Joanna
----- Original Message ----- On 3/14/2012 9:15 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Carrol doesn't care about elections. Who controls the state has nothing to do with politics, apparently.
At the library today I did something I haven't done in ages. I wanted an article from the wayback machine by Frederic Jameson and it was only available in the reference section so I photocopied it.
It's an essay from 1970 on Raymond Chandler. I was reading it earlier and found this bit on U.S. politics that I think fits here:
"On the level of abstract thought, the effect of the preordained permanency of the Constitution is to hinder the development of any speculative political theorizing in this country, and to replace it with pragmatism within the system... A kind of reverence attaches to the abstract, a disabused cynicism to the concrete. As in certain types of mental obsession and dissociation, the American is able to observe local injustice, racism, corruption, educational incompetence, with a practiced eye, while he continues to entertain boundless optimism as to the greatness of the country, taken as a whole."
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