"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against
the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better,
but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse
than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking
primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions,
to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley
"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination.
All others are subsumed by it."
-- Diane DiPrima, "Rant", from Pieces of a Song.
"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
If you fight fire with fire, what do you fight demagoguery with? How do you shame a politician for saying what his constituents want to hear? The people who want to hear such things are not rational. They are literally governed by fear and raped by their own ignorance.
I’m on the low rent cable television tier – my Internet service is cheaper if I buy the television service with it. They play the same movies over and over again on the poor man’s version of Home Box Office. This month the first Men in Black is spinning on rotisserie. There are just so many great parallels to real life, I enjoy watching it over and over.
My favorite:
K put his finger on the heart of the matter. Individuals are smart, but packs of humans are susceptible to fear whether it’s real or imagined. The conservatives are exploiting this basic quality of human nature.
But it takes two to tango. Someone has to peddle fear uncertainty and doubt. And someone else has to buy it.
Amazingly astute comment from servant, btw.
This is quite a post. Not surprising about the Bush push for Israel, very surprising about the IRA bombs, and, when I read earlier about Mr Howard’s rather egregious rodent commentary in re Mr Obama, my first thought was that Mr Howard is just as adept as his kissing cousin Mr Bush at making obtuse statements that don’t represent the views of their people—and making them as if they do. Sigh…if only Mr Howard were also definitively on his way out.
Thanks for this post.
Thanks guys. Thank Goodness for links – for when you’re time-pressed rather than WordPressed ;)
LOL Howard’s is a “rodent commentary” indeed. I couldn’t believe he dared to presume to pass judgments in public about candidates for office in another country, and the US Presidential Race no less. Put a sock in it, Howard!
I agree, it’s quite an astute comment from Servant on the state of knowledge, how paradigms change and the formation and exploitation of collective fear.
How does one fight demagoguery and fear? Education, education, education.
My other favorite real life parody is the flashy-thingy and the stories AIPAC and ADL makes up.
All right, Beatrice. There was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a U.F.O. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket…and refracted the light from Venus.
….
And Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
….
And Hillary is obviously wearing an human suit.