Links Archive
Mark Elliot Cullen Nobody’s A Critic→
Morgan Meis in The Smart Set:
The word criticism has its root in the Greek word krinein, which means — in its most original sense — to divide or separate. It’s about sorting things out and making distinctions. Criticism is thus about doing something that is, in this era, almost impossible to do. It is difficult simply to keep up with the vast global cultural output, let alone to make determinations and judgments.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Bryan Klausmeyer The “Far Left” is the Main Stream→
Daily Kos has some interesting poll figures indicating that the majority of Americans are actually much further to the left than one would otherwise suspect. Obviously poll figures are hardly sacrosanct, but I think they lend some due credence to the suspicion that the notion of the “middle-class moderate” majority is essentially a fantasy discourse propagated by the media and political elite.
We reflect the majority opinion of this country on pretty much every issue, yet the media continues to pretend that we’re the far left, the lunatic fringe. They’re still unwilling to admit the obvious…we are the mainstream.
But it’s not just the media. The idea that the majority of Americans are moderate in the apolitical sense is a groundless ideological assertion that has successfully propagated itself at nearly every level of social consciousness, such that any evidence that contradicts it is read as being partisan.
Obviously, it would be very discomforting for the Right to find out how little support their ideas actually have amongst the majority of Americans, but it seems that they are aware of this, which is why (to borrow a concept from Adam Kotsko) there is and always has been a clear asymmetry in relation to the truth between the Left and the Right: to take an example from this election year, the notion that John McCain is a warmonger is not actually far from the truth, given the innumerable quips he has made about killing Iranians, whereas the notion that Barack Obama is a Communist secret Muslim is simply a paranoid racist fantasy.
Unless you take most people to be less intelligent than yourself, in which case you are most likely an asshole, it really shouldn’t be surprising at all that most Americans (and most people in general) are more concerned with truth than lurking in the cesspool of their most idiotic and self-indulgent fantasies.
Fed Raises Specter of Class Struggle→
World Socialist Website:
The US ruling elite is determined to do everything in its power to transfer its own enormous losses onto the backs of the American working class. The unlimited bailout power being called for by the Treasury and the Fed constitutes one part of this attempt. The systematic drive to slash real wages in order to finance the return to profitability constitutes another.
Hundreds of Super Rich Under Investigation→
Thanks to the deeds of one disgruntled computer technician, who managed to steal banking information from his home country of Lichtenstein, which evidently has very secretive banking laws, hundreds of extremely wealthy U.S. citizens are now under investigation by federal prosecutors for tax evasion. Apparently, the giant Swiss Bank UBS may also have been complicit in helping to hide up to $20 billion. (Via The Consumerist.)
Judas!→
Daniel Miller, writing for The Nation, has recently published a “scathing critique” of Slavoj Žižek in general and his latest book, In Defense of Lost Causes, in particular, pointing to his pyrrhic descent into madness as indicated by the undoubtedly Hegelian trifecta of Hitchens-esque contrarianism, left-wing militarism and, of course, the culminating integration with hyper-reflexive late-capitalist consumerism. Miller concludes his review with this bit of speculative reason:
Throughout In Defense of Lost Causes, Žižek speaks recurrently, and in a sometimes disturbingly extravagant tone, of the “messianic” imperative of performing “a Leap of Faith” over the ravine of common sense in pursuit of “lost Causes, Causes that, from the space of sceptical wisdom, cannot but appear as crazy.” During such moments, it’s hard not to suspect that Žižek has finally gone mad.
As a student of advanced theory, I don’t find any of this problematic. On the contrary, Miller’s reaction to Žižek’s “Kehre” typifies the kind of idolatry that surrounds innumerable public figures when the ego catches a glimpse of its own auratic reflection only to find itself spurned and alienated in the solipsistic idiocy of its own narcissistic jouissance.
Perhaps this gives some credibility to Rex Butler’s otherwise annoyingly stupid and culturally inept comparison of Žižek to Bob Dylan, only insofar as both succeeded in alienating large portions of their audience at a certain world-historical juncture. If this is the case, then I fully welcome Žižek’s theological turn and his advertisements for the BBC and Abercrombie & Fitch. If Miller represents the kind of audience Žižek had formerly captivated, then I eagerly await the sleeveless leather shirts and aviators to come.
The Tailor of Ulm→
Lucio Magri in the New Left Review:
A first task for the new era, then, is to draw up a balance sheet—in a spirit of truth, whatever the convictions with which one begins and the conclusions at which one arrives; without fabricating facts, without offering excuses or separating lived experience from its context… In sum, to recompose the thread of a titanic undertaking and dramatic decline, not seeking to make allowances or to pursue an impossible neutrality, but aiming at an approximation to the truth.
(Via No Useless Leniency, where you can find a copy of Brecht’s poem.)
Believing is Seeing→
Errol Morris in the New York Times’ photo-op:
I have asked myself how this controversy over a photograph became international news. Clearly, there are many reasons. But at the center of them all is this question: Are we on the brink of another war? I remind myself that the war in Iraq started with bellicose posturing and photographs. At the United Nations, Colin Powell displayed several photographs of Iraqi sites showing incontrovertible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Of course, we now know that this incontrovertible visual evidence was false. We don’t need advanced digital tools to mislead, to misdirect or to confuse. All we need is a willingness to uncritically believe.
Bush Backs Israeli Attack On Iran→
If it ever comes to that, I think a serious war crimes prosecution is in order.
A History of Hooch→
Sam Anderson in New York magazine:
The popular history of a humdrum object—that faddish genre in which the most boring items on your dining-room table (salt, cod, potatoes, bananas, chocolate) are revealed to be secret juggernauts of profound social change—has recently become so popular that it’s probably time for someone to write a popular history of it. If I were forced, I’d diagnose the trend as yet another symptom (like $4 gas or home foreclosures) of our current flavor of late-phase capitalism—a commercialism so far advanced we’ve begun transferring historical glories from our leaders (Napoleon, Churchill, Gandhi) to our products, so that we find ourselves surrounded by greatness in every aisle of Whole Foods.
I’d also add, if forced, that the genre’s wild success seems to predict its own obsolescence: The conclusion that everything is integral to the history of everything is perilously close, in the end, to no conclusion at all.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
The Party of Torture→
Check out these amazing conservative t-shirts, particularly the waterboarding and Ann Coulter ones. Good to see that the GOP has made torture and imperialism its explicit slogans this year. Classy, as always. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
The Second Gilded Age→
Mike Soron has a great post comparing our current “era” to a repeat of the Gilded Age, which is something I’ve long been in the habit of joking about, so I’m glad that there are others out there who confirm my world-views (What else could blogging be for?). I would add that perhaps in this instance we should “stand Hegel on his head”: if the first Gilded Age occurred as farce, then the second occurred as a tragedy.
The Audacity of Listening→
A strangely sensible op-ed piece by Gail Collins on Obama’s recent “triangulation.” I say “strangely” because it’s in the New York Times. Zing! (Via Wonkette.)
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