Why Send It To Washington When You Can Send It To Baghdad?

[cbertsch]

An article on the sort of speech George W. Bush is likely to give for his State of the Union address this evening provides the following insight:

President Bush is certain to focus on the economy on Monday night, reiterating his faith in Americans’ enterprise and work ethic, arguing for a short-term shot in the arm and repeating his call for low taxes as a permanent way of life. Mr. Bush believes deeply in Americans’ “keeping more of their hard-earned money, rather than sending it to Washington,” as his spokeswoman, Dano Perino, put it the other day.

Will there ever come a day when this Administration acknowledges the gap between rhetoric and reality? It would seem not. Then again, after doing everything in their power to sustain and strengthen a demographic either unwilling or unable to make that distinction, the powers behind our President may have lost the capacity to recognize that there are still people out there who lack that lack of insight.

Comments

[cbertsch.livejournal.com]

I agree with your argument here, though I might choose different points to argument. A long time ago I wrote a piece along similar lines (http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1994/15/bertsch.html). It occasioned my favorite "fan mail" ever, a terse note of approval from sci-fi author and then-Wired columnist Bruce Sterling, from his "well.com" address.

[babyiwasshot.livejournal.com]

though I might choose different points to argument

hahahah THIS is the problem underlying my whole academic career. I don't think in an ORGANIZED fashion. I can come up with good ideas lightning quick, but it's often difficult for me to trace the path by which I arrived at my conclusions. To me, the conclusions are key, not the argument; when I analyze other arguments, for example, I don't do so based on evidence presented so much as whether it LOGICALLY makes sense (TO ME) after pondering it for a bit. I mean: look at my SYNTAX: commas everywhere, CIRCUMLOCUTION....It really feels like speaking another language sometimes; some people just can't understand my writing.

It's a really "german" affliction. I'm like kant/hegel; I'll "stream-of-consciousness" an argument and leave the burden of organizing/collating it into something fluvial and cogent on the reader, which BACKFIRES (big time) with certain instructors--over the years I've learned to DROP any class taught by teachers who laud Strunk&White; I can't conform to the ENGLISH manner of presenting an argument;

I'm dialectical; I don't think in a straight line like some instructors; I think in oscillation, back-and-forth, verbally arguing with myself, which (fortunately) is a "Style" of thinking guys like you can comprehend.

...not to say I can't write a cogent essay, but it takes a TON of time/labor.

[babyiwasshot.livejournal.com]

Within this culture, however, there is a subgrouping particularly invested in this 'edge'. There are number of potential names for this category, but I think Adam Parfrey's 1987 collection Apocalypse Culture provides the most appropriate, since it embraces the extreme within the supposed extremity of alternative culture and includes cultural productions fascinated with everything that seems to herald the disintegration of civilization as we know it (including their own fascination!): serial killers and mass murderers, eccentric David Koresh-like prophets of the apocalypse, abnormal sexual practices, the emergence of nostalgia for a pre-civilization tribalism, the unapologetic fringe of the drug culture, conspiracy theories that explain, however bizarrely, how everything is coming apart, etc.

You should apply this to Palahniuk, particularly Fight Club (other examples; Twelve Monkeys, anything unique to the whole "portland" subculture)

Frankly, the whole anarcho-primitivism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism) thing fascinates me, probably because it's a quasi-philosophical expression of my subconscious desire to "transcend" (or rather just DO AWAY WITH) traditional morality--pure Nietzsche.

Really, Nietzsche's the go-to source that enables one to understand EVERYTHING postmodern or "hyper-marginal."

All really RADICAL fictional characters are aspirants to the state of the "übermensch": Mr./Col. Kurtz, Tyler Durden, Dexter (from the showtime series)...even the recent character of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.