The Statue Wars Begin

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

...Able2Know discussions are mostly dominated by a liberal point of view, and there is a core group of people who bully any opinions outside of their ideological bubble...

I wouldn't call it a liberal point of view, but the beliefs of their respective demographic, based on the large divisions within society. In my opinion there exists a degree of smugness that opinions amongst themselves is a priori correct. Sort of like the belief in a duality of consciousness (something exists after death) and non-duality beliefs (death is the end - no soul, etc.). One from each belief set cannot discuss their beliefs with anyone from the other side.

Notice how many "liberals" today manage to use the existence of Israel as a logical reason to feel alienated from any Jew who believes that WWII proved the need for a Zionist state. Back in the late '40's the liberal view was that Jews needed their own state after WWII. Now it is the reason to consider Jews not "getting with the program" of diversity in a country (tell that to the Arabs to accept diversity).

Anyway, my thought about liberal versus conservative ignores that some feelings survive because they might be rooted perhaps in our reptilian brain, and we will never accept those that on some level threaten us.

Be that as it may, what is the end game of liberals. I have never heard that mentioned, in all the angry rhetoric from liberals? In my opinion, it is as flawed like the early 20th century belief by the Bolsheviks that a "classless society" will eliminate all types of bigotry, once everyone is a "comrade." Hah.

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@Foofie,

The core group here is pretty much in ideological lockstep, and they are pretty abusive to anyone who expresses ideas outside their worldview. Sure, this is human nature, but on a public discussion forum such as this it is a wasted opportunity.

I often disagree with you Foofie (including about Israel), but I do appreciate that you are not part of the group think here.

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@maxdancona,

Lockstep? You mean like this?

Then

Now

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@maxdancona,

I appreciate your viewpoint of being an outsider who is not part of the clique of liberal A2K members. (After all, I'm not exactly popular here, either.) Yes, I'll readily admit to the abuse on their part. But there are conservative members who have been just as abusive. The prevailing mood is anger. Even I've lost my temper at times.

Speaking of wasted opportunities, I've just about given up on social media. I once was a moderator at a small nonpolitical forum. There were occasions when someone was enlightened by listening to someone else for a change. But the forum is now dead; and I don't even have the desire to post there anymore, thanks to a now-banned member who wore me out with his unrestrained hatred and bigotry. (Remember, this was a nonpolitical forum!) Most of the "discussions" were insult-athons. As people say, the rage of the Internet is rage.

By the way (and I say this very respectfully to you), I hope you realize that there are individuals who don't belong to either side in the scenario you present. You may consider me a progressive, but I'm not. I happen to be conservative of at least two major current issues, not to mention other peripheral issues. (For example, I consider pornography to be socially destructive, especially with regard to its pernicious effects upon children.) I don't fit very well into your scenario. I've always been different in one way or another. I've been that way since I was a young child. It certainly didn't bring me much happiness.

I'd certainly like to see more civility here, but I'm afraid it will never happen -- not here at A2K or anywhere else on the Internet. Good luck with your attempts to do something positive.

1 Reply

@snood,

I don't live close to Corpus Christi. My wife and I live in Pearland, which borders Houston to the south. Pearland hasn't been told to evacuate, but the two of us will comfortably (I hope) wait it out inside our home where we've stocked up plenty of drinking water and food. Of course, a lengthy power outrage could cause some problems.

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@ossobucotemp,

I agree with you. I believe that's all edgar was saying.

Thanks for wishing us well, osso. We have a younger daughter who lives with her husband in Deer Park, which is only a half hour's drive away. She's also expecting. Hopefully, she won't have to see her doctor in the next few days about any complications.

I really feel sorry for the people who will suffer greatly. The Governor says the hurricane will be a disaster.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Joan of Arc? Really?

What's the problem with Joan? She was a Catholic?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/17/new-orleans-joan-arc-statue-vandalized-take/?utm_source=PJMFacebook&utm_medium=post

That must be a practical joke.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

From the time I was in the third grade (beginning in 1959), I grew up in the Spring Branch/Memorial area of Houston, Texas, where racial bigotry was pervasive. There were a few times when I used the word "n*gger" (which I picked up from classmates in elementary school) in the presence of my parents, who loved me enough to want me to not be adversely influenced by the racist attitudes of so many of the people who lived in that area. I used the word twice in those few years, and my father spanked me for it each time. They did not think that racism was funny. They demanded that I respect others. My parents would have reacted the same way if I had used the word "k*ke" or "sp*c." If I used regular cuss words, I'd literally end up with a bar of soap in my mouth. I have never disapproved of the way my parents raised me in this regard. In fact, I owe a lot to them.

The question I would ask Mr. Carlin is this: Were my parents being "politically correct"? What about being morally correct? Doesn't that count for anything anymore?

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@maxdancona,

I met Carlin, albeit across a medical lab counter. I loved him to bits, for years. Didn't know about his book.
I've never tuned in to Limbaugh. I've no idea however many times either of them talked about political correctness, but Edgar didn't say Limbaugh was first in line.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Joan of Arc? Really?

What's the problem with Joan? She was a Catholic?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/17/new-orleans-joan-arc-statue-vandalized-take/?utm_source=PJMFacebook&utm_medium=post

That must be a practical joke.

Don't understimate the power of the practical joke. In the midst of current-issue political statue destruction, let's not forget there always has been (and always will be) a certain level of ordinary statue vandalism. To the extent that statues represent what orthodox "respectable" people think the common folk should look up to, there will always be the potential for the common folk to give them the finger. In Ireland there are (or used to be) roadside grottoes housing life-size statues of the Virgin Mary, and for decades it has not been unknown for them to be adorned with lipstick, eye shadow and a cigarette between the lips, probably by teens, but who knows? There is something thrilling about toppling a statue (any statue) and once the idea has got out on the still night air*, maybe all statues should wonder how firm their fixings are?

*Like the idea of the receding tide in Dover Beach (a topic to which I may return)

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@centrox,

Well, adorning a Virgin Mary with lipstick is something I could do. The point (as I would see it) would be to push back on a pervasive religious culture that equates virginity with moral purity. The Virgin Mary myth* is anti-sexual and thus anti-life.

If one assumes the tagging of Joan's statue is serious and first degree, the question becomes: what does her representation stands for, that the tagger objected to?

In France, it stands for 19th century-type French nationalism. The kind of nationalistic spirit that led us into the first world war. Joan was heroeized (and also beatified, if memory serves) centuries after her death, during the 19th century, to support a nation-building vision. That symbol is why the National Front has tried to connect with her image.

I don't think many Americans happen to know that though. Very few French know it... So it is IMO highly improbable that the people who tagged her statue's piedestal had an anti-French or anti-nationalist message.

I think it's much more likely that someone wanted to mock the "teer down confederate statues" meme; to show how far into ridicule such drive to bring down old relics can go, if allowed to thrive unchecked.

* Mary was not a virgin anyway, according to the gospels, since Jesus had a number of brothers.

1 Reply

@centrox,

centrox wrote:

*Like the idea of the receding tide in Dover Beach (a topic to which I may return)

By all means do. And thanks for the reference to "Dover Beach". I checked it out, love the poem and appreciate the ideas behind it.

Quote:

... The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The core group here is pretty much in ideological lockstep, and they are pretty abusive to anyone who expresses ideas outside their worldview. Sure, this is human nature, but on a public discussion forum such as this it is a wasted opportunity.

I often disagree with you Foofie (including about Israel), but I do appreciate that you are not part of the group think here.

Word

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@centrox,

centrox wrote:

Don't understimate the power of the practical joke.

Or stupid people's willingness to believe it.

Quote:

Some people genuinely thought that Big Ben was going to be renamed ‘Massive Mohammed’ after a report on a satirical news site.

The Rochdale Herald ran the story with the headline ‘Big Ben to be renamed Massive Mohammed from 2018’, and reported that ‘the famous landmark, which is due to undergo extensive refurbishment next week, is to be called “Massive Mohammed” from 2018 to reflect the city’s growing diversity’.

‘Due to health and safety fears, “Massive Mo” will be silenced during the four-year renovation period,’ it continued. ‘However, Tardy revealed that large speakers installed at the top of the tower will instead play the Muslim call to prayer every hour upon the hour.’

Other stories on the Rochdale Herald’s site include ‘David Davis hospitalised after failing to negotiate his way out of wet paper bag’, and ‘Thunderbird puppet with condom over his head to play Michael Gove in Brexit Movie’.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/17/people-actually-believed-that-big-ben-was-going-to-be-renamed-massive-mohammed-6859959/<br /> <br />

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@wmwcjr,

wmwcjr wrote:

I appreciate your viewpoint of being an outsider who is not part of the clique of liberal A2K members.

There's no clique, just Max trying to reposition his bigotry as something else. Max is on record as saying he fears that some of his college sexual encounters could be reinterpreted as rape. That's the sort of person he is.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

some of his college sexual encounters could be reinterpreted as rape.

Those hungover mornings... mouth like a parrot's cage, can't remember a thing... sore arse... we've all been there, haven't we?

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Generally, allegations such as that there is a clique of liberals here are a product of what is known in statistics as the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. Simply stated, that fallacy provides "evidence" by finding examples which seem to support the thesis, while ignoring any examples which contradict the thesis. You will see this here when people whine about being ganged up on, ignoring that those who criticize them have their own contretemps. One thing they will not do is recognize that the criticism may be valid. Max, our newest world class whiner, is constantly involved in polemic here (for the dull-witted, polemic is a verbal or written attack on a person or idea). While Finny is involved in political and/or ideological polemic, Max hates and constantly attacks women. This, of course, makes him unpopular with a broad segment of people here. Rather than seriously reflect on the nature of his "contribution" to the site, he has taken the easy path, honored from time immemorial by ranters and screed-writers, of claiming to be persecuted by a clique.

Would that it were true, and Max were truly subjected to the the abuse he so richly deserves. Alas, most of us here have wider and more numerous areas of interest, and haven't the time to take the piss as his obsessions merit.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

centrox wrote:
*Like the idea of the receding tide in Dover Beach (a topic to which I may return)

By all means do. And thanks for the reference to "Dover Beach". I checked it out, love the poem and appreciate the ideas behind it.

I misremembered the phrase - it's not 'still night air', it's 'sweet night air'. But no matter. What I am alluding to is the play "On Dover Beach" by Tom Stoppard. It is a radio play written for the BBC, to be read by Alan Howard, and broadcast in 2007. It is a dialogue between two voices: Matthew Arnold ("Matt"), and the self-doubting "Himself", about his poem. Arnold's imagined internal dialogue. If you ever get the chance to listen to this play, I suggest you do! After the "sound of the surf" below, Howard reads the poem beautifully. It is on Bit Torrent, but I don't think I should tell you here how to get it by that method.

The idea I was reminded of is the problem of the superficially illogical "tide" metaphor, and how, in spite of its apparently erroneous nature, it has escaped from that, with the poem, and taken root in people's minds:

Quote:

HIMSELF: Poor Matt! You were never born to be a poet except for
one sublime moment in Dover when the good Lord paid you in
advance and you hit the spot with a lyric that bobs up like a
cork whatever anyone throws at it — the hackneyed recourse to
sea and moon, the vagueness of whatever point it doesn't quite
make, the name-dangling of famous dead Athenians, the
metaphor problem -

MATT: The what?

HIMSELF: The problem of the tide, Matt. Tides don't just go out, they
invariably come back in. Give it twelve hours, the Sea of Faith
will be banging up against those glimmering cliffs, and the
world will be right as a trivet again.

MATT: But my metaphor — my celebrated metaphor — was of the
tide going out, not in!

HIMSELF: And the other problem, that there's no tide in the Aegean
anyway, so whatever sound Sophocles heard it's unlikely to
have been -

MATT: This is not criticism, it's oceanography!

HIMSELF: Whatever criticism is or isn't, and whether or not your
thousands of words on 'the function of criticism' can help you
now, 'Dover Beach' has escaped into the sweet night air —
(The sound of the surf.)

1 Reply

I love this part... You really should hear Howard.

Quote:

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; —on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Very few French know it...

In my office we had a very nice French agency worker recently called Camille, and somehow I got on to the subject of "la Pucelle" and she rolled her eyes in a very charming way. She is everything I imagine a charming French woman to be - she is 27, her boyfriend is a 50 year old teacher who wears a blouson noir, they are both socialists, and she once saw Fabrice Luchini in a Monoprix.

1 Reply

The Statue Wars Begin

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