Washington Post Not Even Trying Anymore...

... to hide their boners.

But one habit endures: Obama has gone to the gym, for about 90 minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row. He always has treated exercise less as recreation than requirement, but his devotion has intensified during the past few months. Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.

link

Real Men

from the Huffington Post

Obama: "Cha Cha?"

Barbara: "It's short for Cha Cha Cha."

O: "What is a Havanese?"

B: "It's like a little terrier and they're non-allergenic and they're the sweetest dogs.."

O: [Face suddenly changes.] "It's like a little yappy dog?"

Michelle: "Don't criticize."

O: "It, like, sits in your lap and things?"

M: "It's a cute dog."

O: "It sounds kinda like a girly dog."

M: "We're girls. We have a houseful of girls."

O [with hand gestures]: "We're going to have a big rambunctious dog, of some sort."

I'd like to take a moment to point out what a faggoty little dog Bush owns.



Especially in comparison to the manly ol' Clinton dog.


Especially in comparison to Putin's dog.

Nano-update II

The Economist has a huge boner for Obama; I have a huge boner for Rahm Emanuel.

Nano-update

Fake New York Times circulates, includes an expression of my dearest wish.

Op Ed excitement

Not really a post, just an expression of how excited I am, having realized that Maureen Dowd has a column on Wednesdays. As does the horrible Thomas Friedman, but I am less thrilled about that in particular. The godawful column in question is up already, all two pages of the tritest rehash one could possibly cough up on such a momentous occasion. Go choke on a dick, Friedman.

Good Night, Sweet Election

I loved you well.

Vice President He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

BREAKING NEWS
Obama bravely utters the name of the Dark Lord!

"Yesterday, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location and hit the campaign trail. He said that he is, and I quote, 'delighted to support John McCain,' " Obama told the crowd in Columbus. When he was repeating his lines later in Cleveland, rain started to fall.

"You notice what happened when I started talking about Dick Cheney," Obama said with a chuckle. "But a new day is dawning. Sunshine is on the way."

When asked for comment, You-Know-Who scowled in response, then proceeded to vomit snakes.

Well-Spoken and Articulate '08

"Well-spoken" is the best damning-with-faint-praise adjective, usually used by condescending whites in conjunction with other adjectives, like "[surprisingly] bright," "[surprisingly] nice-looking," and "[surprisingly] clean". And don't forget "articulate". The following video is an interview with the kids from the "You Can Vote However You Like" video.



at 2:48, upon being asked, "As a woman, what do you think of Sarah Palin?" the small black girl replies:

Well, in my opinion, I really like Sarah Palin. She's very articulate and well-spoken. There are some things that maybe she could do a bit better, but overall, I think she's a very good candidate.

owned

A Bunch of Libertarian Retards Now Addicted to Hopium

John Sidney McCain III is a man of many stereotypes. He is a military brat/frat boy asshole, a salty old sailor with a filthy mouth, and a doddering old man. Today we may add to that list "friendless wonder." Like the kid at lunch who sits by himself, eating his weird lunch and reading his weird manga, McCain has no friends. The only people truly endorsing him are party hacks or former political figures no one gives a shit about while Obama grabs them like they were hamburgers and he were some sort of burglar of hamburgers, if such a thing should or could exist.

Some of the more recent of these endorsements come from the libertarian edge of the political spectrum, an edge I tend to respect for at least having the balls to admit that they'd relish in seeing the poor used as a food substance, and the ideology tied with anarchism for having the most amount of supposed adherents that consistently support and vote for policies entirely opposite to their proclaimed interests. Not all libertarians are retards, and in fact I would argue that the majority of academic libertarians are quite smart, if not cold, cartoonishly villainous human beings who would watch the world burn if it meant nobody put any tariffs on anything. Our own contributor spike is one of these people, and she has earned my intellectual respect, as well as my moral contempt.

Even so, shit-headed groups like College Republicans tend to latch on to the word "libertarian" like asshole Democrats latch on to the word "progressive," and they pop boners for the more conservative leanings of publications like Reason and The Economist. (Note: Whether the Economist is really libertarian or not is debatable, but I would argue that it is the standard-bearer for libertarian policy among American libertarian academics) Well, guess what? Reason just released a list of a whole bunch of libertarians endorsing Obama (plus a bunch of retards talking about Bob Barr and one guy who apparently actually likes Palin.) The list is chock full of marginalized ideologues and dumb-ass celebrities (Drew Carey? Doug Stanhope!? I'm surprised Penn Jillette's discussion wasn't sloppily edited out of context, and then followed by Penn making a fart noise and saying "Well FUUUCK YOOOOUUU.")

Some highlights from this list include from author and guy I think it would be unsettling to be around Steven Pinker:

Who are you voting for in November? Barack Obama, because he most exemplifies Reason and Free Minds (sorry, the country is in no mood for Freer Markets). The contrast between his discernment and eclecticism and the Republican ticket’s impulsiveness and idiot populism is vastly more important than any differences in their adherence to libertarian first principles.

Intolerable person Tim Slagle:

Leaving George W. Bush out of consideration, what former U.S. president would you most like to have waterboarded? Franklin Roosevelt. You wouldn't even have to board him, just tilt his chair back into one of the reflecting pools he built. And keep repeating it, until he ADMITS he was a Communist.

And from Cathy Young:

Who are you voting for in November? I can't in good conscience give my sanction to either of the two major-party candidates: McCain/Palin represent a GOP in thrall to troglodytes, while Obama will likely preside over an even bigger expansion of government than McCain would have. I think an Obama victory would be the lesser of two evils overall, but I will probably vote for Bob Barr.

Who did you vote for in 2004 and 2000? In 2004: Michael Badnarik. In 2000: Bush.

Interesting.

Well, what about The Economist, a supposedly legitimate and, from what I hear, even of-quality magazine? Well, it turns out they went ahead and endorsed Obama earlier today, but with caveats that they understand that his "worrying" policies "protectionism" and "unions" (I guess they don't like that he believes they should exist, I don't recall any Obama rhetoric regarding unions other than a vague and benign general attitude.)

Why is this really relevant, though? With the concerns for civil liberties and staunch anti-war stances, wouldn't the more libertarian-identifying media (if not their readers) consistently vote in favor of people like Obama? Why am I even talking about this?

I'll tell you why: I'm a gigantic fan of irony, and the conservative movement for the last 25 years has apparently run exclusively on a platform of irony. The policies of Reagan and Bush(es) have made the government vastly bigger and sunk our national debt to unheard of levels, they embroiled us in incredibly costly foreign policy, and contributed to the most ridiculously transparent subsidy program in existence, the military-industrial complex. But still, the neoconservative movement is still often blindly followed by the Free Market-oriented media. The Economist endorsed W in 2000, and Reagan twice. A good 35-40% of the libertarians interviewed in the Reason article voted for Bush. Some voted for him twice, a tacit approval of the Iraq War, while the Economist actually actively supported it. And while The Economist endorsed Kerry in '04, they only did so "with a heavy heart."

That's why I'm laughing right now, laughing with a bilious hate in the bottom of my stomach and an exhausted, furious nausea. Economic policy is the foot that people like Reagan and Bush jammed into the door to get elected, and fear due to terribly implemented foreign policy is the way they stayed there. The economic right fell for it again and again, until the worst eight years in government incompetence have finally gotten it into their heads that when men like Bush "govern least," it is disastrous. I'm not so naive as to think that this will bring about the end of voting-for-tax-cuts, but maybe it'll make people think that there are other things to fucking consider in a fucking candidate besides how much they'll tax people or regulate the economy, both the Democrats and Republicans are capitalists and the difference between their fiscal policy is fucking negligible. The chickens of this retarded way of thinking have come home to roost, and they are now shitting up the god damn place.

This was actually meant to be a well-reasoned argument about the folly of voting for fiscal conservatism while ignoring social liberty when the candidates that are supposedly fiscally conservative are the exact opposite, but now I am too angry and I'm just going to end this before I literally murder a person.

*fart noise*

FUUUUUCK YOOOUUUU

this is a post that sucks

plus i got depression

The Adorablest Journalists: Part Two: Amy Goodman

This week we'll be focusing on NPR's very own riot grrrl host of Democracy Now! and silver-haired vixen Amy Goodman.

corporate media must be held accountable, nyoro~n ^-^

Amy Goodman is something of a mythic figure among the alternative press, along with being a grade-A cutie! She's also famous for being beaten by East Timor soldiers while covering the independence movement of the Indonesian nation. How could you beat that face up? She looks like a tiny puppy! I'm glad I hadn't heard of East Timor before researching this article, it sounds like a terrible place!

She's such a sweety pie, I want to take her out to the carnival and win her a huge bear at a shooting gallery, and then listen to her object to the whole affair on the grounds that the fabric of the bear was mostly from petroleum products, and then stuffed with cotton picked by nonunionized exploited indigenous labor, and then sewn together by children in an impoverished and highly fascist state. I'd stare longingly into those deep eyes of hers as she mentioned that she wasn't so hot on the whole gun-oriented part of the incident either, and then steal a kiss on her world-weary cheek.


Amy Goodman should also be credited with making Pacifica, a mumbly and sheenless radio station that always sounds like its being broadcast out of your friend's dad's basement using the ham radio he tooled around with back in his days at Long Beach State, somewhat listenable. Her small and sensible voice coos through the airwaves like a bird ghost, purring reminders of the Iraq war and calling Fareed Zakaria a sellout in a pleasant West Coast drawl, lulling me into a sleepy outrage.

*sigh*

Perhaps the cutest thing about Amy Goodman is her undying belief that what she's doing matters. God, she's such a little trooper, apparently deciding that the best way to combat a press fueled by entertainment and the public's desire for sensational narrative is to present the news in the most boring and academic method possible. It's very brave of her, really, I couldn't imagine how hard it would be to establish myself as a media talking head whose only audience is made up of the small group of people who either already know what I'll be saying or already agree with my analysis. Oh, wait, shit.

shh, its okay amy goodman, im right here amy goodman

Goodman will likely be best known for being arrested at this year's Republican National Convention for reporting on some of the protests that were going on, which while not particularly adorable, is a hilarious metaphor for this current Republican administration in general. The police report officially stated there was "probable cause" that she would start a "riot." Looking back on it, I don't blame them. Just looking at her come-hither frown is causing a riot in my heart right now.

As we speak, my aorta is throwing a garbage can through the window of my lungs and my left ventricle just overturned my hyoid process. I'll be sending in white blood cells with rubber bullets within the hour, America. Within the hour. <3

B is for Barack. Or maybe Black.

A woman in Pittsburgh claimed to have been attacked by "a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes ... wearing dark colored jeans, a black undershirt and black shoes" for having a McCain bumper sticker.

Quoting sarahsarmy.blogspot.com (a pretty awesome blog, one of those whose hilarious earnestness and horrible grasp of everything from logic to formatting makes me wonder why we bother to try to be funny at all), in a post now deleted but still cached on Google:

More Hope, Change and Mutilation...

The McCain volunteer Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, was robbed at an ATM then had the letter “B” carved on her face by her Obama-supporting robber.

McCain has called the Ashley's family-- The attacker said the mugger was screaming about McCain when he beat her.

But that's horrible! A "B" you say? B for... Barack?!

Wait a second. I'm pretty sure that even poor, angry, criminal & illiterate minorities can write a B in... how do you say... not-reverse. What's the word for when something looks like it wasn't written while looking in a mirror? Yeah, I'm pretty sure even black people can make letters look like that.

P.S.- the attackers were black.

***

And in case you were wondering, Ashley Todd is currently being held in county jail for filing a false police report. The original story has been removed from most news sites, but it's still up here.


EDIT: pumpkins

The Paradox of John McCain, Praise Be Upon Him

According to AP, Senator John McCain has just been endorsed by Al Qaeda, which is funny, because this is exactly the kind of thing McCain said wouldn't happen to him back in April. Oh, wait, no, that's not why it's funny. It's funny because terrorists support John McCain because they think he's so incompetent and hotheaded that he'd destroy his own country trying to hunt down terrorists. Yes, that might be why it's funny.

It's getting to the point where I'm starting to feel bad for the McCain-Palin campaign, in the way that one feels bad for Jerry Lundegaard at the end of Fargo. Let's just take a walk through this election again, to see the watershed moments of retardation:

Prior to the conventions, McCain's entire narrative was centered around how only he had the experience and the competence to run the country, because he had seen more fucked up things in five minutes out there in the shit than Barack Obama had seen his whole life. Then, he picked Sarah "I'll be mayor of the Senate!!!!" Palin as his running mate and traded the experience and judgment line for the look-how-pretty line. Frankly, the move made no sense other than a cynical swiping of Obama's "change" and "history" tags, but everyone was too busy beating off at how well she was able to pronounce newclear to notice that she was very dumb. After Palin desperately talked her way out of such mindbending questions as "What newspapers do you like to read?" it's become clear that McCain has somehow flipped the competency argument against himself.

Immediately after this, Wall Street farted in its own mouth (shamefully) and McCain's story became about suspending his campaign to go personally the situation with his own withered hands. His criticisms of Obama then were about how little he was doing to help the economy. However, some of McCain's most recent talking points have had Obama painted as having deep socialist leanings and outrageously pink ideas, a lie that I wish in my deepest hearts were true. One could argue that these are contradictory claims, but then again, someone could argue that they are semantically distinct, so whatever. What's paradoxical about this is that McCain really seemed to be one of the bigger proponents of the bailout. Even if he was decrying its some of the pork attached to it, he suspended his presidential campaign just to make sure that something like it passed. He then went on to bring out his ill-fated government mortgage-buyout. I may be wrong about this, but I think in the next two or three days we're going to see a "Is John McCain the REAL Socialist?" arc spread throughout a lot of the media, just as was shown in the Daily Show clip. In fact, it looks as though Obama is starting to spread this himself.

And now, we have terrorism, the McCain camp's most stupid and easily-refutable, and thus most effective, charge against BHO. This Al-Qaeda endorsement story might not pick up as anything other than a novelty, but theoretically, we now for real have McCain's single most outlandish claim turning against himself. McCain has gone from the cool-handed, fiscally responsible American war hero that would be a moderate and perhaps even ineffectual interrim president to the crazy, bumbling, socialist terrorist wildman that will drive this country into the ground faster than a...well...navy plane, I suppose.

With Obama rubber to McCain's glue, what does the Republican candidate have left? With a large amount of famed conservatives and even the most disillusioned of liberals endorsing Barack, who does he have left? Oh, yes, that's right. The whole reasoning behind the Palin pick. The base. Thus, we see the final piece of the puzzle that has become this campaign: McCain exists like the protagonist of some magical realism novel: The opposite of every one of his desires appears to come true, and when he finally does something to make sure he gets what he wants, it becomes twisted and malformed. In order to secure the nomination during the primary, he threw away everything that anyone decent liked about him in the first place to boost his numbers among the base. He could have run as a centrist and won, but instead opted to run as some kind of megarepublican. Now, the only people that still ardently support him are either stubborn straight-ticket republicans or the very die-hard, fuckin'-muslims, HOOSAYN types he grew famous for not pandering to, because he based his campaign on pandering to them.

McCain will leave this campaign in these last two weeks in a very similar fashion to Fargo. I'm thinking in particular of the arrest of William H Macy's tragic villain: A weak smile, a deluded sense of confidence fueled by imminent salvation, always sure that his next trick is going to be the one that is going to be the one that rescues him, until his reckoning finally comes and he, pathetically, screams and wails at the unfairness of it all. You're tempted to feel bad for him, for he indeed was cheated out of the 2000 nomination with possibly the sleaziest and most offensive campaign of attacks seen in American elections. But my empathy can only go so far, especially when he starts doing the exact same sort of thing to his current opponent.

EDIT: Robert Draper of the NYT just published this excellent and eloquent discussion of the McCain campaign's meltdown, with emphasis in the struggle for his narrative. It's really well written and you should all just stop whatever you're doing and read it right now, please, okay, do it, thanks.

Ben Stein is an asshole.

I remember a time when the reigning view of Ben Stein was a smart, dry, and quite likable gent that happened to hold some conservative opinions on economics. Cut to a decade later and we have to put up with shit like Expelled! and its thesis that equates to, "You know who else believed in evolution? That's right..." When exactly did this metamorphasis from amicable uncle to embarrasingly beligerant grandfather take place.

It's not exactly like he was hiding it, being a speechwriter for Nixon and all. Still, in the time he was appearing in movies and television, his conservative views were barely noticable except for the occasional Laffer curve. Lately, however, he's been trying his hand at punditry and occasionally writing for Yahoo Finance, among others, penning articles like this: http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/111202

"Remember a few months ago when oil was heading ever higher, gasoline reached unheard of prices, and Americans were essentially hysterical? Remember when Americans demanded, actually screamed in the politicians' ears that we wanted to drill in our offshore areas? ...Amazingly, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives gave the American people a firm slap in the face while it planted a big wet sloppy kiss on the lips of Hollywood's glitterati."

"Hollywood's glitterati?" THAT'S YOU MOTHERFUCKER!

Sometime in the past few years, a Dennis Miller-like transformation occured, changing the once memorable comedic presence with a gimmick into the forgettable neo-con mouthpiece with a gimmick. After years of answering trivia and fending off gay jokes, Stein has established himself as a bit of a genius. But not like those west coast liberal elites. Ben is the working man's genius, here to take this big ol' situation and lay it all out for you. Just look at this article: http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/115733

"First of all, obviously, I don't know what the future will bring. If I knew the future, I would be the richest man on the planet very soon and I assure you I am very far from that. But I now see what has happened and I can explain that, and it might give a tiny bit of insight into what will happen in the future."

Please, Ben, give it to me straight.

"Start around 1995. Groups involved with civil rights issues and activities for poor people began to complain that poor people and especially non-white poor people got mortgages much less often than white well to do people. Many economists, including me, explained that it was not at all surprising that poorer, less credit worthy people were often turned down for credit. That's how credit is supposed to work: you lend to people who will pay you back. But the advocates for poor and black people had immense political clout. Under President Bill Clinton, they passed legislation that called on banks to be required to lend to non credit worthy borrowers."

You asshole.

Which brings me to the main point of this post. Other pundits have made the claim that banks were forced to give loans to minorities as an attack against Obama and hiss work as a community organizer. It's ugly, pathetic, and evil, but hell, it's an election. Campaigns take any oportunity to strike at their opponent and everybody forgets about it after November. Hopefully, the right will stop thinking community organizers are terrorist operatives, I'll forget John McCain started the Forrestal fire, and the world will keep spinning. But this isn't about that.

Ben Stein isn't bringing up this argument as a campaign attack. That is undoubtedly where this talking point originated from, but unlike other examples, he fails to mention Obama. Instead, Stein presents this simply as an economic situation: market tampering to aid poor individuals ("especially minorites") resulted in instability. Forget for a moment that the idea banks were forced into this is total bullshit. Forget that the official policy of the free market is apparently "fuck poor people." Ben Stein is saying that the economy is collapsing because banks gave black people money. Way to go Ben, you fucking asshole.

oh no he dident. ... no, he really didn't.

Maureen Dowd mentioned in her column three days ago:

I even felt a little thrill go up my leg, as Chris Matthews would put it, when I heard that the Lehman Brothers C.E.O., Richard Fuld, got punched in the company gym after it was announced that the firm was going under.

Although previously confirmed, the story is, in fact, not true.

But according to Fuld's people, it was: "It's absolutely untrue," said a spokesperson now representing Lehman in bankruptcy court. "It never happened."

Alex Greenberg, general manager of the Lehman fitness center, backed them up. “The statement that he was punched is not true,” he said, adding that I was the first person to ask. “It’s a matter of fact that he has not visited the club since the bankruptcy. We’re not even open on Sundays.” The knockout was said to have occurred on Sunday, September 21.

Vicky Ward, Maureen Dowd, and everyone else who took the rumor at face value don't understand America. Here, the proles sit back and take it. Balls deep. That's what makes this country great.

BIDEN OWNS

JUST WANTED TO REMIND Y'ALL THAT BIDEN IS A CERTIFIED BADASS



FFFUUUUCCCK LOOK AT THAT 9 1/2 MINUTES OF PURE PETRAEUS OWNAGE

MORE LIKE PETR-GAY-US



WHOA WHAT WAS THAT? IRAQ IS FOR SCRUBS? YOU TELL THEM JOE YOU ARE THE MIDNIGHT SHOGUN, HERE TO PURLOIN ALL THAT MEN HOLD DEAR IN THEIR NIGHTMARE MINDSCAPES



YES! YES! YES!



HE IS A WORD-WARRIOR, LISTEN TO HIS BATTLETALK

HERE'S A QUICK RUNDOWN:

BAD THINGS ABOUT JOE BIDEN

• HAS QUESTIONABLE POLICIES ON WAR ON DRUGS, RIAA AND DMCA STUFF, HAS LIKE LITERALLY THE BIGGEST BONER FOR ISRAEL IMAGINABLE
  
• IS OLD; WHITE

GOOD THINGS ABOUT JOE BIDEN:

• HE RULES

The Adorablest Journalists, Part One: Roland Martin

I'm starting today what I hope to be a multi-part series of showcases of journalists that I consider to be just precious. First up is CNN's baby-faced Roland Martin. Oh my God, I just want to kiss that tiny face of his!

He basically looks like an infant with a hipster beard. According to his bio, Roland's analysis is usually drawn upon in African-American matters. Ebony Magazine named him one of the 150 most influential African-American figures in 2008, which is a coincidence, because in 2008 I named him one of the top five little champions I want to throw up in the air and then catch and then give a zerbert to! I also like that he looks like one of those "cool babies" that were on posters in the '90s, with sunglasses and saxophones. He just does not give a fig, particularly when it comes to making sure his eyes are pointed in the same direction.

"heck yeah" - Roland Martin, 2008

Roland's also written extensively on issues of faith, which is awfully cute. I don't think he really cares about the God stuff all that much, I think he just likes to go to church to see his friends and play in the playground in the back after Sunday School. For Roland Martin's birthday, I am going to get him a Tonka Truck.

He also maintains a blog with a gigantic fucking typeset that somehow is harder to read than if it were smaller. Roland! That is too silly! Why did you do that!?

Here is a video of Roland being adorable for the camera on CNN the other day. Also, as a bonus, a woman says "cunt" twice.

From Wonkette

Roland Martin, you are a multifaceted and experienced contributor to my heart.

I'm Voting for McCain Now

Oh man the cast of Gossip Girl! Yeah, they get the picture. They're in touch with Obama's message. Especially the bits about the middle class. And fiscal responsibility at both the individual and government levels. The youth of today are our bright and shining hope!

This is Not a Post

I'm sorry to say that my inaugural post is about philosophy. Quick, David. Write up a new post and bury mine. (You know what would be really useful? One of those cut tag things that both LJ and typepad have. I think wordpress has it too. Fuck you, Blogger.)

I'm linking to a post on postmodern conservatism, which I got to via a link from the #1 female blogger I secretly want to make out with. (Unsettlingly pathetic fantasies of liplocking aside, I do want to make a note that I am in fact not a huge fucking libertarian, and do not agree with Megan McArdle to as much of an extent as many suppose.)

Freddie of L'Hôte writes on the contradiction of postmodern conservatism, namely that it doesn't seem like one can make a choice to be traditional in an existential sense, since embracing conservative "traditional" values involves a very selective memory of the "old days". As the Daily Show put it:

The Republican Party is the party of nostalgia. It seeks to return America to a simpler, more innocent and moral past that never actually existed.

I won't claim to have any knowledge on the subject of existentialism just because I stumbled through a couple of brain-wrenching classes on Heidegger (often referred to as "Gaydegger," "Heidegay," and "Ugh" by my friends, who are all very sick of hearing about him), but it interests me to read that

If you are aware that you've made a choice to embrace the traditional, you can't possibly accept the traditional in the same way that those heady champions of "the '50s" simulacra did. For them there were not choices of identity, there was the way the world was. A person in those days would be baffled at the notion of "exploring the traditional." Explore what? There's no need for exploration if what you've lived is really what is.

"Are you sure?" I say doubtfully. All I can think of is having to write my second paper for that class on Being and Time's Division II. Especially this weird and awful passage in Chapter 5:

Resoluteness implies handing oneself down by anticipation to the "there" of the moment of vision; and this handing down we call "fate". This is also the ground for destiny, by which we understand Dasein's historizing in Being-with Others. In repetition, fateful destiny can be disclosed explicitly as bound up with the heritage which has come down to us.

Weird for self-evident reasons. Awful in its historical context. I argued (rather unsuccessfully, to tell you the truth) in my paper that the idea of destiny (a collective authentic historizing) contradicts the rest of Being and Time, and hence we don't have to worry too much about the chilling words of creepy!Heidegger. (On the other hand, destiny is what it's all about in The Origin of the Work of Art. So much for trying to save Heidegger from himself.) (I say this very flippantly while demonstrating a flagrant disregard for serious Heidegger scholarship.)

Basically I want to ask:

What exactly is terribly contradictory about "repeating" the past-- not recreating it blindly, but making Heidegger's reciprocal rejoinder, a "response to that which in the 'today', is working itself out as the 'past'." We can all agree on this incredible quote from Alan Ehrenhalt, via this link which was linked in the pomocon post which was linked in the McArdle post, etc:

"What we want is to edit [the 50s]. We want to keep the safe streets, the friendly grocers, and the milk and cookies, while blotting out the political bosses, the tyrannical headmasters, the inflexible rules, and the lectures on 100 percent Americanism. But there is no easy way to have an orderly world without somebody making the rules by which order is preserved. Every dream we have about re-creating community in the absence of authority will turn out to be a pipe dream in the end. This is a lesson that people who call themselves conservatives seem determined not to learn."

No, we don't want the real 50s back. But perhaps what postmodern conservatives see in the moment of vision is a 50s simultaneously curbed and liberated by the circumstances of today. We can't and won't have the political bosses and the Lucky Strikes and the oppressive chauvinism-- it doesn't make sense in the here and the now. (We can't have Marilyn Monroe either, no matter how hard Lindsay tries.) I can see a (specifically Heideggerian) way of being a conservative existentialist, but on the other hand, I doubt that many can squeeze through Scylla and Charybdis to get there.

Freddie also says:

Because this, to me, is a simple fact: the chaos of meaning kills conservatism.

... How can traditionalism survive, when you know that mere human subjectivity is the source of tradition?

This strikes me as particularly apt, though I don't think that the problem is that the pomocon has made an intellectual choice to be a conservative. The problem here is that conservatism tends to depend horribly upon there being an observer-nonrelative basis to their views. (It's usually God, but there's also natural law). I think an existentialist shouldn't, by definition, subscribe to the belief that there are brute facts that necessitate their social beliefs. I don't want to pick at whether it is actually necessary to have an observer-nonrelative basis to conservative views. I don't see any such necessity prima facie, but honestly I don't give enough of a shit to engage in deep thought over it. The thought of anyone believing in natural law is enough to make me gag and reach for dramamine.

***

What I really want to point out is that the question of retreading history is not unique to conservatives. I've already heard David express a vague wish to see a new Depression era. (And it sounded just as bad as it looks in type. You're a dick, David.) I've seen a newspaper article describe a speech Obama made on the Wall Street situation as "channeling FDR."

But we're not the Depression Era. We can't be, even if we wanted to-- which we definitely don't. There are plenty of reasons, even without the whole Depression part of the Depression Era, not to want to be in the Depression Era (yeah, David, THAT'S FUCKING RIGHT!). If/when we retread history, we must do it on our own terms. Face it, there's just no goddamn way we're going to launch World War III and power up our economy that way.

If anything, the lesson of the moment is not a chant of, "We know it all, we've seen it all before; we know it all, we've read it all before." The lesson is that we don't know. We can't know. The things we don't see coming are the really big, really important things. This moment in history is not completely different from what's come before, but it's still a unique moment.

***

I think I should end all my posts with oddly relevant lyrics from the 80s, one of the most retarded modern decades. That should be my thing.

More than this
You know there's nothing
More than this
No, there's nothing

***

addendum / fake edit:

An attack on postmodernism along predictable lines. I've read more or less the same thing from Sokal and Dawkins (Sokal was funnier, IMO), I've also heard it also articulated awkwardly by one of my more infuriating boyfriends. Guess who. A reply. A counter-reply in the comments of that reply. I'm linking these because I realized I'm going to get some wtfs. I'm sorry, I'm really bad at explanations. I don't have the gift of explaining without the fallacious reductions. Maybe I should just not post this, but fuck you guys, I spent way too much time writing this. Seriously, fuck you.

Haha, Fuck You National Review

Christopher Buckley, son of conservative scholar-king and all-around terrible person William F Buckley, just resigned from the National Review, a piece of shit paper for retards. All this stems from a pile of heat he received for endorsing Obama over McCain. Select pro-quote:

"While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case."

What I really like about this quote is that he immediately follows it with this nugget:

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

Hmm, yes, Reagan, a real conservative, a man with an administration bereft of questionable foreign policy, lacking in money-sinking programs, and entirely and utterly without any expansion of the national debt.

In response, I had this to say:

lol