Escape from What?

1. camerounia17 03.02.07 / 2am

   Escapism has ALWAYS been a strong component of the American psyche. The Europeans who came over here were escaping; they did not stay behind to confront and change the existing order. Or maybe they were just smart, or lucky. In the 19th century, again, when things got too tight on the East, well, there was the West…so escape has been “inculcated” almost by the historical topography of this nation.

   I’m not saying the writer is wrong. John Steppling is actually not just right about what he says, he’s absooolutely right. So let me just say a few things to add my dime’s worth, or nickel’s worth or whatever to what is already eloquent enuff. Here goes:

   (1) I always smelled phoneyness with the SNL due to its pronounced apoliticalism or jejune politics when it dared to show its face; the kind of I-can-say-what-I-like and get-away-with-it-because-I-m-a-kid kind of thing. “Enfant-terribilism” for American mass consumption. That continues to date, only the formula is now desperately shopworn, and it shows. For my taste, SCTV was 10 times more creative, in fact SNL raided SCTV. But even SCTV was nothing, big zero in the political department, just more original, funnier comedy. The critical flaw with SNL, and the source of its imposture, is that it attempted to appear radical and defiant when in fact was simply spphomoric and deeply liberal. Isn’t that (still today) what much of the political confusion in this country is all about? The fact that liberals actualy think themselves to be an opposition, an alternative to “the system”? In that sense SNL was and is a mirror to our culture of political “avoidism”, even cowardice.

   (2) I feel that humor links primarily to truth…it is the recognition of truth in something that allows for its exploitation in a comical twist, which sometimes may be cruel…but Steppling is right, cruelty is humor’s main wrapper.

   (3) The idiotic movement “to save Darfur” has reached a new low in its imbecility these days with a bunch of ads actually asking Bush to intervene…how dense can you be? Dont these people realize that by asking Bush to intervene they are actually sanitizing Bush, legitimating Bush, and interventionism by this bully of a nation, in a way that his operatives could never dream of?

   But then, of course, we’re talking about latte liberals, just about the creme de la creme of a very fastidious and repulsive breed, a class of people as ignorant as they are arrogant in their melifluous politics…with luminaries such as Mia Farrow (who I believe is or recently was in Chad recoinnoitering the place, and shopping I suppose for yet another orphan to add to her bulging stable–this woman is sick), Clooney, the inevitable Bono, and others who fancy themselves “international citizens” with access to power. A couple of months ago I saw Sean Penn on Larry King, King one of the most notorious loose cannons on TV (King doesn’t seem to have any political pereferences, only ratings inside that brain of his so he qualifies fully as a media prostitute of Olympian proportions…). Well, in any case, after Sean finished mouthing a few things you and I would agree with about Iraq and Bush, he then proceeded to say he had also visited Cuba, too, and met Fidel…But here’s the rub. While he praised some of Cuba’s undeniable accomplishments, he was quick to “balance” his testimony by describing Cuba as lacking in democracy, something along the lines of, well, “they still don’t have freedom and democracy the way we have it here,” etc. , etc. So here we had Penn, before the assenting Larry King,  just showing how profoundly ignorant and conventional he was about Cuba, and how abysmally out of his depth, which, by the way, seems to be the defining flaw of most of these celeb-activists. I suppose that hedonism and patient study are incompatible.

   Which is not very surprising. Liberals are idiots—well meaning idiots, perhaps, but idiots first and foremost. They create a lot of unnecessary trouble in this world, not only by giving the real left a bad name, but by covering the boil that desperately needs to be lanced…by confusing the crowd, and they are a problem because they’re so fucking rich, in a culture where money talks.
   You probably know that, contrary to perception, liberal foundations are about 10 times larger in assets than their conservative counterparts? Their ineffectiveness is commentary enough about their preferred political track.

   As for Mirren and Frears, well, I think they are both rich establishmentarians…houses and servants all ove rthe place…so both suffer from terminal bourgeoisdonism, a disease that affects anglo-americans with special ferocity. Anglo culture is conservative. Period. But in an underhanded, insidious, tenacious way. No explosions of brutal reactionism for them, as in Croatia, circa 1943, Poland, etc., although given the right circumstances, who knows?…But so far just quietly conservative, quietly reactionary, in that perennial, mulish search the middle classes usually have for “dignity”, “propriety” and social respect. Pathetic eh? No wonder they have been so often fascist fodder.
2. Paul_Armand 03.02.07 / 3pm

   My, how true what Steppling says here about the unspoken realities underscoring “pacifism”—a philosophy so dear to liberals and other people who, in the midst of so many crises, specialize in sitting on the fence.

   In the controversial but indispensable little volume,”Pacifism as Pathology”, by Ward Churchill, Ed Mead, in the preface, states:

   “I served nearly two decades behind bars as a result of armed actions conducted by the George Jackson Brigade. During those years, I studied and restudied the mechanics and applicability of both violence and nonviolence to political struggle. I’ve had plenty of time to step back and take a look at the larger picture. And however badly I may represent that picture today, I still find one conclusion inescapable: Pacifism as a strategy of achieving social, poitical and economic change can only lead to the dead end of liberalism. Those who denounce the use of political violence as a matter of principle, who advocate nonviolence as a strategy for progress, are wrong. Nonviolence is atactical question, not a strategic one. The most vicious and violent ruling clss in teh history of humankind will not give up without a physical fight. Nonviolence as a strategy thus amounts to a form of liberal accommodation and is bound to fail. The question is not whether to use violence in the global class struggle to end the rule of international imperialism, but only when to use it.”

   As an ex priest who worked many years in Latin America, a supporter of Liberation Theology, I happen to think that Mead is right, regrettably but fundamentally right. Liberalism leads nowhere.
3. Minerva_carril 03.05.07 / 2am

   What does Mr Stepelling think of those occasions when Hollywood “looks at itself”?

   I’m talking here about what on the surface would be “legit” progressive films, made by card-carrying liberal folks like Robert Redford. The movie Quiz Show comes to mind, is that a typical “Hollyvision” artifact? In other words, is Hollywood ever capable of actual honesty and insight in this kind of representation?
4. johann 03.05.07 / 10am

   These tribunals are yet another exercise in globalized “manipulated consent”—pure propaganda to re-legitimate a badly tattered order. The corporate system just cannot do without such accoutrements; they are integral to its governing way of life, its DNA. But, none of this would ever fly if the media did not facilitate the imposture. I honestly believe that before we unmask the criminal fraud that capitalist “democracy” is we have to unmaske and disarm its chief and most effective bodyguard: the media.

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