Most were more liberal--aka "non-orthodox" jews. One of the people I keep most constant contact with these days--a good friend of mine, and a Philadelphian is of Jewish decent, though he does not practice the faith (this is the case with many Jews I've met).
To say one "knows" Jews is to say one "knows" Christians--which is to say nothing at all because the faithless son of a west-coast Jewish Mother, neither of which have been to synagogue in a decade is very different from knowing the kind of Jew who would shut down is web E-Commerce site from Friday evening to Saturday evening Personally I have a HUGE amount of respect for someone who executes their religious convictions with that level of detail.
Do I know every detail of the various and sundry Jewish tribes? The difference between orthodox, reform and the rest didn't stick. No, my mind is more like a hurricane fence than a fine mesh. Lots of stuff blows through before the detritus builds to a sufficient thickness to hold details, and consequently much I could have learn is lost like the c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate.
But the same is true of just about everything I know, think I know, think I don't know, or don't know I don't know. I'm sort of a poly-arithmetic.
I have my prejudices, I'm not claiming otherwise. I have my preferences, opinions and causes. But it's not the color of a mans skin, the tongue of his mother or the name of his god that gives me pause, it IS the content of his character, his relationship with the world and it's diverse peoples that matter.
Which brings us to "why NYLs [New York Liberals] now think it's okay to hate the Jews".
Understand first that I draw the distinction between a Liberal, who would never hate the Jews, and a Progressive, who has never not [hated the Jews].
I think to the degree that one can conflate hating Israel as a state actor with hating Jews the answer is a long propaganda effort by the progressives. Israel has been put in an impossible position and they are responding just like the last few fighters in Mila 18 did (did I mention that I loved that book?) They have their backs to the sea and are fighting as vicious a fight as their morals will let them. This bothers modern Liberals who really are good hearted souls who believe that there ARE essentially no differences between people (which is clearly untrue).
So more clearly maybe, I don't think that a NYL *does* hate The Jews. I think that if you're talking to a self-described Liberal who hates Jews you ought to ask them which takes primacy, the State or the Individual.
Then you have your answer. For the one thing that the Progressive CANNOT ABIDE is someone who puts something else ahead of the general state (they may not put it thus, they may talk of class unity (communists) or purity of culture (old-school Nazis) or "the community" (communitards) or whatever, but the idea of an allegiance other than to some sort of corporate entity (not like a business corporation, but a group) is bad, but even worse is the allegiance to a group that is NOT theirs. Jews have been a whipping boy for Western Culture (along with Gypsies etc.) for a long time, and they're a useful one since unlike the Gypsies they have CLEARLY uh...damn I hate it when a word won't come. They've profited and grown over the years, largely through their OWN industry, thrift and cleverness proving that one DOES NOT need the state. One CAN take care of oneself, ones family and ones community members w/out the theiving hand of the state.
Either that, or some people are just assholes.
The Mormons will eventually get the same treatment. But unlike the orthodox Jews, they wear the funny clothes on the inside.
Bigotry and prejudice are different things. So are preferences.
I don't know the truth. I suspect it, but people who were demonstrably a LOT smarter than me have argued all sides of various questions, so while I'm absolutely certain that some things--slavery, child abuse, wanton cruelty and body paint and foam fingers at professional sports events are wrong on a deep moral level, other things merely make running a society difficult.
It is the lack of questioning that stagnates cultures. It is the questioning of ideas, especially the profane questioning in the areas of science and philosophy that push our society foward, that have given us what to our Greek or Roman forefathers would seem to be closer to a heaven on earth than they could have imagined. We *have* to tolerate the other because THEY MAY BE RIGHT. We don't know. We think we know, but as Feynman once observed "Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong."
Indeed.
posted at
12:10 am
by
InstaPunk
I Like this guy.
Reminds
me somehow of another guy.
FOR CIDNIE. Same insistent beat as Johnny Dodge's Country Punk.
6.
Here is the lantern.
2 You are the boy who lighted the lantern.
3 You are the boy who lives in its light. You are the boy who will die in its light, who will die from its light.
4 Lantern light and lantern fire. It burns and spreads and glows like flame, consuming illumination.
2 You are the boy who lighted the lantern.
3 You are the boy who lives in its light. You are the boy who will die in its light, who will die from its light.
4 Lantern light and lantern fire. It burns and spreads and glows like flame, consuming illumination.
7.
Candlelight. Huddled interiors at
night, the meek forays of little
people’s little words, darting into dark and back, needing escape and
fearing the blanks on the map.
8.
Torchlight. Pine knots and smoke and
painful flying embers. Sometimes
the bearer catches fire and falls, rolling into blackened ruin.
2 All you see is flicker, red shadows, shapes of your deepest fears, roaming round you outside the cone of orange protection.
3 Friends erupt and fall, friends fall and disappear into the field of answers outside the light.
2 All you see is flicker, red shadows, shapes of your deepest fears, roaming round you outside the cone of orange protection.
3 Friends erupt and fall, friends fall and disappear into the field of answers outside the light.
9.
Electric light. Light enough at last
and light too much.
2 A human chain of links electrified, pulsed into a stream of bits, harsh river of naked white exposure without shadows to hide in.
3 In too much light there is suspicion, fear that the truth is ugly beyond belief. Are we just this? Pallid pretenders unmasked in our creeping, crawling scavenger hunt?
4 Light alone is beautiful and mocks whatever dares to share its stage. Or: We are but reflections of the horrors concealed within, the dirty folds inside the bright white mantle of creation.
5 Light of knowing, light of doubt, light of shame, it’s all the same, a bleaching, draining dryness of the mind.
2 A human chain of links electrified, pulsed into a stream of bits, harsh river of naked white exposure without shadows to hide in.
3 In too much light there is suspicion, fear that the truth is ugly beyond belief. Are we just this? Pallid pretenders unmasked in our creeping, crawling scavenger hunt?
4 Light alone is beautiful and mocks whatever dares to share its stage. Or: We are but reflections of the horrors concealed within, the dirty folds inside the bright white mantle of creation.
5 Light of knowing, light of doubt, light of shame, it’s all the same, a bleaching, draining dryness of the mind.
10.
Blue light. Light of movement, the
sadness of falling night.
2 We are shifted, playing with time, and traveling inside the crystal facets of the beam.
3 Death and birth await us there, our own, grand and belittled, my blood-stained chain link fence here guards the plains of Troy, where Achaeans roar and whisper rumors of the Metalkort.
4 There, beyond the blue-lighted Coliseum I saw the one who set the tale in motion.
5 He was gleaming, sweaty, radiant, bleeding, blessing and cursing, perfect, shattered, and the armature spun inside his polar hands, feeding the world with sharp blue current.
6 I caught a spark and lost it, or so I thought, but saw that it had borne me all along, bit player in the streaming blue that swept through time to the barren beds of drought in which I’d picked my role.
7 Blue light. Not a shade away from white as I had thought, but whiter than the eye can see, the blue-white whole of divinity.
2 We are shifted, playing with time, and traveling inside the crystal facets of the beam.
3 Death and birth await us there, our own, grand and belittled, my blood-stained chain link fence here guards the plains of Troy, where Achaeans roar and whisper rumors of the Metalkort.
4 There, beyond the blue-lighted Coliseum I saw the one who set the tale in motion.
5 He was gleaming, sweaty, radiant, bleeding, blessing and cursing, perfect, shattered, and the armature spun inside his polar hands, feeding the world with sharp blue current.
6 I caught a spark and lost it, or so I thought, but saw that it had borne me all along, bit player in the streaming blue that swept through time to the barren beds of drought in which I’d picked my role.
7 Blue light. Not a shade away from white as I had thought, but whiter than the eye can see, the blue-white whole of divinity.
11.
Red light.
2 Why can’t we have the blue, forever and always?
3 Who took it? Who defiled it? Who screened it from our sight?
4 Raging, screaming, warring light. The rampage and the flood. Destructive creation, like forest fire and eye of hungry vulture.
5 Yes, I am the scavenger. The boy who lighted this cruel cruel light.
6 Forgive me if you can, if I can I will forgive you, but I am past forgetting, past hiding from harsh light.
2 Why can’t we have the blue, forever and always?
3 Who took it? Who defiled it? Who screened it from our sight?
4 Raging, screaming, warring light. The rampage and the flood. Destructive creation, like forest fire and eye of hungry vulture.
5 Yes, I am the scavenger. The boy who lighted this cruel cruel light.
6 Forgive me if you can, if I can I will forgive you, but I am past forgetting, past hiding from harsh light.
12
Fire light.
2 I am the boy who came to Gobb’s and sat at the bar, the boy who played with fire.
3 If you dare explore the blue of night, the night will explore you too.
4 For the heights you steal, the price you pay is loss, and a pain to equal your pride.
5 I am the boy who took the blue oath of loyalty, to the blue king who carried a blood red light.
6 And I watched as they doused him, in envy and fear and hate.
7 I laid him in a shroud, a bright white mirror of our shame, and I rode beside him through the pines to a gray-blue sea, where a ship was waiting for his other journey.
8 Had I been given the choice, I’d have taken his place, but instead I lit the fire.
9 His woman wept, for what and who I never knew, except that the fire soared and singed us all, a cathedral of sorrowing flame, asking one question and demanding an answer.
10 What price for light is worth the light?
11 I am the boy who presumed. I am the boy who lit the light and presumed I could pay the price.
12 But the price is paid by everyone,
13 And the current flows,
14 And the lantern glows,
15 And the fire goes on and on,
16 And the mirror shows us why.
2 I am the boy who came to Gobb’s and sat at the bar, the boy who played with fire.
3 If you dare explore the blue of night, the night will explore you too.
4 For the heights you steal, the price you pay is loss, and a pain to equal your pride.
5 I am the boy who took the blue oath of loyalty, to the blue king who carried a blood red light.
6 And I watched as they doused him, in envy and fear and hate.
7 I laid him in a shroud, a bright white mirror of our shame, and I rode beside him through the pines to a gray-blue sea, where a ship was waiting for his other journey.
8 Had I been given the choice, I’d have taken his place, but instead I lit the fire.
9 His woman wept, for what and who I never knew, except that the fire soared and singed us all, a cathedral of sorrowing flame, asking one question and demanding an answer.
10 What price for light is worth the light?
11 I am the boy who presumed. I am the boy who lit the light and presumed I could pay the price.
12 But the price is paid by everyone,
13 And the current flows,
14 And the lantern glows,
15 And the fire goes on and on,
16 And the mirror shows us why.
Et cetera.
posted at
5:09 pm
by
InstaPunk
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
The Week Between
AMERICAN COMA. This post has a variety of inspirations. Memorial Day is followed within a week or thereabouts by the anniversary of D-Day, which always gets its separate acknowledgment, even though they both share the same taproot, the latter being the epitome of the unselfish heroism of the former. Isn't there an argument, particularly in a time of war, for a span of remembrance about the U.S. military and all who have supported it, from families to citizenry to civilian partners at risk like the merchant marine? We promote and endorse Black History Month. Couldn't we also find a corner in our hearts for Military History Week?
I'd say, too, there's a particular relevance this year, this month, this week, to the heroism of military discipline and the remembrance of just causes. I'm appalled to see the so-called civilized world jump ugly on Israel for allowing its bravest soldiers to defend themselves against a deliberate, calculated ambush, as if civilian lives -- no matter how politically conniving and vicious -- always matter more than the lives of those whose mission is to observe the rules of engagement they've been given. I cannot describe the nausea I feel at the worldwide conspiracy to adjudge Israel guilty for defending itself from exactly the same hatred, from exactly the same quarters (plus the American hard left), that sought to exterminate Jews in the war even liberal Americans continue to insist they were proud to fight.
There's also, for me, a blending of the personal and national this year for multiple reasons, including this. And I was moved by Brizoni's 'moremoir,' in which he describes a kind of coming of age, which caused me to remember my own, a precipitating event analogous to his viewing of We Were Soldiers.
I've written before about my personal touchstones to World War II (my dad) and the Holocaust (my friend Julian). I grew up in the culture of World War II -- big band music, stoic (childhood and) manhood, pride in national icons like the S.S. United States, etc. But it wasn't till I got to college that I had the moment Brizoni describes in his Memorial Day post. My freshman roommate at Harvard (well, pan-college roommate) was another son of a WWII pilot -- bomber, not fighter -- and he introduced me to a show that was running on a Boston UHF station at the time: Victory at Sea. It was old even then, dating back to the year of my birth, but my roommate, who was several years older, had watched it as a child and was so delighted at its return that the whole world stopped when it was on.
So there we were. In the darkest days of our nation's Vietnam retreat and withdrawal, we watched the actual footage of World War II and the inspiring music that bound it together in one of the most inimical environments then extant for its message of patriotism, courage, and perseverance. He went on to join the Marines immediately after graduation and served as a lieutenant in Okinawa. I went on to read every book I could get my hands on about that war. (Best one: Goodbye Darkness.) I thought about joining up, too, (his example was inspiring and tempting) but Vietnam was done and I was more amped up for war against the radicals who hated America from inside. When we compared notes later, he was disappointed in the post-war military (boring), and I was equally disappointed that I had accomplished nothing in the interim (abject failure). I thought he was going to be president someday. He thought I was going to write the Great American Novel. Something about youth, ideals, and the lessons of real life. We figured in each other's weddings, but all these years later we have lost touch. He's a banker as far as I know, and I'm, well, at fault. I'm the recluse. As the site's resident harpoon would say, I'm just pondering.
Personally, of course, I hope that what I do here is more than pondering. No matter what course you choose, as long as you give your best, you're bound to have your moments of joy and triumph and defeat and hurt and loss and enlightenment and recompense and atonement and vindication and shattering heartbreak. I've had all of those, in spades. Nobody escapes the great grinding wheel of life. I keep thinking that if I tell you the truth as I see it, you might find it helpful.
The truth, as I see it today, is that the best thing you can do today -- and maybe for the rest of this week, till D-Day -- is catch up on Victory at Sea. And accomplish the time machine feat of watching it in the context of this, this, this, this, this, and this.
Feats of imagination are now the province of interconnecting Internet minds. Don't ever forget it.
