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My "paralysis" is metaphorical, thankfully, but genuine in that very sense. I've simply lost the capacity to comment frequently on an unprecedented upwelling of mass psychosis and psychopathy that is represented to news consumers as "populist vigor." Rising rapidly to the top of my reading list is the Book of Revelations (or whatever its official name is), in which it is shown that the end times will be characterized by a polar reversal in how the damned human race assesses good and evil. I'm starting to think that the Jehovah's Witnesses may be more credible interpreters of reality than The New York Times.
That's not all. I've been deeply affected by the sight of Barack Obama futilely scampering around to co-opt snakes and sworn enemies under his imaginary big tent of collegiality. Maybe Obama really is playing some awesome game of 10-dimensional chess in which he's five moves ahead of all opponents on all planes. But I have no way of guessing, and he's used up all the benefits of my many reasonable doubts. Basically, it appears to me that he's using the Oval Office for approximately the same purposes I feared Hillary Clinton would: to symbolically appease credulous liberals with rhetoric and tokens while nurturing same cabal that began delegating our national sovereignty to a world government administered by banks and industrial corporations 30 years ago. (Sometimes I think the Black Helicopter crowd, in some sense, may have a more accurate worldview than Tom Friedman --- they are just hallucinating about who is pulling the strings while Friedman revels in the glory of the institutions that really are pulling the strings.)
For the past several weeks I've been trying to figure out what to do with this blog. It seems impossible a the moment to write a meaningful opinion essay on public affairs. The data stream is fully choked with disinformation and what Situationists called The Spectacle. I'm leaning toward a radical de-emphasis of direct commentary on The Spectacle since it's about like trying to document all the faces that appear in the clouds when no one else is looking.
Let's see what emerges. Something asymmetric, I hope.
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psychological paralysis? And we thought some loan shark had broken your keyboarding phalanges.
ReplyDeleteBut, I agree with the assessment of "the state of things". It's a fucking madhouse. Too much nonsense to write about let alone ruminate.
The Bible could be a good asymmetrical thing to ponder-- especially that reject, Revelations. For a good point of view on that and other Bible construction, check out Thomas Paine's Age of Reason.
And then the rantings of some psycho Scottish hose beast clergyman a couple decades after Paine, who twisted from Revelation some delusions about a rapture. And I know plenty about Scottish hose beasts.
Paine is on the bookshelf but I don't know when he'll rise to the top; I'm thinking I may want to read some Locke before that.
ReplyDeleteDon't know which Scot you're referring to, but he wasn't the first one to pervert ancient wisdom with the help of a delusional personality.
I'm now reading Genesis as illustrated by R. Crumb; he actually applied some scholarly vetting to the translations in order to get inside the text for the illustrations. On my wish list is Basil Wolverton's illustration of various books of the Bible. Google him; he was the most deranged illustrator for early MAD comics, and also a devout end-of-times religionist. Comics and the Bible: A Winning Combination!
Take two quotations, then view a new morning.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Voltaire
Anon: I'll have to look into the works of this Voltaire guy. I forget: did he write for DC or Marvel?
ReplyDeleteDC. 9 voltaire.
ReplyDeleteA Prediction on outcome of Copenhagen: since politically you ALWAYS have to get patronage and support out of doing the "people's business" the net result will NOT be to ban beans either worldwide or only in developed countries. Instead it will be a subsidy and/or tax break for BEAN-O! But, as is typical, the promises of the contractor will prove false and an insufficient supply will be ready even after an extended deadline. So, in a ponderously adaptive way, about 8 months behind schedule a rationing system will come in: even and odd residence addresses will be able to purchase on Mon/Wed/fri or Tue/Thur/Sat. What happens on Sunday, you may ask dear reader? Well, obviously the World rests.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Cash for clunkers? Nope, instead: "Bucks for Bean-O"...it will get the world's economy moving.
ReplyDeleteEngineering Guy: sounds familiar but I can't find the source using the Google.
ReplyDeleteAnon: Bean-O might be made out of trees by a clever society, but Ikea is too far along chopping them down for use in progressive-looking disposable furniture. My climate idea would be to genetically engineer a race of powerless superclowns, bred to look like transnational industrial robber barons that quack when they cough. As they respire CO2, they metabolize it into O2, but the process is so debilitating that they all slowly cough themselves to death, leaving all the rest of us in stitches and fresh air as we honk their noses. And, of course, leaving room for more air-freshening superclowns.