Eviction Notice

Interesting comments on the Jay Gould piece; many suggesting this is a hoax or a troll post of some kind. Perhaps. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t really matter. I’ve heard Frank Gaffney, Martin Ames, and William Kristol say things just as absurd and vicious. Just as racist and phobic. I wrote a short comment in the thread pointing to this man’s self-loathing — and someone asked about this. I think the far right fascist personality is always self-hating. Here is where both Reich and the Frankfurt school come in handy.

The fact that such extreme irrationality passes for public discourse suggests how far down the road we’ve travelled. The road to nowhere. The final bus stop. The only place I disagree with Guy is that I think all critiques HAVE to be partial. The very ideal of a total explanation is fraught with problems. Here is where we inch into the Enlightenment and its after affects — much talked about the last few years. Wittgenstein’s oft quoted remark about even if everything were explained, the mystery would still remain, is echoed in Adorno and Delueuze, and even in radical psychoanalysis.

I suspect I have another inclination lurking around the edges in regard to the current political climate, and that has to do with inisisting on a discussion about the reluctance to really accept that the entire structure of western political life is bankrupt. That the whole rug must be pulled out from under our feet. The result of this would be a feeling of panic, but such panic can and should lead to insight and a new humanism. The rebirth of compassion.

Guy’s post on the *conversation* touches on the madness we see in figures like Dick Cheney, or Karl Rove, in Wes Clark or Tony Blair or John Bolton. These are deeply disturbed individuals. There can be little doubt about this. The hubris they possess is a specific kind of insanity. The short description is that they are delusional. I believe they are. You can see it in their faces. The blankness and the lack of affect. The lack of continuity between the workings of their mouths and their gestures. It’s disconcerting, to say the least. Condi Rice is another example; a face disfigured with her own inner demons. Those demons may not ever surface in her mind; but they are there. There is clear sexual pathology too, and this is why secular-minded guys like Cheney are, in the end, quite comfortable with the fanatics of the religious far right.

I’m reminded of so much as I think on this. Pope John Paul II’s beatifying the former Ustashe chaplain, Alojzije Spepinac, or the Nobel Peace Prize to Arial Sharon. Contradictions. The pathogenic and malignant nature of advanced capital is to be seen everywhere; in video game violence and in the de-aestheticizing of art. Men like Gould are empty, and they cannot engage with others or with culture. They worship authority and its icons (Reagan is perfect — a prematurely senile third rate actor who performed as a sonambulist father for the Empire).

The western world of privilege is choking on its own contradictions. There is a deep echo inside that alerts us to the emptiness — but few are listening. Still, there are self-corrective mechanisms, or at least I try to believe there are. Some of these mechanisms reside in the world of art. Art is anti-fascist or it isn’t art. Reactionary art is another contradiction. The rug needs to be pulled…and as Adorno said, liberalism is the handmaiden to fascism…so pull the rug away from the liberals as well as the nut cases like Gould.

If Gould is a hoax, its means little. The hoax can only be a hoax in a world where such sickness has its place. The corrupt institutions of Church, of the military, of the police and of the judicial system, are all festering and pus-filled boils on our consciousness. They live in our heads and don’t pay rent. Throw them out. Pull away the rug. Because if we don’t, guys like Gould (real or fake) will inherit what’s left.

John Steppling

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You’re currently reading “Eviction Notice,” an entry on Cyrano’s Journal /•\ ||| Placebo ART

Published:: 03.05.07 / 4pm

Category:: TRAVELS IN BOURGIEDOM, KULTURATI, DOMINANT IDEOLOGY, PLACEBO ART, COLLISION COURSE

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Cyrano’s Journal and its blogs are about clear thinking, the liberating power of truth and the cultivation of the good arts—which requires good artists to begin with. If you’re wondering who the gentleman in the pix is, well, it’s none other than one of the finest cinema and stage actors of the 1940s and 50s, Puerto Rico-born Jose Ferrer, onetime husband of Rosemary Clooney (and therefore uncle to famous George C.). His mug decorates this space because he gave us the definitive Cyrano in his Oscar-winning masterwork, Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). No one has ever topped that performance. He also gave us a terrific Barney Greenwald, defense attorney in The Caine Mutiny, but that’s another story.

ManfredYcc 03.06.07 / 2am

I quite agree with Steppling’s diagnosis that we’re living in the midst of a decomposig, utterly demoralizing social system, and that, like all systems before it, capitalism will not go of its own accord, a remedy must be found, a solution must be implemented as soon as feasible. This madness cannot continue.

But I have a small peeve with his statement about the “self-loathing” aspect of fascistic mentalities.

While I am prepared to admit that we’re talking very diseased personalities here, or, rather, personalities that follow or reflect the pathology of the system they swim in so merrily, I am not so sure whether ’self-loathing” is the appropriate diagnosis, any more than a wish-fulfilling label we, on the left, are happy to attach to such repugnant behavior, or to any type of abhorrent behavior that is unfathomable from the standpoint of decency.

In this contect I think Steppling is being bblivious to other possibilities, and while I lack any form of training in psychology, I would still advance the idea that these people are actually sociopathic hedonists, therefore quite aptly equipped to derive sadistic pleasure or emote zero empathy on behalf of those who suffer unnecessarily. What say you?

northernLight 03.06.07 / 4am

manfred….this is a good topic. Just quickly, i see people like Gould (and we can all aggree he is certifiable…genuinely insane) hate themselves in the sense that sexual repression is reinforced by the logic of domination…and in turn recreates that domination. The primitive violence of the father (authority) transforms into the brutality of exploitation and domination — and a Gould has, as is the case with most war mongering fascists, internalized aggression — the death instinct — which, in the end, creates guilt. I am being really reductive here….and highly Freudian (though not totally)…but the struggle between the instincts creates a tension…but then we have the formation of the super ego…and as freud said “as a rule the ego carries out repressions in the service and at the behest of the superego”. The repressions become automatic , as it were….and eventually they entail a kind of paralysis…psychic disability and lack of mobility. So now a gould is on auto pilot and “reacting” via his super ego..or rather, the now unconscious reactions of this structure. There is no satisfaction or gratification in such a paralysed psyche. But there is a growth of sadism. This due to the frustrations of never achieveing total control of onself and one’s surroundings. And also a growth of masochism, I suspect…..but in a Gould I would argue we have a sadistic personality — but one that recieves no gratification — not even a substitute gratification — and hence there is a hatred of self….for not being able to adhere strictly enough to the reality principle in place. He feels he can never be controlling enough (imagine what it must be like to be married to such a man…or work for him !!!!)
Whew……let me think more on this….and Im glad you raised the question….because I think we see a lot of the anal-sadistic…obsessive compulsive personality these days….not just in a Cheney but also in Hillary and in Rusmfeld. It goes with advanced capital.

ManfredYcc 03.06.07 / 5am

Thank you for the very persuasive explanation Mr. Steplling. Now I see what you meant. This kind of mindset is bound to bloom in such terrain, as that of crepuscular capitalism. It’s like toxic mushrooms in dirty caves. These people seem to have a part of their human anatomy, equipment missing—they are literally robotic, even though they would be shocked to discover that the feature is so transparent and undeniable. 35 years of uninterrupted hell in corporate corridors made me an expert in this atrocious species.

northernLight 03.06.07 / 8am

manfred….
I often think of cyborgs,too…..when in those corridors of power (well, I used to work in Hollywood…its own special circle of hell) one cant help but think of cyborgs — and/or the sense of schizophrenia I think Deleuze describes….that shape shifting sort of *non* person we all encounter. Anyway, thanks for the comment.

Lonleer009 03.06.07 / 10pm

Gentlemen, this sounds to me like a chicken-egg question…I mean has anyone figured out whether these folks are moulded by the corporate environment into imbecilic unfeeling zombies…OR they were born that way and therefore fit in the corporate environment and that of a ruthless plutocracy? I think we go back to the old see-saw between nurture and nature here, don’t we?

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Eviction Notice

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