You think it was politics. That particular dance, boy, that’s over.
— William Gibson,Virtual Light, p. 101
Is politics something historically specific? Put that way, the answer is obviously “yes.” What isn’t historically specific, after all? But that does carry with it the suggestion that Gibson’s character could be right, that maybe politics would be “over,” and that seems hard to comprehend. Read more↴
The disadvantage of not posting anything for a while is that whatever post you write inevitably takes on the mantle of being a post worth breaking your silence for. Luckily, this problem was solved for me by finding something I couldn’t not post: a preview of the tATu film.
Aside from that, I’ve been: Read more↴
Turns out hipster favorite Ron Paul believes in the “North American Union” theory being pimped by such eminent fascists as Lou Dobbs and Alex Jones (short version, George Bush is s3cr3t1y a dirty Mexican socialist OMG!). And he wants to abolish the federal reserve (that’ll teach those Jewish bankers)! No word yet on his position on degenerate art or his policy towards the Slavs.
I wouldn’t have thought American politics would be able to find new ways to appall me, and yet: Senate Approves Resolution Denouncing MoveOn.org Ad. Further stupidity:
Mr. Obama had voted minutes earlier in favor of an extremely similar resolution proposed by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.
Ms. Boxer’s proposal, which failed, called for the Senate to “strongly condemn all attacks on the honor, integrity and patriotism” of anyone in the United States armed forces.
This is one of those strange limit-cases of contemporary liberalism: it’s an important principle of liberal democracies that the civilian government has formal control the military, but only, apparently, on condition that it never disagrees with the military.
Maybe I subsconsciously believe the analytic misrepresentations of Derrida. At least, I wouldn’t have expected that in a debate between Derrida and Habermas, it would be Derrida who provides the lucid, rigorous arguments. But what else are we to make of passages like this:
The specialized languages of science and technology, law and morality, economics, political science, etc. … live off the illuminating power of metaphorical tropes; but the rhetorical elements, which are by no means expunged, are tamed, as it were, and enlisted for special purposes of problem-solving.
— Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 209
Is Habermas taking the piss? Read more↴
I’m probably not the first person to come up with a variation on this macro to celebrate the new Britney Spears single (though it’s surprisingly difficult to find immediately recognizable pictures of her which don’t lead to 100% wrongness when you superimpose the words “GIMME IT” on top of them). It’s really very good, although in the genre of famous‐person‐sings‐about‐not‐liking‐being‐famous I don’t know if it’s as good as Lindsey Lohan’s “Rumors,” or, of course, Britney’s own chef‐d’œuvre, “Lucky.”