my tres centavos: 2010

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

What the fuque, Jon?

The tell here is the phrase "you lefties": because it's a generalization, it sets up the following phrase about vitriol as invalid, in an attempt to invalidate the emotional truth of what people are feeling. Jon's initial comment is fake reasonableness. When he says "perfectly nice" in re: Tucker Carlson, most of us instinctively know that he's talking out of his ass, because Carlson is in fact the farthest thing from "perfectly nice". Carlson might not have the vehemence of some other right-wing assholes (not-so-Breitbart), but he's something even worse than most of those; a wannabe, much like Michelle Malkin is an Ann Coulter wannabe. Further, Carlson is the douche-iest of all wannabes....with his ham-handed stylistic cues (the bow tie, the limp hairlock) he signifies Richie Rich, the Berries-and-Cream Starburst guy, and a soupcon of antiEstablishment hippie longhair. The cross-purpose-dressing is supposed to let us know that there's an intellectual heavyweight under all that pampered neotony. But Jon Stewart pulled the curtain back for us on that- all Carlson could do, when Stewart handed him his ass on live TV, was grin stupidly.

Laura McLean Also too, Andrew Breitbart, Tucker Carlson, and Tom Vilsack are dicks. Horrble, shameful, tiny dicks.

You and 4 others like this.
- Jon Frugoli Tucker Carlson?...Why?...He strikes me as a perfectly nice person, and a respectful and moderate debater. Why the hate?
  July 20 at 8:00pm ·
- Jon Frugoli Who's Tom Valsack?....never heard of him.
  July 20 at 8:02pm ·
- Laura McLean Well, in fairness, Tucker's more of a douche.
  July 20 at 8:35pm ·
- Richard Beres he's a mothertucker!
  July 20 at 9:16pm ·
- Jon Frugoli What did he say that's got you all so upset?
  July 20 at 9:20pm ·
- Ob Askin http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/15/884657/-Tucker-Carlson-vs.-Keith-Olbermann:-Master-Of-Your-Domain
  
  Not nice, not respectful, not moderate.
  Just as much bile as others like Beck, just doesn't drool.
  July 20 at 10:08pm ·
- Jon Frugoli
  Gee, you lefties can dish out the vitriol like nobody's business, but you can't handle even the slightest speck criticism - or even a joke - without crying like babies.
  
  So Tucker Carlson owns KeithOlbermann.com?...I think that's pretty damn...See More
  July 20 at 10:20pm ·
- Jess Winfield
  I don't see any lefties crying like babies in this debate. But heeere's a rightie crying like baby when he realizes he's been wrong about gay marriage.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te5xIGu6FiQ
  
  Just proves that "crying like a baby" is a val...See More
  July 21 at 2:02am · · 1 person
- Laura McLean
  I was referring to the gleeful slandering and firing of a woman who not only had done nothing wrong, but whose life's work has been to move beyond racial bounderies and aid poor farmers.
  
  Breitbart apparently loves to call innocent people of ...See More
  July 21 at 8:25am · · 1 person
- Rand Stoller John just has a man crush on Carson. Live and let live.
  July 22 at 1:28am ·

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Lemme lay it out for you- if your revolution doesn't hurt or kill anyone, then you haven't committed any crimes. If your revolution is bloody, then obeying the law is the last thing on your mind. Either way, there's no need for a "Right to Revolution", and little chance that The Founders had one in mind when crafting the 2nd amendment.

Not that it matters what The Founders had in mind. Great recent opinion by Justice Stevens on why "strict constructivism" is a sham, y'all have probably read it. Nonetheless, I think we can infer that what they were talking about was maintaining the legality of a way of life (huntin', collectin'), and maintaining readiness for national defense (vs. Redcoats). Preserving a right to delegitimize The State probably wasn't on the table, especially since they had just gone to so much trouble to create It...and since they had already included so many paths for legitimate dissent.

So why do we need this brand-new right, regardless of its provenance? I mean, revolution is something that people do, without referent to the Constitution or code or anything else...when The People have had enough, they tend to rise up and overthrow, and they usually don't stop to consult the local law library. The only thing that comes to mind is, its a way for the desperate contrarians among us to justify their paranoia about the gummint takin' away their guns. Don't let this happen to you! If you're a proud American gun-nut, console yourself with the fact that a lot of legislation has been passed regarding guns, and our glorious 2nd is still here. If you're a shrinking American violet when it comes to guns, take comfort in the fact that despite our glorious 2nd amendment, we still have the legal ability to make some places gun-free. In either case, don't be fooled- those who yammer about a "right of revolution" are making stuff up. These yammerers (!) are of a type- they fashion themselves "shit-disturbers", and will attach themselves to a number of causes that are diametrically opposed. All arguments made in bad faith; a hallmark of your typical Randian/Objectivist.

And it's no accident that Objectivism rears its ugly head here. Only those who subscribe to something as shockingly immoral as Ayn Rand's "philosophy" would feel the need to gin up a "right of revolution".

my first, and last, dailykos diary

So, I've been banned- I admit it, I broke the rules.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/12/183119/227

Thursday, July 08, 2010

here's a little tete-a-tete

So, Kaili is running her mouth over at DailyKos, and here are two or three of my cents:

I really wanted to let this one go. (4+ / 0-)

Recommended by:: AaronInSanDiego, dsb, Futuristic Dreamer, Its the Supreme Court Stupid

I even started writing a comment, got up, walked away, and got pulled back because there was just too much idiocy in this post to let stand without objecting.

First, you have a really facile interpretation of the Constitution if you think the plural term "the people" is always going to convey an individual right, or that liberals shouldn't vociferously defend collective rights. Not only is it facile, but it's illogical. Look at the example you picked: the right of assembly. When one person assembles,there is no assembly, there's just one person exercising his or her right to express a view, which is freedom of speech. For the right of assembly to be an individual right means that you've compressed it into the right of speech--in other words, you've actually taken away one distinct, collective right and folded it into another one. That turns the right of assembly into a dead-letter, and that's simply foolish.

Second, restrictive gun laws aren't inherently anti-Second Amendment. The 2nd is a narrow right, protecting very limited ranges of conduct, and not everything that touches on gun ownership, possession, sales, or transportation is a constitutional issue. The RKBA folks were nice enough to let me borrow their platform a few months ago to elaborate this point--feel free to read it.

Third, and this is the most important in my book, THERE IS NO RIGHT OF REVOLUTIONin the Constitution (unless you read it into the guarantee of the Ninth Amendment). There's a grant to Congress of the unchecked authority to punish treason, which pretty well flies in the face of the idea that the document enshrines our right to commit it. The 2nd may facilitate treason (I'm sure it made life easier for many in the Confederacy, for example), but to say that it's a right is asinine. And from a logical perspective, have you considered that at the point when a group is waging war on the United States it is no longer bound by the Constitution? If we wanted to raise an army to challenge the US military (which is fucking suicidal--the Iraqi insurgency fought a small proportion of our troops away from our homeland, which bears about as much resemblance to a home-grown revolution as a large turd does to the Sistine Chapel), why the bloody hell would we give two shits about the 2nd Amendment, if we're in a position where we don't recognize the authority of the state?

Your premises don't hold, your argument requires a type of constitutional textualism that's anathema to actual liberal goals, and your entire argument ignores the real harm that befalls our society because of unchecked weapons proliferation.

[And because this is somehow obligatory for me to note: I'm willing to bet that I'm one of the very few people on this goddamn thread who spent any part of today firing a weapon at a shooting range. For those in or near western Maryland, the Savage River State Forest's outdoor range is quite nice, though it does tend to get crowded on holidays.]

"Speaking for me only." -Armando

by JR on Sun Jul 04, 2010 at 04:07:03 PM PDT

[ Reply to This ]

Hear, Hear! (0 / 0)
I know Kaili pretty well- her recently deceased ex-husband was my best friend of 32 years. He shot himself a couple of months ago, just after Kaili served him with divorce papers. One thing I know about Kaili is that she desperately wants to be taken for an intellectual- thus her attraction to ideas that are guaranteed to be provocative (pro-gun, pro-Ayn Rand, etc.). Thanks, JR, for explicating and exposing her simplistic analysis of the 2nd amendment. I'm a former Marine, I've been in combat, I've used guns and actually (legally!) SHOT PEOPLE- and I think gun restrictions should be made a lot tighter. It makes me physically ill when I think of all the young people in this country that have been killed by guns, chief among them my best friend Scott. I think this overwhelming amount of violence is definitely facilitated by the fast and loose attitude we have with guns. I don't know if the laws about gun possession should be changed- I'm not a lawyer and never will be- but I do think that we should close whatever loopholes exist that allow most gun crimes to be anonymous. This, to me, is the core of the problem: there are so many guns available, and so cheaply, and with so few legal means to track their provenance, that prosecuting crimes becomes impossible. I don't think most of us are worried about "gun nuts", because with rare exceptions they aren't committing crimes. Gun nuts are having accidents, but it's gang violence that kills the poor, and the innocent bystanders who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think that arming ourselves with guns to combat gang violence is the wrong approach- as a Liberal, I support social solutions to social problems, so I would rather see programs that lift gang members out of poverty. I also think that arming ourselves against theoretical or possible tyranny, rather than actual tyranny, is completely nuts: thanks for making the point that revolution is not a right- it may be necessary from time to time, but the State is under no obligation to legitimize its own dissolution. Kaili's desire to voice new and original ideas has run up against her insufficient parsing of the real world, so she ends up as a de facto teabagger....too bad.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Trap of Nihilism

Scott is dead, by his own hand, and I've been struggling to make sense of it (against the impulse of my intellect, which knows there's no sense to be made...we have a natural, irrevocable tendency to search for meaning, even in an absurd universe. Now, why?). Scott once said to me (complaining), "But Steiny, you always see the good in every person." I guess that's true- I'm of a much sunnier disposition than he, don't know why, even though I've felt depression as black and absolute as his...I think I know something about the roots of his despair. Most of it was from unwarranted self-loathing, but there was a portion that happened like this: when you are a teenager, you are in a fight to establish your identity. This is existentially important, and if you grow up in a politically charged atmosphere your options will be limited. Por ejemplo- most develop a political consciousness based on the position of their parents. If you were in high school in the 1980s, you would find that nearly every rational position had been co-opted by some group or other with major negatives attached (once upon a time, the "left" was the exclusive domain of the Hippies, so if you didn't smoke pot or believe in new-age personal growth bullshit, or buy the whole raft of groupthink that went with it, you were suspect, your politics invalid). "Third Way", "independent" parties aren't much help here, since politics depends on groupthink; even the most hardcore libertarian can find like-"minded" individuals to commiserate with. That being the case, nihilism becomes very attractive to the teen aged mind; after all, if all the positions are bullshit, then the whole system must be bullshit as well. I don't think Scott thought of himself as a nihilist (that would have required major insight)- but he did commit suicide, after all. There was a tendency in him to be malevolent, which bothered me and for which I criticized him, and which I think was the result of an unconscious alignment with nihilism. But it wasn't his nature, it was a pose he struck as a defense against the dearth of viable positions. This is obvious to me because of the things he never abandoned- such as a commitment to human rights, and justice (his knee never failed to jerk violently against obviously evil people).

I mention this now because I want to warn anyone considering this position. Sarte warned against bad faith; and nihilism is bad faith incarnate. If you find yourself fed up, and everyone in the world is saying things that make you sick, then it is your obligation to create a position and articulate it. Walter Sobchek: "Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos." Art (which to me includes all the human creative endeavors, language, music, politics, law) is our best defense against the abyss, our birthright as Homo Sapiens, but most importantly a requirement of continued membership in life. Nihilism adds no comfort, makes no statements, shines no light and offers no solutions. There's a difference between that and art with the flavor of nihilism, which can be downright exhilarating: the Sex Pistols pump you up, and it's fun to give the finger to The Man, but all these "movements" that have annihilation as their core value (teabaggism, objectivism, end-times-ism) appeal mainly to those who are losing it all and want everyone else to lose it all too. Stay away from that shit! It's mind poison! Be creative! "Go not gentle into that good night" means not just to hang on to life, but also to battle death, the abyss that stares into us.

Which is a somewhat pollyannaish position, I know. I react, because I've lost someone that I love. I would do almost anything to have him back, alive. But my options are limited, even philosophically, because my emotions are a more accurate indicator of truth. I hate the thing that depressed him, whatever it is, so I can't have sympathy for a position that killed my best friend. We had a thing- what he called our "twins language"- which was a cipher that grew out of our mutual status as outcasts. But in later years, he started to pervert it so that communication was minimized; he wanted simply to parrot the phrases, to repeat the memes without referent. We got mad at each other over this- he because I wouldn't "run my lines", I because he sucked all the joy and meaning out of it. Tellingly, we would argue about this very issue in our twins language (meta-meta-meta-meta). And now it is a dead twins language ha ha ha. Fucking bleak, eh? The point is, I understand the attraction of giving in to death. When your strength is gone nothing is more sweet than going limp and letting Lethe carry you, drifting, towards Hades. And by the way fuck you world. Sadly, I'm still alive and I can't abandon hope (not an option for me, father of two, husband of one, son of many). The only way for me is to give myself over to the small consolations of creation, like the things that gave Scott joy (music and words and food). And to find a target- in this case the immorality of giving up. It's odd for me to align myself with Aquinas, considering my recent feelings about religion, but perhaps not: the Saint represents a time before the bad faith of the postmodern era. His argument is pure, and made from first principles. I only wish it would have worked on Scott.

Friday, March 26, 2010

what is the purpose of federalism? To provide the courts a rationale for making excessively narrow judgements. Under federalism, twisted logic is acceptable. That's why federalism is a tool for those who wish to reduce civil rights, by discrimination. A liberal court is just the opposite- it will seek at every turn to extend rights to every class, as it is defined into existence. That's why liberalism is capable of dealing with the future; whereas federalism attempts to hold back the tide.