VIEW ALL 200MOTELS' BLOG ENTRIES
The philosopher Marshall McLuhan once compared modern society to a car driver barreling along at 90 mph while looking through the rearview mirror.
He wrote this at a time of comparatively primitive technology, when computers were the size of a house and a transatlantic telephone call had to be reserved in advance. Still, social philosophy was at that time relatively liberal compared to the reactionary thinking that prevails today. If McLuhan were alive today he might change his observation to say that we are traveling a thousand miles per hour with the windshield totally blacked out.
Modern age has totally put the lie to the old adage that form follows function. Just to cite an example, the rock n’ roll of the fifties and sixties developed because musicians and recording engineers were inspired by new technologies to stretch the limits of art. A sterling example of this stretch might be seen in the films of Michaelangelo Antonioni like “Red Desert” and “Blow Up,” and music of the Who and Pink Floyd who attempted to expand the content of art to exploit the new technologies.
But then, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future. The reactionary classes, threatened by a new culture that considered them irrelevant, and new social democratic politics that they feared would cost them money, mobilized the working classes, whom the artistic elite had not even bothered to consider at all, to mount a ferocious counter-offensive against anything even remotely reminiscent of modernity.
The reactionary onslaught is so ferocious that even athletes are not exempt from it. Any athlete who profits from the new training technologies and technology to break through barriers is now immediately suspect of being “on something.” That’s all you hear from these morons: “This guy’s on something.” “That guy’s on something.”
One night years ago I did a comedy routine at the Tripple Inn on West 54th Street. I had a very good night with the audience. After my act I went over to the manager, who was standing at the bar.
“How’d you like that?” I asked him.
The prick gave me a sour look and sneered at me, “Whaddaya, on something?”
Story of my life, folks. I hate to tell you how many comedy bars I have been thrown out of because I wasn’t traditional (read: shabby) enough.
So I am in the tank and a lifeless idiot like Seinfield, with all his stale shit about bagels and can’t get a girl, is worth a hundred million bucks. Sure I’m pissed off.
I have a cousin, a regular moron. He posted an interview with himself on the internet saying that the reason he decided to become a “conservative” was that he wanted to find a way to differentiate himself from all the West Side Zabars liberals. That’s how he literally put it.
How’s that for the philosophical underpinning of social consciousness? Later for Socrates, Cicero, the Renaissance, the Reformation, Rousseau, Voltaire, John Locke, the French Revolution, Victor Hugo, Zola, Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, Marx, Freud, Einstein. This pineapple elected to become a reactionary because it would differentiate him from the old liberal bubbies and zaydies who stuff their faces in Zabars, would make a regular Marlboro Man out of him.
This genius even wrote a book, called “In Praise of Nepotism,” about how great it is to be born rich. This fantastic original concept tanked right out of the gate like an old nag.
When it comes to promoting an atmosphere of destructive reactionism, last year’s insults are old hat. Pat Buchanan and his vile language used to be considered cutting edge but he was elbowed out by Bill Reilly. The current champion in the make-me-puke sweepstakes, the bulimic, hatchet face phalangist bitch Ann Coulter, never hesitates to smear people with terms like communist and traitor. If she were a man, she would definitely be in danger of having her teeth knocked out, so the very person who has no compunction about labeling somebody a coward is, in the final analysis hiding behind her own weakness and frailty in an age when really cool women are bodybuilding and boxing. If she were really as tough as her rhetoric, she should at least be able to back up her vile language with muscle against the legions of tough, liberal women who would surely love to get their hands on her.
Ann Coulter amazes people by her vehemence. I have heard the question posed, “Why is she so angry, a woman who grew up in Connecticut in the lap of luxury and never had to endure any kind of adversity?”
The answer is obvious – she is a fascist, who would not be out of place in fascist Spain of Milosevitch’s Yugoslavia, an Axis Sally who would love nothing better than to operate a concentration camp like the fat broad in Lina Wertmuller’s film “Seven Beauties,” torturing prisoners and drowning them in vats of shit.
The obvious conclusion about these fascists, or “conservatives,” is that they are not motivated by reasoned thought or even ideology, but by visceral violence, the need to punish a victim.
The right is painting itself into a corner by the inflationary expectations of its rhetoric. Once the public internalizes the rhetoric of “traitor” and “coward,” the parasitic demagogues who make a living from inflaming the public discourse are going to have to become even more extreme in order to have an impact. They don’t have that much wiggle room left, and eventually, like Milosevitch in Yugoslavia, they are going to have to start calling for civil war and police repression to meet the expectations of their audience. If the situation continues to deteriorate in Iraq, as it certainly must, those events will play into the hands of fascist demagogues.
The most laughable aspect of the extreme right is its defiant attitude of rebelliousness. Their edgy attitude in defense of the establishment enables them to strike a pose, as Madonna would put it, in defense of a power structure whose rallying cry is “no new taxes,” or rather “no taxes at all.” Some rebels!
What’s pernicious about it is that they portray themselves as being under siege by the liberals. Any time a liberal happens to object to the agents of reaction, reactionaries, who are remarkably thin-skinned considering the insults and invective that is their daily diet, react with alarm and dismay. It’s like; we’re not supposed to talk back.
They particularly detest George Soros, whom they consider to be a traitor to his class for funding left-wing initiatives. According to their primitive logic processes, if you have money you are supposed to align yourself with the reactionary class, and it is particularly galling to them that Soros funded the Michael Moore move about Bush and supports legalization of marijuana, the marijuana laws being a convenient weapon for the right wing to wield against liberals just as it used to be against Mexicans that they wanted to deport.
Where all this is going, I do not care to predict in this article, except to say that ancient Rome degenerated into civil war at the height of its wealth over issues that might seem laughable to us today.
Tags:
None
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/18/2006
(
Permanent Link
)
Read
462 Times
Send to Friend
