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Weekend open thread, 22iv11

By Michael J. Smith on Friday April 22, 2011 10:24 AM

Not just my Muse, but all nine of 'em, seem to be on spring break. So have at it, ungentle readers.

Comments (68)

Diogenes:

http://aol.it/e3Pcmb

U.S. Sen. John McCain praised Libya's rebels as his "heroes" in a visit to their de facto capital Friday, a day after the United States started flying armed drones to bolster NATO firepower and try to break a battlefield stalemate with Moammar Gadhafi's forces.
Judging by the stuff Father S's pal Louis Proyect is pumping out, we may have a Hitler-Trotsky pact in the making here.

Anybody here catch the big flash about the "protest" at the Obama fundraiser in Frisco? Wasn't that just the saddest goddamn' thing you'd ever seen? Saw the flash on Drudge yesterday; caught the video on Scarborough's program this morning -- about thirty seconds of mealy-mouthing "protest" followed by Scarborough and crew tossing off inane remarks about bad singing. What really made me gag was the words to the song the "protesters" were singing:

Dear Mr. President we honor you today sir
Each of us brought you $5,000
It takes a lot of Benjamins to run a campaign
I paid my dues, where's our change?
We'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true
Look at the Republicans - what else can we do
Even though we don't know if we'll retain our liberties
In what you seem content to call a free society
Yes it's true that Terry Jones is legally free
To burn a people's holy book in shameful effigy
But at another location in this country
Alone in a 6x12 cell sits Bradley
23 hours a day is night
The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain't right
We paid our dues, where's our change?

Yeah, that's right -- he's stomped on them, exploited them, betrayed them, abused them and insulted them to their faces on TV, but they're going to vote for him again anyway because oh, noes, the Republicans are worse! Jeezus, how fucked up is that?

That had to be the weakest goddamn' shit I'd ever seen -- and believe me, I've seen plenty of weak-assed shit, having spent five or six years covering Code Pink. These goddamn' doorknobs spent five grand apiece to get into the event so they could spew whiny entreaties to their President to free Bradley Manning even though their President has publicly committed to imprisoning whistleblowers and has publicly stated that Manning should remain imprisoned and tortured because "we're a nation of laws". What a fucking embarassment.

Yeah, Obama's crapped all over them, but they're going to support him next year anyway. Sounds like your classic abusive relationship if you ask me.

Honestly, man... seeing shit like this makes me wonder why I bother to keep on doing these goddamn' cartoons. The Drunken Pundit is starting to make sense more and more: fuck it, man, let's hit the bar. Yeah, right on, DP. Now I know why the alcoholism rate was so high among Russians during the Soviet Era.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finish another cartoon, after which I plan to drink in response to events.

So, Senator Get Off My Lawn says the Libyan sock puppets... uh, Libyan rebels are his "heroes", huh? Well, I guess that makes it official: it's not a revolution anymore.

My forehead's starting to get sore from all the facepalming I've been doing lately.

sk:

40'th anniversary of a trip this weekend:


Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era–the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time–and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights–or very early mornings–when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L.L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt about that...

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

And that, I think, was the handle–that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting–on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark–that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

sk:

...Libyan rebels are his "heroes", huh?

Are they also the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers?

op:

great institution open threads

oughta have one here every weekend
so pop smiff can go sailing or bowling or whatever
with his ...err ahem ......niece

http://zxhub.com/img/2849.jpg

------------------------
example:
these open mike nites
made melissa pussy kat's site
from a clever fur flier
into a virtual salon
for gals of the anti kos rad sort
and certain tender footed
POMO males

op:

"Hitler-Trotsky pact"

more like
well the real deal

the leon trotsky / john dewey pact

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5161747095_213b7f305c.jpg

reshaped fully outfitted
for extented duty in the tough dove tasks
of an angry pre sivilized under-planet

humanist universalism personified

a baby blue winged helmet
on it's head
and a naughty boy seeking
armed predator
dangling between its knee caps

op:

after which I plan to drink in response to events.

where flugnutz and madame x ray
become soul sisters ..
neither have a basement man cave
with wet bar
but both like the brace of
well loaed shooters at dusk

op:

"Now I know why the alcoholism rate was so high among Russians during the Soviet Era"

no you don't

op:

sk

bless you


that's from the non dialectical
skunk den hemi-core of me

the hunter
bull lee
twain
and melville


all an idiot boy could ask for ...eh ??

sk:

…from the non dialectical skunk den hemi-core of me

No need to renounce the Americanness of your own political vision:


This, if I am honest, is my self, my sensibility. Take Marx and Vico and a few European novelists away, and my most intimate pantheon would be a provincial tea party: a gathering of the English and the Anglo-Irish. Talk of free-will and determinism, and I think first of Milton. Talk of man's inhumanity, I think of Swift. Talk of morality and revolution, and my mind is off with Wordsworth's Solitary. Talk of the problems of self-activity and creative labour in socialist society, and I am in an instant back with William Morris…

op:

"The rugged vitality of Thompson’s political rhetoric has a strength which is reminiscent of Orwell and which conveys a political vision in some ways akin to his"

"...some ways akin ...."

thank god that's not entirely "..akin " ...!!!!!!!

Boink:
bettin' man:

owen, count me as someone who wants uncle out of everything and everywhere, including norte america. but a man's got a make a buck where he can, and i'm trying to make a few on col q's fate.

if i told you, "the colonel's out by the 4th of july," would you say yay or nay?

anyone else chime in too.

i can't get uncle to do what i want one way or the other, so might as well cash in.

i promise you all i have no intentions of trying to turn smbiva into an online 'gaming' site.

op:

boink
i think you capture father S's
target age interval perfectly
young svelt supple gals
on the demure verge of abandoned behaviour

his surface pose
glee club voice coach
and director

that is of course
when not playing
as i suggested above
low stress weekend /school vacation
" sailing " instructor

as a glee club maestro
he was once considered
an upper west side fixture

sort of a mitch miller of the para-nubile set
known for his excentric use
of reedy chapel pipe organ
to accompany his glee-mates
as they worked out their parts

op:

"if i told you, "the colonel's out by the 4th of july," would you say yay or nay?"

he'll be out by then really effectively out
this isn't going to hang fire thru the summer
but you might have trouble proving
he's out
if the deal involves
time and job shuffle
the actual out moment might take post facto
excavation
this stuff gets complex i'd hustle for say labor day to play it safe

MJS:

Thanks for the suggestion, Boink, but alas, I have a settled preference for Mediterranean lamb over Pac-rim chicken.

op:

come on guys load this up
we need to encourage mjs to do this every friday


btw
i have decided to join the sparticus league

Boink:

More rainy day diversions:

From Barrie's introduction, and a reminder to all with a tooth for chicken and lamb, "Chaperon seems to be one of the very few good words of which our authoress had never heard."

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21415/21415-h/21415-h.htm

An amusing 30 minutes of efficient litrachure.

bettin' man:

owen, july 4th over/under is whats on the table. no flexibility there. i think i'm gonna pull the trigger on out by fireworks day. black nixon's is dropping drone boom on the col now. not that that tips the scale.

damn, i should bet how i root: col q stays, defies 'em all. but i'm feeling he's gone by 7/4.

MJS:

I'll bet dinner at my local Palestinian falafel hell on Tent-man to survive Il Quattro Glorioso. I'm not even convinced that Uncle is going for the quick knockout.

op:

alex has a very wobble dee bobbled
section of his latest weekend ramble
at punch drunk
on of all topics
civil war amerikana and radical revisionism

http://www.counterpunch.org/

that includes this fishy rapsody on
the radical abolitionists :

" Compared to the tinny, often hypocritical squeals for “humanitarian intervention” these days , the abolitionist cause was a mighty chorale, consuming national debate for decades, prompting duels in Congress and amid the people, an intensity of passion that prompted all white juries in the north to nullify laws requiring return of runaway slaves. "

"...the Abolitionists, a hugely powerful moral force, far more potent in lobbying power than the Tea Party today, preferred to argue against slavery on the basis of Biblical moral injunction, rather that the US Constitution, which recognized the right of secession"

this passage seems not to know
the garrison abo line of the 1850's at all

secession of the northern free states
from the transcendental immorality
of the constitition
in fact there is no reason to consider the constitution as a license for secession
nope
the right to revolution was invoked
---revolution in the national liberation sense not social transformation sense--
in the north by the unionists
and a right to beat revolutionist down as well
resting in a constitution that was a more perfect union achieved by the people
not the states

karl marx is called "Lincoln’s great admirer"
--hardly the case --
yes the red monster was
pro unionist
because whatever the concious motivations at bottom the war was about africa chattel slavery and it would either lead to slavery's or a fresh start toward expansionary slavery even to its restoration north of mason dixon in all but something doc marx calls
the new england states

well a pretty shoddy performance over all

op:

the tiny ultra wing of abolition
not garrison's conscience wing
the wing that went harpers ferry
ie armed guerrilla war in the app-smokey mountains etc
a true slave rebellion
was in fact closer to the line alex tries
to imply for abolition in general
when in fact the coherent position of garrisonians until the slavers went ape
and started seceding themselves
was as i said
immediate northern free state seccession

once the unionist juggernaut started to mobilize
it was clear to garrison as to marx where events must head blindly if necessary
ie liberation of the slaves
regardless of unionist indifference
to the issue

op:

fidel on theoblgations
of the party's latest generation of "leaders"

"The new generation is called upon to rectify and change without hesitation all that needs to be corrected and changed ..."
of course boiler plate
but i like this typical fidel florish:


"...continue demonstrating that socialism is also the art of doing the impossible: constructing and making a reality the Revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor .."


"...and defending it for half a century against the most powerful state
which has ever existed."

amen

sk:

Re abolitionists, epigraph from a fine new book by Alberto Toscano:


Always, everywhere, John Brown was preaching the primacy of the act. 'Slavery is evil,' he said, 'kill it.'

'But we must study the problem…'

Slavery is evil–kill it!

'We will hold a conference…'

Slavery is evil–kill it!

'But our allies…'

Slavery is evil–kill it!

Lerone Bennett Jr., Tea and Sympathy: Liberals and Other White Hopes

op:

"no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant..."

beware the sentiment here
its jinn work

this mush is what yields up
such as our
impossible mr Crow

that is
if a being is not tempered
in a long burn of soul-flesh

viva the social fires
they only burn soul meat

the cruciable of contradictions
made invisible flesh

incised by actions flame

they criss cross in three D
thru the thews of any "anatomic" spirit

if
one is convinced

---in some soul burdensome sense---

that IT all still remains
"out there "

despite the paradox
of appearing
only "in here" anymore
and at that
only now and again

then not enough soul flesh
has been liquified
carved by flame

seared even all over isn't enough

too little deep network
ripped into
and one soul left by choice alone
can not be rendered
post adolescent

again
viva the fires of ruthless social time
engage get not immolated
but hacked by reflexive back fires
into
uneasy turbulence tumble
mobile pieces

sk:

beware the sentiment here...

It wasn't all senimentality, even if it didn't fit into the He-Man verities of the Marxist-Leninst creed. And this is what the same place looks like today:


Political silence, total silence," said Chris Hebdon, a Berkeley undergraduate. He went on to describe how various student groups gather at Sproul Plaza, the center of student activity at the University of California, Berkeley. These groups set up tables to recruit and inform other students, a practice know as "tabling."

"Students table for Darfur, no one tables for Iraq. Tables on Sproul Plaza are ethnically fragmented, explicitly pre-professional (The Asian American Pre-Law or Business or Pre-Medicine Association). Never have I seen a table on globalization or corporatization. Students are as distracted and specialized and atomized as most of their professors. It's vertical integration gone cultural. And never, never is it cutting-edge. Berkeley loves the slogan 'excellence through diversity,' which is a farce of course if one checks our admissions stats (most years we have only one or two entering Native Americans), but few recognize multiculturalism's silent partner–fragmentation into little markets. Our Sproul Plaza shows that so well–the same place Mario Savio once stood on top a police car is filled with tens of tables for the pre-corporate, the ethnic, the useless cynics, the recreational groups, etc."


op:

sk
the news from the berk only bucks me up

most merit class rads have no sticking power
anyway

much like most bi sexual frick frack
activism after a brief sporatic dilly dally
vanishes away
once the merit trumpet calls
they're usually
off to the races again

responding promptly and diligently
to advancement signals
is how they got "so far" in the first place

blessedly
as you well know
these are not the folks facing
the present mcjob market

the world historical agent class
the skill flattened
jobbler many
will not be found
on leading college campuses
but at their posts inside corporate amerika

op:

"The nation’s elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent and often subversive"

so what ??

where did honest intellectual inquiry get anyone ??

social change is not some mysteriously
co orrdinated
pilgrim's progress of n minds

the way to the future is hacked out
by each of us in hacking struggle with ..each other

sk:

Hehe, I could make snide comments about Nechayev and quote from a man born on this date, but will choose the better part of discretion.

MJS:

I've become increasingly a friend to sentiment. And while it seemed a point of contrarian honor to take a Paine-ian viewpoint toward the Sixties while they were happening, the revanche has gone so far that it's now a point of honor to do the opposite:

For great were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love;
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven; 0 times,
When Reason seem'd the most to assert her rights
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchanter to assist the work,
Which then was going forwards in her name....
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of! The inert
Were rouz'd, and lively natures rapt away:
.... Why should I not confess that earth was then
To me what an inheritance new-fallen
Seems, when the first time visited, to one
Who thither comes to find in it his home?

op:

a generation in romance

that's us early boomers

now hunter was of dirth generation birth
and they i think could well swell up
at the thought of the rising 60's

not us

buck privates of that upheavel
for them it was rejection..rebellion even
for us their followers
a time wasted on raw...too raw youth

op:

they
in their "last chance " 30's
pushed on further
we in ours
coiled back into yuppies
or worse some half way house
between woodstock and laputa

Hey, waitaminnit. Dude, you have nine muses? What, do they all have specialties? Is there one particular muse who visits you when you need to write a really sarcastic article about, say, Christopher Hitchens? Damn, must be nice.

I just have the one standard-issue, myself; she's a generalist, and visits me when pretty much any inspiration of any kind is needed.

Anyway... I don't recognize any of the muses in that image, now that I think of it. All the portraits look alike, sort of late-period Romanish. Perhaps this image inspired Andy Warhol's famous Marilyn prints:

http://sites.duke.edu/artsvis54_01_f2010/files/2010/11/andy-warhol-marilyn-monroe.jpg

MJS:

The Pierian workforce has expanded considerably since classical times. There's a Muse of Bathos (for whose portrait Melissa Harris-Perry could model), a Muse of Gender Studies (Andrea Dworkin), a muse of Economics, quam vide:

That's the late Milton Friedman with her.

The only Muse who ever visits me personally is Thalia, and that not often.

Been reading Dworkin online, lately. I find her less and more objectionable than before. What's your take on her, Mr. Smith?

chomskyzinn:

"...continue demonstrating that socialism is also the art of doing the impossible: constructing and making a reality the Revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor .."


"...and defending it for half a century against the most powerful state
which has ever existed."

Can I get an Easter amen?

chomskyzinn:

Mike,

Regarding the 5,000 Buck Singers:

Not to be too black-and-white here, but at some point folks have got to be in or out. I'll be damned if I'm dropping 5 grand to turn around and sing a song against the guy who's getting my money. If I'm dropping 5 grand, I'm wearing the Hope and Change jersey, getting fired-up-and-ready-to-go, and rooting for the man to win at all costs. And damnit, I'm going to have a good time doing it.

Or I'm going Nader, McKinney, or SMBIVA.

But to lay out 5 grand for the "opportunity" to sing a protest song? Can't I just do that for free on the sidewalk outside?

MJS:

I always thought of Dworkin as the acme of Female Nationalism. But perhaps I should try again. Where is she to be read online?

"I've become increasingly a friend to sentiment."

Thank you for admitting that. One always wonders where the shift lies, not that it's ever 100 percent.

But, no offense, but it's been pretty obvious here lately. Very lite on the MJS analysis, and somewhat long on recreational postures.

MJS:

Guilty as charged -- with an explanation. One doesn't want to repeat oneself -- though maybe that's the nature of the medium, and one ought to just get over oneself. And then of course new ideas arrive at an increasingly leisurely pace as Anno Domini extracts his inexorable tribute.

op:

"One doesn't want to repeat oneself"
yes blogs are all about rep
think of yourself
as quite like
the autocrat of a snack stand
full of
phrase turns well worn
lapidary if not arch observations
reflexive gasps and mutters
and other such diurnal tics
groans and florishes

be not as the burning bush

op:

i find myself ever more robust
in both my endorsement of new and revived
nationalisms of all sorts
and the near sacred beauty
of inviolate mohican end times
let em vanish
even in a river of blood and gore

the 7th cavalry are always klansmen

ie
be steadfastly stoic in the face of slaughtered "innocent "

pretend
in moments
where hysterical gobbling
seems all about you
indifference

and this above all else
if no action is likely ...by u
better turn as if
into a tiger
liking its paw
even unto your neighbor's plight
then
join the hand wringing horse shit tableau

anti sivilized
anti goo goo
anti compassionate
anti fuss budget
anti interventionist

universalisms are mostly the bunk


dreams of final global conflicts
just that ...dreams

necessary dreams
dreams without which the meme /emoto bag
never sews itself closed
and it must sew itself closed
or you can't carry it around very often or far
without
too much self directed care and
and obscene rituals
of loving "replenishment"

is this all wildly contradictory ??

i hope to hell it is

if after all these rounding years i 'm not a study in contradictions
what damn use as witness
am i to anyone

op:

What's your take on her, Mr. Smith

that the sabath crow regards your views
father S
is touching to me

i might reconsider looking at his
affected hard and bad guy's
mossy den of a site


now and again

op:

"recreational postures"


and that's so wronghhh ??
i prefer a comrades postures to
a comrades line
party's have lines
comrades have ..well..themselves

them whole selves

expose it in all its jiggly dripping
bodaciousness

like ..dare i say it

fluglle be nuggets always does

if you got it
whatever u got
baby here's the place to expose it

are we hollow little elves here ??
or are we dwarfs
full of conflicted ends and means
rumbling around inside us
worthy of a nice puke out among mates ??

inside us is
not
the gardens of versailles

right ??

just a great deal
of partially digested rig a ma role

a goat's breakfast of
poorly suited particulars

"ralph you punks ralph "

op:


beware the induction
of
bovine intoxication

by saying too often

libyan sock puppets
libyan sock puppets
libyan sock puppets


op:

"Scapegoat:
The zionics , Israel and the feminazis "


talk about bell book and candle time


" We separate them , together with their accomplices and abettors, from the precious body and blood of the Lord and from the society of all Christians; we exclude them from our Holy Mother, the Church in Heaven, and on earth; we declare them excommunicate and anathema; we judge them damned, with the Devil and his angels and all the reprobate, to eternal fire until they shall recover themselves from the toils of the devil and return to amendment and to penitence. "

okay okay she wrote jews and womens liberation
but that's pure imposture

she was after neon under lining
this pair of self serving identifications
project :

re -ghettoization

two archepeligos
of tightly knotted grievers

her in the over lap
yes lap
as in
pappy mutts stained lap for young things

she used the broader
non pathological
larger basket terms
jew and wom-lib
to try to perk up the come on

quite a shrewd huckster

to speak ill of the dead

Chomskyzinn:

In other news, Stockman in today's nyt laments the coming class war. If only...

chomskyzinn sez on 04.23.11 @17:56:
"...and defending it for half a century against the most powerful state
which has ever existed."

Can I get an Easter amen?

Amen!

...and a Happy Zombie Day to everybody. Yeah, that's right; this is the day Jesus rose from the grave and walked among the living... y'know, like a zombie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8CnxfiBO7k

Fadduh Smiff sez on 04.23.11 @20:13:
always thought of Dworkin as the acme of Female Nationalism. But perhaps I should try again. Where is she to be read online?

I suspect some judicious Web-search sifting would yield some juicy nuggets-o-Dworkin. Leave all hope behind.

Personally... I may have been a bit quick to judge, because I've hardly read any of her stuff at all, but... as I recall, she was the one who infamously declared that any and all erotic imagery -- from the cheesiest fetish pr0n to Titian's Odalisque -- was equivalent to rape. Yeah, that's right, the Odalisque = rape. It was at that point where I decided screw this noise, chick's fuckin' whack, and pretty much blew off anything else she might have to say.

But then, as the old folk saying goes, your mileage may vary.

chomskyzinn sez on 04.23.11 @18:02:
Regarding the 5,000 Buck Singers:

Not to be too black-and-white here, but at some point folks have got to be in or out. I'll be damned if I'm dropping 5 grand to turn around and sing a song against the guy who's getting my money...

...But to lay out 5 grand for the "opportunity" to sing a protest song? Can't I just do that for free on the sidewalk outside?

Wow, man... The Five Thousand Buck Singers. That's frickin' hysterical, man. I smell a cartoon coming on, like maybe a fake album cover... perhaps even a song parody, something to the tune of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing"...

We all threw down five grand apiece
to gain access to you...

(etc etc)

MJS:

Was it Dworkin who said "porn is the theory, rape is the practice"? That always struck me as breathtakingly wrong-headed.

op:

"the nearly untaxed windfall gains accrued to pure financial speculators, not the backyard inventors envisioned by the Republican-inspired capital-gains tax revolution of 1978."
--stockman--

" And they happened in an environment of essentially zero inflation, the opposite of the double-digit inflation that justified a lower tax rate on capital gains back then — but which is now simply an obsolete tax subsidy to the rich. "
--stockman--

back yard inventors need
a HYPER SBA agency loan
to hell with the cottage industry methods of raising start up funds


the real return on passive investment
-- pre tax -- oughta be zero

any productive investment
both risky enough and
with real potential on the up side
oughta be
uncle funded anyway

MJS,

Sorry. Been offline.

Reading Dworkin, here:

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneAListing.html

*

As re the other thing - I thought you were hinting by way of trebled pun (Boer, Lerner; Boor, Learner; Bore, Learner). My misread. I do, on the other hand, think that the Zionist national ideology contributes directly to Jewish practice, in the exact same way that MDestiny contributed to Westward Expansion. Of course, there's basic venality, but the tribal/national justifications work to capture people who might otherwise form objections.

I don't think there's some sort of special Jewishness or a special case for rejecting Jewish belief and practice. But, I see no way to separate materially informed belief from its consequences.

MJS:

Hey Jack -- my title was a bit more crude than you gave me credit for. Boer=South African=Israeli. But ... is it because they're Dutch?

MJS:

I was unfortunate, perhaps, in my first dip into the online Dworkin archive:

Slavery, rape, torture, extermination have been the substance of life for billions of human beings since the beginning of patriarchal time.
And everything was hunky-dory before the beginning of patriarchal time? When exactly did patriarchal time begin?

Gotta admit: the use of the term "patriarchal" in this context seems to me like a badge of idiocy.

I have continuing problems with the plasticity of the term "patriarchy." But, it's preferably to the doubly stupid and stupidly redundant "kyriarchy."

But, perhaps I have my own blinders. Class is easy. It can be identified. Delineated. Shown. Demonstrated. There are plenty of bad faith and poorly argued assertions which follow from the use or misuse of class, as a descriptor - but it can be shown.

"Patriarchy," on the other hand, lacks rigor. And in making that case to a feminist, it was "explained" to me that this means that I have a male-violent and aggressive-colonial logic which blinds me to the obviousness of an actual and real entity, Patriarchy.

The goalposts are always being moved to suit the argument, the opponent of the moment, and the arguer, and I find that suspect.

op:

patriarchy 's plasticity
is prolly no greater then bourgeois
and certainly no greater then oppression


yes it's a bit more difficult to
put into a useful time and stage interval
world histoically speaking
then bourgeois or slave
the helot gender doesn't get it done either

to me the gender contradiction
is not bound to be antagonistic
like exploiter exploited class contradictions
or spartan helot
or tutsi hutu
or dixie jim crow era
black and white
and perhaps even catholic and protestant

and this suggests to me a very different
handling method might be in order

but dear dwork here gets her juice from pushing the alert signal to maximum red

i/ve never looked into it frankly
that is the "theory " of partiarchy

but it seems to cover a fairly easiliy identified
set of results and at least implicit en soi
" goals" of human societies ...
many qualitatively different human societies
including a long trail into the pre class pre state past of we skin ape's ancestory
but even there
it gets exceedingly sinuous
an unrelenting
political/personal conflation

and that is likely i guess
a very understandable attempt to articulate
the lopsided nature of
societies " power structure "
as we used to call it

that lopsidedness of powerholding
exists even if states don't exist
or what amounts to the basis of states
even if economic exploitative
class systems don't exist

to me the problem is perhaps some implicit notion of a great circle of the human experience

an edenic origin a passage/pilgrimage
thru many stages to a "return " to eden

well the end of male gender power
might not be in a return
to some pre patriarchal gender mutuality
that never existed for us skin apes

to me with the discovery
of our genes
and the means to alter our own biology
--as with its implicit sub set sextual orientation--

gender becomes choice
like habitat and hats

history opens a very new chapter indeed

op:

striving for a postivistic
let us say for purposes of satire
any Popparian definition for a term
like patriarchy
is 18th century folly

since herder-hegel
--at our best--
we voyaging euromemenauts
have gone beyond those absurd
enlightened rationalistic
predicate logic chained
stipulationary 'fencing in '
of useful knowledge

yes we know what the dworkinites are talking about
even if we can't map it like say the streets of the city of detroit or the palm
of bill o'reilly's right hand

op:

crowis ducking the issue here i suspect
doing his
usual retreat behind the broad shield
of my hero davey hume
a move he shares from time to time
with a conceptual 1/3
of all presently working
think units

ps
crying incoherence circularity
unrefutability etc etc etc
in the face of
what is both complex and contradictory
is no touche sargent crow
not
by metron rules of combat at least


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

Peter Ward:

My impression of feminist theory--based on what of it I "studied" as a university student--is that in fact it does the opposite of what is says on the box. Helps obscure what (to me) seem salient examples of patriarchy at work; even within the university itself.... Not only does the theory avoid referring to specific examples--say, as illustrations--it "abstracts" (ascends) to the point it becomes impossible even to generate principles from which "real world" examples of patriarchy might be identified.

It's striking a radical pose in a fashion the patriarchs can live comfortably with, to the detriment of actual feminism...in my not so humble opinion.

Boink:

straight from gilbert and sullivan:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13192071

biggayslut:

Yeah, it's not very humble to dismiss all feminist theory in one swoop, Peter, but your take on it seems true enough when applied to the mainstream now, Peter.

I can't take any feminist seriously who does not oppose militarism, which is patriarchy's most vivid and destructive expression. Seeing so-called feminists climbing on board the war on swarthy chauvinists, staying silent on war rapes and cheering burqa bans and anti-porn campaigns is too fucking sickening for words. Their cunts drip for white male power. There is no nice way to put it.

Owen,

I'm sick. I don't have time for a discourse. It pleases me, all the same, to know that your revolution will never come, and that you have consigned yourself, instead, to petty anonymous sniping over points of pointillist despair.

Fuck you. Gently. With a mallet.

juan:

boink's 9 japanese girls have -forced- me to comment

they are
hot hot hot [even if a bit - only 'a bit' - young]

and

i know when my late great grandfather lived in the nagasaki compound [circa 1890] he must have sampled.

god this is so trivial i have to throw in 'miss
greece'-
http://www.glamgalz.com/index.php/supermodels/miss-greece-ria-antoniou.html

Boink:

Credit where credit is due. Those nine willowy maidens hail from Korea.

juan:

jinn
captured if not by
solomon
at least in his
time became

duende[fied] by 1600
.........[prob
much earlier]

and so she flows
until few yrs go
becoming

World Time

found honest to god
late classic freedom as west
virginian 'homewrecker hot dog'

a truly apostolic invasion by huntingtonized wilderness

three and a half pounds of deep fried sausage and a deep fried one pound weenie topped with sauteed peppers and onion, two kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, spicy sauce, mustard, ketchup and creamy slaw."

rippled into hand
now sure pittsburgh has its giant early morning sandwhich, replete with frys and all

still, can it really compete [and win] v giant wvhot dog

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