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Archive for the 'Get Your Ass Back in the Culture War' Category

The Socrapic Dialogues

Posted by scott on November 28th, 2010

It’s been awhile since we’ve checked in with Ellis Washington, internet radio personality and former law clerk, so I think you’ve had plenty of time to heal.  And we’re in luck, because Clerk Washington (Ret.) is fresh from the gymnasium, flushed, dewy, and as naked as the Truth!

Symposium: Art, music and the Wagnerian dilemma

Socrates (470-399 B.C.) was a famous Greek philosopher from Athens who taught Plato, and Plato taught Aristotle, and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great.

And someone has finally taught Ellis how to use Wikipedia.

Socrates used a method of teaching by asking questions. The Greeks called this form “dialectic” – starting from a thesis or question, then discussing ideas and moving back and forth between points of view to determine how well ideas stand up to critical review, with the ultimate principle of the dialogue being Veritas– Truth.

Which, by a strange coincidence, happens to be Ellis’ gimmick too, “Veritas,” being a word he blurts with the regularity of a wacky sitcom neighbor popping in to deliver his rib-tickling catchphrase.

Characters

  • Socrates
  • Richard Wagner, German Romantic composer
  • Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s filmmaker
  • Wimsatt & Beardsley, The New Criticism School
  • Ezra Pound, American expatriate poet
  • Publius, Pupil of Socrates and conflicted lover of Wagner’s music

{Setting: Symposium of Socrates}

I see Ellis has found a way to recycle his Punky Brewster spec script.  (By the way, he provides a link to a YouTube of Wagner’s Lohengrin as “suggested background music.”  It’s nice — lush and epic — but after reading the following dialogue, I would have gone with “Surfin’ Bird.”)

Socrates: We are gathered here today at my Symposium to discuss the venerated discipline of aesthetics and to seek to answer this question of the ages – Can immoral art be good? Or more pointedly, can an immoral person create good art?

Sir?  Can you please sign my drop slip?

Wimsatt & Beardsley: Yes, Socrates, philosophers call this paradox the intentional fallacy…

Socrates: Oh gee, thanks for explaining philosophy to me, guys.  Maybe you can stick around after class and give me a quick tutorial on togas and pederasty, too.

Wimsatt & Beardsley: …which developed in the New Criticism School of the 1930s and was first used by us in a 1946 essay. A long-running debate in philosophy has centered around the question of whether art that is morally bad can itself be good (as art).

…then we saw An American Carol, and just decided to go get shitfaced instead.

Leni Riefenstahl: The question of the intentional fallacy has tended to focus on controversial figures like Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Andreas Serrano (“Pi– Christ” [1989]) or artists such as myself, for I was the German filmmaker for the Third Reich, the Nazi Party and for supreme chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, whom I immortalized in such documentaries as “Triumph of the Will,” which chronicled the Nuremberg rallies, and “Olympia,” a documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I am profoundly ashamed of these movies now in light of Nazi atrocities and the human-rights genocide of the Holocaust, for my so-called art was exploited as Nazi propaganda. Nevertheless, many critics to this day consider my movies to be technically and artistically brilliant.

I had no idea playing with a Ouija board could be so dull.

Leni Riefenstahl: …but I have left the glorification of racial purity and fascist ideals behind me, and am currently developing a Porky’s-style teen comedy that I profoundly feel would be both morally and aesthetically good  for Zac Efron.

Socrates: To us, the ancient Greeks, the very idea of an intentional fallacy, the notion that one can separate art from beauty would have been readily dismissed, as for them the notions of beauty and moral goodness were inextricably linked –

Moreover, when I say “us” and “them,” I’m actually talking about “we.”  Remember, it’s philosophy, jackass, it’s supposed to be confusing!

–yet due largely to the modernist philosophy of relativism – the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity and have only relative, subjective values according to differences in perception and consideration – this question has proved more troublesome for the modern mind.

Socrates: But the verities of my time are as true today as they were in the 5th Century B.C.  Not only do the Ancient Greeks provide ethical guidance sufficient and appropriate to any conceivable dilemma, but us and them are also a good source of practical wisdom.  For instance, if you’re building an addition to your home — say, a new slave quarters — beware when you break ground for the foundation, for you may sever a subsurface gas or power line.  This can be avoided by praying to Tartarus, Erebos, or any other duly authorized chthonic god before you dig.

Much of modern art since 1900 isn’t about beauty, but has devolved into an unedifying mix of snobbishness, greed, grotesqueness and fetishism, which the intentional fallacy has only made worse. How?

Does it screw it up your Socratic method if I don’t feel like answering the question because I reject your bullshit premise?  If so, how?  And please show your work.

Because the New School Critics have legitimized the separation of God from art

Imagine how much more you would have enjoyed Too Close for Comfort had it been touched by the power of Zeus.

…goodness from beauty, art from truth, thus much of modern art has become an exaltation of evil, caricature, deception, politics and pride – rather than truth, virtue, beauty, realism and godliness.

As you may recall, Mr. Washington believes that Michael Savage is a Promethean figure, so if the pugnacious author and radio host is willing to recline on a rock for eternity while an eagle pecks at his liver, I think it would do much to reverse the trend toward snobbishness and greed by providing art that is not only morally good, but pretty damn entertaining.  Although it might make the grotesqueness and fetishism worse, especially if the Franklin Mint opts to immortalize the scene on a collectible plate.  Still, as Socrates himself would say, “Here, take a sip of this.  Does this taste funny to you?”

Sure You’re A Winner, But You’ll Be Sore In The Morning

Posted by scott on November 10th, 2010

I’m on day two of a (so far) two-day headache, and want to apologize for not posting this week, but I just haven’t felt up to skimming through the usual wingnuts.  However, since the inside of my skull feels the way a bad bearing sounds — grinding, scraping, shrieking — I figure I might as well read Pam Geller’s column, since it produces roughly the same effect.

We Won – Now What?

The Republican win on Tuesday was far larger than the historic takeback of 1994, the stunning rebuke of Bill Clinton that subsequently forced a chastised president to enact welfare reform (a flying-pig moment).

Just as some people release doves as symbols of peace and love at the conclusion of weddings or memorials, Pam commemorates the passage of important legislation by releasing flying pigs in order to ward off Muslims.  (Genetically engineered raptor-swine made possible by a grant from the Archer Daniels Midland Company.)

Even the sparse wins the subversive left managed to pull out on Tuesday were riddled with chicanery, cheating, union payoffs, and the buying of votes with “free lunches.”

I’d been planning to vote for Meg Whitman, but as I approached the polling place (and well within the 100 foot “no electioneering” limit) I was accosted by a Jerry Brown supporter and bought off with an olive loaf on white bread and a Fun Size bag of Cheez Its.

Harry Reid’s systemic corruption garnered a win funded by millions of dollars from public-sector unions. It was all in the game. Same for California — a state from which decent, hardworking Americans (aka Republicans) have been fleeing

This is true, and as a liberal it’s partly my fault, but I’ve tried to make amends by holding the door for them.

…a state destroyed by a union choke hold.

Linda McMahon dispatched some of her employees to battle the SEIU thugs, but unfortunately, WWE wrestlers are barred from using the union choke hold, so it wasn’t really a fair fight.

The stakes could not have been higher or more serious in the triumph of the rational on Tuesday.

The Triumph of the Rational (Artist’s Conception).

Obama still doesn’t get it. Obama’s tone at his press conference on Wednesday was still contemptuous of the American people and shocking in terms of simple math. He had the audacity to say this: “We should be able to agree now that it makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth. That used to be us. They’re making investments, because they know those investments will pay off over the long term.”

His math is shockingly bad — it doesn’t even use numbers, which I’m pretty sure is a prerequisite.

Singapore and China are free-market economies — laissez-faire capitalism

Yep, China’s National Center for Supercomputing, and Ministry of Railways — Triumphs of Private Enterprise!

Higher taxes imposed on the rich (and the semi-rich) come out of their investment capital (i.e., their savings). These taxes mean less investment, i.e., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices, etc.

That’s why China’ free-market railroad magnates invented Reardon Metal, and we didn’t.

By the time the “rich” lower their standard of living, those who work in their companies or subcontract with them will be gone, along with their savings and their spouses’ jobs — and no power in the world (no economic power) will be able to revive the dead industries. There will be no such power left. (In this I am paraphrasing Ayn Rand’s words from decades ago.)

And as Rand correctly predicted, America’s great piece-goods moguls were forced to offshore their sweatshops to South-East Asia because Obama taxed Dagny Taggart.

The Concorde was going to be the future of air travel, in which we’d bop from place to place in half the time. Now the Concorde is defunct. Kaput. Much like the environment for producers and businessmen, who are the “villains” of Democrats, statists, collectivists, moochers, and looters.

This is the price of force. This is the price of coercion. This is the price of statism. This is the price of big government. The very idea of America has been subsumed by an enslavement mentality.

Democrats have killed America’s national symbol, the Concorde, which replaced the bald eagle, a statist bird that just wanted to sit on the Endangered Species List and mooch and loot, rather than going extinct as the free market decreed.

Government is not the answer — it destroys everything it touches.

On the bright side, this is how we manage to win all of our wars.  WWII, as you’ll recall, came to a swift and sure end in early 1942 when Roosevelt sent some Department of Agriculture bureaucrats over to Berlin to touch Hitler.

We must take back the culture, because politics is merely a reflection of the culture. The left has the culture in a choke hold.

We must break up this match and save the culture, before the left gets The Real Housewives of New Jersey in a three-quarter facelock, or immobilizes American Idol with a Boston crab and forces Ryan Seacrest to tap out.

We are done with lies. We are done with “It’s Bush’s fault.” We are done with “Obama inherited the second Great Depression.” No. Obama’s policies led to a great coming depression. Obama talks about Bush spending? The utter gall. Bush was Jack Benny to Obama’s profligate Mack Daddy Warbucks.

“Racism” is the new “Irony.”

The left can spin it any way they like, but the economic emergency of 2008 was a direct result of Democrat entitlement/financial policy: Carter’s Community Investment Act (CIA), Clinton’s sub-prime push, and the ensuing Barney Frank Freddie Mac/Fanny Mae plunder.

I’m disappointed that Pam has failed to connect the dots by pointing out how Johnson’s “Great Society” planted the seeds of the sub-prime mortgage crisis by making minorities think they’d be ready to buy a house in 43 years.  Oh well, at least she’s not blaming this on the Muslims…

I do not fault Bush war expenditures. We are at war with a ruthless, bloodthirsty, savage ideology that has no humanity. No expense can be spared in defeating jihad. Obama’s sniveling like a little girl falls on deaf ears when you consider the trillions he stole from us for no reason but to pad the pockets of his shadow government.

I have to agree with Pam — we should have just bombed and invaded the banks instead of bailing them out.

Our victory is the beginning of the forty years’ war — who is with me?

Sounds great!  But before we get started, I’m just curious — why a Forty Years War?  I assume because a Hundred Years sounds too long, and Thirty Years sounds too French?  Anyway, the important thing is, Pam has a manifesto, which, in honor of her twin inspirations, Hitler and Fergie, she has entitled Mein Humpfs.

We will repeal national socialist ObamaCare.

We will destroy all old propaganda media. New media is steamrolling over the dead media walking.

We will take back the college campuses.

We will get on our children’s school boards and, just like in Texas, change the whitewashed history books and review the syllabi.

Deregulate business. Piece by piece. Sector by sector. Unshackle the motor of the country. Free the producer.

Producers will now be free to sell up to 100% of Broadway musicals to multiple investors.

We will call our mortal enemy by its rightful name: Islamic jihad.

Or “Voldemort,” depending on how touchy Rowling is about her IP.

We will turn the Muslim Brotherhood into the Muslim Little-Girlhood.

We’ll teach them to vlog in their bikinis!

We will ridicule, polarize, and render irrelevant the dogmatic, evil leftists.

We will crush them with our logic and reason and concrete facts.

While ridiculing and polarizing them.  Our facts may be concrete, but they’re funny.

We will demand reasoned discourse and laugh at their ad hominem attacks.

We’re, uh, we’re gonna start with that the second one first.

We will raise the voting age to 21.  Military excluded.

Our facts are concrete, but some of our logic and reason was, admittedly, filched from Starship Troopers

If “children” are still on their parents health insurance at 26, maybe 21 is too low.

In order to register to vote, you must show proof of having been refused treatment at a private hospital.  Preferably for something life-threatening, like a gunshot wound or acute appendicitis, so we know you’re serious.  Remember, No Suffering, No Suffrage.