From the Moonbat Section On Iraq

[Annie]

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2005/12/12/activist/index_np.html

Written by a very self-impressed grad student on why he may leave:

Dec. 12, 2005 | Dear Cary,

I'm a philosophy student in grad school. This is my first year in graduate school, and I left a large metropolitan city in the South in order to come to a small, isolated city in the mountainous Northeast. I really love grad school, and feel I am doing well. I have two papers that will be coming out for publication soon (I can't wait to see my name in print, I will admit it), my professors like me and respect me, and my evaluations for my teaching are excellent. More than all of that, I deeply and profoundly enjoy what I do. Teaching is a passionate activity and reading philosophy is something I consider fun. I could do this for the rest of my life and consider it a life worth having lived. This is not an alienated job to me, but rather it is the work of life; what Marx meant when he called labour a "living, form-giving fire."

But I feel guilty. Whenever I teach about people like Michel Foucault or Antonio Negri, I make sure my students know some biographical details about their lives. I make my students aware that for these two men, and many others I teach and read, there was no way to separate their resistance from their scholarship. There can be no separation between a Foucault who got into fights with the cops and a Foucault who wrote "Discipline and Punish." Nor can there be a separation between a Negri who helped organize workers in Italy and a Negri who wrote extensively on Spinoza (mostly while in prison). But I feel this is exactly what is happening to me. I haven't done any activism work since coming to grad school, despite the fact that I was a committed activist before grad school. And I am not sure how that will change, for there is just no time. Sleeping, cooking and making love are luxuries that one somehow steals in between teaching and researching here in grad school. And I will be here for at least six years, if not longer. And after that?

I don't think the world needs another academic. Not really. What the world needs are more women and men willing to dedicate what Jefferson & Co. summed up quite nicely -- their lives, fortunes and sacred honor -- to making this world a better place. And I am not sure if there is a way in American academia to seriously help make the world a better place. The only academics in America who seriously shape the country are scientists, neocons and economists. So I feel stuck, both deliriously happy with what I am doing and at the same time wracked with guilt over what I am not doing.

Oh and the answer from the Salon writer:

Dear Academic Who Would Be a Revolutionary,

...Though I do not know what school you are teaching at, I imagine that few of your students have much experience fighting police. It is not one of the extracurricular activities one's parents urge one to engage in while in high school, in order to highlight it on college applications.

And yet fighting police can be crucial to understanding what power really is -- as hearing the clang of a metal door can be crucial to understanding what confinement is. And thus it can be educational. One must know and accept the consequences of one's ideas.

At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. Yeah, I know... For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?) Yep, he really wrote that and I sat through a video ad to get it for you! Yes, I must be!

I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. And I do think that at a certain point the achievement of that goal might take precedence over our personal predilections for writing, teaching and the like. We might be called upon to go on general strike, for instance. We might be called upon to set up camp in the streets for weeks or months, to gather and remain in large public squares as the students in Tiananmen Square did, and dare government forces to remove us or to slaughter us in the streets.

This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable? ...

 

[Annie]

Very funny reaction to the above:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2005_12_11_archive.html#113442053262055165

Remember the Twilight Zone Episode With The American Officer Who Suddenly Turns Japanese?

It's a memorable episode about a gung-ho Army officer, prepared to engage in a needless slaughter of Japanese soldiers in the closing days of World War II. He drops his binoculars--and when he picks them up, he is a Japanese officer ordering his men to attack U.S. soldiers holed up in a Philippine cave, two years earlier.

Cary Tennis over at Salon is making noises that seem strangely familiar to me, from the early 1990s:

At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)

I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. And I do think that at a certain point the achievement of that goal might take precedence over our personal predilections for writing, teaching and the like. We might be called upon to go on general strike, for instance. We might be called upon to set up camp in the streets for weeks or months, to gather and remain in large public squares as the students in Tiananmen Square did, and dare government forces to remove us or to slaughter us in the streets.
​

One obvious difference is that we didn't have access to the news media back then. We still only have one friendly network, Fox News--and people like Cary Tennis still have the majority of news organizations on their side.

Another large difference is that we did, finally, in 1994, change the composition of both houses of Congress. Why? Because in spite of the news media's overwhelming support for what Bill Clinton was doing, enough of the population became troubled by Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the federal assault weapons ban to say, "Wait a minute! Something is wrong here." Tennis's faction still controls the major news media--and in spite of all their efforts, they have failed to get a majority of their side.

The most amusing difference, of course, is that the same crowd that has been working overtime to have the government disarm the masses is now making noises that imply violent overthrow of the government. What are they going to use? Super Soakers?

posted by Clayton at 1:39 PM

 

[musicman]

Written by a very self-impressed grad student on why he may leave

Wow - you so have this clown pegged! Me me me. I'm so great. I'm so smart. And, I'm so noble; I feel GUILTY, you see.

"And I am not sure if there is a way in American academia to seriously help make the world a better place."

Oh, I've got a few ideas - if this asshole REALLY wants to know!

Oh and the answer from the Salon writer

Now, THIS guy scares me. The will of the people, expressed at the ballot box, is just not going to do - not if we're too unenlightened to get it right. What a miserable little tyrant! The blind arrogance of liberal socialism never ceases to dazzle me. And he's got the nerve to compare the left's "struggle" to the students in Tiananmen Square; is he that dim, or does he just think WE are?

 

[Annie]

Wow - you so have this clown pegged! Me me me. I'm so great. I'm so smart. And, I'm so noble; I feel GUILTY, you see.

"And I am not sure if there is a way in American academia to seriously help make the world a better place."

Oh, I've got a few ideas - if this asshole REALLY wants to know!



Now, THIS guy scares me. The will of the people, expressed at the ballot box, is just not going to do - not if we're too unenlightened to get it right. What a miserable little tyrant! The blind arrogance of liberal socialism never ceases to dazzle me. And he's got the nerve to compare the left's "struggle" to the students in Tiananmen Square; is he that dim, or does he just think WE are?

personally I was impressed with the references to Marx by the student and Tiananmen Square, seems to prove that they are still interested in Communism. "C'mon, we can get it right!" Moonbats!

 

[musicman]

personally I was impressed with the references to Marx by the student and Tiananmen Square, seems to prove that they are still interested in Communism. "C'mon, we can get it right!" Moonbats!

Spectacular, dazzling moonbattery! The student, of course, demonstrates that he is yet a novice; the seasoned communist revolutionary has learned to cloak the designs of his secret heart in "progressive" or "civil libertarian" guise. He''ll learn; he'll become a more accomplished liar. The movement can't have these loose cannons crashing about - blurting out their true desires.

The Salon writer, on the other hand, is a more dangerous character, IMHO. He has learned to lie AUDACIOUSLY - his skill almost Clintonian. To wrap himself up in the true heroes of Tiananmen Square, when their murderers were tyrants of his precise stripe...

For once, I'm at a loss for words!

 

[LuvRPgrl]

Im not so sure I would be so critical of the original writer / student. He seems genuine, and like you say, the salon writer seems scary.

Plus the student did mention neocons having influence, I like that!

 

[musicman]

Im not so sure I would be so critical of the original writer / student. He seems genuine...

Well, I'll go along with THIS much - he seems like a genuine, self-absorbed, slavishly indoctrinated communist moonbat!

I agree, though, that the Salon writer is truly dangerous.

 

[Annie]

Im not so sure I would be so critical of the original writer / student. He seems genuine, and like you say, the salon writer seems scary.

Plus the student did mention neocons having influence, I like that!

Yup, implying that the left has none. Right. Btw, he also mentions Marx.

 

[ThomasPaine]

in front of. Dagnabit!! What's a young aspiring Marxist revolutionary to do? It's simply not enough to poison the minds of others, one MUST have a physical cause..... Damned democracy!!! Electing people the left doesn't approve. Stupid, moronic, Marxist education lacking, free, liberated, voting Americans, simply are UNDESERVING of the guidance of the Marxist educated intellectual. Dumb Americans!!

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Yup, implying that the left has none. Right. Btw, he also mentions Marx.

That's what got me. You know you're in trouble when someone mentions Marx, in a good way, in the first ten lines of something that long.