French Theory: No Longer Trendy; Still Bullshit
See, now the old me would have wasted an hour explaining exactly why Stanley Fish is full of excrement about this (as he is about, well, mostly everything else).
But not this time. Instead, I just point you to it and note that it's excrement and move on.
I think I'm growing as a person.
I might get bored enough to go through it, or some other philosopher somewhere might be so bored--though even somebody who isn't used to wading through this stuff could figure it out with some time and effort, I think. It'd just take more time than it was worth.
Heck, I think everybody should do a little philosophy now and then, but the fact of the matter is, lots of folks in other disciplines think they're good at it but aren't. Many literary critics, anthropologists, sociologists, and even some actual scientists all seem to think that philosophy is something that everybody is just naturally good at. Hey, it's fun, and if you're good at bullshitting, then you can write stuff that will be vaporous enough that most experts won't be able to see how excrementous it is! But philosophy done by literary critics is almost uniformly awful. About like literary criticism done by philosophers, I'd think.
O.k., look, just one little point. Check out Fish's list of the up sides of the French literary theory (or just "Theory" to the hipsters) fad:
Translation, correcting for bullshit:
It opened up new avenues of investigation that all turned out to be complete dead ends, it deified some new and particularly bullshitty bullshitters (e.g. Lyotard, De Mann, Fish), it gave us some very, very irritating jargon that dumb people could use to try to sound smart ("deconstruction," "valorize," "narrative," "meta-narrative," etc.), it produced whole journals devoted to bullshit (e.g. Social Text), and it wasted lots of taxpayers' money by sending bullshitters to a lot of chic and trendy parties masquerading as academic conferences. (Read David Lodge's Small World for an amusing parody of it all.)
Thanks, French "theory"!
Seriously. This is not just me being cranky. This stuff is a complete waste of time. I guess it's no longer trendy, but it's still around. All those folks who studied that stuff in grad school are now teaching college. The crap they're spouting might not be the cool thing anymore, but students will be subjected to it for the next forty years at least.
A fairly high price to pay, I'd say, just to give Mr. Fish and his posse an excuse to fly to Barbados on the public's dime.
See, now the old me would have wasted an hour explaining exactly why Stanley Fish is full of excrement about this (as he is about, well, mostly everything else).
But not this time. Instead, I just point you to it and note that it's excrement and move on.
I think I'm growing as a person.
I might get bored enough to go through it, or some other philosopher somewhere might be so bored--though even somebody who isn't used to wading through this stuff could figure it out with some time and effort, I think. It'd just take more time than it was worth.
Heck, I think everybody should do a little philosophy now and then, but the fact of the matter is, lots of folks in other disciplines think they're good at it but aren't. Many literary critics, anthropologists, sociologists, and even some actual scientists all seem to think that philosophy is something that everybody is just naturally good at. Hey, it's fun, and if you're good at bullshitting, then you can write stuff that will be vaporous enough that most experts won't be able to see how excrementous it is! But philosophy done by literary critics is almost uniformly awful. About like literary criticism done by philosophers, I'd think.
O.k., look, just one little point. Check out Fish's list of the up sides of the French literary theory (or just "Theory" to the hipsters) fad:
And it also had its glories, new avenues of investigation opening up everyday, new heroes to put on a pedestal, new vocabularies to apply to old texts, new venues for publication, an exciting round of conferences, many of them taking place in exotic locations.Yup. Those are supposed to be the positives. It produced new "heroes" to "put on a pedestal," new "vocabularies," new journals for people to publish in, and hip and trendy conferences (see previous "advantage") in exotic places.
Translation, correcting for bullshit:
It opened up new avenues of investigation that all turned out to be complete dead ends, it deified some new and particularly bullshitty bullshitters (e.g. Lyotard, De Mann, Fish), it gave us some very, very irritating jargon that dumb people could use to try to sound smart ("deconstruction," "valorize," "narrative," "meta-narrative," etc.), it produced whole journals devoted to bullshit (e.g. Social Text), and it wasted lots of taxpayers' money by sending bullshitters to a lot of chic and trendy parties masquerading as academic conferences. (Read David Lodge's Small World for an amusing parody of it all.)
Thanks, French "theory"!
Seriously. This is not just me being cranky. This stuff is a complete waste of time. I guess it's no longer trendy, but it's still around. All those folks who studied that stuff in grad school are now teaching college. The crap they're spouting might not be the cool thing anymore, but students will be subjected to it for the next forty years at least.
A fairly high price to pay, I'd say, just to give Mr. Fish and his posse an excuse to fly to Barbados on the public's dime.
posted by Winston Smith at
1:00 PM
41 Comments:
And you know what's worse than looking at it from afar as a philosopher?
Standing waist-deep in it trying to study religion.
amen brother
but I'm in english... the motherlair
Good god, man.
My thoughts are with you.
Egad...right...English departments are like the Mordor of postmodernism...
Good luck.
But not this time. Instead, I just point you to it and note that it's excrement and move on.
I think I'm growing as a person.
I might get bored enough to go through it, or some other philosopher somewhere might be so bored
Point who to it, exactly, WS? Mystic? Your fellow philosopher, I suppose.
Koo koo cachoo.
Legate Van Dyke demonstrates the philopsophy of the Pavlovian reflex, as he comments as though it was himself and not French theory that was under the approbation of WS.
I am the eggman, I am the Walrus."
All the chords are major chords or seventh chords, and all the musical letters of the alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G) are used. The song ends with a chord progression built on ascending and descending lines in the bass and strings, repeated over and over as the song fades. Musicologist Alan W. Pollack analyses: "The chord progression of the outro itself is a harmonic Moebius strip with scales in bassline and top voice that move in contrary motion."[6] The bassline descends stepwise A, G, F, E, D, C, and B, while the strings' part rises A, B, C, D, E, F#, G: this sequence repeats as the song fades, with the strings rising higher on each iteration. Pollack also notes that the repeated cell is seven bars long, which means that a different chord begins each four-bar phrase.
The song also contains the exclamation goo goo g'joob. Various hypotheses exist regarding the origin and meaning. One is that the phrase was derived from the similar "koo koo ka choo" in Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson, written in 1967. However, the film The Graduate, where "Mrs. Robinson" debuted, did not appear until December 1967, a month after "I Am the Walrus", and The Graduate Original Soundtrack (which contained only fragments of the final version of "Mrs Robinson") was not until January 1968.
James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains the words googoo goosth at the top of page *557, where it appears:
...like milk-juggles as if it was the wrake of the hapspurus or old Kong Gander O'Toole of the Mountains or his googoo goosth she seein, sliving off over the sawdust lobby out of the backroom, wan ter, that was everywans in turruns, in his honeymoon trim, holding up his fingerhals...
It is not clear that Joyce is the source, or what it would mean if he were, but it has been a hypothesis put forward by fans of both artists.[8]
Another theory about the phrase's origin is that goo goo g'joob were the last words of Humpty Dumpty before he died [9]
The Doctor Who serial The Three Doctors references the song. It happens when one of the Doctors tries to explain that he and the other two Doctors are all the same person. His explanation follows closely to the lyrics when he says, "I am he, and he is me..." Jo Grant, his main companion at the time, breaks in and finishes the line, "and we are all together, goo goo goo joob?" This confuses the Doctors until the assistant explains, "It's a song by the Beatles."
I wonder what a philosophic Moebius strip looks like, or would a philosophical Klein bottle be a better description of Legate Van Dykes' contributions here....................
In mathematics, the Klein bottle is a certain non-orientable surface, i.e., a surface (a two-dimensional topological space) with no distinct "inner" and "outer" sides
Ah, it's goo goo g'joob, then. Thank you, DA.
The story about the end of the song is interesting. It was McCartney who was into Stockhausen and he used a similar technique at the end of "A Day in the Life."
[The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was once asked whether he had conducted any Stockhausen. He replied: "No, but I once trod in some." ]
As for my contributions, you might be right, or it just might all seem that way to the one-dimensional mind.
Goo goo g'joob.
Non-orientable struck me as a good characterization of the posts that I don't respond to, and I did characterize your musings here as having a fractal(and therefore, multi-dimensional) character in the past.
This character is multi-dimensional as well. :>)
Hehe. You get me, DA, sort of.
Ssuartsoel.
[Not that it helps with the persecution any...]
Critical views of Strauss
Nicholas Xenos similarly argues that Strauss "was not an anti-liberal in the sense in which we commonly mean 'anti-liberal' today, but an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. Strauss was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of pure fascism."[20] As evidence, Xenos cites Strauss's attempt in 1933 to gain favor with Charles Maurras, the leader of the right-wing Action Française, as well as a letter Strauss wrote to his friend Karl Löwith in 1933 in which he defended the politics of the right against the Nazis. Strauss wrote that "just because Germany has turned to the right and has expelled us, it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected. To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right – fascist, authoritarian, imperial – is it possible in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man’ to protest against the mean nonentity."[20]
Strauss is also criticized by some on the right, especially by paleoconservatives. For example, Paul Gottfried expresses the viewpoint that Strauss' ideology is not really conservative or right-wing at all; for example:
The Democrats are less inclined than the Republicans to push the war policies favored by the Straussians. Although this reluctance may be due to their preoccupation with social questions at home, the Democrats are less open than the Republicans to Straussian imperial projects at the present time, if not necessarily for the future. Moreover, the establishment Right and its Republican organizational structure have become scavengers, living off yesterday’s leftist rhetoric. What Claes Ryn calls the "new Jacobinism" of the neoconservative- and Straussian-controlled pseudo-Right is no longer "new." It is the warmed-over rhetoric of Saint-Juste and Trotsky that the philosophically impoverished American Right has taken over with mindless alacrity. Republican operators and think tanks apparently believe they can carry the electorate by appealing to yesterday’s leftist clichés.
As for persecution, one is reminded of this observation:
The persecutor of God. -- Paul thought up the idea and Calvin rethought it, that for innumerable people damnation has been decreed from eternity, and that this beautiful world plan was instituted to reveal the glory of God: heaven and hell and humanity are thus supposed to exist - to satisfy the vanity of God! What cruel and insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought this up first, or second. Paul has remained Saul after all - the persecutor of God.
from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadow, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
I've read quite a bit of Strauss, and all I can say is don't believe everything you read from his undermanned critics. For one thing, he would have ridiculed the Iraq war as "making the world safe for democracy" Wilsonianism. His connection with the neo-cons is garbage.
That said, his method of "close reading" is invaluable.
And for the record, I happen to oppose Strauss in many ways, but like all good philosophers, there is much to agree with.
As for Nietzsche, this is also true: I don't agree with a word, but he is never wrong. Another Klein bottle from TVD if you will, but that's the nature of things...
Egad, DA...Strauss?
Now we're moving into SERIOUS bullshit territory...
Right on schedule, WS, just as Strauss predicted.
I'm not sympathetic towards someone who expresses the sentiments Strauss does in the letter excerpt I took from the WIkipedia entry.
That could be because Mother Avenger was a 'guest' of the Japanese Imperial Army in Shanghai, China, when she was a child for 1.5 years until the two A-bombs were dropped. I have a non-tolerance for BS in the name of evil. I'm sure that Strauss had a counterpart somewhere in Japan justifying the establishment of the "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" at the same time, but with highly refined BS, the "Supreme" grade to Strauss' "Regular" as quoted above.
Legate Van Dyke, did Strauss leave behind any good stock tips as well as predicting that WS(and presumibly me as well) would diss him at this point in time?
Actually the 1933 letter to Loewith requires careful study, first of all, what was meant by "fascism" in 1933, which is not what it means in 2008.
And yes, he predicted that some or most would prefer the Wikipedia to the actual source---which I courteously linked for you---since the latter requires actual effort.
Neither is agreement required to learn something from someone else, as WS and apparently you are unable to do. I endorsed Strauss' method of careful reading, not his conclusions, a point that you have skipped over.
Are you serious about your mom, DA??
Wow. That's astonishing! She must be made of pretty stern stuff.
I shouldn't be piping up, only seeing half of what's going on here, but Strauss is such a joke that mention of him evoked the blog-comment-ish equivalent of a laugh from me.
My good and extremely smart and level-headed friend S. rex was forced to endure a whole class in poly sci grad school taught from a "Straussian" perspective. By the end of it he could only speak about the experience in bewildered terms. "Strausians" are like cult. Baffling phenomenon.
You almost never run into 'em in philosophy. It's a movement based on only the wispiest of reasons. A complicated yarn spun out from very little actual evidence or reasoning. If you get sucked in by those people and try reasoning with them, you will ultimately only face two options: (a) give up and leave or (b) keep going forever. As with so many nutty true believers, actual, rational inquiry is out of the question. They will never, ever give up on their quasi-religious conviction. And you won't learn much from them. So discussion with 'em is pretty much pointless
It's weird how these intellectual cults crop up. Or maybe it's the commonest of things...
In other words, WS, you know nothing about Leo Strauss but have an opinion about him anyway. Well done.
As a matter of fact, there is no normative "Straussianism" to speak of. Whatever your friend got in the class was his teacher's version of Strauss, not Strauss himself. Strauss' best virtue was his openmindedness, to question not only others, but our own presumptions.
One of his students wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," and it's on exhibit here.
In other words, WS, you know nothing about Leo Strauss but have an opinion about him anyway.
As with so many nutty true believers, actual, rational inquiry is out of the question. They will never, ever give up on their quasi-religious conviction. And you won't learn much from them. So discussion with 'em is pretty much pointless
Legate Van Dyke has just 'proven' your observation, so I'd say that you're more of a prophet than poor, misunderstood Leo......
Not at all, DA, for whom I still held out hope for as an individual. You were presented with the chance to read Leo Strauss for yourself without WS' filtering or Wikipedia's, or even mine.
You took the easy way out and bought second-hand goods for full retail price.
Well, as you know, DA, I don't read TVD's comments anymore since I finally came to recognize that he's about 80% troll. And I can highly recommend the policy. But I find the comment you quote amusing. He gets his panties in a wad like this with some frequency. As usual, he knows absolutely noting about how much I know about this Strauss fellow. Actually, I'm embarrassed to know as much as I know. And I know anything only because I find kooks of that kind intriguing. He's (rightly) almost completely ignored in academic philosophy, and only a minor figure in poly sci as I understand it.
Oh, and stage two of TVD's little tantrum--if he sticks to form--will be the part where he pretends to know a lot about the person in question (as happened with, e.g., Rorty, Habermas. And as for theories: fallibilism), and then throws out some info such that it's painfully obvious that it came from Wikipedia or the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The cherry on top will often be a quote that doesn't say what he says it says. Sprinkle liberally with a condescending tone, and add at least one suggestion that I'd be ever so much better off if only I were half the philosopher TVD is.
So I'm happy I'm missing it. Please warn me in the future if you're going to quote him. 'Cause see? I just wasted five minutes of my precious life instead of getting actual work done.
Sorry, Legate Van Dyke, but I recognized BS when I followed your link to the Strauss and read a few pages.
You took the easy way out and bought second-hand goods for full retail price.
No, you're like a salesman who blames the customers for his/her stack of unsold goods, you can't have made a mistake, it's everyone else who doesn't recognize the wonderful stuff you're offering today.
"Don't bullshit a bullshitter"
Mother Avenger
As usual, he knows absolutely noting about how much I know about this Strauss fellow.
Nor I, for that matter, but that doesn't keep his annoying "I know what you didn't read last summer--or since this thread started" from being put to work here.
Sprinkle liberally with a condescending tone, and add at least one suggestion that I'd be ever so much better off if only I were half the philosopher TVD is.
Yes, it's funny how a great mind like his can't convince anyone of his points and he resorts to glib putdowns when his wisdom isn't given the proper honor and approval
From Memory Alpha:
Kiri-kin-tha was a Vulcan scholar and follower of Surak's teachings. Kiri-kin-tha's First Law of Metaphysics is "Nothing unreal exists."
Fortunately, Kiri-kin-tha never read any of Legate Van Dykes' posts, or he'd have had to reformulate his teachings........
But I wasn't selling anything. I was opposing militant ignorism. You don't like Strauss, fine. But you've presented nothing except the Wikipedia and a misunderstanding of what fascism meant in 1933.
WS says absolutely nothing of substance, once again, yet expresses it authoritatively. No, you don't know bullshit when you see it.
Your special pleading(Leo was using fascism in a different way than the word is used in 2008) is unconvincing at best, and intellectually repellent at worse.
WS says absolutely nothing of substance, once again,
You remind me of the old line, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes!"
It's not a special pleading, it's a fact, one that I'd hoped you'd look up on your own, since you seem unable to listen to anything I have to say without jumping down my throat, which is why I didn't continue.
[And Heidegger was a Nazi. Where does that leave you and your condemnations?]
As for WS, what did he say of substance besides that the other fellow is bullshit, which is his favorite method of discourse, whether it's me or Habermas or Rorty or the Frenchies or Strauss or...
In the years I've written here, I scarcely mentioned Strauss [perhaps never] because as a "professional" academic "philosopher," WS' reaction was entirely predictable. His is the entirely conventional academic spew that shouts down what it doesn't want to hear.
At least "Henry" at Crooked Timber has some promise as a philosopher, the main requirement being an acknowledgment that nothing is truly permanently settled. A "professional philosopher" can easily be as dogmatic as any preacher.
"Henry" is persuasive here in condemning [dismissing] Strauss, but one must follow down to comments 36-38.
http://crookedtimber.org/2003/10/03/what-was-leo-strauss-up-to/
And it's a shame Henry apparently never had the civil discussion he refers to at the end. It would have been groundbreaking for a member of the left-liberal academic establishment to actively solicit opposing opinions. Most of them militantly avoid them, as we see here.
See, DA, whenever you quote Tom without warning, I see it.
But, since I DID see it, let me say:
Tom, you are completely full of shit, as usual.
That's why I don't respond to you or even read your comments anymore. You haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about. As for substance--I don't try to respond to you with substance because you cannot be reasoned with. (Once again: if you doubt that, go back and look at the last thread in which I DID try to reason with you--the 200 comment thread on religion and democracy. You either can't tell or won't admit when you are wrong, no matter how thoroughly you've been refuted. So why should I bother? You even can't tell or won't admit when you've changed positions. Trying to reason with you is an exercise in futility.
Seriously, man. Why not just go somewhere else?
And don't let the screen door bang you in the ass on the way out.
And DA: puh-leeeez warn me before quoting that guy.
Warning: TVD quote ahead!:
It's not a special pleading, it's a fact, one that I'd hoped you'd look up on your own, since you seem unable to listen to anything I have to say without jumping down my throat, which is why I didn't continue.
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less"
you seem unable to listen
You seem unable to state your case other than repeating "Read Strauss! Then you'll understand! Read Strauss! Then you'll understand!"
[And Heidegger was a Nazi. Where does that leave you and your condemnations?]
Nice try at changing the subject, but your attempt to divert attention from the lack of substance behind your assertions works as well this time as it has in the past, which is to say, not at all.
As for WS, what did he say of substance besides that the other fellow is bullshit, which is his favorite method of discourse, whether it's me or Habermas or Rorty or the Frenchies or Strauss or...
Actually, if you look it up, he had some good things to say about Rorty after he passed away in 2007, he just doesn't have good things to say about the BS you try to pull off about Rorty and the thinkers you mentioned.
I had rather more respect for Rorty than I have for those who want to have their cake and eat it too by embracing naturalism and physicalism while ignoring what seem to be their more radical consequences.
His is the entirely conventional academic spew that shouts down what it doesn't want to hear.
Then why bother to post here if he's such an unfair 'academic' in the first place?
At least "Henry" at Crooked Timber
Nice passive-agressive move, Legate Van Dyke: "Why can you fellows be nice like Henry?"
the main requirement being an acknowledgment that nothing is truly permanently settled
If you could bring a logical case for anyone you mentioned above, you'd have done so by now in your posts, instead of your pathetic gibes and putting down WS as you have here and other posts in the past.
Your the one who says agreement is unimportant, except when WS and I agree on your BS.
You either can't tell or won't admit when you are wrong, no matter how thoroughly you've been refuted. So why should I bother? You even can't tell or won't admit when you've changed positions. Trying to reason with you is an exercise in futility.
As the kids say, word.
Yee-aaargh!!!
My eyes flicked down and I saw the bold type anyway. Though thanks for the warning.
One important lesson I've learned:
Don't get into discussions with irrational people, true believers, political and religious fanatics, etc. I've wasted innumerable hours of my life with such people. Creationists are the paradigm. You can only engage with their arguments so long before you realize that they're some combination of clueless and intellectually dishonest. When you engage with their arguments, they can't tell or won't admit when they're wrong. When you finally realize that they're full of shit and point that out, they say "Oh! So that's all you've got to say! I see you refuse to engage in civil argument!" Now, if you let yourself be drawn into discussion with such people you're always going to be caught on the horns of a dilemma: either waste your time reasoning ad infinitum with the unreasonable, or be accused of fearing to engage in rational discussion.
TVD's full of shit, pretty much top to bottom, as his claim about my claims about e.g. Habermas show. Pointing out that somebody is full of shit is perfectly reasonable, especially when you've demonstrated it before (again, see the democracy and religion discussion). I've never said that Habermas was full of shit. Rather, when Tom ran to Wikipedia, as he so frequently does, to look up a quote so he could pretend that he knows some philosophy, I merely pointed out that the Habermas quote didn't say what TVD said it said. Not only did TVD not know what he was talking about, he couldn't even understand the quote he'd Googled to try to sound like he knew what he was talking about. In my book, "full of shit" is a reasonable description in such a case.
And, re: Rorty: what I've said is that I've got a higher opinion about him than most analytic philosophers do, though much of what he says is wrong. I've explained why in some detail elsewhere.
Jeez, DA, why do you try to reason with this guy? He's a troll.
Reason? You give opinions and present them as fact.
Then why bother to post here if he's such an unfair 'academic' in the first place?, asks DA.
To learn that. I didn't realize how deep the commitment was to "accepted opinion" and refusal to think for yourselves. Mob mentality. Sheep.
If WS had said Strauss was OK, you'd have read everything completely differently, this time with care and sympathy.
And you obviously didn't read "Henry," DA, because you didn't refer to it. [It wasn't about the civility.] You accept WS' opinion of Strauss and "back it up" with reading 2 pages of Leo Strauss and pronounce your own expert opinion that it's bullshit.
And unlike DA, WS, I don't use the Wikipedia to make my points. But he does [and just did], but it's OK, because he accepts your opinions and so you let it pass without comment.
[And Heidegger, one of the great minds of the 20th century, was completely relevant. Being a Nazi is far worse than a man who had just fled Hitler making sympathetic reference made to fascism which you still don't understand.]
And of course, I brought Strauss up in a rare moment of fun. His whole point with "Persecution and the Art of Writing" is how "accepted opinion" must destroy what ever it considers to be a threat.
Like you two are doing. WS makes a big point of "ignoring" me. I wish he'd keep his word.
Word.
Seriously, Tom, piss off.
I'm not making a big point of ignoring you, I'm just ignoring you. I stupidly got pulled into this, and into reading these last two comments, because you continue to spout your BS--which BS includes not only ad hominems against me but lies about things I've written in the past.
Seriously, Tom. Consider this an explicit invitation to go elsewhere and not come back. I enjoy having rational discussions with people who disagree with me, but discussions with you are not rational. Nobody around here is sheep-like--we disagree about all sorts of things. But we do it rationally and respectfully.
What you do it throw out BS criticisms of every point, never admitting error, never considering rational arguments against you, never just keeping your damn mouth shut when you really don't have anything to say. You have become a troll.
So do piss off. And don't let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out.
As for WS, what did he say of substance besides that the other fellow is bullshit, which is his favorite method of discourse, whether it's me or Habermas
which BS includes not only ad hominems against me but lies about things I've written in the past.
Link
Exactly right, M. Nobody said Habermas was BS. I said that there was a lot of BS like this floating around.
The defense rests, your honor.
WS:
In the words of the Chinese sage:
"Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors."
Peace, I'm out.
Please try to give the next fellow a better chance. You guys are a tough town.
Poor, poor pitiful me!
DA, I opened myself up to you in a weak moment and made a private joke, intended to be just between you and me. You took advantage.
Your politics are so important to you that you betrayed that and I'm afraid it's the same with WS.
WS has asked me to leave, so I will. I'm just cleaning up my correspondence. I'd appreciate if you don't slam the door on my ass on the way out.
Because I won't let it hit me on the way out, OK? Please yield me that.
Heard from an old internet foil today. She misses our conversations. Lefty as they come. Taught me about Habermas, back before he got sociable with Pope Ratzinger and all.
Went drinking with another internet pal on Friday here in Los Angeles. We've been foils for years on the internet. Delightful fellow, a total Democrat and anti-capitalist. Getting together again next Friday.
You know where to find me, DA, and my door is always open to people of good faith. Absent good faith, politeness will do. I don't ask much.
I assure you that if you ever choose to comment on my blog, I'll keep the vampires off your neck, as it's the decent thing to do. We're fellow Americans, and fellow human beings---it's the least we can do for each other.
And my door remains open to WS too. We've all been friends longer than we've been enemies. I've learned a lot in our time together.
Cheers. Please let me go. It's time.
Tom wants to go out by saying that he's open-minded and willing to dialog with everybody, clearly indicating that I am not (and neither are you).
This thread basically started in one of the typical ways: with an incoherent and completely gratuitous and off-topic insult by Tom. (Hey! Look at me! Did everybody forget about me! Hey! Hey!) God knows what it meant, or why he felt obligated to stick his oar in yet again... But apparently no post is completely without a comment by Tom, relevant or no.
The picture he wants to paint is: he's reasonable, open-minded, long-suffering... I am not. You are not. And the martyr pose is supposed to say, inter alia: you don't get to dispute my parting shot!
It's always been hard to know what to make of the dollop of graciousness that inevitably comes among the insults and sophistry and snarky suggestions and relentless partisanship. One doesn't want to refuse graciousness, but it does look like just another ploy against that backdrop. I never know what to think of it, really. I don't deny that it's sincere; I just deny that it's consistent with the other stuff.
The message is supposed to be that it's all been pearls before swine, and that all his other liberal friends see his open-mindedness and good will, and that this proves that he's capable of reasoning with anybody...but me. And you.
So be it. I've never bloody understood what was going on with all this anyway.
Rest easy, Winston - none of his little parting quips are taken sincerely by me or anyone else here. I know you want to ensure that you don't stand idly by, letting someone spew repetitious libelous, deceitful comments, but as literally as it is possible to be, and as you've already discovered, the amount of time you spend in response to him isn't worth it.
Tom's the only one buying into his illusion. If letting him have his moment of fabricated martyrdom in a blog thread will finalize his departure (and I seriously doubt it will, but it's worth a shot..), for the love of logic, let him have it.
Ah, but you didn't let me have it, "Mystic."
Y'all have been scrolling down here to see if there's a comment #39, so here it is:
What I left out about my Habermas friend is that in a virtually identical situation, she got my back, altho she never agreed with a single word.
That's what it's all about, my friends, my could-be friends. All the rest is what's bullshit.
Legate Van Dyke, I suggest you have your friend(if she's not imaginary)read this thread and follow the link below.
Link
Of course, you didn't call her creepy as you did to those not sharing your POV here, but why drag reality into it and harsh your mellow?
And this observation, made 1.5 years ago, is relevant:
TVD, there certainly is an 'us' that's not creepy - the long list of your, ahem, interlocutors - those of us who have tasted your demands for one-way civility, interlaced with your attempts to teach us object lessons by using what you claim are our tactics, often without making any distinction between us as individuals. You clearly assume this TVD-against-the-world-of-Philosoraptor in many of your postings; don't pretend otherwise.
Oh, and St. Sebastian came in a dream to me. He wants his arrows back, Legate Van Dyke.
He also says Heaven has no room if you hold a pity party during your stay in this vale of tears.
Did you find the above useful?
Self-pity? Not at all. My pity goes elsewhere.
Our little scene has been played out countless times before, and we're just reading from our scripts.
No, it's not about the money, DA, but it is all about the other things.
"Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner:
You, my friend, a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?
And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do care; then I do not leave him or let him go at once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less.
And I shall repeat the same words to every one whom I meet... For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.
I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."
Bang, DA. You got me.
[And WS misunderstands what "pearls before swine" actually means. The pearls are not mine, although they could be yours...]
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