> "a slightly used BMW."
that would be pre-owned. and i'll have you know that i was there in the beginning for that rhetorical shift. i was tarbending at a little jazz-dinner club and two guys were arguing.
one says, "Hunnnnnee! doncha think (hic) calling 'em 'pre-owned cars' is a baaaaad idea? Is a used (hic) car. Tell 'im. Tell my dad here, you met my dad, right? Nobozzy (hic) will ever ever fall for that. Yerra smart chick, (hic) right? Wuchew think highly of my dad here (hic) if you were on a date with 'im and he called his ex a "pre-owned wife?" Zee? It'll nevah work. (hic) A pre-owned wife is an ex. She's used. Just like a car. It's used (hic). No one'll everrrrrrrrr buy it. (hic)" (the conversation needed a little humor, damn it!)
As to Woj's suggestion, about reading, and if you want to understand the religious (not wacko) right, and how it all connects to american culture, _Habits of the Heart_ Bellah et al. i'm sure there are other good suggestions, though.
I'm kinda surprised this is not well known stuff. It's the three-legged stool, third way, communitarianism stuff that I thought everyone (most) despised here? It was, as Jonah Goldberg noted, picked up and secularized as "the politics of meaning" and part of the political think tank culture that preceded and grew with Clinton's presidencies. What was that SC island retreat they all used to go on? Ostensibly, they were supposed to be discussing this kind of thing every year as they took seagrass and kiwi-lime mudbaths and noshed on fresh berries and creme brulee.
At 01:51 PM 11/9/2004, John Thornton wrote:
>Someone want to explain to me what I am apparently missing because I think
>the narrative idea is a bit disingenuous and I don't think that is what
>others have in mind?
>
>John Thornton
YOu are among the people on this list who I'd count has having the capacity to convey--even in e-mail--a genuine human concern and care for other people. There are plenty of people like that here, so I'm not dissing anyone, just don't have time to point it out and show you how I see it in your typings. But you sure as heck don't come off as some wonky number crucncher babbling on about logical fallacies, etc. (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that).
You so obviously care about injustice. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm deluded, I don't know. But I see it in you. You tell a narrative about what it means to be a lefty in nearly everything you type, every emotion that leaks from your prose. It's a passion that pervades what you write, especially when you're really on fire about something. Same thing as Greg wrote last night. And jOanna wrote. I shouldn't pick out posts because I'll forget to list others, so don't be offended, but seriously a lot of us are like this already.
At 01:57 PM 11/9/2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
>People don't understand wonky stuff. They don't connect policy to party or
>candidate in any detail. They need a one- or two-sentence story that
>excites them about politics. "America is in danger and Bush can save us!"
>Doesn't matter what the danger is - terrorism or lesbianism - it still
>works. Things like that.
oooo oooo. thank you so much for reminding me. i'm trying to work this out in my head.
Eli Sagan, in explorations of the source of a moral consciousness, talks about how children respond to their parents when they are disciplined (and worse, abused): they can identify with the punishing parent and become the punishing parent. they can identify with the victim and be a victim all their life.
Busheviks play on both. They need a culture of abused people, so to speak. Rude I know, but this is what the fear thing is all about. It's always why it's proto-fascistic b/c the splitting tendencies lend themselves to Othering enemies external and internal.
But there's a third response, the mature response of a healthy developing ego. The child (and all of us b/c we repeat this throughout life) can identify with the nurturing parent who is, as any good Freudian knows, inextricably bound up with the punishing parent.
The task of maturity is to not sunder the good/bad parent (the good/bad self). When we do that, we stay the same and suffer from horrendous, stupefying guilt (instead of a progressive condition called shame which is the basis for progress). When we split good/bad, we project or introject. bad stuff. We can't bear the anxiety brought about by reconciling the good/bad parent/self/other. It's easier to project and/or introject.
But, if we can sustain that anxiety and work through it, we achieve a sense of well-being and wholeness, capable of recognizing ourselves and others as both good and bad, etc. etc.
The goal of any progressive narrative must be one which encourages us to side with the nurturer (not the punitive parent, not the victim). This is all related to cognitive psych stuff about frameworks since a lot of that draws on Freudian theory -- or it did last time I looked into it.
Question is, as Wojtek suggests, can any such narrative be progressive at all? Is our goal to strip the world of all narrative, all myth, all symbolism? is that possible (i don't think so). Alas, don't many of us have that as our goal? We want facts, unadorned truth, bang bang bang, numbers, straight up no chaser.
And don't forget, there IS a moral narrative that undergirds the wonk (liberal enlightenment).
k
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling