Time for the Jets to cool

sororyzbl · Post by **sororyzbl** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 6:57 pm

Sfonzarelli wrote:Thelemia was an early form of Erisianism!

So that being said, why are you so into "informing" people? Wouldn't you rather intentionally confuse them for your own amusement? (And possibly for greater strategic reasons) I know I like to.

It depends on whether it's funny or not. If I were to say that the OTO is made up of shriners and their shiny fezzes and little cars, now THAT's funny.

sororyzbl · Post by **sororyzbl** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 6:58 pm

spaciegirl wrote:you like it raw don't you?

raw as in robert anton wilson?

spaciegirlreturn · Post by **spaciegirlreturn** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:00 pm

As in Ol' Dirty Bastard...coincidentally also known as Little Baby Jesus. I'll still take my Mothra Jesus over him though.

Sfonzarelli · Post by **Sfonzarelli** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:09 pm

sororyzbl wrote:
Sfonzarelli wrote:Thelemia was an early form of Erisianism!

So that being said, why are you so into "informing" people? Wouldn't you rather intentionally confuse them for your own amusement? (And possibly for greater strategic reasons) I know I like to.
It depends on whether it's funny or not. If I were to say that the OTO is made up of shriners and their shiny fezzes and little cars, now THAT's funny.

Yeah, I meant if it was funny. But tannhaus' posts are only unintentionally funny. (Although...)

The Lovely Miss M. · Post by **The Lovely Miss M.** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:12 pm

spaciegirl wrote:
The Lovely Miss M. wrote:Okay, there are like a buhjillion different types of Protestantism. And, yes, some of them are kind of assholes about it.

Personally, I was raised Dutch Reformed and now attend a Presbyterian church (both Protestant).

Frankly, the only thing that makes me different from most people is that through church I have learned how to make amazing pie crust.
I learned from "Martha Stewart's Pies and Tarts". She is my own personal Jesus.
edit- I reccomend the Wine Poached Pear Frangiapani Tart and the Macadamia Nut Tartlettes

I've got it! Martha Stewart is the reincarnation of Martin Luther!

It's all in the pies....

Sfonzarelli · Post by **Sfonzarelli** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:18 pm

spaciegirl wrote:As in Ol' Dirty Bastard...coincidentally also known as Little Baby Jesus. I'll still take my Mothra Jesus over him though.

ODB and R.A.W are both pretty cool but I'd choose ODB.

spaciegirlreturn · Post by **spaciegirlreturn** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 8:57 pm

Sfonzarelli wrote:
spaciegirl wrote:As in Ol' Dirty Bastard...coincidentally also known as Little Baby Jesus. I'll still take my Mothra Jesus over him though.
ODB and R.A.W are both pretty cool but I'd choose ODB.

I think that ODB album was the last thing I ever had on cassette. Every time I see your avatar I remember this skanky little scratched up case that floated all over my car for a while. I can't think of many things that give me such fond memories as all things wu-tang do.

dVant · Post by **dVant** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:03 pm

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

When religious people argue all I hear is "my neurosis will kick your neurosis in the ass!"

...

By the way, spaciegirl was insulting tannhaus... not attacking him.

Sfonzarelli · Post by **Sfonzarelli** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 10:09 pm

dVant wrote:
Religion is the opiate of the masses.

Karl Marx was an old fat cranky German with about as much relevance to anyone's life as Ann Coulter

spaciegirlreturn · Post by **spaciegirlreturn** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 10:12 pm

Kasdeja · Post by **Kasdeja** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 6:38 am

I can't tell if the flaming is over...if not, here's my addition to this thread...

Sheikh Gomelez · Post by **Sheikh Gomelez** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:03 am

Sfonzarelli wrote:
dVant wrote:
Religion is the opiate of the masses.

Karl Marx was an old fat cranky German with about as much relevance to anyone's life as Ann Coulter

Strangely enough, substitute another name for Ann Coulter's, and that would read like an Ann Coulter quotation.

I'd argue that Marx is more relevant-- at least in terms of providing a framework and analytical tools-- to people's lives than Coulter.

Marx's The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoléon, a sadly neglected text, offers a useful analysis of Napoléon III's rise to power. In the book, Marx demonstrates direct historical connections between Napoléon I, the 1848 Revolutions, and Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's 1851 coup; he also provides a chilling and (to me) darkly humorous analysis of the role nostalgia and class resentment played in Louis-Napoléon's rise to power. This sort of material should strike the contemporary reader as frighteningly reminiscent of the way nostalgia for World War II, the Cold War, and even the Reagan era-- for "simpler times"-- functions in our mediascape, and the way Fox News-style discussions of natural disasters and wars as being "good for the economy" and therefore for the nation's well-being operate as propaganda in the current political theater. Louis-Napoléon, Napoléon's (possible) nephew, picked a date significant to France-- the day he seized power was was the anniversary of both Napoléon's coronation and Napoléon's defeat of the Russo-Austrian forces at Austerlitz-- and set himself up to be the person-- the only person-- who could solve his nation's problems. He was going to be the new Napoléon, putting an end to those pesky worker revolts inside France, giving the French a renewed sense of confidence in France's place in history and in the world, and making the nation a dominant power, just like Uncle had done, just like the good old days.

As a work of historical analysis with contemporary relevance, it ranks with Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism as something work reading, at least in my opinion.

Marx's book and Arendt's work cut a number of ways; you can read them, and get models for thinking about and discussing why other countries and peoples are acting kinda odd these days.

Also, Marx's theoretical writings, particularly The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Grundrisse, and sections of Capital prove useful when considering certain political and economic conflicts, and offer an interesting take on what did-- and didn't-- happen in the 19th and 20th Centuries. And I think the base-superstructure argument is useful as heck.

Such works aren't necessary when undertaking such analyses, but they can be useful. (Such tools only take you so far, and that has a lot to do with the utopian streak in Marx's work, with inconsistencies between the early and the later Marx's views on human nature, and with the problems inherent to any reductive system, i.e. any system that tries to break a human or social problem down to simple elements. Kind of like Korzybski and General Semantics... sometimes the model's useful, sometimes it's not, and dogmatists can't and don't see the difference. To be fair, I don't think Marx was completely a Marxist, whichever "Marxism" we're discussing; the pleasure he derived from Cervantes and from Balzac-- Balzac, a reactionary, for Pete's sake!-- wasn't purely that of a dialectical materialist or an economist.)

Whereas Coulter's stuff works differently.

A critique of Marx requires more effort than a dismissal of Coulter does, unless you're going the ad hominem route. With Marx's, one has to look at the details, think about his reasoning, and see where he fails.* With Coulter, she distorts facts, employs deliberately inflammatory rhetoric, and uses invalid analogies and deeply flawed similes, e.g.: "Our book is Genesis. Their book is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax." (As if all environmentalists-- or all liberals, or all Leftists, or whatever-- read Carson at all, let alone with anything resembling religious faith. As if all Christians, for that matter, read Genesis literally. And never mind popular predictions of environmental catastrophes in the past... History is not Ms. Coulter's strong suit. After all, she has a search engine, so see can pick and choose support-- I don't mean evidence-- for her arguments as she goes along.) "Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them." (So... the number of abortions increases or decreases based on government policy? Probably. But when such procedures are illegal, I don't know how you get reliable statistics as to their frequency. I mean, how many people use illegal drugs in the United States? Exactly? I suspect the same inability to determine the number of abortions would set in if abortion was outlawed. And no, I'm not stating that abortion is the moral equivalent of illegal drug use; I'm saying that, if abortions were outlawed, it would be difficult to state the precise number of illegal abortions, high or low, for the same reason it's difficult to determine how many Americans use illegal drugs; we only know about the ones who die, get caught, or go into treatment centers. For all I know, you're all toking away at this very moment, or you've just gotten back to your work station after doing a line in the bathroom, or whatever. Not like you're going to tell the cops or your boss or the feds about it.

I don't think Coulter's comparison holds in other ways. In a taxation-abortion comparison, does one consider illegal abortion as analogous to protection fees, extortion, etc. as illegal taxation? I mean, one could just as easily say abortion isn't like taxation, insofar as I've never met someone who's pro-life who'd consider taxation to be morally equivalant to abortion, even if taxes do piss the person in question off. She's trying to say that Democrats don't like talking about abortion and taxes, that Democrats support both, and so the the things are like each other, which strikes me as a pretty loose kind of similarity if she wants to be cutting and cynical, but oh well.) And so on; Ms. Coulter provides us with a vast, although fortunately not infinite, range of examples.

Marx was very much a product of German philosophy-- and of his time. Some of his stuff can be useful; some of it is dated, idealistic, or otherwise bunk. Coulter is very much a product of our media-satured, soundbyte-driven age. Her writings, personal appearances, and public speeches succeed in getting her attention. Controversy, mockery, and dismissing her by name generate greater recongition for her. She's the Paris Hilton of political pundits.

Not a Marxist, but yours in irony and off to earn the Yankee dollar,
The Sheikh

*You can try to ignore him, but variations of his ideas work themselves into all sorts of things.

spaciegirlreturn · Post by **spaciegirlreturn** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:57 am

I hereby refuse to read any post where the text is longer that 1.5 inches on my screen.

Mirage · Post by **Mirage** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:00 am

spaciegirl wrote:I hereby refuse to read any post where the text is longer that 1.5 inches on my screen.

Agreed. My eyes automatically glaze over.

When I saw the name of this thread, for some reason, I thought it was about the actual Jets, so I came in here ready to flame away..*dissapointed shrug*

sororyzbl · Post by **sororyzbl** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:15 am

Mirage wrote:
spaciegirl wrote:I hereby refuse to read any post where the text is longer that 1.5 inches on my screen.

Agreed. My eyes automatically glaze over.

When I saw the name of this thread, for some reason, I thought it was about the actual Jets, so I came in here ready to flame away..*dissapointed shrug*

football jets or street gang jets?