Save the ACLU

The origins of web culture: utopian anti-intellectualism, boosterism, and the unreflective intelligence of sexually immature adolescent males.

"A comedian says funny things. A comic says things funny."

Ed Wynn

Someone discovered this one through google and I rediscovered it through Sitemeter.
from 2002

Is Camp a form of art based not on sympathy but pity?

Law/Justice/Wisdom
Judgment, discernment, discrimination. sophistication The ability to perceive and to communicate nuance, to describe what has not been named -categorized- previously. It is not creation but observation and description.

This is the root of what Kant might call genius. Genius is wisdom. It is non-cumulative. As a capacity/ability it can be learned but not taught. The record of past acts of wisdom is only that.
Technocrats are experts: craftsmen within the limits of their own knowledge. An honest technocrat is self-deprecating (Politics requires a vulgar definition of the world.) Fascism is politics without irony.
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Interesting reading the Times. Television critics are sharper more quick witted than most of the book or film critics. They don't take their jobs as seriously. The old line was that the best newspaper writing was in the Sports pages. Sports are trivial. Olberman started at ESPN. Jon Stewart was a stand up comic. Frank Rich is a theater critic. Observation begins with an ironic awareness of the self. Stand-up is ethnography, not sociology. David Graeber on the beginnings of sociology as the study of modern man by himself as disembodied, denatured.  Self-ethnography makes people nervous. Nervousness/comedy. Edmund Leach is a model of ironic awareness compared to this generation of academic dimwits. Marshall and Bernie Sahlins.
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Idiot Henry Farrell on determinism in Marx. If Ayn Rand rewrote Anna Karenina replicating the novel in her own words it would have the same meaning as Tolstoy. The 20th century was the first century where ideas preceded craft. The culmination of moderism in ideology. In language it's always a mistake to follow. "In the manner of..." Science is predicated on it. Marx was a writer.
Beethoven the first composer to fail by overreaching, but there's less arrogance in Wagner's bombast than in Wen Ho Lee's shy clockmaker smile. The face of a bombmaker.
Intellectual over-determination and moral under-determination (moral passivity.)
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Zhang Yimou's Hero. Remember A Touch of Zen. An epic that felt independent of Hollywood. Wirework has a theatrical beauty that Hollywood would never have developed on its own. It's too mannered, too recognizably fake.

You can call culture a market of ideas, except that the market as such is only one example of the capacity for invention.
Remember the Irish-Bulgarian bartender on whether or not Manhattanites will take over the neighborhood. "I hope not. I like the diversity." Interestingly with the changes in the country over the last generation the standard issue Americans aren't as offensive as the ones who take themselves seriously.

Again[?]
Sincerity reverses ends and means.
Saying "I love you" will not get you laid. Saying it well, might. A gesture is only distinctive if it is seen that way by others. The sincerity of the American singer-songwriter or indie filmmaker is based on a misunderstanding, and the "insincerity" of Hollywood is a misnomer. Moral seriousness and high purpose are best left for others to discover.
Kelly was more serious than Astaire, Ozu more serious that Mizoguchi.

link
SS 43.
Art in general
1.) Art is distinguished from nature as making (facere) is from acting or operating in general (agere), and the product or the result of the former is distinguished from that of the latter as work (opus) from operation (effectus).

By right it is only production through freedom, i.e., through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its action, that should be termed art. For, although we are pleased to call what bees produce (their regularly constituted cells) a work of art, we only do so on the strength of an analogy with art; that is to say, as soon as we call to mind that no rational deliberation forms the basis of their labour, we say at once that it is a product of their nature (of instinct), and it is only to their Creator that we ascribe it as art.

If, as sometimes happens, in a search through a bog, we light on a piece of hewn wood, we do not say it is a product of nature but of art. Its producing cause had an end in view to which the object owes its form. Apart from such cases, we recognize an art in everything formed in such a way that its actuality must have been preceded by a representation of the thing in its cause (as even in the case of the bees), although the effect could not have been thought by the cause. But where anything is called absolutely a work of art, to distinguish it from a natural product, then some work of man is always understood.

(2.) Art, as human skill, is distinguished also from science (as ability from knowledge), as a practical from a theoretical faculty, as technic from theory (as the art of surveying from geometry). For this reason, also, what one can do the’ moment one only knows what is to be done, hence without-anything more than sufficient knowledge of the desired result, is not called art. To art that alone belongs which the possession of the most complete knowledge does not involve one’s having then and there the skill to do it. Camper, describes very exactly how the best shoe must be made, but he, doubtless, was not able to turn one out himself.17

17In my part of the country, if you set a common man a problem like that of Columbus and his egg, he says, “There is no art in that, it is only science”: i.e., you can do it if you know how; and he says just the same of all the would-be arts of jugglers. To that of the tight-rope dancer, on the other hand, he has not the least compunction in giving the name of art.

(3.) Art is further distinguished from handicraft. The first is called free, the other may be called industrial art. We look on the former as something which could only prove final (be a success) as play, i.e., an occupation which is agreeable on its own account; but on the second as labour, i.e., a business, which on its own account is disagreeable (drudgery), and is only attractive by means of what it results in (e.g., the pay), and which is consequently capable of being a compulsory imposition. Whether in the list of arts and crafts we are to rank watchmakers as artists, and smiths on the contrary as craftsmen, requires a standpoint different from that here adopted-one, that is to say, taking account of the proposition of the talents which the business undertaken in either case must necessarily involve. Whether, also, among the so-called seven free arts some may not have been included which should be reckoned as sciences, and many, too, that resemble handicraft, is a matter I will not discuss here. It is not amiss, however, to remind the reader of this: that in all free arts something of a compulsory character is still required, or, as it is called, a mechanism, without which the soul, which in art must be free, and which alone gives life to the work, would be bodyless and evanescent (e.g., in the poetic art there must be correctness and wealth of language, likewise prosody and metre). For not a few leaders of a newer school believe that the best way to promote a free art is to sweep away all restraint and convert it from labour into mere play.

SS 44.
Fine art

There is no science of the beautiful, but only a critique. Nor, again, is there an elegant (schone) science, but only a fine (schone) art. For a science of the beautiful would have to determine scientifically, i.e., by means of proofs, whether a thing was to be considered beautiful or not; and the judgement upon beauty, consequently, would, if belonging to science, fail to be a judgement of taste. As for a beautiful science-a science which, as such, is to be beautiful, is a nonentity. For if, treating it as a science, we were to ask for reasons and proofs, we would be put off with elegant phrases (bons mots). What has given rise to the current expression elegant sciences is, doubtless, no more than this, that common observation has, quite accurately, noted the fact that for fine art, in the fulness of its perfection, a large store of science is required, as, for example, knowledge of ancient languages, acquaintance with classical authors, history, antiquarian learning, etc. Hence these historical sciences, owing to the fact that they form the necessary preparation and groundwork for fine art, and partly also owing to the fact that they are taken to comprise even the knowledge of the products of fine art (rhetoric and poetry), have by a-confusion of words, actually got the name of elegant sciences.

Where art, merely seeking to actualize a possible object to the cognition of which it is adequate, does whatever acts are required for that purpose. then it is mechanical. But should the feeling of pleasure be what it has immediately in view, it is then termed aesthetic art. As such it may be either agreeable or fine art. The description “agreeable art” applies where the end of the art is that the pleasure should accompany the representations considered as mere sensations, the description “fine art” where it is to accompany them considered as modes of cognition.

Agreeable arts are those which have mere enjoyment for their object. Such are all the charms that can gratify a dinner party: entertaining narrative, the art of starting the whole table in unrestrained and sprightly conversation, or with jest and laughter inducing a certain air of gaiety. Here, as the saying goes, there may be much loose talk over the glasses, without a person wishing to be brought to book for all he utters, because it is only given out for the entertainment of the moment, and not as a lasting matter to be made the subject of reflection or repetition. (Of the same sort is also the art of arranging the table for enjoyment, or, at large banquets, the music of the orchestra-a quaint idea intended to act on the mind merely as an agreeable noise fostering a genial spirit, which, without any one paying the smallest attention to the composition, promotes the free flow of conversation between guest and guest.) In addition must be included play of every kind which is attended with no further interest than that of making the time pass by unheeded.

Fine art, on the other hand, is a mode of representation which is intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has the effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the interests of social communication.

The universal communicability of a pleasure involves in its very concept that the pleasure is not one of enjoyment arising out of mere sensation, but must be one of reflection. Hence aesthetic art, as art which is beautiful, is one having for its standard the reflective judgement and not organic sensation.

SS 45.
Fine art is an art, so far as it has at the same
time the appearance of being nature.

A product of fine art must be recognized to be art and not nature. Nevertheless the finality in its form must appear just as free from the constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere nature. Upon this feeling of freedom in the play of our cognitive faculties-which play has at the same time to be final rests that pleasure which alone is universally communicable without being based on concepts. Nature proved beautiful when it wore the appearance of art; and art can only be termed beautiful, where we are conscious of its being art, while yet it has the appearance of nature.

For, whether we are dealing with beauty of nature or beauty of art, we may make the universal statement: That is beautiful which pleases in the mere estimate of it (not in sensation or by means of a concept). Now art has always got a definite intention of producing something. Were this “something,” however, to be mere sensation (something merely subjective), intended to be accompanied with pleasure, then such product would, in our estimation of it, only please through the agency of the feeling of the senses. On the other hand, were the intention one directed to the production of a definite object, then, supposing this were attained by art, the object would only please by means of a concept. But in both cases the art would please, not in the mere estimate of it, i.e., not as fine art, but rather as mechanical art.

Hence the finality in the product of fine art, intentional though it be, must not have the appearance of being intentional; i.e., fine art must be clothed with the aspect of nature, although we recognize it to be art. But the way in which a product of art seems like nature is by the presence of perfect exactness in the agreement with rules prescribing how alone the product can be what it is intended to be, but with an absence of laboured effect (without academic form betraying itself), i.e., without a trace appearing of the artist having always had the rule present to him and of its having fettered his mental powers.

SS 46.
Fine art is the art of genius.

Genius is the talent (natural endowment) which gives the rule to art. Since talent, as an innate productive faculty of the artist, belongs itself to nature, we may put it this way: Genius is the innate mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.

Whatever may be the merits of this definition, and whether it is merely arbitrary, or whether it is adequate or not to the concept usually associated with the word genius (a point which the following sections have to clear up), it may still be shown at the outset that, according to this acceptation of the word, fine arts must necessarily be regarded as arts of genius.

For every art presupposes rules which are laid down as the foundation which first enables a product, if it is to be called one of art, to be represented as possible. The concept of fine art, however, does not permit of the judgement upon the beauty of its product being derived from any rule that has a concept for its determining ground, and that depends, consequently, on a concept of the way in which the product is possible. Consequently fine art cannot of its own self excogitate the rule according to which it is to effectuate its product. But since, for all that, a product can never be called art unless there is a preceding rule, it follows that nature in the individual (and by virtue of the harmony of his faculties) must give the rule to art, i.e., fine art is only possible as a product of genius.

From this it may be seen that genius (1) is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given, and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e., be exemplary; and, consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for others, i.e., as a standard or rule of estimating. (3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to produce similar products. (Hence, presumably, our word Genie is derived from genius, as the peculiar guardian and guiding spirit given to a man at his birth, by the inspiration of which those original ideas were obtained.) (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius not to science but to art, and this also only in so far as it is to be fine art.

SS 47.
Elucidation and confirmation of
the above explanation of genius.

Every one is agreed on the point of the complete opposition between genius and the spirit of imitation. Now since learning is nothing but imitation, the greatest ability, or aptness as a pupil (capacity), is still, as such, not equivalent to genius. Even though a man weaves his own thoughts or fancies, instead of merely taking in what others have thought, and even though he go so far as to bring fresh gains to art and science, this does not afford a valid reason for calling such a man of brains, and often great brains, a genius, in contradistinction to one who goes by the name of shallow-pate, because he can never do more than merely learn and follow a lead. For what is accomplished in this way is something that could have been learned. Hence it all lies in the natural path of investigation and reflection according to rules, and so is not specifically distinguishable from what may be acquired as the result of industry backed up by imitation. So all that Newton bas set forth in his immortal work on the Principles of Natural Philosophy may well be learned, however great a mind it took to find it all out, but we cannot learn to write in a true poetic vein, no matter how complete all the precepts of the poetic art may be, or however excellent its models. The reason is that all the steps that Newton had to take from the first elements of geometry to his greatest and most profound discoveries were such as he could make intuitively evident and plain to follow, not only for himself but for every one else. On the other hand, no Homer or Wieland can show how his ideas, so rich at once in fancy and in thought, enter and assemble themselves in his brain, for the good reason that he does not himself know, and so cannot teach others. In matters of science, therefore, the greatest inventor differs only in degree from the most laborious imitator and apprentice, whereas he differs specifically from one endowed by nature for fine art. No disparagement, however, of those great men, to whom the human race is so deeply indebted, is involved in this comparison of them with those who on the score of their talent for fine art are the elect of nature. The talent for science is formed for the continued advances of greater perfection in knowledge, with all its dependent practical advantages, as also for imparting the same to others. Hence scientists can boast a ground of considerable superiority over those who merit the honour of being called geniuses, since genius reaches a point at which art must make a halt, as there is a limit imposed upon it which it cannot transcend. This limit has in all probability been long since attained. In addition, such skill cannot be communicated, but requires to be bestowed directly from the hand of nature upon each individual, and so with him it dies, awaiting the day when nature once again endows another in the same way-one who needs no more than an example to set the talent of which he is conscious at work on similar lines.

Seeing, then, that the natural endowment of art (as fine art) must furnish the rule, what kind of rule must this be? It cannot be one set down in a formula and serving as a precept-for then the judgement upon the beautiful would be determinable according to concepts. Rather must the rule be gathered from the performance, i.e., from the product, which others may use to put their own talent to the test, so as to let it serve as a model, not for imitation, but for following. The possibility of this is difficult to explain. The artist’s ideas arouse like ideas on the part of his pupil, presuming nature to have visited him with a like proportion of the mental Powers. For this reason, the models of fine art are the only means of handing down this art to posterity. This is something which cannot be done by mere descriptions (especially not in the line of the arts of speech), and in these arts, furthermore, only those models can become classical of which the ancient, dead languages, preserved as learned, are the medium.

Despite the marked difference that distinguishes mechanical art, as an art merely depending upon industry and learning, from fine art, as that of genius, there is still no fine art in which something mechanical, capable of being at once comprehended and followed in obedience to rules, and consequently something academic, does not constitute the essential condition of the art. For the thought of something as end must be present, or else its product would not be ascribed to an art at all, but would be a mere product of chance. But the effectuation of an end necessitates determinate rules which we cannot venture to dispense with. Now, seeing that originality of talent is one (though not the sole) essential factor that goes to make up the character of genius, shallow minds fancy that the best evidence they can give of their being full-blown geniuses is by emancipating themselves from all academic constraint of rules, in the belief that one cuts a finer figure on the back of an ill-tempered than of a trained horse. Genius can do no more than furnish rich material for products of fine art; its elaboration and its form require a talent academically trained, so that it may be employed in such a way as to stand the test of judgement. But, for a person to hold forth and pass sentence like a genius in matters that fall to the province of the most patient rational investigation, is ridiculous in the extreme.1 One is at a loss to know whether to laugh more at the impostor who envelops himself in such a cloud-in which we are given fuller scope to our imagination at the expense of all use of our critical faculty-or at the simple-minded public which imagines that its inability clearly to cognize and comprehend this masterpiece of penetration is due to its being invaded by new truths en masse, in comparison with which, detail, due to carefully weighed exposition and an academic examination of root principles, seems to it only the work of a tyro.

SS 48.
The relation of genius to taste.

For estimating beautiful objects, as such, what is required is taste; but for fine art, i.e., the production of such objects, one needs genius.

If we consider genius as the talent for fine art (which the proper signification of the word imports), and if we would analyse it from this point of view into the faculties which must concur to constitute such a talent, it is imperative at the outset accurately to determine the difference between beauty of nature, which it only requires taste to estimate, and beauty of art, which requires genius for its possibility (a possibility to which regard must also be paid in estimating such an object).

A beauty of nature is a beautiful thing; beauty of art is a beautiful representation of a thing.

To enable me to estimate a beauty of nature, as such, I do not need to be previously possessed of a concept of what sort of a thing the object is intended to be, i.e., I am not obliged to know its material finality (the end), but, rather, in forming an estimate of it apart from any knowledge of the end, the mere form pleases on its own account. If, however, the object is presented as a product of art, and is as such to be declared beautiful, then, seeing that art always presupposes an end in the cause (and its causality), a concept of what the thing is intended to be must first of all be laid at its basis. And, since the agreement of the manifold in a thing with an inner character belonging to it as its end constitutes the perfection of the thing, it follows that in estimating beauty of art the perfection of the thing must be also taken into account-a matter which in estimating a beauty of nature, as beautiful, is quite irrevelant. It is true that in forming an estimate, especially of animate objects of nature, e.g., of a man or a horse, objective finality is also commonly taken into account with a view to judgement upon their beauty; but then the judgement also ceases to be purely aesthetic, i.e., a mere judgement of taste. Nature is no longer estimated as it appears like art, but rather in so far as it actually is art, though superhuman art; and the teleological judgement serves as a basis and condition of the aesthetic, and one which the latter must regard. In such a case, where one says, for example, “That is a beautiful woman,” what one in fact thinks is only this, that in her form nature excellently portrays the ends present in the female figure. For one has to extend one’s view beyond the mere form to a concept, to enable the object to be thought in such manner by means of an aesthetic judgement logically conditioned.

Where fine art evidences its superiority is in the beautiful descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing. The Furies, diseases, devastations of war, and the like, can (as evils) be very beautifully described, nay even represented in pictures. One kind of ugliness alone is incapable of being represented conformably to nature without destroying all aesthetic delight, and consequently artistic beauty, namely, that which excites disgust. For, as in this strange sensation, which depends purely on the imagination, the object is represented as insisting, as it were, upon our enjoying it, while we still set our face against it, the artificial representation of the object is no longer distinguishable from the nature of the object itself in our sensation, and so it cannot possibly be regarded as beautiful. The art of sculpture, again, since in its products art is almost confused with nature, has excluded from its creations the direct representation of ugly objects, and, instead, only sanctions, for example, the representation of death (in a beautiful genius), or of the warlike spirit (in Mars), by means of an allegory, or attributes which wear a pleasant guise, and so only indirectly, through an interpretation on the part of reason, and not for the pure aesthetic judgement.

So much for the beautiful representation of an object, which is properly only the form of the presentation of a concept and the means by which the latter is universally communicated. To give this form, however, to the product of fine art, taste merely is required. By this the artist, having practised and corrected his taste by a variety of examples from nature or art, controls his work and, after many, and often laborious, attempts to satisfy taste, finds the form which commends itself to him. Hence this form is not, as it were, a matter of inspiration, or of a free swing of the mental powers, but rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement, directed to making the form adequate to his thought without prejudice to the freedom in the play of those powers.

Taste is, however, merely a critical, not a productive faculty; and what conforms to it is not, merely on that account, a work of fine art. It may belong to useful and mechanical art, or even to science, as a product following definite rules which are capable of being learned and which must be closely followed. But the pleasing form imparted to the work is only the vehicle of communication and a mode, as it were, of execution, in respect of which one remains to a certain extent free, notwithstanding being otherwise tied down to a definite end. So we demand that table appointments, or even a moral dissertation, and, indeed, a sermon, must bear this form of fine art, yet without its appearing studied. But one would not call them on this account works of fine art. A poem, a musical composition, a picture-gallery, and so forth, would, however, be placed under this head; and so in a would-be work of fine art we may frequently recognize genius without taste, and in another taste without genius.

SS 49.
The faculties of the mind which constitute genius.

Of certain products which are expected, partly at least, to stand on the footing of fine art, we say they are soulless; and this, although we find nothing to censure in them as far as taste goes. A poem may be very pretty and elegant, but is soulless. A narrative has precision and method, but is soulless. A speech on some festive occasion may be good in substance and ornate withal, but may be soulless. Conversation frequently is not devoid of entertainment, but yet soulless. Even of a woman we may well say, she is pretty, affable, and refined, but soulless. Now what do we here mean by “soul”?

Soul (Geist) in an aesthetical sense, signifies the animating principle in the mind. But that whereby this principle animates the psychic substance (Seele)-the material which it employs for that purpose-is that which sets the mental powers into a swing that is final, i.e., into a play which is self-maintaining and which strengthens those powers for such activity.

Now my proposition is that this principle is nothing else than the faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas. But, by an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e., concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible. It is easily seen, that an aesthetic idea is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which, conversely, is a concept, to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.

The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature. It affords us entertainment where experience proves too commonplace; and we even use it to remodel experience, always following, no doubt, laws that are based on analogy, but still also following principles which have a higher seat in reason (and which are every whit as natural to us as those followed by the understanding in laying hold of empirical nature). By this means we get a sense of our freedom from the law of association’ (which attaches to the empirical employment of the imagination), with the result that the material can be borrowed by us from nature in accordance with that law, but be worked up by us into something else-namely, what surpasses nature.

Such representations of the imagination may be termed ideas. This is partly because they at least strain after something lying out beyond the confines of experience, and so seek to approximate to a presentation of rational concepts (i.e., intellectual ideas), thus giving to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality. But, on the other hand, there is this most important reason, that no concept can be wholly adequate to them as internal intuitions. The poet essays the task of interpreting to sense the rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc. Or, again, as to things of which examples occur in experience, e.g., death, envy, and all vices, as also love, fame, and the like, transgressing the limits of experience he attempts with the aid of an imagination which emulates the display of reason in its attainment of a maximum, to body them forth to sense with a completeness. of which: nature affords no parallel; and it is in’ fact precisely in the poetic art that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can show itself to full advantage. This faculty, however, regarded solely on its own account, is properly no more than a talent’ (of the imagination).

If, now, we attach to a concept a representation of the imagination belonging to its presentation, but inducing solely on its own account such a wealth of thought as would never admit of comprehension in a definite concept, and, as a consequence, giving aesthetically an unbounded expansion to the concept itself, then the imagination here displays a creative activity, and it puts the faculty of intellectual ideas (reason) into motion-a motion, at the instance of a representation, towards an extension of thought, that, while germane, no doubt, to the concept of the object, exceeds what can be laid hold of in that representation or clearly expressed.

Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given concept itself, but which,. as secondary representations of the imagination, express the derivatives connected with it, and its kinship with other concepts, are called (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of Which, as an idea of reason, cannot be adequately presented. In this way Jupiter’s eagle, with the lightning in its claws, is an attribute of the mighty king of heaven, and the peacock of its stately queen. They do not, like logical (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of the sublimity and majesty of creation, but rather something else-something that gives the imagination an incentive to spread its flight over a whole host of kindred representations that provoke more thought than admits of expression in a concept determined by words. They furnish an aesthetic idea, which serves the above rational idea as a substitute for logical presentation, but with the proper function, however, of animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of kindred representations stretching beyond its ken. But it is not alone in the arts of painting or sculpture, where the name of attribute is customarily employed, that fine art acts in this way; poetry and rhetoric also drive the soul that animates their work wholly from the aesthetic attributes of the objects-attributes which go hand in hand with the logical, and give the imagination an impetus to bring more thought into: play in the matter, though in an undeveloped manner, than allows of being brought within the embrace of a concept, or, therefore, of being definitely formulated in language. For the sake of brevity I must confine myself to a few examples only. When the great king expresses himself in one of his poems by saying:

Oui, finissons sans trouble, et mourons sans regrets,

En laissant l’Univers comble de nos bienfaits.

Ainsi l’Astre du jour, au bout de sa carriere,

Repand sur l’horizon une douce lumiere,

Et les derniers rayons qu’il darde dans les airs

Sont les derniers soupirs qu’il donne a l’Univers; he kindles in this way his rational idea of a cosmopolitan sentiment even at the close of life, with help of an attribute which the imagination (in remembering all the pleasures of a fair summer’s day that is over and gone-a memory of which pleasures is suggested by a serene evening) annexes to that representation, and which stirs up a crowd of sensations and secondary representations for which no expression can be found. On the other hand, even an intellectual concept may serve, conversely, as attribute for a representation of sense, and so animate the latter with the idea of the supersensible; but only by the aesthetic factor subjectively attaching to the consciousness of the supersensible being employed for the purpose. So, for example, a certain poet says in his description of a beautiful morning: “The sun arose, as out of virtue rises peace.” The consciousness of virtue, even where we put ourselves only in thought in the position of a virtuous man, diffuses in the mind a multitude of sublime and tranquillizing feelings, and gives a boundless outlook into a happy future, such as no expression within the compass of a definite concept completely attains.18

18Perhaps there has never been a more sublime utterance, or a thought more sublimely expressed, than the well-known inscription upon the Temple of Isis (Mother Nature): “I am all that is, and that was, and that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil from before my face.” Segner made use of this idea in a suggestive vignette on the frontispiece of his Natural Philosophy, in order to inspire his pupil at the threshold of that temple into which he was about to lead him, with such a holy awe as would dispose his mind to serious attention.

In a word, the aesthetic idea is a representation of the imagination, annexed to a given concept, with which, in the free employment of imagination, such a multiplicity of partial representations are bound up, that no expression indicating a definite concept can be found for it one which on that account allows a concept to be supplemented in thought by much that is indefinable in words, and the feeling of which quickens the cognitive faculties, and with language, as a mere thing of the letter, binds up the spirit (soul) also.

The mental powers whose union in a certain relation constitutes genius are imagination and understanding. Now, since the imagination, in its employment on behalf of cognition, is subjected to the constraint of the understanding and the restriction of having to be conformable to the concept belonging’ thereto, whereas aesthetically it is free to furnish of its own accord, over and above that agreement with the concept, a wealth of undeveloped material for the understanding, to which the latter paid no regard in its concept, but which it can make use of, not so much objectively for cognition, as subjectively for quickening the cognitive faculties, and hence also indirectly for cognitions, it may be seen that genius properly consists in the happy relation, which science cannot teach nor industry learn, enabling one to find out ideas for a given concept, and, besides, to hit upon the expression for them-the expression by means of which the subjective mental condition induced by the ideas as the concomitant of a concept may be communicated to others. This latter talent is properly that which is termed soul. For to get an expression for what is indefinable in the mental state accompanying a particular representation and to make it universally communicable-be the expression in language or painting or statuary-is a “thing requiring a faculty for laying hold of the rapid and transient play of the imagination, and for unifying it in a concept (which for that very reason is original, and reveals a new rule which could not have been inferred from any preceding principles or examples) that admits of communication without any constraint of rules.

If, after this analysis, we cast a glance back upon the above definition of what is called genius, we find: First, that it is a talent for art-not one for science, in which clearly known rules must take the lead and determine the procedure. Secondly, being a talent in the line of art, it presupposes a definite concept of the product-as its end. Hence it presupposes understanding, but, in addition, a representation, indefinite though it be, of the material, i.e., of the intuition, required for the presentation of that concept, and so a relation of the imagination to the understanding. Thirdly, it displays itself, not so much in the working out of the projected end in the presentation of a definite concept, as rather in the portrayal, or expression of aesthetic ideas containing a wealth of material for effecting that intention. Consequently the imagination is represented by it in its freedom from all guidance of rules, but still as final for the presentation of the given concept. Fourthly, and lastly, the unsought and undesigned subjective finality in the free harmonizing of the imagination with the understanding’s conformity to law presupposes a proportion and accord between these faculties such as cannot be brought about by any observance of rules, whether of science or mechanical imitation, but can only be produced by the nature of the individual.

Genius, according to these presuppositions, is the exemplary originality of the natural endowments of an individual in the free employment of his cognitive faculties. On this showing, the product of a genius (in respect of so much in this product as is attributable to genius, and not to possible learning or academic instruction) is an example, not for imitation (for that would mean the loss of the element of genius, and just the very soul of the work), but to be followed by another genius-one whom it arouses to a sense of his own originality in putting freedom from the constraint of rules so into force in his art that for art itself a new rule is won-which is what shows a talent to be exemplary. Yet, since the genius is one of nature’s elect-a type that must be regarded as but a rare phenomenon-for other clever minds his example gives rise to a school, that is to say a methodical instruction according to rules, collected, so far as the circumstances admit, from such products of genius and their peculiarities. And, to that extent, fine art is for such persons a matter of imitation, for which nature, through the medium of a genius gave the rule.

But this imitation becomes aping when the pupil copies everything down to the deformities which the genius only of necessity suffered to remain, because they could hardly be removed without loss of force to the idea. This courage has merit only in the case of a genius. A certain boldness of expression and, in general, many a deviation from the common rule becomes him well, but in no sense is it a thing worthy of imitation. On the contrary it remains all through intrinsically a blemish, which one is bound to try to remove, but for which the genius is, as it were, allowed to plead a privilege, on the ground that a scrupulous carefulness would spoil what is inimitable in the impetuous ardour of his soul. Mannerism is another kind of aping-an aping of peculiarity (originality) in general, for the sake of removing oneself as far as possible from imitators, while the talent requisite to enable one to be at the same time exemplary is absent. There are, in fact, two modes (modi) in general of arranging one’s thoughts for utterance. The one is called a manner (modus aestheticus), the other a method (modus logicus). The distinction between them is this: the former possesses no standard other than the feeling of unity in the presentation, whereas the latter here follows definite principles. As a consequence, the former is alone admissible for fine art. It is only, however, where the manner of carrying the idea into execution in a product of art is aimed at singularity, instead of being made appropriate to the idea, that mannerism is properly ascribed to such a product. The ostentatious (precieux), forced, and affected styles, intended to mark one out from the common herd (though soul is wanting), resemble the behaviour of a man who, as we say, hears himself talk, or who stands and moves about as if he were on a stage to be gaped at-action which invariably betrays a tyro.

SS 50.
The combination of taste and genius in products of fine art.

To ask whether more stress should be laid in matters of fine art upon the presence of genius or upon that of taste, is equivalent to asking whether more turns upon imagination or upon judgement. Now, imagination rather entitles an art to be called an inspired (geistreiche) than a fine art. It is only in respect of judgement that the name of fine art is deserved. Hence it follows that judgement, being the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non), is at least what one must look to as of capital importance in forming an estimate of art as fine art. So far as beauty is concerned, to be fertile and original in ideas is not such an imperative requirement as it is that the imagination in its freedom should be in accordance with the understanding’s conformity to law. For, in lawless freedom, imagination, with all its wealth, produces nothing but nonsense; the power of judgement, on the other hand, is the faculty that makes it consonant with understanding.

Taste, like judgement in general, is the discipline (or corrective) of genius. It severely clips its wings, and makes it orderly or polished; but at the same time it gives it guidance directing and controlling its flight, so that it may preserve its character of finality. It introduces a clearness and order into the plenitude of thought, and in so doing gives stability to the ideas, and qualifies them at once for permanent and universal approval, for being followed by others, and for a continually progressive culture. And so, where the interests of both these qualities clash in a product, and there has to be a sacrifice of something, then it should rather be on the side of genius; and judgement, which in matters of fine art bases its decision on its own proper principles, will more readily endure an abatement of the freedom and wealth of the imagination than that the understanding should be compromised.

The requisites for fine art are, therefore, imagination, understanding, soul, and taste.19

19The first three faculties are first brought into union by means of the fourth. Hume, in his history, informs the English that although they are second in their works to no other people in the world in respect the evidences they afford of the three first qualities separately considered, still in what unites them they must yield to their neighbours, the French.

Law is not morality. Lawyers are not judged on their morality but on their ethics, as defined by their adherence to a code of formal conduct that is by necessity amoral. Morality is metalegal. Experts debate legality or it’s equivalent. Morality is best left to amateurs.

Posner's newest book
Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency

I don't have much patience for debate these days. I'll say only that it should be clear that Posner is willing to argue for such extreme measures only because he doesn't understand the logic of the rule of law. I'll repeat...:

Posner: "Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors."

...and repeat my response: No. Modern representative democracy is about acknowledging that we can never be certain who is ordinary, who is superior, whom we can trust, and under what circumstances we can trust them.

Posner is enamored of his own powers of reason. Whether others think those powers exist or not, especially if those others are hoi polloi, is of little consequence. By his own analogy -and only by analogy- Posner is a scientist and his rule is the rule of science. Brian Leiter uses the same logic to defend his status both as an academic philosopher and soi-disant leftist. Brian doesn't understand that his philosophy, a dream moving in sympathetic vibration with an absent scientist, is both pure delusion, literary false logic, and damaging to democracy.

If you define the world according to your speciality how easy is does it become to dismiss the opinions of others who do not share it? If the world exists outside of our perceptions, how can any man-made model of the world be so powerful as to render all other models obsolete? Individualism eats itself. How much does this differ from DeLong?
The rule of law is not a model of the world, it is a model for argument about it. The rule of science, the rule of scientists and priests of the analogy of science, defends not a model of argument but a unitary model of perception and experience. In a world of sense in which we communicate in language, there can be no unitary model of perception that is not authoritarian.
---

Here's the entire post from 2004:

Posner:

Rawls and others have thought that religious beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to influence public policy, precisely because they are nondiscussable. But this view rests on a misunderstanding of democracy. Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors.
If this analysis is sound, then we see that the statement that “Modernity has a secular self-understanding that tends to deny religious doctrine a role in political justification” depends on whether modernity is equated with the dominance of the secular. The statement is thus entirely circular.

In this country the english language is the language of record in a court of law. You may not argue a point in latin and then demand it not be translated. You can not argue from canon law or the logic of the wergeld and expect to win a case. If you want to make a case for a position that for yourself is based on religious doctrine, you must be able to translate, or transliterate, that argument into one that someone of another doctrine may come to understand and with which s/he may be willing to agree. This country is based on an ideal of secular politics for this reason alone, that of communication amongst doctrines; catholics arguing with Jews about Baptists. It's that simple.
Where the fuck are we, third grade?

I am not an agnostic, if by that is meant (and this is the sense I have of the term, though it may be an idiosyncratic sense) someone who is perplexed as to whether or not there is a God; who regards this as an interesting question to which he happens not to have the answer. I am someone who simply doesn't feel the presence of God in my life. That I think is the typical state of the nonreligious person, and corresponds to what I assume is the feeling of a eunuch about sex. The eunuch knows that sex is important to many people, but he doesn't have any feeling of that importance. Sex doesn't exist for him.  God doesn't exist for me. That doesn't mean that He doesn't exist. My understanding of Nietzsche's dictum that "God is dead" is not that it is a metaphysical statement, a statement of atheist doctrine, but that it is a statement that God is as if dead, to educated Europeans of Nietzsche's era. I think that whether or not God is dead for one depends on upbringing and temperament, but not on arguments.

Two things in response. One is that the I made the same argument about Nietzsche in a paper I wrote for Marcia Cavell. She practically yelled her notes at me. "Nietzsche was an atheist!" She gave me a 'D' and I dropped the class. She was an idiot, or hadn't read the books in years. Needless to say, Posner is right, but he still misses the point. His arguments rest on metaphysical principles as much as anyone's, and much more so than my own.
When I was young, in my early teens, I spent some time trying to figure out the common denominator, the ground, for my definition of justice, the sort of metaphysic of value that would pass whatever sort of test I would want to throw at it. Posner, in his 'realism' has chosen for himself some sort of ideal of the conflicts of the marketplace. I've always thought of the market as an inevitable, even necessary, vulgarism, but I would never use it as a model for the good. A right to property is not primary, since the right to a limited resource is too easily opposed. I decided against speech as a value in itself since the right either to scare or bore people also has its limits, but I ended up with its converse, the right to listen: The right to be curious.
More later maybe. I'm tired and I'm covered in dust.
-----

Autism and post war German culture: pattern (rhythm) is warmth.

Autobahn, recording 1975


The Robots, 1978

I'm sure there's something interesting about slacker politics, at least as symptom


Styles P & Pharoahe Monch, The life, 2002

I can respect a killer, remorseful or not - and for the ones without it you sometimes have no choice. I've met killers I've liked, but I've never been seduced by them. So what am I supposed to say to people who are?
First and foremost Clinton's a killer. He was a killer before he became President, before Rwanda, before Iraq. None of this says I wouldn't meet the man if I needed to, and of course Bush is worse by far, but what can I say about the sense of moral superiority of those who've spent so much time looking at themselves in the mirror that they don't know what they're seeing?

Technocrats

Modern representative democracy isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their intellectual superiors.

No. Modern representative democracy is about acknowledging that we can never be certain who is ordinary, who is superior, whom we can trust, and under what circumstances we can trust them.
Somebody found that post on Google and I reread it. I can and have respected religious fundamentalists, communists, businessmen, thugs, con men and murderers. But there is a certain kind of arrogance that I want to see bloodied and broken, intellectually emotionally, physically.

Cold War Liberals.
I'm about as scared of Iran as I was of Russia Under Brezhnev.

Tristero, riffing on a paper from the Carnegie Endowment:

In other words, it will be very difficult to achieve a major defeat of Hezbollah. Indeed, one troubling result of the recent war in South Lebanon is the possibility of a stronger Sunni/Shi'a alliance against Israel. Such an alliance would enhance Iran's standing in the region. Therefore, one way to resist this is to counterbalance " the excitement generated by their [Hezbollah's] anti-Israel words and deeds" by highlighting how much Iran's ambitions will impinge Sunni interests.

The Great Game.
---

I've heard no comments in this country yet. Too many Catholics? Too many Christians? The Pope's an idiot.

Two from Jay-Z

Slick Rick, Bedtime Story, 1988

Kraftwerk, Man Machine, original recording 1978


The Fearless Four, Rockin' It, 1982

Pity for Professionals

On a recent book tour, Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of “Nickel and Dimed,” was nearly brought to tears when an information technology marketer told her of growing so desperate after being laid off that she took a job as a janitor. ...Inspired by such tales, Ms. Ehrenreich has started an organization called United Professionals to help white-collar workers, be they unemployed, uninsured, downsized, stressed out or merely anxious.

Am I supposed to feel pity for someone who used to have others clean up after her, and who's now living life as a servant? Universal skills are looked down on, but it's good to be versatile. I'll never sell my tools. And the worst thing about mopping floors for a living is the response from the people who walk by. I really hate Barbara Ehrenreich. I have for years.

Kraftwerk, Trans Europe Express, 1977


Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, Planet Rock, recorded 1982

Nas, The Message, 1996

Fake thug, no love, you get the slug, CB4 Gusto
Your luck low, I didn't know til I was drunk though
You freak niggaz played out, get fucked and ate out
Prostitute turned bitch, I got the gauge out
96 ways I made out, Montana way
The Good-F-E-L-L-A, verbal AK spray
Dipped attache, jumped out the Range, empty out the ashtray
A glass of 'ze make a man Cassius Clay
Red dot plots, murder schemes, thirty-two shotguns
Regulate wit my Dunn's, 17 rocks gleam from one ring
Yo let me let y'all niggaz know one thing
There's one life, one love, so there can only be one King
The highlights of livin, Vegas style roll dice in linen
Antera spinnin on Milleniums, twenty G bets I'm winnin them
Threats I'm sendin them, Lex with TV sets the minimum
Ill sex adrenaline
Party with villians, a case of Demi-Sec to chase the Henny
Wet any clique, with the semi-tech who want it
Diamonds I flaunt it, chickenheads flock I lace em
Fried broiled with basil, taste em, crack the legs
way out of formation, it's horizontal how I have em
fuckin me in the Benz wagon
Can it be Vanity from Last Dragon
Grab your gun it's on though
Shit is grimy, real niggaz buck in broad daylight
with the broke Mac it won't spray right
Don't give a fuck who they hit, as long as the drama's lit
Yo, overnight thugs, bug cause they ain't promised shit
Hungry-ass hooligans stay on that piranha shit

Chorus: samples from "New York State of Mind" (repeat 4X)

"I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death" -> Nas
"I ain't the type of brother made for you to start testin" -> Nas

[Nas]
I peeped you frontin, I was in the Jeep
Sunk in the seat, tinted with heat, beats bumpin
Across the street you was wildin
Talkin bout how you ran the Island in eighty-nine
Layin up, playin the yard with crazy shine
I cocked a baby 9 that nigga grave be mine, clanked him
What was he thinkin on my corner when it's pay me time
Dug em you owe me cousin somethin told me plug him
So dumb, felt my leg burn, then it got numb
Spun around and shot one, heard shots and dropped son
Caught a hot one, somebody take this biscuit 'fore the cops come
Then they came askin me my name, what the fuck
I got stitched up and went through
Left the hospital that same night, what
Got my gat back, time to backtrack
I had to drop so how the fuck I get clapped
Black was in the Jeep watchin all these scenes speed by
It was a brown Datsun, and yo nobody in my hood got one
That clown nigga's through, blazin at his crew daily
The 'Bridge touched me up severely hear me?
So when I rhyme it's sincerely yours
Be lightin L's sippin Coors, on all floors in project halls
Contemplatin war niggaz I was cool with before
We used to score together, Uptown coppin the raw
But uhh, a thug changes, and love changes
and best friends become strangers, word up

Chorus: first from "New York State of Mind", then "Halftime" (repeat 4X)

"Y'all know my steelo" -> Nas
"There ain't an army that could strike back" -> Nas

[Nas]
Thug niggaz
Yo, to them thug niggaz gettin it on in the world you know?
To them niggaz that's locked down
doin they thing survivin yaknowmsayin?
To my thorough niggaz, New York and world wide
Yo to the Queensbridge Militia
9-6 shit.. The Firm clique, Illmatic nigga
It Was Written though
It's been a long time comin
Y'all fake niggaz, tryin to copy
better come with the real though
Fake ass niggaz yo..
(They throw us slugs we throwin em back, what?)
Bring the shit man, live man
(Fuck that son)
Nine-six shit..

FP: What specific policies and strategies do you think America must apply to win this terror war?

Nowrasteh: The Patriot Act was a huge first step. We need to watch our borders and watch our "allies" like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- as well as our enemies. And I support anything we can do to assist those Iranian people who wish to join the civilized world.

"Wish to join the civilized world."

Reading, or rereading Edmund Leach: Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse. The discussion and diagrams of the categories of taboo and their relation (or lack thereof) to the "law" of non-contradiction -there's no discussion, it's ignored entirely (and for good reason)- should be required reading for every intro to analytical thinking.
The category of taboo is reserved for those things that are both P and ~P. Feces, both me and not me, are taboo. A teacher of introductory psychology will have her students spit into a paper cup and then ask them to drink what just came from their mouths. All bodily excretions with the exception of tears are treated as controlled substances (and feces, urine, semen, menses, the 'proper' words, are latin imports). In English you insult someone by calling them a pig, not a giraffe. We don't eat giraffes, as we don't eat dogs, but dogs are pets. You marry a neighbor's daughter, not your sister and not an outsider.

We regulate the world in the act of naming and not naming; these are the basic truths of language and social life. Even economists and analytical philosophers are products of culture. But social life is always producing new taboos, and removing others. Art is a locus of the taboo, the place for those objects, events and creatures that are ambiguous, that are between names.
What is the significance of the individual in Shakespeare or Michelangelo, of the noble dwarfs in Velazquez, or the naked whore in Olympia? What were the terms of discussion about blacks, Indians or women in the 19th century, or 40 years ago, or concerning Palestinians now, in the American press? What is America in the European imagination? What is the significance of money for Brad DeLong? He doesn't know and he doesn't want to know.

What was long beyond discussion in post war Germany?

The taboo is a universal category. What it encompasses varies by time and place. I'm not that bothered by people who adhere to them strictly; I'm not bothered by those who argue against most of them. I'm disgusted by those who imagine themselves immune. They're the most predictable things in creation.
---
If the links die: the first is a discussion on a German website of Gunter Grass' admission of being in the SS. The second is the last interview with Sebald, a week before he died.

This would not have been necessary if the Democrats had stood for something, anything, on principle. If the situation were reversed the Republicans would have never stopped fighting. If the Reagan biopic had run on CBS, the right would have howled even more the next day.
This morning? Nothing.
Self-interest is a good motivator. The Liberal leadership worries about the poor, but they aren't poor. They worry about the middle class, but they aren't middle class. They make their money the same way the republicans do, and being American and having the best intentions, they have no idea why the Republicans win.

Again check out DeLong trying to figure out whether or not he likes the rich. If he thinks they're necessary then he wants to think that they're good people. But he wonders why they behave in bad ways.

The American imagination is gullible and paranoid, cheaply cynical or Panglossian.
To be an adult is to cringe.

removed from comments:[archive.org]

"Why was this necessary?"

I second that question. What purpose does it serve?
Wonder Horror and Awe.
Single events may loom large in the popular imagination, but they are meaningless outside of an understanding of what came before and after. Understanding is moments in context. This image has become an icon, an object of veneration, a graven image.

link

I don't think such things are appropriate for a republic.

2,973 Total number of people killed (excluding the 19 hijackers) in the September 11, 2001 attacks

72,000 Estimated number of civilians killed worldwide since September 11, 2001 as a result of the war on terror

2 Number of years since US intelligence had any credible lead to Osama bin Laden's whereabouts

2,932 Total number of US servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 2001

1,248 Number of published books relating to the September 11 attacks

$119m Ticket sales for anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11

$40bn Airline industry losses since September 2001

2009 Date when the official memorial will open at the World Trade Centre site

0 Hours of intelligence training provided to new FBI agents before 9/11. Now they get 24.

91 per cent Terror cases from FBI and others that US Justice Dept declined to prosecute in first eight months of 2006

11 Weeks the 9/11 commission's final report was top of New York Times' non-fiction best-seller list

117 Number of UK service personnel killed in Iraq since invasion

40 Number of UK personnel killed in Afghanistan since invasion

7 per cent People in UK who think US-led war on terror is being won, according to YouGov

1 Those charged in US with a crime in connection with 9/11

455 Number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay

77 per cent Percentage of people in the UK who believe Tony Blair's Middle East policy has made Britain a terrorist target (YouGov)

4,000 Number of UK troops left in Iraq after British-controlled provinceshanded back to Baghdad

18 The number of times that undercover investigators with fake IDs have breezed through US border checkpoints in a test by the Government Accountability Office

$8bn The amount the US will spend this year on hunting Bin Laden and other terrorists

Occupation
Weekly Summary, 31-August-2006 to 6-September-2005

The Observer

Dramatic evidence that America is involved in illegal mercenary operations in east Africa has emerged in a string of confidential emails seen by The Observer. The leaked communications between US private military companies suggest the CIA had knowledge of the plans to run covert military operations inside Somalia - against UN rulings - and they hint at involvement of British security firms.

I never fail to be amazed by this country.

From a commenter at DeLong:
"I must say I would rather be a billionaire than a graduate of any particular institution of higher learning."

"Exclusivity" or "spite"; choose your term. Both are part and parcel of the relations of the wealthy to the masses, unless of course you prefer noblesse oblige, in other words, condescension.

You may want to argue that the rich serve a purpose, as sleazy trial lawyers do, but here as elsewhere DeLong ignores social and psychological complexity in order to focus on the clean beauty of the machine.
The rich are greedy, driven not by curiosity but by self-interest. Wealth is power, and the pursuit of one is the pursuit of the other. It's absurd for people to both defend economic Darwinism and social equality without seeing the contradiction between the two. It's like defending an economic Raj and a democratic social life.

Americans have the moral imaginations of precocious children.

Helena Cobban

Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.

A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.

Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.

Max sends us to James Galbraith on the Mexican election

Felipe Calderón has been named president of Mexico, by a court, much as George Bush was named President of the United States, by a court.

But did he win the election? We do not know. The court's decision does not establish this, any more than the Bush v Gore case established that Bush won his first election - which, as we now know, he did not.

In both cases, the truth could have been known in time. But it was not. And that is because one side - in the legal struggle, the winning side - refused and resisted a full recount of the votes.

more

"Fall is traditionally when Hollywood turns to more serious films, and the Toronto International Film Festival is where they are frequently shown. But a new movie that seems certain to raise hackles and induce squirming is a raucous comedy that makes its points by seeming to embrace sexism, racism, homophobia and that most risky of social toxins: anti-Semitism."

What Sascha Baron Cohen does is minstrelsy. I'm waiting to see his version of a settler on the West Bank.
---

Khatami at U.Va:

"If you ask me should the Americans leave tomorrow, I'd say 'No, don't do it'."

Libel?
I was wondering
---


Anna Akhmatova, 2001, oil on polyester applied to copper, 17"x17"

Occupation

Link from Helena Cobban, included in a long post that is litle more than a linklist, with commentary, to stories in Haaretz describing what seems to be absolute chaos among the leadership of the country.
One article on Olmert at a Knesset committee meeting:

"Olmert also told the committee that "there were failures in the war, but there were also amazing achievements. Has the U.S. collapsed after three years in Iraq? What's the panic? We all make mistakes, I first of all."

"What did you think, that there would be a war and nothing would happen to our soldiers," Olmert asked the committee. "The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?"

Olmert also did not know in advance abou the bids going out for new construction in the west bank. But Amir Peretz, the 'laborite' [sic] defense minister did.

Also, quoting Hobban: "...the attorney general has rejected two of the five people (men) whom Olmert had named to serve on the committee he is forming to look into the problems of the recent war. The reason? Because, as an Israeli good-governance NGO pointed oput, these men are both executives with major defense-contracting companies, and therefore have a clear financial/professional stake in the ooutcome of the committee's work."

And Hobban again: " HaAretz has found potentially five more women who claim they have been either sexually harrassed or sexually assaulted by State President Moshe Katsav-- at least one of whom now says she's prepared to join the existing complainant in testifying publicly against him."

And IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz is in trouble. The list goes on and on. Links at Just World News

Afternoon reading, found in a manilla envelope in files from my parents' basement, along with a xeroxed copy of Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse, by Edmund Leach: an 18 page typewritten copy of The Tribulation of the European Spirit

An essay written by Klaus Mann in 1949, in France, introduced and read by Manfred Wolfson over KPFA, Oct. 5 1958.

The "introductory remarks" go to a page and a half. The essay itself, I found here, under a different title, and with an additional first paragraph.
---

Published as Europe’s Search for a New Credo in the magazine Tomorrow, in 1949
Wolfson might of given it to my parents. The timing is right.

Helena Cobban:
Sistani down, Moqtada aggressive and up?

"Iran is run by a nasty regime that destabilizes an important part of the world, [more than, say, Israel?] frustrates American and Western interests, [which are what exactly?] and causes problems for allies like Israel. [see 1 and 2] But let's get some perspective."

Why quibble? Fareed Zakaria lays it out clearly enough that even an idiot should understand. A link from Laura Rozen

Glenn Greenwald: This week's FISA debate.

Read the comments
I'm in there for one, which DeLong fucked with, and another which was removed. Tony Judt's article is indeed silly.

He is a philosopher, a historian of philosophy, and a Catholic thinker. He spent years studying early modern Christian sects and heresies and for most of the past quarter-century has devoted himself to the history of European religion and philosophy and to what might best be described as philosophical-theological speculations.

The Catholic church doesn't interest me much, but I'm not going to begrudge people their faith. Still, I won't ignore the crimes of the Church, even in the present: "In El Salvador, the church helped push through a law requiring condom packages to carry a warning label that they do not protect against AIDS."  That link was included in the comment removed by DeLong.

I'm not trying to play tit for tat, but I see no reason why I should have to listen to haranguing oversimplification on one subject by someone so open to it on another.  It was odd to hear the paranoid tone of a Likudnik in Judt's zero sum description of the dangers of Marx. It might as well have been Dershowitz on Arafat (though I'm aware that until recently that tone on this subject -Europe and the left- is what Judt's become known for.)

The fallacy of self-reference: To consider your actions to be "X" [moderate? just?] because you consider yourself to be "X."

I assume at this point that academics are not intellectuals. In the interest of technical advancement or in the attempt to reinvent every field so as to allow for such definitions, questions of psychology or psychology, not as science but as self-awareness, doubt and judgment, have been removed from fields to which they were once central. Art is the history of cases, the recording of perception as a series of discrete events. Academia, in the interest of practicality, and claiming to speak in the name of science, deals now only in generalizations. Universities are no longer places of learning, they are now simply places where things are taught.

DeLong is a coward for being terrified of ambiguity. The same is true for almost every academic I've run into on the web for the past 5 years. I have to admit, I'm pretty disgusted by the lot of them.

Khatami in Chicago

A commonsensical response:

"This statement by Brad DeLong disturbed me on so many levels and I've had difficulty sorting them all out."
---

Fuck it: At this point I assume that academics are not intellectuals.

Max chimes in as well

Man, 1999, oil on canvas, 84"x84", private collection NY



Here's a nice one.
Still updating images (and including more information.)
Setting up a real page in the near future I guess.