Charles Brown wrote:
>
>
> CB: Of course ! rightwing is ultimately dumb for us. No matter how fancy the
> thoughts leading to being rightwing, they are at bottom , poor use of the
> intellect. Good writing form does not save bad content of ideas. Evil
> literary geniuses get no vote.
This can't be supported. Any text is, among other things, and index entry to possible events or states of feeling/thinking/doing. Or an arrow pointing to such. Consider the following lines in praise of Hitler:
Adolph furious from perception.
But there is a blindness which comes from inside --
they try to explain themselves out of nullity.
(Canto 104)
Hitchens was banal both as a leftist and a rightist, because his texts never pointed to anything that wasn't either banal to begin with or wss reduced to banality by his lust for a smartcrack that would show how hip he was. I heard him speak once in Chicago, and had mostly forgotten what he said in the first part by the time I was listening to the last part of his talk. You can think about the lines above for a long time, and each time you think of them you can see new things, which are worthwhile for leftists to think about too. And they might also lead to thinking about the different sources of appeal of different forms of reaction. Bush & the DLC are moving us toward a police state, but no one will ever say of _anyone_ now in D.C. or there for the last two decades that he/she is "furious from perception." Pound was wrong about Hitler -- but don't focus on that; focus on how Hitler provoked or encouraged that sort of wrongness. And you can't learn that from anyone who never even felt the attraction.
Carrol