Bilbo’s Riddle: What do I have in my pocket??
From Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)
(Live Performance at Glastonbury 08:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILxlVqf2fYU)
Drinking in the morning sun
Blinking in the morning sun
Shaking off the heavy one
Heavy like a loaded gun
What made me behave that way?
Using words I never say
I can only think it must be love
Oh, anyway, it’s looking like a beautiful day
Someone tell me how I feel
It’s silly wrong but vivid right
Oh, kiss me like the final meal
Yeah, kiss me like we die tonight
Cause holy cow, I love your eyes
And only now I see the light
Yeah, lying with you half-awake
Oh, anyway, it’s looking like a beautiful day
When my face is chamois-creased
If you think I’ll wink, I did
Laugh politely at repeats
Yeah, kiss me when my lips are thin
Cause holy cow, I love your eyes
And only now I see the light
Yeah, lying with me half-awake
Stumbling over what to say
Well, anyway, it’s looking like a beautiful day
So throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year’d see me right!
Throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year’d see me right!
Throw those curtains wide! (Cause holy cow, I love your eyes)
One day like this a year’d see me right! (And only now I see the light)
Throw those curtains wide! (Cause holy cow I love your eyes)
One day like this a year’d see me right! (And only now I see the light)
Throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year’d see me right!
Throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year’d see me right!
(SLOW) So throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year’d see me right!
(LIL FASTER) So throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year’d see me right!
Dark horse alternative-machine young-vote liberals.
1960:
John F. Kennedy *- Beat Johnson, Humphrey. Johnson made VP. Kennedy wins general.
1968:
Eugene McCarthy. Robert Kennedy.
Kennedy assassinated. VP Humphrey received nomination. Lost.
1972:
George McGovern (1972).
Pulls upset win over Muskie & establishment. Loses momentum after convention with VP debacle, “amnesty, abortion, and acid.” Loses to Nixon in general.
1976:
Jimmy Carter *
Beats open field using new nominating rules. Beats Ford in general.
1984:
Gary Hart. Loses to former VP Mondale. “Where’s the beef?” Hart worked for McGovern in ’72. Mondale loses to Reagan.
1988:
Gary Hart. Frontrunner, till stupid sex scandal. Jessie Jackson runs strong second place. Governor Dukakis of Mass. wins primary. Loses to Bush in General on Willie Horton, proto-swift-boating, and riding around in a tank.
1992:
Bill Clinton * (1992). Howard Dean (2004). Barack Obama * (2008).
Thoughts on Barack Obama, John Kerry, and their respective Swift-Boating:
When BHO was running for the Democratic nomination for Pres., many nervous supporters of both BHO and HRC were concerned about the inevitable “swift-boating” that would come if BHO were to secure the nomination. This internal debate was echoed in my own life by individuals who were concerned that BHO could not win in America, either because he was black or because he was not experienced with the “Right-Wing Attack Machine.”
Little did any of us know, after much consternation in the HRC camp, and the inevitable conclusion that if you’re running for President, you run for keeps (it ain’t beanbag, as Johnnie Mac use to say), HRC / Mark Penn began doing the swiftboating — quietly and with the help of the media, culminating in the “head-shot,” Obama’s pastor screaming “God Damn America” on national television, conjuring all sorts of connotations of a rejectionist African American community that wanted no part in reconciliation with the representatives and fellow travelers of their former (and sometimes still-current) oppressors.
A similar moment had happened during the summer and fall of the 2004 Presidential election, when a rising tide began to question John Kerry’s war-time service and patriotism.
The swiftboating (by HRC) of Barack Obama failed relatively quickly, while as Kerry’s was largerly seen as contributing to Kerry’s loss. What was the difference? Why didn’t the Republican 527s actually swift-boat Obama?
One reason, that’s immediate clear, is that Obama didn’t pussyfoot around the Reverend Wright affair. Faced with the negative coverage, Obama faced the issue head-on, in his typical eloquent fashion, and banked on the maturity of the segment of the American population that would be needed to elect him President. He gambled that by talking intelligently and openly on race (an issue in which we are too often too scared to even mention), drawing the landscape, placing Wright in his proper historical perspective and showing the divergence in beliefs between the two men, Obama was able to transcend the issue.
Any attempt to bring it back up might be met with a disappointed “there you go again.”
On a deeper level, Kerry was swiftboated because the anecdote reinforced the narrative: Kerry’s past military service was murky and questionable; his promised strategy for the War on Terror was alsos murky and questionable. Swift Boat led directly into “he was for the war before he was against it.”
The attempted swift-boating of Obama didn’t work because the narrative of difference and anti-Americanism, while compelling, was capable of a fierce rebuttal. Obama was running for President; what anti-American would want to run this Fierce Empire? Obama was different, but we are all different, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. Obama had his own narrative to rebut the swiftboat narrative, and Obama knew that his was stronger.
Kerry had a narrative to play as well — but he never did.
If Kerry had ever stood up on national television, dismissed the allegations, and then launched into a direct attack on the merits of the argument — that a “mission accomplished,” “stay the course,” “with us or against us” mentality was absolutely not the correct philosophy for America to follow in prosecuting an irregular and assymetrical war against an amorphous enemy in a somewhat hostile civilian environment, and that Kerry, through judgment, nuance, experience in diplomacy, and a keen understanding about the failures of Vietnam, was a superior commander in these troubled times, the nonsense over the Swift-Boats would have gone away and we would have instead been having a discussion about the prosecution of the Iraq War.
Instead, Kerry conducted his campaign without ever successfully articulating the mistakes that had been made in Vietnam, the mistakes the neocons were making as of then, and the fierce urgency of change. In a vacuum, banality dominated.
Ultimately, Kerry was not the man. He did not have the stamina, will, and maybe desire to win the Presidency.
One other reason swiftboating did not work with Obama, which has less to do with Obama’s strengths as a candidate and more with the relative maturity of the American people: while white society may be structurally rascist (probably) most white people aren’t racist, or at least, don’t want to be. Any racist attack would lose Obama’s opponent the vast meritocratic middle class that enjoys seeing minorities succeed because such success convinces them that their privileges, by being open to all, are in someway deserved.
McCain always knew that he would lose more than he’d gain by unleashing the hounds. McCain went negative, and they rolled out William Ayers — and said Obama’s middle name as often as possible — but it wasn’t endorsed by McCain, and it wasn’t approved of by the American people. The American people were more willing to endorse the smearing of a military veteran than a member of a historically underprivileged minority.
Strange that indie would be the musical genre that leads the vanguard of the sell-out crowd, plastering their airy songs all over various consumer commodities, even as this Whole Great World begins to doubt the crap they’ve sold us.
Musicians are rarely messiahs; art is the ornament of the master classes, and the artists well-paid house-slaves enamored of wealth and the love of beautiful women.
And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
Leviticus, Ch. 25
I was like a seventy year old man but could never understand how there could be spatial dimensions curled until Brian Greene explained it to me, saying: they are like the circular dimension of a cylinder, which a 1-dimensional worm could crawl around.
http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/limited-tolerance/?hp
“Tolerance ends where harm begins.”
The essential ethical quandary of the 21sts century was brought into stark light by the actions of the morning of September 11, 2001, when ten men hijacked four airplanes full of civilians and piloted two of them into two of the the largest office buildings in the world, one into a government office-building serving the military of the largest military power in the world and crashing one into a field in western Pennsylvania. All this they did to advance their geopolitical goals. They were steeled by a particular conception of their religion, and their religion’s historical role, and the changes the world had undergone in the previous two hundred years, in which European peoples were able to dominate the rest of the world and imposse their cultures and political structures on these other peoples.
As European political philosophy neared the end of its own rationality, brought into rigorous objectiveness by the dialectic between its two predominant 20th century strains, communist authoritarianism and liberal capitalism, the own unfairness of its dominance which reflected power relationships Europeans and the others were increasingly uncomfortable with and unable to justify resulted in the rise of postcolonialism and postmodernism. The Death of the Western God led to the Death of All Gods — the removal of the curtain to reveal naked power politics (on both right and left) led to the great Crisis of Faith in our institutions and ethics. The devaluing of other cultures was replaced with a culture of tolerance — maligned as moral relativism, it was really a form of cultural relativism that admitted that our ethics and morals were the product of our histories, that they were contingent and could not be justified based on belief in some higher power or ultimate truth.
Yet, the lessons of evolution and of Marxian dialectic do propose another justification for certain of our ethical considerations: that the contending of many parties for their desires results in a dynamic consensus that is the best way we know how to approximate justice. That justice, true justice, though the daughter of particulars, is the mother of all. That harm and waste are difficult to justify. That benefits should outweigh costs.
Can we be tolerant of intolerance? Why be tolerant? One reason is uncertainty — we are uncertain that our way is right even for us, how much more so should we not take away some one else’s way. Another is the prevention of monocultures — the process of evolutionary justice that brought the West to where it is requires many voices, all seeking their own good. This preference against monocultures is a preference — hard to justify intrinsically if our first value is tolerance.
Hence, our first value should not be tolerance. It should be humanity, with the freedom to pursue their own ends, since we are mortal and uncertain. Everyone must choose for themselves. A Choice that hurts others must be made susceptible to the pressures of others. We are all free, but also responsible to guarantee the freedom of the others, for loss of freedom to one jeopardizes our freedoms. However, we are not free to take away freedoms.
What about tax? It is a restraint by government to correct externalities of our actions.
She stands alone, staring into the mirrorstone that occupies the far wall of the gloomcave where I’ve placed her. Even so, the terror and anxiety that stir her features are sometimes betrayed by the ghost of the girl as she adjusts the image’s hair by smoothing her own. I watch her, invisible, tracing her with my mind’s eye, each young line, absorbing the white color of her skin, the dark browns of her hair. She is my prisoner, yet she enchants me with her presence, with the song of those hands upon her hair.
Just like this, I watch her for a minute, or an hour, or a century.
In the halls of death, as on the edge of a lightbeam, time loses meaning.
I am old and eternal, all calcium and bone, thick and gristle — and I know that there is at least a cold fire that burns within me, that while it might not heat it may still bear light and in these subterranean caves that are merely the true rendering of the world above, such light is not unwelcome. All who have walked before and all who will ever walk must stand before that light — cold light, shadow light, but light nonetheless — is such light, such truth, capable of love? Deserving of it? Blood flows in her veins. She is the flower of the spring, and I am the memory of winter.
Out of shadows, I appear, startling her, stretching the edges of her pale eyes.
Given that Janet Napolitano wants to rebrand terrorism as man-caused disasters (which is a fairly clunkity-clunkity hyphenated neologism) what other better and more specific Names might we ascribe to this particular presentation of assymetric warfare? Terrorism seems particularly imprecise, given that it invokes a certain fear-based emotional response in some abstract sense of a victim, instead of describing what it is.
Suicide bombing is better. Mass Homicides or Civilian Targeting might be better. Attacks on Vulnerable Civilian Populations. Attempting to hold populations hostage. Attacks on Civilian Targets.
Disaster is almost certainly wrong — like terrorism, too results oriented; it neglects that which is essential about terrorism and how to stop it, which is the Act and the Intention. (Actus Reus and Mens Rea). The result is relevant, but disaster has a connotation of amorphous guilt — when terrorism is very much about specific guilt. Terrorism assumes too much — assumes that the goals of the act are terror — when they may not be the goals, but only the response the victim feels.
Nuance? Or precision? By Naming correctly, do we get closer to the truth? I think so.
The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees 