Stop Me Before I Vote Again

It's a lot easier to get these people to go along with a war than with a coarse expression.

Fucking beautiful.

Really? [shrug]

I feel like I've met plenty of self-proclaimed "progressives" who can out-fratboy P.J. O'Rourke. If I never have to hear any more about which Right-wing female pundit/elected official they'd most like to get into bed, or how they're noble martyrs because nobody appreciates their Confederate flag which they've "ironically" situated in the living room, it'll be too soon.

Confederate flags? Really? Among the truly committed Dembottery? Clearly I need to get out more.

Portland Oregon is truly a magical place, MJS.

We'll save a few chicken-fried giant slugs for you.

Time for a visit, obviously.

Fadduh Smiff sez:
...The Republicans' ability to indulge in unbridled extravagant rhetoric has long been a source of resentment and envy to the Democrats. The situation is asymmetrical because the Democrats -- once the party of Jackson! -- no longer have much of anything resembling a popular base...

...not to mention the fact that the current crop of Donkeycratic politicians have given a whole new meaning to the word "base".

It's a lot easier to get these people to go along with a war than with a coarse expression.

Back when I was still on the Editorial Board at DC Indymedia, I got into a huge pissfight with the other editors over my use of the word "cunt" to describe Hillary Clinton, despite my taking care to precede it with the phrase, "greedy, bloody-handed, warmongering old fascist". I finally ended up being kicked off the Indymedia Ed Board for basically being too radical, and using "bad" language (among other crimes). They just couldn't handle my unvarnished method of self-expression, whether in words or pictures, and it totally made their heads explode when I wouldn't behave the way a "proper" Leftie was supposed to behave. They were vegan potlucks, soy milk and Ani DiFranco; I was sausage pizza, beer and The Who.

I'd believe the stars and bars in a minute. It's Portland's unseemly racist past (and present) repurposed with hipster-fucko "irony." The po-mo bo-bo hybrids get weirder and weirder, layered over an increasingly Victorian poor house reality. It's perfect.

gluelicker:

...The po-mo bo-bo hybrids get weirder and weirder, layered over an increasingly Victorian poor house reality...

[applause]

Hey, gluelicker, were you around for Jim Goad's moment of hipster fame back in the Nineties, too? The people who tried to make some kind of culture hero out of that creep didn't even have the excuse of a "new Depression," since they were all 'net bubble cyber-tycoons, or at least wannabees.

Good luck explaining all that to Mike F, though. Apparently once you get asked not to fling around gender-based insults anymore, your income magically shoots up about 3000K a year and suddenly history is rewritten so that all your ancestors came over on the fucking Mayflower or something.

Oh, and cheer up, Mike F. I got excused from one of them other Leftie blogs just the other day for dropping the f-bomb. The universe is not a perfect place.

I remember Jim Goad. Then and now I half-understood and vaguely identified with his rage against the liberal arts identity politics crowd (having witnessed its pretensions and shell games myself). But of course the shtick was and is an eminently bankable rage, with the slippery slope to Bill O'Reilly about a foot high. Predictably it gave and gives exurban frat boys in monster trucks license to bash queers and harass (or worse) Ethiopian refugees.

Oh, my God. Can you possibly be the same people who were whining about identity politics just last year? If only feminists were smart enough to bring sausage fucking pizza to their womyn-powyrd gatherings! I like to drink soy milk and I think Hillary Clinton is a greedy, bloody-handed, warmongering old fascist cunt (as is her awful husband). Mind: Blown?

I don’t see a big problem with name-calling; sticks and stones etc. — and I find that cursing at people is not only cathartic, but occasionally descriptive in the gravest sense of the term. There are just people who are sons-of-bitches. It’s an irrefutable fact.

The question that I ask myself, when thinking politically, is: Would this person/these people just as soon see me dead as look at me? I think Ahmadinejad and the Tea Party, for example, would both qualify there as "yea" votes, so I find them equally repulsive, despite the fact that Ahmadinejad is a refined brown intellectual with nice hair and the teabaggers are the trashiest illiterate white trash imaginable.

Cf. — It's a lot easier to get these people to go along with a war than with a coarse expression.

The situation is asymmetrical because the Democrats -- once the party of Jackson! -- no longer have much of anything resembling a popular base.
I think that’s because they want just the same thing as the Republicans: to demonazite what remains of the American public as quickly and quietly as possible. But because they lack the Republican flair for dramatic, hypocritical rhetoric, they flail a little more obviously.

Oh, I forgot to say this, because I was spell-checking like a motherfucker:

Teabaggers and progressives define vulgarity differently. I’m sure that if I showed up at an anti-war protest with an artist’s rendering of Jesus crapping on an American eagle and laughing, or a big sign that said, "FUCK SARAH PALIN’S NEW BIG TITS!," probably nobody would bat an eyelash. But try that at a Teabaggers’ Constitution Party! No, really. I want to watch.

Portland isn't any different from any place else in this TV-homogenized nation-state, and progressives do not put up Confederate flags. Redneck reactionaries do, as everywhere. Progressives are not pure evil or even the main source of our problems. They're simply a major roadblock.

Meanwhile, the real message of this Loughner thing is, to my eye, about access to medical care. Would this amazing loon have gone untreated in a society with single payer insurance? Perhaps, but the odds would have been much different, at least. As it stands, it costs major cash up front to see mental health providers, even if one has what they call "insurance." Dollars to donuts this kid was uninsured, too.

the slippery slope to Bill O'Reilly about a foot high.

What I read just now - 'The Rape Issue' - was easily as bad, apart from the fact that he's more a vicarious rapist than a vicarious bombardier. I suppose it's meta-misogyny or some shit.

Oh, for the day when members of the ostensible left do not travel in such isolated, rarefied bubbles that they actually come to see the word cunt, consumption of meat, classic rock and rape jokes as radical rebellion. Jeez, do you watch South Park, too?

I do notice confederate flags and the N-word remain off-limits. That's something, I guess.

DE MONE TIZE!

...progressives do not put up Confederate flags...

Michael, you should check out my neighborhood in Brooklyn if you don't believe organic food, Confederate flags and (vintage) pickup trucks can coexist.

Though given the amount of attention payed to looking like a redneck I often wonder how deep the irony really goes. (By the way, I have nothing against rednecks, being one myself. As to the racist charge, I can't say that I find the Blue Staters less racist, they just disguise their racism in liberal-friendly ways.)

Michael, you should check out my neighborhood in Brooklyn

You've got to cut Smith some slack. He's in the UWS. They don't do irony up there; they don't even do Woody Allen-world up there as much anymore. Increasingly, what they do up there is mostly identikit 20- and 30-something women with long North Face coats, luxury handbags, Ugg boots, and valley girl accents. The same can be said for the entirety of Manhattan below (and increasingly above) 110th Street. What remains of downtown "hipsters" (sic sic sic sic) all have perfectly coiffed bedhead hair, a la the lineup of a Korean boy band. And AFAICT they're non-ironic about it.

Xray lady
Pretty much outlined me in her first comment

Its spirits like mine that require party discipline

Ps emma u can't opossibly out
Mis spell me

DE MONE TIZE

Ps emma u can't opossibly out
Mis spell me

WTF was she trying to spell? Something mindblowing and rad, like sausage pizza?

WTF was she trying to spell? Something mindblowing and rad, like sausage pizza?
Yes, because I'm the one who fetishizes sausage pizza. I was trying to spell "demonetize," but I'm on a damned iPhone.

I liked 'demonazite' better. In fact I'm going to start using it.

In fact I'm going to start using it.
I don't even know what it means!
(Apparently it's some kind of mineral.)

Oh, my God. Can you possibly be the same people who were whining about identity politics just last year?

Speak for yourself, Emma. I'd rather eat glass than hear more about how if Teh P.C. Cops would just be quiet we Real Activists could SAVE TEH WORLD! Nine times out of ten, that's nothing but lazy fuckers supporting their own right to treat other people like shit without being called out for it.

If only feminists were smart enough to bring sausage fucking pizza to their womyn-powyrd gatherings! I like to drink soy milk and I think Hillary Clinton is a greedy, bloody-handed, warmongering old fascist cunt (as is her awful husband). Mind: Blown?

Oh gosh! [swoon]

You're so... edgy!

Yes, let's show how clever we are by using a insult connected to our own body parts to mock a woman who can't even hear us, and wouldn't care if she could! Yeah, that warmed-over brand of National Lampoon-style revolutionary thinking is really the key to successful interaction with others who might share our causes and interest! You're a genius, Emma. A real fucking genius.

Smith:

It's a lot easier to get these people to go along with a war than with a coarse expression.

Yeah. It's also a lot easier to defend "freedom" when all it entails is the right to be a stupid asshole without anyone actually calling you one to your face. [snerk] Organizing, marching, and the like is hard work. Plus it might damage your credit rating. And those icky marches might get in the way of a hipster pub crawl after a hard day of selling iPods™. But calling women "bitches" and wearing an "ironic" T-shirt with a 1930s racist caricature of a Chinese dude doing laundry? That's just cool and groovy and the ultimate blow for equal rights!

Dude, I like you or I wouldn't be here, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Apathy or outright hostility towards peace is everywhere across the spectrum of political thought in the U.S. It has fuck-all to do with how "P.C." the average citizen is.

tarzie:

...Oh, for the day when members of the ostensible left do not travel in such isolated, rarefied bubbles that they actually come to see the word cunt, consumption of meat, classic rock and rape jokes as radical rebellion. Jeez, do you watch South Park, too?...

Thanks for saving the dregs of my sanity this morning. Hell, I'll watch SP from time to time. I sniggered at Team America, too. But I don't kid myself into thinking these are by any means some kind of "radical" gestures, any more than not consuming them would be. :/

Thus ms_x:

But calling women "bitches" and wearing an "ironic" T-shirt with a 1930s racist caricature of a Chinese dude doing laundry? That's just cool and groovy and the ultimate blow for equal rights!

Never gazed upon a copy of VICE Magazine, MJS?

I'm sure that there are novels set in it, Smith. But seeing this kind of shit around me, I don't really feel any particular need to look them up.

Believe me. Some of the biggest Obama fans around here are the same ones who rail online against those horrid old "P.C. police every four minutes. There's no disconnect there. It's all about consumer goods and which one's this year's must-have. It doesn't have to make any logical sense.

There's something I'm not understanding here. Surely it's one thing to believe that "PC"-ism -- for lack of a better term -- exhibits an essentially bourgeois-managerial mentality, which is what I believe, and to dislike it for that reason. And surely it's quite another thing to believe that being non-"PC" is ipso facto revolutionary, or activist, or whatever.

Perhaps there are people in the world who hold the latter of these beliefs. But are any of them contributing here?

And no, I've never heard of VICE magazine. Gotta go do my homework, obviously.

Vice used to be pretty good in the late 90s. It really went to seed about 5 years ago.

I've thought about bringing up Vice here before to make a similar point. A lot of the anti-PC stuff in our corner of the blogosphere comes off like a half-assed retread of 1990s Vice. It's really played out.

MJS:

There's something I'm not understanding here. Surely it's one thing to believe that "PC"-ism -- for lack of a better term -- exhibits an essentially bourgeois-managerial mentality...

Returning to your initial post:

...It's a lot easier to get these people to go along with a war than with a coarse expression.

It seems to me that you drew a connection between a certain type of speech and a resignation to (or outright relish of) a pro-war culture. All I'm saying is that I don't think this is correct. I, too, would like to see other issues get even a fraction of the attention that discussions of "coarse expressions" do. But I don't see any specific correlation between one or the other, as you do. As I said above, plenty of people are either indifferent to or outwardly hostile towards any serious attempts at building a culture that doesn't run on war, not just the supposed legions of "P.C. police" out there. There are a million topics that get more attention than others that are more deserving. I could be here all day listing them, if I felt like it.

And as I said a few months back when we had this discussion: managerial schmanagerial. Why is it so damn tough for people who want to work together to just not act like assholes all the time? If somebody tells me, I hate that term. Please stop using it, maybe I should-- in the interests of constructive interaction, stop using it. Nobody is setting the entire dictionary on fire. It's just one word.

If I find that they make too many demands, or that their demands don't make any logical sense, I can take my attempts at dialogue somewhere else. It's not the end of the world.

If that makes me "manager material" somehow, great. I can't wait to get on the horn to my Mom and tell her that at this late date, her little girl could still amount to something.