Regarding the Trumpola inauguration, and aftermath: How many times, over the past few years, did I say that when a civilization collapses, it doesn't look pretty?
Be sure to look out for my new book, "The Degradation of the Buffoons."
-mb
ps: I do hafta say one thing: If I had to choose being Trump, vs. being Schmiden, I wd pick Trump. Trump is evil incarnate; he is a criminal and a scumbag. But he is not, I repeat not, a douche bag and a doofus. Schmiden is, unequivocally, a douche bag and a doofus. I prefer to be a criminal and a scumbag rather than a douche bag and a doofus. That's all I hafta say on the subject.
1. He points out that in the past, Trump never had a majority of Americans approving of the job he was doing, and thus "did not really embody America." But now, he goes on to say, he does: "alongside the very large core of voters who are thrilled by his misogyny, xenophobia, bullying, and mendacity, there are many more who are at the very least not repelled by his ever more extreme indulgence in those sadistic pleasures. They know what he's like and don't much mind." Sadism, imo, is the operative word here.
2. Liberals and progressives, he continues, always distinguished between the gov't and the people. Yes, the gov't sometimes did terrible things, but the people themselves "are essentially decent and benign." Sorry, amigos, O'Toole implies; this no longer can be maintained.
3. Trump's 2nd admin "will stage its own spectacles of mass roundups and treason trials for the amusement of the many millions who are, it now seems abundantly clear, entertained by exhibitions of cruelty." Cruelty, imo, is the operative word here.
O'Toole does fall down toward the end of the article, making a serious mistake. He says that a major consequence of Trump's victory is that "it decisively shifts the idea of who is a normal American." But this is to get it ass-backwards: Trump's victory is the *result* of a shift in the American people, who have, over the last few decades, become increasingly clueless, stupid, violent, sadistic, and cruel. The evidence for this is everywhere you look, and it was this shift that finally formed a wave, a wave that Trump rode into the White House. Again, we can look to Hegel, and the notion of the world-historical individual: Trump is now president because he embodies the darkness that lies at the heart of the American soul. Or perhaps more correctly, he has no soul, and neither do the American people.
In any case, this error aside, I salute Mr. O'Toole. I tell ya, being a voice in the wilderness ain't that much fun. What I felt upon rdg this essay was that it was nice to have a comrade-in-arms.
"He who is not busy being born is busy dying." Who said it? A future Nobel Prize winner, in 1965. 60 yrs later, it's even more relevant. Who, in the US, is busy being born? Wafers and Native Americans. Who is busy dying? Most of the rest of the country, as well as the country as a whole. I mean, just stand back, and look at Trumpi from a distance. This man is busy dying, tho he doesn't know it. I know he will do a lot of damage, but from a distance, it's clear he's a buffoon; a v. silly character, really. And look at the crowd around him: clowns like Musk, Zuckershmuck, Hegseth, Vance. And hopefully, soon, Tulsi von Schmulsi. Cartoon characters, I venture to say. That these folks now constitute the American political leadership is both vomit-provoking and hilarious. And then look at all the woke people, thinking that diversity programs amount to real political power. They too are busy dying (busy "purifying" texts of Mark Twain, e.g.).
To all you Wafers I say: Let's celebrate life, even in the face of death.
To Bob Dylan I say: Thanks for the memories. I'm glad yr still alive.
The Times refused to publish my response, demonstrating to me that they were cowards, not interested in serious debate or rational dialogue. Michiko was pretty much a joke, as a reviewer. Salman Rushdie wrote that she had no business reviewing bks, and Norman Mailer added that the Times wd have fired her, had she not been an Asian female and thus politically protected. As a reviewer she was quite childish: if she liked a bk, it was gd by definition; if she didn't, it was 'bad', and deserved the kind of savage/prejudiced attack I received, even if the author backed up his or her argument with solid empirical evidence. The notion that she cd dislike an excellent bk, or like a badly argued one, was way beyond her understanding. Of course, this way of 'thinking' has gotten much worse/pervasive since 2006; Trump has finally made it coin of the realm. She subsequently wrote a bk called "The Assault on the Truth," ironically enuf, given that over the yrs, this was in fact what she was frequently engaged in. (The bk trotted out an old argument in the guise of some sort of major intellectual breakthru. All in all, she's a gd example of America going to hell in a basket. And she was a reviewer for the Times, for chrissakes.)
Turning to my bk on the Brits: of the 10 people I profile, only 3 committed suicide: Woolf, Koestler, and Turing, and I don't believe Turing did (see p. 117 and bks by Jack Copeland).
As for me, I plan to die in 2045, by wh/time the American empire will have hopefully faded into semi-obscurity, and be regarded by the other nations of the world as a failed, not to say tragically misguided, experiment. By that time, perhaps we might expect discussions of America and American history to commonly include the word 'buffoons'. (A man can dream.)
Well, I doubt I'm all that great, altho I will admit to slowly going broke. At this pt, I wd prefer to die b4 I go broke, as it wd be a lot better than going broke b4 I die. I spend a lot on alternative health practitioners, to prolong my life, but this cd be dumb, as the bills add up. Then there are always crashes of various sorts: house, car, computer, my poor body, etc. Things can turn on a dime (and have). Plus, Mexico City isn't all that cheap. Lots of things cost as much here as in the US.
Not to give u a big spoiler, but at the end, the Sopranos really have v. little to show for a life of crime, and I think that this was what David Chase was trying to say. The American ethos is one of hustling, wh/has no spiritual, intellectual, or emotional content. It's the ideology of buffoons, but very few Americans realize that. Ivan Ilyich had 3 days b4 death, to contemplate the mistake of his life. Most Americans don't get 3 minutes. They sleepwalk thru their lives, and then they croak.
Anyway, v. few people read my work; if I had to survive on royalties, I wd have been dead yrs ago. And the blog has only one guideline: reality, wh/most Americans are not interested in. But Pamela Anderson is abs. rt: the win is in the work. From that pt of view, I guess I won. I had fun. I'm happy. I had v. few friends in the US. I have a shitload here. I'm taking notes for possibly another bk. And I'm trying to live past 100. I lack for only 1 thing: chopped liver. Well, you can't have everything.
-mb
ps: Tony was a thug. Is there such a thing as an intellectual thug? (e.g., the Surrealists, the Bloomsbury Circle, Black Mtn College, etc.)
I wd like to say that there is one thing Trumpi might do that wd actually be terrific: put an end to this phony/proxy war in the Ukraine. Stop the Biden stupidity; stop sending arms and $ to Zelenskrap. Putin had every rt to protect Russian borders from NATO and the American threat. *We* caused the war in the Ukraine, not Russia. What a fucking charade this has been. So enuf. Enuf with that douche bag Zelenskapoop. Let him take his considerable wealth and remove himself to his villa in Tuscany. Russia is winning this war in any case. Go, Trumpi!
However, I do think there is something deeper going on. For yrs I have repeatedly stated that the root cause of the American decline (something I was writing abt in 2000, when talk of decline was practically unheard of)--that is to say, the most crucial factor--was the American people themselves. There is a mystique of the American people that one must never challenge: that they are intelligent, well-meaning, hard-working, fundamentally decent, and so on. But I lived in America for many decades, and literally from high school on, if not b4, I saw little evidence for this. What I saw was anger, competition, stupidity, cruelty, and a hardness of heart that European observers (e.g., D.H. Lawrence) saw as obvious characteristics of the American people. By age 8, on an intuitive level, I knew that I didn't belong; that I was a stranger in a strange land. In any case, what I am saying is that as a critic of our culture, I had few bedfellows: H.L. Mencken, George Carlin, and Gore Vidal, all of whom saw what I saw: that the American people were morons, a collection of bad jokes, and not especially 'good'. And accordingly, they made fun of those people, and were, consequently, largely ignored. Which has been my fate as well, because to say that Americans are nasty, or stupid, or anything like that, is politically incorrect. You simply can't get onto the intellectual radar screen if this is your analysis of America, and if you keep repeating it. I mean, what did I think was going to happen? That I wd be celebrated w/open arms?
Meanwhile, I observed that those critics who were on the intellectual radar screen carefully avoided crossing that politically incorrect line. But there was a down side: since they were ignoring the crucial factor in the American decline, their analyses were often fairly tepid. I mention all this not to show you how smart I am (as an anti-hustler, one cd say I've been quite dumb), but as a prelude to discussing O'Toole's essay, because--mirabile dictu--he *does* lay a lot of the blame on the American people; on their character, on who they are. Let me be specific.
Wafers-(This is Part 1 of a discussion that I've posted in 3 parts)
I need to comment on an article by Fintan O'Toole in the 5 Dec. 2024 issue of the NYRB, dated Nov. 7th, and constituting an analysis of the Nov. 5th presidential election. But first, a bit of personal background. As an intellectual who has written 22 books, and has kept up a running commentary on American politics, I am aware of an interesting irony, namely that in terms of public intellectual discourse, I am not on the radar screen. I can't get an article published anywhere in the US, and my Amazon royalties are pitifully small. If there is a conference on a subject on wh/I have written in extenso, there is literally no chance that I will be invited to speak. This has been the case for many yrs now, and oddly enuf, I'm not angry or even frustrated. Long ago, I learned to accept the role of a modern-day Cassandra. Tough shit, you can't get everything you want.
But all of this did lead me to ponder why it was the case. One obvious possibility is that Americans are not very well-disposed to hearing or reading critiques of the US, esp. ones that are too accurate, too close to the bone; ones that might force them to rethink what the country is really about (Noam Chomsky, for example, couldn't get a public voice for decades, and even today, it's unlikely that as much as 1% of the population knows his name). Along with Will Herberg and Robert Bellah, I have argued that the real religion of America is America itself, and most religious people don't fancy having their religion criticized, let alone debunked. So this cd be a possible factor.
Many yrs ago I taught for a yr at Evergreen. The woke ideology was pretty stifling, and pretty ubiquitous. Both students and faculty had at long last found The Truth, and there was no budging them from it. At the same time, I hafta say that I did have several truly creative students in my class, altho it was tempered by the presence of a few who were emotionally disturbed. Anyway, that's all in the past; I left and never looked back. But I did know abt Weinstein, and his futile attempt to shake the woke students out of their rage, and rigidity. I agree w/u that it's a shame, that he fell into a rigidity of his own, i.e. Trumpism, and can't see the irony in it. Let me add an historical note, that the same thing happened, decades earlier, with fervent communists who became fervent anti-communists. (Very relevant here is Eric Hoffer's bk, "The True Believer.") Arthur Koestler is as gd an example as any, but my personal fave is Whittaker Chambers, who did the same dance, and then proclaimed to a friend of his, "You see how I've changed!" His very astute friend replied: "Whittaker, you haven't changed; you've merely changed sides." Touche.
BTW, after yrs of pursuing one Truth after another, Koestler came to realize that the problem was not any particular Truth, but the zeal of the pursuit. His word for that zeal was 'devotion', and he saw it as the central problem of humanity. He recommended that scientists come up w/a pill(!) to counteract devotion. This was in the early 1980s. We have many such pills today, I suppose, and yet human beings are still caught up in the 'Truth' of their ideologies, be it Trumpism or Wokism or whatever (e.g. fundamentalist vegetarians, etc.). It's all dogma, nonsense, and I doubt we will ever be free of it. (For more on Koestler check out my portrait of him in "Eminent Post-Victorians.")
The all-time champion of beating off was Biden. Trumpi isn't doing that. What he is doing is gaslighting. So, for example, he really won the election in 2020. Or, equally egregious, the Jan. 6 riot was not an insurrection, but the uprising of "heroes." This is Orwell w/a vengeance. Up is now down, black is now white, and millions of his devotees--probably most of the country--believe it. O&D, amigos.
-mb
ps: We cd provide numerous examples of the Schmiden administration beating off, but at the top of the list wd be sending Blinken, Schminken to the Middle East. He was a piece of theater, little more than a prop. He did absolutely nothing. He was, and remains, an empty person, an utter piece of dreck. Wd that I cd pee on his shoes, w/vast quantities of urine.
I want to thank all of you for your comments. Let me also suggest that you and all Wafers go back to the post entitled "The American Sitcom, Part 3", and re-read the Epilogue. And also to update your post-its with a single word: BUFFOONAGE. Today, a major buffoon was inaugurated as president, and was cheered by millions of buffoons, nationwide. Hence, let me repeat this blog's slogan: Bad Is Good.
-mb
ps: One bit of positive fallout from Trumpi's election: the end of the political career of Blinken, Schminken, a consummate piece of crap. What, exactly, did he do for the Middle East? He was a nonperson, little more than theater. Wafers need to fly to DC, corner him, slap him silly, and then vigorously urinate on his shoes. Jesus, what a turkey.
The whole country is crashing; the plane crashes can be seen as metaphors, altho they are obviously horrible events. Tariffs coming tomorrow, will do lots of damage. Utter incompetents will be approved by the Senate. Thousands fired, chaos reigns. Health system in the toilet. Hell, just abt everything in the toilet, including the blatantly corrupt Supreme Court. Young people on more drugs, more suicides, as their lives are w/o meaning. They know they have no future. The whole nation going nowhere, drifting into oblivion. How often did I say it? When a civilization comes apart, it doesn't look pretty. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." Who said it? We're in the shit, my friend, and it's going to get much worse; you can count on it. See below, the Guardian essay on turning pts vs. structural factors. None of this can be stopped; it's called karma, and is relentless as a steam roller. More disasters, more persecution, more violence, more hysteria and stupidity, more destruction and self-destruction, more douchebaggery, and of course, more buffoonage. Certainly, no self-transparency; there will be no wake-up moment for the American people--no fucking way. You might wanna get a print of "The Garden of Earthly Delights," by Hieronymus Bosch, stick it on the door of yr fridge.
"the fixation on turning pts risks overlooking their deeper causes. To understand them, we need to take a sober look at the underlying structural transformations that produce them. In the end, 'turning pts' are always, at best, merely optical markers on the surface, the 'crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs', as the historian Fernand Braudel put it. The major transformations and changes, the tectonic shifts, in history are always processes wh/evolve over decades and then become visible thru certain events, or turning pts."
Note the ref to tectonic shifts, and to Braudel, one of my heroes (ldg figure of the French Annales School).
Speaking of evidence, what proof do we have that US social media people were getting paid by the Kremlin?
Black-
Yeah, Cenk was a real gem, I hafta say, tho lots of folks who interviewed me followed the same pattern of not being willing to hear what I was saying. The only thing that got thru to the guy was that at the end, I said 'thank you' in Turkish (teşekkür ederim). I recall that many yrs ago, Charlie Rose had Noam Chomsky on his program, and literally wdn't let him speak. He kept shouting him down, or talking over him. In 1 hr of time, Noam managed to get heard for 10 mins. My analysis: Americans are incapable of hearing any critiques of the US, no matter how slight, because their real religion is the US itself--as a # of scholars (e.g., Will Herberg, Robt Bellah) have pointed out. Once again, check out Eric Hoffer. Plus update yr post-it: BUFFOONS RULE!
This is gd, of course, and fits w/my thesis of Trumpi as History's agent for the West to East shift and the Larger (tectonic) Shift. But I listened in vain, w/great disapptment, that I didn't hear the word 'buffoons'. Bolsen does comment that, in effect, Americans have shit for brains; but I think we cannot enter into a truly realistic discussion of the American situation until we hear that magic word.
I wish to head up the Dept. of Recto-Cranial Embedment (RCE). Our goal (with Tulsi von Schmulsi as my assistant) will be to get as many citizens' heads rammed up their asses as quickly as possible, so they can roll around like doughnuts.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've been rdg some Surrealist literature as of late. In 1925, the Surrealists published a tract called "Revolution First and Always!", in wh/they stated: "We find the idea of the fatherland repellent...Wherever Western civilization reigns, all human attachment but that motivated by self-interest has ceased, 'money is the bottom line'." Of course, Marx said something similar in the Communist Manifesto, 1859.
Yrs later, Andre Breton said that Marx urged workers to transform the world, while Rimbaud urged them to change their lives. Breton commented that these two urges went hand in hand.
Which reminds me of 2 of my recent bks, "Healing," abt changing one's life, and "The Crisis of Our Time," wh/is abt changing the world (or trying to). My Spanish-language publisher is having these 2 translated and published in a single volume; title yet TBA. For all you hispanohablantes out there, it shd be available in April, and you can order it off the website of Sexto Piso Editorial.
Wafers-
Regarding the Trumpola inauguration, and aftermath: How many times, over the past few years, did I say that when a civilization collapses, it doesn't look pretty?
Be sure to look out for my new book, "The Degradation of the Buffoons."
-mb
ps: I do hafta say one thing: If I had to choose being Trump, vs. being Schmiden, I wd pick Trump. Trump is evil incarnate; he is a criminal and a scumbag. But he is not, I repeat not, a douche bag and a doofus. Schmiden is, unequivocally, a douche bag and a doofus. I prefer to be a criminal and a scumbag rather than a douche bag and a doofus. That's all I hafta say on the subject.
-mb
(continued from below--Part 3)
1. He points out that in the past, Trump never had a majority of Americans approving of the job he was doing, and thus "did not really embody America." But now, he goes on to say, he does: "alongside the very large core of voters who are thrilled by his misogyny, xenophobia, bullying, and mendacity, there are many more who are at the very least not repelled by his ever more extreme indulgence in those sadistic pleasures. They know what he's like and don't much mind." Sadism, imo, is the operative word here.
2. Liberals and progressives, he continues, always distinguished between the gov't and the people. Yes, the gov't sometimes did terrible things, but the people themselves "are essentially decent and benign." Sorry, amigos, O'Toole implies; this no longer can be maintained.
3. Trump's 2nd admin "will stage its own spectacles of mass roundups and treason trials for the amusement of the many millions who are, it now seems abundantly clear, entertained by exhibitions of cruelty." Cruelty, imo, is the operative word here.
O'Toole does fall down toward the end of the article, making a serious mistake. He says that a major consequence of Trump's victory is that "it decisively shifts the idea of who is a normal American." But this is to get it ass-backwards: Trump's victory is the *result* of a shift in the American people, who have, over the last few decades, become increasingly clueless, stupid, violent, sadistic, and cruel. The evidence for this is everywhere you look, and it was this shift that finally formed a wave, a wave that Trump rode into the White House. Again, we can look to Hegel, and the notion of the world-historical individual: Trump is now president because he embodies the darkness that lies at the heart of the American soul. Or perhaps more correctly, he has no soul, and neither do the American people.
In any case, this error aside, I salute Mr. O'Toole. I tell ya, being a voice in the wilderness ain't that much fun. What I felt upon rdg this essay was that it was nice to have a comrade-in-arms.
"He who is not busy being born is busy dying." Who said it? A future Nobel Prize winner, in 1965. 60 yrs later, it's even more relevant. Who, in the US, is busy being born? Wafers and Native Americans. Who is busy dying? Most of the rest of the country, as well as the country as a whole. I mean, just stand back, and look at Trumpi from a distance. This man is busy dying, tho he doesn't know it. I know he will do a lot of damage, but from a distance, it's clear he's a buffoon; a v. silly character, really. And look at the crowd around him: clowns like Musk, Zuckershmuck, Hegseth, Vance. And hopefully, soon, Tulsi von Schmulsi. Cartoon characters, I venture to say. That these folks now constitute the American political leadership is both vomit-provoking and hilarious. And then look at all the woke people, thinking that diversity programs amount to real political power. They too are busy dying (busy "purifying" texts of Mark Twain, e.g.).
To all you Wafers I say: Let's celebrate life, even in the face of death.
To Bob Dylan I say: Thanks for the memories. I'm glad yr still alive.
-mb
Jarid-
I replied to the Times' dishonest review the day it appeared, 16 June 2006. Here's the relevant information:
https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2006/06/letter-to-new-york-times.html
The Times refused to publish my response, demonstrating to me that they were cowards, not interested in serious debate or rational dialogue. Michiko was pretty much a joke, as a reviewer. Salman Rushdie wrote that she had no business reviewing bks, and Norman Mailer added that the Times wd have fired her, had she not been an Asian female and thus politically protected. As a reviewer she was quite childish: if she liked a bk, it was gd by definition; if she didn't, it was 'bad', and deserved the kind of savage/prejudiced attack I received, even if the author backed up his or her argument with solid empirical evidence. The notion that she cd dislike an excellent bk, or like a badly argued one, was way beyond her understanding. Of course, this way of 'thinking' has gotten much worse/pervasive since 2006; Trump has finally made it coin of the realm. She subsequently wrote a bk called "The Assault on the Truth," ironically enuf, given that over the yrs, this was in fact what she was frequently engaged in. (The bk trotted out an old argument in the guise of some sort of major intellectual breakthru. All in all, she's a gd example of America going to hell in a basket. And she was a reviewer for the Times, for chrissakes.)
Turning to my bk on the Brits: of the 10 people I profile, only 3 committed suicide: Woolf, Koestler, and Turing, and I don't believe Turing did (see p. 117 and bks by Jack Copeland).
As for me, I plan to die in 2045, by wh/time the American empire will have hopefully faded into semi-obscurity, and be regarded by the other nations of the world as a failed, not to say tragically misguided, experiment. By that time, perhaps we might expect discussions of America and American history to commonly include the word 'buffoons'. (A man can dream.)
-mb
Chico-
Well, I doubt I'm all that great, altho I will admit to slowly going broke. At this pt, I wd prefer to die b4 I go broke, as it wd be a lot better than going broke b4 I die. I spend a lot on alternative health practitioners, to prolong my life, but this cd be dumb, as the bills add up. Then there are always crashes of various sorts: house, car, computer, my poor body, etc. Things can turn on a dime (and have). Plus, Mexico City isn't all that cheap. Lots of things cost as much here as in the US.
Not to give u a big spoiler, but at the end, the Sopranos really have v. little to show for a life of crime, and I think that this was what David Chase was trying to say. The American ethos is one of hustling, wh/has no spiritual, intellectual, or emotional content. It's the ideology of buffoons, but very few Americans realize that. Ivan Ilyich had 3 days b4 death, to contemplate the mistake of his life. Most Americans don't get 3 minutes. They sleepwalk thru their lives, and then they croak.
Anyway, v. few people read my work; if I had to survive on royalties, I wd have been dead yrs ago. And the blog has only one guideline: reality, wh/most Americans are not interested in. But Pamela Anderson is abs. rt: the win is in the work. From that pt of view, I guess I won. I had fun. I'm happy. I had v. few friends in the US. I have a shitload here. I'm taking notes for possibly another bk. And I'm trying to live past 100. I lack for only 1 thing: chopped liver. Well, you can't have everything.
-mb
ps: Tony was a thug. Is there such a thing as an intellectual thug? (e.g., the Surrealists, the Bloomsbury Circle, Black Mtn College, etc.)
I wd like to say that there is one thing Trumpi might do that wd actually be terrific: put an end to this phony/proxy war in the Ukraine. Stop the Biden stupidity; stop sending arms and $ to Zelenskrap. Putin had every rt to protect Russian borders from NATO and the American threat. *We* caused the war in the Ukraine, not Russia. What a fucking charade this has been. So enuf. Enuf with that douche bag Zelenskapoop. Let him take his considerable wealth and remove himself to his villa in Tuscany. Russia is winning this war in any case. Go, Trumpi!
-mb
(continued from below--Part 2)
However, I do think there is something deeper going on. For yrs I have repeatedly stated that the root cause of the American decline (something I was writing abt in 2000, when talk of decline was practically unheard of)--that is to say, the most crucial factor--was the American people themselves. There is a mystique of the American people that one must never challenge: that they are intelligent, well-meaning, hard-working, fundamentally decent, and so on. But I lived in America for many decades, and literally from high school on, if not b4, I saw little evidence for this. What I saw was anger, competition, stupidity, cruelty, and a hardness of heart that European observers (e.g., D.H. Lawrence) saw as obvious characteristics of the American people. By age 8, on an intuitive level, I knew that I didn't belong; that I was a stranger in a strange land. In any case, what I am saying is that as a critic of our culture, I had few bedfellows: H.L. Mencken, George Carlin, and Gore Vidal, all of whom saw what I saw: that the American people were morons, a collection of bad jokes, and not especially 'good'. And accordingly, they made fun of those people, and were, consequently, largely ignored. Which has been my fate as well, because to say that Americans are nasty, or stupid, or anything like that, is politically incorrect. You simply can't get onto the intellectual radar screen if this is your analysis of America, and if you keep repeating it. I mean, what did I think was going to happen? That I wd be celebrated w/open arms?
Meanwhile, I observed that those critics who were on the intellectual radar screen carefully avoided crossing that politically incorrect line. But there was a down side: since they were ignoring the crucial factor in the American decline, their analyses were often fairly tepid. I mention all this not to show you how smart I am (as an anti-hustler, one cd say I've been quite dumb), but as a prelude to discussing O'Toole's essay, because--mirabile dictu--he *does* lay a lot of the blame on the American people; on their character, on who they are. Let me be specific.
(continued above)
Wafers-(This is Part 1 of a discussion that I've posted in 3 parts)
I need to comment on an article by Fintan O'Toole in the 5 Dec. 2024 issue of the NYRB, dated Nov. 7th, and constituting an analysis of the Nov. 5th presidential election. But first, a bit of personal background. As an intellectual who has written 22 books, and has kept up a running commentary on American politics, I am aware of an interesting irony, namely that in terms of public intellectual discourse, I am not on the radar screen. I can't get an article published anywhere in the US, and my Amazon royalties are pitifully small. If there is a conference on a subject on wh/I have written in extenso, there is literally no chance that I will be invited to speak. This has been the case for many yrs now, and oddly enuf, I'm not angry or even frustrated. Long ago, I learned to accept the role of a modern-day Cassandra. Tough shit, you can't get everything you want.
But all of this did lead me to ponder why it was the case. One obvious possibility is that Americans are not very well-disposed to hearing or reading critiques of the US, esp. ones that are too accurate, too close to the bone; ones that might force them to rethink what the country is really about (Noam Chomsky, for example, couldn't get a public voice for decades, and even today, it's unlikely that as much as 1% of the population knows his name). Along with Will Herberg and Robert Bellah, I have argued that the real religion of America is America itself, and most religious people don't fancy having their religion criticized, let alone debunked. So this cd be a possible factor.
(continued above)
David-
Many yrs ago I taught for a yr at Evergreen. The woke ideology was pretty stifling, and pretty ubiquitous. Both students and faculty had at long last found The Truth, and there was no budging them from it. At the same time, I hafta say that I did have several truly creative students in my class, altho it was tempered by the presence of a few who were emotionally disturbed. Anyway, that's all in the past; I left and never looked back. But I did know abt Weinstein, and his futile attempt to shake the woke students out of their rage, and rigidity. I agree w/u that it's a shame, that he fell into a rigidity of his own, i.e. Trumpism, and can't see the irony in it. Let me add an historical note, that the same thing happened, decades earlier, with fervent communists who became fervent anti-communists. (Very relevant here is Eric Hoffer's bk, "The True Believer.") Arthur Koestler is as gd an example as any, but my personal fave is Whittaker Chambers, who did the same dance, and then proclaimed to a friend of his, "You see how I've changed!" His very astute friend replied: "Whittaker, you haven't changed; you've merely changed sides." Touche.
BTW, after yrs of pursuing one Truth after another, Koestler came to realize that the problem was not any particular Truth, but the zeal of the pursuit. His word for that zeal was 'devotion', and he saw it as the central problem of humanity. He recommended that scientists come up w/a pill(!) to counteract devotion. This was in the early 1980s. We have many such pills today, I suppose, and yet human beings are still caught up in the 'Truth' of their ideologies, be it Trumpism or Wokism or whatever (e.g. fundamentalist vegetarians, etc.). It's all dogma, nonsense, and I doubt we will ever be free of it. (For more on Koestler check out my portrait of him in "Eminent Post-Victorians.")
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Black-
The all-time champion of beating off was Biden. Trumpi isn't doing that. What he is doing is gaslighting. So, for example, he really won the election in 2020. Or, equally egregious, the Jan. 6 riot was not an insurrection, but the uprising of "heroes." This is Orwell w/a vengeance. Up is now down, black is now white, and millions of his devotees--probably most of the country--believe it. O&D, amigos.
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ps: We cd provide numerous examples of the Schmiden administration beating off, but at the top of the list wd be sending Blinken, Schminken to the Middle East. He was a piece of theater, little more than a prop. He did absolutely nothing. He was, and remains, an empty person, an utter piece of dreck. Wd that I cd pee on his shoes, w/vast quantities of urine.
I want to thank all of you for your comments. Let me also suggest that you and all Wafers go back to the post entitled "The American Sitcom, Part 3", and re-read the Epilogue. And also to update your post-its with a single word: BUFFOONAGE. Today, a major buffoon was inaugurated as president, and was cheered by millions of buffoons, nationwide. Hence, let me repeat this blog's slogan: Bad Is Good.
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ps: One bit of positive fallout from Trumpi's election: the end of the political career of Blinken, Schminken, a consummate piece of crap. What, exactly, did he do for the Middle East? He was a nonperson, little more than theater. Wafers need to fly to DC, corner him, slap him silly, and then vigorously urinate on his shoes. Jesus, what a turkey.
Michael-
The whole country is crashing; the plane crashes can be seen as metaphors, altho they are obviously horrible events. Tariffs coming tomorrow, will do lots of damage. Utter incompetents will be approved by the Senate. Thousands fired, chaos reigns. Health system in the toilet. Hell, just abt everything in the toilet, including the blatantly corrupt Supreme Court. Young people on more drugs, more suicides, as their lives are w/o meaning. They know they have no future. The whole nation going nowhere, drifting into oblivion. How often did I say it? When a civilization comes apart, it doesn't look pretty. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." Who said it? We're in the shit, my friend, and it's going to get much worse; you can count on it. See below, the Guardian essay on turning pts vs. structural factors. None of this can be stopped; it's called karma, and is relentless as a steam roller. More disasters, more persecution, more violence, more hysteria and stupidity, more destruction and self-destruction, more douchebaggery, and of course, more buffoonage. Certainly, no self-transparency; there will be no wake-up moment for the American people--no fucking way. You might wanna get a print of "The Garden of Earthly Delights," by Hieronymus Bosch, stick it on the door of yr fridge.
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Wafers-
Did I already post this?:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/27/turning-point-world-history
"the fixation on turning pts risks overlooking their deeper causes. To understand them, we need to take a sober look at the underlying structural transformations that produce them. In the end, 'turning pts' are always, at best, merely optical markers on the surface, the 'crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs', as the historian Fernand Braudel put it. The major transformations and changes, the tectonic shifts, in history are always processes wh/evolve over decades and then become visible thru certain events, or turning pts."
Note the ref to tectonic shifts, and to Braudel, one of my heroes (ldg figure of the French Annales School).
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Jarid-
Speaking of evidence, what proof do we have that US social media people were getting paid by the Kremlin?
Black-
Yeah, Cenk was a real gem, I hafta say, tho lots of folks who interviewed me followed the same pattern of not being willing to hear what I was saying. The only thing that got thru to the guy was that at the end, I said 'thank you' in Turkish (teşekkür ederim). I recall that many yrs ago, Charlie Rose had Noam Chomsky on his program, and literally wdn't let him speak. He kept shouting him down, or talking over him. In 1 hr of time, Noam managed to get heard for 10 mins. My analysis: Americans are incapable of hearing any critiques of the US, no matter how slight, because their real religion is the US itself--as a # of scholars (e.g., Will Herberg, Robt Bellah) have pointed out. Once again, check out Eric Hoffer. Plus update yr post-it: BUFFOONS RULE!
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Black-
This is gd, of course, and fits w/my thesis of Trumpi as History's agent for the West to East shift and the Larger (tectonic) Shift. But I listened in vain, w/great disapptment, that I didn't hear the word 'buffoons'. Bolsen does comment that, in effect, Americans have shit for brains; but I think we cannot enter into a truly realistic discussion of the American situation until we hear that magic word.
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Jeff-
I wish to head up the Dept. of Recto-Cranial Embedment (RCE). Our goal (with Tulsi von Schmulsi as my assistant) will be to get as many citizens' heads rammed up their asses as quickly as possible, so they can roll around like doughnuts.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've been rdg some Surrealist literature as of late. In 1925, the Surrealists published a tract called "Revolution First and Always!", in wh/they stated: "We find the idea of the fatherland repellent...Wherever Western civilization reigns, all human attachment but that motivated by self-interest has ceased, 'money is the bottom line'." Of course, Marx said something similar in the Communist Manifesto, 1859.
Yrs later, Andre Breton said that Marx urged workers to transform the world, while Rimbaud urged them to change their lives. Breton commented that these two urges went hand in hand.
Which reminds me of 2 of my recent bks, "Healing," abt changing one's life, and "The Crisis of Our Time," wh/is abt changing the world (or trying to). My Spanish-language publisher is having these 2 translated and published in a single volume; title yet TBA. For all you hispanohablantes out there, it shd be available in April, and you can order it off the website of Sexto Piso Editorial.
Arriba!
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