Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Dearest Pope of Ocean Pacific Sportswear,

1) You read Bill Blum's March 1 2011 entry didn't you?

2) "NS" is oceanpacificese for what? NatSec?

CFO -- Might be time to back off a bit. This sort of thing stops being fun after a while. There are a lot of interesting and combative responses that might be made to Owen's theses here. So make one. Obscure and unlinked references to Bill Blum (?) don't qualify, and as for overworked jokes -- I'm the only guy who gets to make those, around here. Did you hear the one about Melissa Harris-Lacewell? Ba-dum!

It's a serious statment, about Blum. His entry for this month has several parts, but the first and longest part talks about the Marshall Plan and says some things that are similar to what is said in the main entry above.

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer91.html

As to the rest -- hey... when are you guys serious and when are you joking, and what role does Dawson play in the mix and who are real people and who are stage props?

If you guys act serious, I can be serious. Doesn't seem like y'all have been very serious lately, though. Am I wrong? Probably, 'cuz this is a confusing place with a lot of inside jokes and when The Pope posts, cryptic messages.

How's a guy supposed to know what's going on?

Thanks for the link. A contrarian take on the Marshall Plan is fine by me; I always thought it was kinda self-serving anyway.

Contrarianism is a way of life for me -- and Owen has a broad streak of it too.

I even like the contrarian take on the Civil War, sketched in the comments on an earlier post, though a boyhood spent in the South convinced me some years ago that there was nothing good to be said about ante-bellum Southern society. No doubt the North's motives were very mixed, but I'm glad they won.

My own attitude has always been that taking the Union apart would have been a Bad Thing in 1860 and would be a very Good Thing now. But this deserves a more extensive treatment.

As for serious and non-serious -- that's always hard to tell, without tone of voice and facial expression. I'm usually pretty serious, since I'm a rather pedantic chap who doesn't really have much of a sense of humor. Owen is less predictable, but he too has his hobby-horses.

Generally, I'd say we're both more often underlyingly serious than not, though our manner of expression may be, erm, whimsical.

I didn't quite get 'NS' either. I'm hoping Owen will explain.

a boyhood spent in the South convinced me some years ago that there was nothing good to be said about ante-bellum Southern society. No doubt the North's motives were very mixed, but I'm glad they won.
General study of the Civil War destroyed my ability to unironically adore mainstream fantasy fiction; if ever there was an opportunity to enact a Battle Between Good and Evil in the exo-literary sphere, it was the American Civil War. Instead, we got the Battle Between Evil and Slightly Less Evil (If You Squint). That is narratively unsatisfying.

My own attitude has always been that taking the Union apart would have been a Bad Thing in 1860 and would be a very Good Thing now.
AJFLUIJIOUFANSULAEFLHNL. HOW?

As for the post: That's horrible! I don't think of the world in these terms, no matter how hard I try. I suppose you're right, though, sadly enough. If the Libyan opposition somehow manages to gain total control of the means of oil production, maybe they won't be so easy to 'victimize.'

national security => ns
as in nsa
67http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/nsa_historical.html

oxy
surely that blum piece didn't enlighten you anymore then me eh ??

merely repeating an old old revisionist narrative ...rather block ishly i might add
as is his wont

one can quarry great raw material
for the above theses
from that marvelous first period
in kold war history
winter 46 thru summer 49
the kennan period
one might call it memic-ly

--- till uncle joe tested his
fission trinket and brother mao
gave that snubby speech in by-bing ---

i really ought to do something on old george k

talk about a character worth study
by our pwog litter

why he has mandarin stripes like a zebra

white black white black

his brand of containment
ever more dark bleatings
---from the side lines-- apres 49
would please many an elite liberal spirit

--------

emma

reality is not so horrible
at the one on one level

and even if Clio plays a very sharp game with us at the global level

after all we do have moments like these
in cairo when
the sun shines thru for brief moments eh ??

all the more precious

nothing worth while is easy to attain eh ??

spinoza sez something like that somewhere

I even like the contrarian take on the Civil War, sketched in the comments on an earlier post, though a boyhood spent in the South convinced me some years ago that there was nothing good to be said about ante-bellum Southern society. No doubt the North's motives were very mixed, but I'm glad they won.

As someone who was arguing the non-"contrarian" view in that thread, I'm honestly surprised to hear the debate framed that way. Maybe we grew up in very different places, but starting in about high school the "contrarian" view seemed to be the predominant one I was exposed to: it was the adult, "serious" view of history, in which both sides were equally to blame and the South was more victim than aggressor. Perhaps I'm younger than some of the other posters here, having grown up in Reagan's America, where the image of the South was being eagerly rehabilitated after the end of Jim Crow. I can't think of why anyone else thinks of the Confederate apologist stance as being "contrarian".

Actually, I think that this disconnect was the main cause of the disagreement in the last thread: nobody was arguing that Lincoln was anything but a corporatist authoritarian asshole, and nobody seemed to be defending the Southern "way of life"; everybody seemed to agree that the aggression originated with the South but was eagerly joined by the North; so I'm not exactly sure what all the rancor was about, if not miscommunication stemming from different frames of reference about what "myth" was being dispelled. Both sides thought they were taking the "contrarian" position and dispelling the widely held "myth" of (Southern|Northern) righteousness.

My comments on the merits of secession had nothing to do with a romanticized South, nor with the South's merits relative to the North, nor with any desire to be contrartian. I was simply arguing that a Disunited States of America might have been a less pernicious --- because more divided --- force. Also, my (limited) understand of the constitution suggests that the South had every right to secede, and could've been allowed to do so peacefully.

Michael, why do you think this: My own attitude has always been that taking the Union apart would have been a Bad Thing in 1860

Picador, I am more geezer than not. In real shorthand, and this relates very much to that dark era known as The Reagan Years, we seem to be ruled by the South's political sensibilties; the North won the battle, but the South seems to have won the war.

Libya seems right now to be the most frightening uprising to the powers-that-be. Most violent, least controllable, most oil. Perhaps least recognizable society post-Colonel (ie: very tribal). Hence the stirrings of the cruise missle liberals. This must be controlled!

"I was simply arguing that a Disunited States of America might have been a less pernicious --- because more divided --- force. ".

Yes. The Christian Republic of Mississippi would be able to afford very few nuclear weapons. Or overseas military bases.

The U.S. Constitution is silent on secession.

As for the South being allowed to secede, leaving aside the fact that that is the wildest of anti-historical fantasies, how does one imagine that a war would not have broken out shortly thereafter, as the two halves of the empire battled for control of new territories and colonies? For that matter, how do you anarchist kiddies imagine the CSA would have been any better an actor that the USA? Shit, the Southern elites kicked the hell out of the Seminoles, and wanted to annihilate Haiti, which was serving as a bad example against their system. Mexico? Might have made an awfully nice new slave state... Maybe some Bush spawn would now be mayor of Ciudad Jackson right now!

I find it fascinating that, of all the US wars BM could have chosen to illustrate his D&D fantasy point (all states are equally violent), he picked one of the two defensible/necessary ones.

Chomsky is one of my heroes, and is, in some sense, an anarchist, even though he argues that we need of heightened state power to get there.

So, I acknowledge that it's possible to be an anarchist and not be stupid.

But, I have to say that I find the popularity of anarchism among what passes for a left in the United States to be very American, in the worst possible sense. "Government is bad." "Karl Marx was wrong."

More importantly, the guy in the Freedom of Speech poster looks a lot like Willem Dafoe, and the praying woman in the Religion one looks like the mother from 6 Feet Under. I don't know if either of them are anarchists.

op -

My point really was that the themes seemed similar. Your post reminded me of Blum's, so I was wondering if you'd read his. Yours is obviously more specific and pointed, his broader and general. But that's how my brain works, seeking connections.

As to my overcrankiness lately and my misread on what's levity and what's not... well... I'm as guilty as the next guy, maybe moreso, of writing things that are hard to discern between serious and joking, between sarcastic dismissal and best-intention (with strange sense of humor) fun-poking. Meaning, I don't really have any room to complain about not knowing when something's serious.

I was really just having my own moment of seriousness when stating that I often don't know, when it comes to posts here, what's serious and what's not. Incidentally: my comments on your prose are 90-95% poking fun at your unique style, 5-10% frustration at not knowing exactly what you're saying. In the end I respect that it's your place & not mine. I am a fan of private property, after all.

I have no ground here from which I could fairly insist on anything, so if I ever seem to be talking in mandate, it's a sure bet that I'm poking fun.

For whatever perceived insult I may have caused, mea culpa and lo siento.

Now that's mighty handsome, CFO. No kidding at all.

i'm not insulted
oxy
just think we need to get back on track here in the comments

starting with me

my reduced participation
here in the trench lines
of vanguard thought
i think
will help that along

i tend to attack what appear to be
the sign boards of
show offs and trouble makers

being both myself
i see them everywhere

baiting and biting
is in the end a spoiler game
and
a sincere anarchist
like a sincere pacifist
or breast feeder
ought indeed
keep her/his convictions up front and clear

and surely an enemy of vulgar pluralism
like myself
often needs lessons in toleration
which maybe only a dutch virtue
but surely
is a useful capacity
in any context other then
tumbril time

and
as a dantonist
i tend to ring THAT bell
a little less often
then some other "jacobins " might