AmbivaBlog

"Reading that book is the ideological equivalent of training with a gun." [UPDATED]

"While Obama was mentored by communists and anarchists, I was reading Ayn Rand."  Seablogger commends Atlas Shrugged as "armament for the ordeal ahead."  More literally, a commenter here says the conservatives he knows are "buying guns and ammo."

More of this astonishing, apocalyptic war talk from the right.  To listen to them, the American way of life is ending as we speak.  Are these writers being melodramatic, to envision a heroic role for themselves?  (Life has been too soft, these last decades.)  Is there a xenophobic, racial streak, a fear that America is about to be (or already has been) drowned in a tsunami of dark-skinned, non-English-speaking aliens?  Or are all those of us who don't see it in such extreme terms at best fatted calves waiting for slaughter?

And at worst?

UPDATE:  The Ayn Rand meme has legs.

What We Take for Granted

Unfortunately, this video can't be embedded.  But it's a must watch -- a "hilarious and perceptive rant," in the words of Ally who sent me the link, on our sense of entitlement to nanoinstant gratification, outpacing even the very technology that enables it.

"Thirteen dead people appear out of the blue in the center of Warsaw. It provokes the deepest astonishment, amazement and suspicion."

The Bodies exhibit of flayed and plastinated human corpses makes some Poles think of Auschwitz.

Have an "Identity Refreshment."

Upscale, green, "spiritual" marketing reaches new heights of suave, earth-toned smarminess.

See also this.

"Fiscal Responsibility is the New Counterculture."

"A grass-roots revolt against the culture of entitlement." 

A "very peaceful and respectful" revolt, so far, they say.

But not a very big one.  So far.

Happy Trails

Sometimes just following links is like being a nose-to-the-ground bloodhound, sniffing, tail-wagging, and occasionally throwing one's nose skyward and baying.  (This image comes to mind because we have a bloodhound neighbor, with the marvelous name of Yonder, who goes by our bedroom window every day, and whose owner tickled J pink by being this guy's daughter.)

Starting with Icepick's links about Human Biodiversity (HBD), a fascinating if treacherous field concerning the politically-incorrect topic of group genetic differences, I wound up at the intersection of two roads I've been on before, Gene Expression (the blog) and Charles Murray (the controversial coauthor of The Bell Curve whose observation on the Larry Summers-women-and-science flap I was surprised to find myself agreeing with). GNXP has a fascinating series of "ten questions" interviews, and here's Murray's.  He has left an interesting and varied professional trail; you may not have known that he's a declared libertarian who advocates a modest annual cash grant to every individual (out of which they'd be required to buy health insurance) to replace all other government transfers.

The bit that especially caught my eye, though, was in Murray's answer to question 9, "Can you tell us about occasions on which you've discovered something which profoundly altered your beliefs?" 

I have been an agnostic since my teens. But I am increasingly drawn to the proposition that of all the hypotheses about God, simple atheism is the least probable. That to be a confident atheist is the silliest of intellectual positions. That thinking about spiritual issues, despite all the difficulties, must be part of being a grown-up.

Now there's a wild card for ya.  Or is it just a natural consequence of the conservative company he keeps?

"I Don't Really Feel Like a Member of the Human Race." [UPDATED]

George Carlin's last interview, nine days before he died.

[T]hey say if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist—that’s what’s underneath. That’s the little flicker of flame, has a little life in it, the idealist: I would love to be able to entertain that side of me, but it doesn’t work like that. I don’t see what’s in it yet, I mean I just like it out here.

I’m not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans’ choices . . .people mistake it for a personal anger but it’s more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we’ve settled for. . . .

I am contemptuous of the mass. That’s the thing I need to explain. One on one with people, I have great capacity and great compassion. I don’t like standing around 20 minutes talking to somebody, but when I see individuals, I see their individual beauty. I’m aware of the potential—and I don’t mean this happened every time I meet someone—but when I see people, I sort of see the potential for the whole species. When you look in their eyes, you can see a hologram of the human species and you kind of know what we could have been.

UPDATE:  Sentiments oddly echoed by the now-late science-fiction writer Philip José Farmer:

An agnostic from the age of 14, Mr. Farmer was ambivalent about humanity’s hunger for life after death. “I can’t see any reason why such miserable, unhappy, vicious, stupid, conniving, greedy, narrow-minded, self-absorbed beings should have immortality," he said in Science Fiction Review in 1975.

But he added, “When considering individuals, then I feel, yes, this person, that person, certainly deserves another chance.” Life on this planet, he said “is too short, too crowded, too hurried, too beset."

Why I Sometimes Hate Science.

TIME's article titled "Why Dreams Mean Less Than We Think."

Smug and stupid.  There's no mystery, only ignorance.  Like we don't need more meaning, not less.  In a world devoid of meaning, science -- mostly pharmaceutical science -- will rule.  A pill, not a thought, for every existential discomfort.  You're just a machine, your experience a side effect of neurological indigestion.  The Traumwerk, the dreamwork of processing experience, struggling to make a work of art out of your life instead of a meaningless jumble -- this is mere metabolism, the mental equivalent of a bubble of gas in the intestine? 

Without dreams, life would be poor and literal, a drab work of socialist realism.  Dreams are the other half of life, the downward-growing trees reflected in puddles after a good rain, making the earth transparent. 

Dreams harrow the hardened earth of habit and allow something new to germinate.

Dreams take the "day residue," and a part random, part inspired selection of other contents going back to our infancy and the infancy of our species (genus?  class?  kingdom?), and shake them up as if in a kaleidoscope to allow new patterns to form, patterns not chained to time, logic, physical laws, or causality.  Great scientific problems have been solved in dreams, as well as great works of art sparked and great personal problems illuminated.  The joy of flying has been experienced without a machine.  The mixed emotions have been purified to their essences.  (Rilke wrote of an apothecary jar with the words Sobrisio saltat. on it -- smile of acrobat.)  You say if there is meaning there it's "only" because we put it there?  So why are we presented with these custom Rorschach blots to find meaning in?  It's a system of sheer genius, natural poetry.  If it evolved by natural selection, it must have done so because it enhanced our possession of meaning and mystery, which in turn enhanced our feeling that there was some point in surviving. 

Now science is going to explain all this away? 

Idiots.

Are Republicans Getting Desperate?

"A movement self-confident in its place in American society would not have made Joe the Plumber a bigger story than he actually was."

Do not miss this -- it's a really good piece by Patrick Ruffini at The Next RIght.

Demographically, Democrats rely on being the party of the upper sixth and the lower third, while Republicans tend to do better with everyone in between. When we start losing the middle class and the suburbs, we lose big like we did in 2008. 

Put another way, Republicans thrive as the party of normal Americans -- the people in the middle culturally and economically. [...] Our base is the common-sense voter in the middle who bought a house she could afford and didn't lavishly overspend in good times and who is now subsidizing the person who didn't. 

When you think about it, a majority built around this solid middle-American base should beat the disjointed liberal rich/poor coalition. This sense of frugality, orderliness, and personal responsibility is something [everyone] aspires to in difficult times. This is why Obama's pitch is fundamentally off-key if framed correctly. People's first instincts in a recession are not to overspend, but to tighten their belts. Obama's address last night assumed that no one is responsible for anything, except maybe corporate CEOs. The banks as institutions are not ultimately responsible. People who took out risky mortgages are not responsible. The Administration is not responsible for sharing in the pain by postponing longer-term projects like health care. And even if they are, everything in a recession is subsumed to the need to throw money at the problem in an attempt to stabilize the system. The risk for Obama in embracing the bailout mentality is that it catches up to you: this is not how ordinary people act in their daily lives without major consequences down the road. [...]

I love Newt's emphasis on finding 80/20 issues* and defining them in completely non-ideological terms. We need to advance our ideas without ever once saying the word "conservative" or "Republican" in a speech. We need to define these ideas not as conservative, but as American. We need to be confident, like the left is, that we are the natural governing party because our ideas are in alignment with basic American principles, and quit treating middle class, working class, or rural Americans like an interest group to be mollified by symbolic, substance-free BS.

*As for Newt's document, I read the list of the top ten priorities and was disappointed in it, given how strongly it was hyped.  It's basically:  Yay English!  (the language)  Yay fossil fuels!  (drill baby drill, clean coal).  Yay God!  ("Keeping the reference to 'One Nation Under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance is very important.")  Newt calls this a "blueprint for real change"?  "English should be the official language of government" --  common sense, but the #1 priority?  The theme of this document is, rather, "Keep things from changing too far, too fast."  That's a needed brake on change that threatens to spin out of control, throwing away priceless values and rendering America unrecognizable; just don't package it as what it's not.  It's anti-change.  I.e., conserve-atism.

We are facing major changes whether we like it or not:  the ascendancy of China and the necessity of finding new, post-fossil-fuel energy technologies, for two.  How to face those changes forthrightly from a base of solid values seems the question, not how to wish them away.  The right's tendency to nativism and the left's tendency to protectionism both seem based on fear rather than confidence, defense rather than preemption.

We've gotten past a major hurdle:  inclusiveness.  People of all kinds are now found in all kinds of places (speaking English a mile a minute).  Americans are now organized by their ideas more than by their categories, which is hugely freeing from a major waste of energy.  Fine.  Now we still have to go forward without breaking with our roots.  Newt's document seems to me an example of what commenter Simon said on this post:  "You have to do what the people want? What if the people want to do something really stupid?"  Like, just keep gasoline cheap!

Kingmaker Rush . . .

. . . reties the gold foil crown firmly under the chin of Bobby Jindal, who got disappointed reviews at best across the political spectrum for his Republican rejoinder to Obama's address last night.

Is Rush just a jester or does he have real political power?  And does he want it, do you think?  If so, will he have the effect of uniting or dividing, galvanizing or polarizing the Republican party?

It's interesting to watch who's queuing up to lead the party back out of the wilderness, and the different spins each would put on it:  Eric Cantor ("in the Gingrich mold" and also "the only Jewish Republican in the House"), Jindal, Palin (currently having minor public-trough troubles) . . . which of these "minorities" could reunite the Reagan majority?  It's interesting, too, that the front men and women now are of Obama's generation and the war babies and baby boomers, less photogenic but wilier -- Gingrich, Limbaugh, Huckabee, Steele -- have withdrawn into official or unofficial backroom positions.

Obama, however, was his own kingmaker and front man in one.  He's exceptionally wily for his age.  But then, Illinois is some stewpot to be seasoned in.