Skip to main content

Recent comments at Salon

SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2016 12:46 AM
Meandering of thoughts from this interesting article: 

From their (young racists') perspective, they're not interested in dominating weaklings but rather saving their weakened "people" from a callous establishment intent on obliterating them. Potentially, racists and leftists, both, can imagine themselves as the "rebels"...they can both work well with this "Jungian" archetype. Rey's way of living--scrounging for scraps to please an asshole food-dispensing boss--is more familiar to children who end up racist than children who become liberal and informed. The current child of affluent liberal parents is more likely to be groomed to fit the establishment, and will in life more closely resemble the assured position of the villains. When you're hating on General Hux, maybe you're more hating on the liberal child of affluents who is irritated by those calling for revolution--when, to them, the world clearly is becoming fairer, more provisioning, and increasingly orderly... and so why are you bothering them?--and less at "alt-right" young Hitlers? 

SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 2016 6:48 PM
I would argue that the Republican base knew from the start that they were supporting an establishment that would sell them down the river. They were looking for this kind of "governance," just as they were looking for a societal sequence which would leave them once again living withered, poor, alcohol-soaked lives, dying before the age of 65 (mission accomplished!). The way to understand this is to think of them as akin to those college kids who suddenly go Taliban; that is, as people who, owing to how they were built out of their nasty, denied childhoods, freak out so much after knowing the opportunities and possibilities of self-actualization they actually seek out such a reversal as the destitution of cave life. 

They were people who grew up with parents so abused and themselves denied, they emotionally abandoned their children when they showed signs of focusing on themselves (for them, children were born to give love to their parents, not the other way around). They were people who learned the inspiration, then, as children, that by showing they would actually work to create a society which would shortchange them, leave them appalling open to whatever menace, they demonstrate their active desire to deny themselves and thereby, their remaining pliancy--we're dependents; we haven't grown up and grown away from you; "we're" still yours to use as you will. And therefore, their worthiness of reclaiming their parents and finding love. The Gods, i.e. our parents, however conditionally, could still care... God coming for suffering-stuffed, wound-stricken Christ. 

Andrew suggested in his previous post that these Americans, full of self-hate, were keen to deposit, to project, their foul lives onto some Other. I think, rather, they're feeling rather self-righteous right now, empowered, entitled, and so not quite so foul, after earning their Oscars for suffering, and are now ready to shirk off the establishment that did their job of humiliating them in preference for those who'll empower their strut. 

Those about the National Review were used -- sadists at the bequest of masochists -- and now, casually abandoned (Those at the National Review have successfully empowered a repetition of their own early childhood predicament, "You abandoned us!": For them, too, mission accomplished.). They were never truly leaders but rather a concoction summoned to pierce a ready-bared hide so those stricken would know no one would doubt they've suffered Rome. 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 2016 4:58 PM
There is something about Bernie which suggests an intrinsic faith in the American people. I think this is out of step with a lot of the professional class, who count themselves as cosmopolitan and the rest of the country as dullards/trolls who need to be shepherded and managed and overall told what to do. 

The rise of Bernie and Trump suggests a changed landscape that would upset how they've structured their psychic life. They won't as readily be able to dismiss the commons as full of trolls--hey look at this commenter jackass!--and count on their viewpoint being mirrored without contention. And so what are they if they aren't in fact overtly better, but actually in fact vested in a worldview which is unfair and cruel to many to support their narcissistic estimation of themselves? 

SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 2016 2:35 PM
Slickship Gunner We only lurch sideways when we feel overtly threatened or unfairly oppressed.  Otherwise, this is a very stable, middle-of-the-road kind of country. And that's how we like our politics.
So in the 1960s America felt threatened and oppressed? I thought it just dared to dream. Also, why is this middle-of-the-road country beset with enough fire power to blow up the world one hundred times over? You'd think middle-of-the-road would settle for a modest moat and perhaps a couple low-key guardsmen. 

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2016 11:00 PM

Dr. Zachary Smith Jack Burroughs The German media didn't immediately report about the Cologne attacks--despite their awesome number--because they were afraid of the majority becoming petrified of the Other. You don't think this is possible in the States? That the majority who are poor or who are not white wouldn't collectively decide, in some state of massive psychic regression, against some unfortunate Other?

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2016 10:30 PM

Jack Burroughs This is a good, tough post. The Left cannot manage the response you're wishing for because of all the self-hate, the psychic oblivion, that would arise if they had to admit that all the peoples their regressive white peers project on and discriminate against where themselves easily as regressive and possibly way worse. To some extent this is why all the attention to the genuine barbarities of the regressive whites: the Left caught sign early on that if they look too close at some of those patriarchal societies that constitute the European-culture-ravaged, they see horror, horror that cannot be accommodated, so they whipped around and faced the European white bully while basically assuming (the nature of) the abused people now at their back whom they're defending. 

Still, the Left are the better people. And the Right would have erupted regardless of Cologne and endless foreigner' molestations. What's at stake to determine if a society progresses or regresses is the aggregate ability to tolerate change and growth. In the 1930s, there were many who were up to speed on Weimar cultural advancement, could handle it and then some (Jews, notably so), but were outnumbered by the Germans who saw in growth some kind of terrible sin. Our hope is that the current situation proves more complex. Perhaps the whites Andrew speak of gain redemption, become Christians worthy of being loved, by proving now to have lived so truly non-selfishly they're dying earlier and living worse lives. America in the 1930s was a lot like that, after all--we didn't quite go fascist. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump

When Rose McGowan appears in Asgard: a review of "Thor: Ragnarok"

The best part of this film was when Rose McGowan appeared in Asgard and accosted Odin and his sons for covering up, with a prettified, corporate, outward appearance that's all gay-friendly, feminist, multicultural, absolutely for the rights of the indigenous, etc., centuries of past abuse, where they predated mercilessly upon countless unsuspecting peoples. And the PR department came in and said, okay Weinstein... I mean Odin and Odin' sons, here's what we suggest you do. First, you, Odin, are going to have to die. No extensive therapy; when it comes to predators who are male, especially white and male, this age doesn't believe in therapy. You did what you did because you are, or at least strongly WERE, evil, so that's what we have to work with. Now death doesn't seem like "working with it," I know, but the genius is that we'll do the rehab with your sons, and when they're resurrected as somehow more apart from your regime,