> At 03:15 PM 5/22/2008, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>
> >Earlier this year Mike Davis wrote 8,000 words with 50 footnotes and
> >a lot of interesting tables about the Democratic party after last
> >fall's elections.
>
>
> I meant last year and fall 2006. I blame my nod on eye-closer posts
> about the poor benighted souls who pay attention to elections.
Since your soul is an imaginary entity, or perhaps a bad metaphor, neither of us can determine its condition. It is what ever story you wish to tell about it.
It is possible to write about elections and actually convey something interesting and new or even entertaining... See for example Norman Mailer's "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" for example and Joe McGinnis's wonderful book "The Selling of the President, 1968." Both books I recommend. See also, "1912: Wilson, Taft, Roosevelt, Debs" by James Chace, for a mildly interesting historial take on an election. But the uninteresting writing and thinking about elections is about a million to one in proportion to the interesting writing and thinking about elections. One only has to read T. H. White's fawning and much praised "The Making of the President" 1960 to see the how bad and stupid-making even the best of this bad election writing is. It is ideological stupefaction carried out as if there can be nothing more normal.
Nobody on this list has written anything remotely interesting about this election. Instead what is recommended to me is that I should recognize the genius of Karl Rove in order to understand America. I am not impressed. The banality of Rove is so obvious that I think that the Doug who appears on this list is not the same Doug who wrote "Wall Street". If Doug can suffer through the ideological stupefaction of Rove, and not recognize it as ideological to its core - a world view imparting no information except interior to its own ideology -- then I wonder where he himself is going politically.
There used to be a joke among my gang in college that anyone who joins a Maoist group loses at least 20 IQ points in a few days. Behind this joke there was a real observation. Smart people become dumber according to their ideological and political committments. There are certain kinds of _ideological activity_ that makes a person less intelligent and more blind to the world, just as their are certain kinds of _theoretical activity_ that makes a person more intelligent and able to see the world clearly. The way that Doug has been recommending that we see this election through his posts seems to me to be an example of the former rather than the latter. Playing Rove's game is not recommended for clarity.
I admire Mike Davis's writing as I admire Doug's intellectual activity and writing, which is why his obsession with Clinton-Obama is as shocking to me as besotted leftists who have fallen under the sway of Obama's charisma.
I have not read Davis's piece. Send it to me, or tell me where I can find it and I will read it. It is possible that like Mailer or McGinnis or Chace that he has written something interesting.
A final note: I tell people I know that they should listen to Doug's show. If he is at a forum or event I often email his the panel and the time of his appearance to people who are also going to the forum or event. He is enlightening and interesting. I only hope that this obsession with elections is some hold over from his youth when he thought he would grow up and become President or something.
Jerry
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/