I agree with everything in this post about driving a car with a stick shift. I'm wondering if my readers who don't drive stick think that it makes sense, or if it just looks like bullshit to them.
I'm currently listening to the latest album by the Travis Morrisson Hellfighters, All Y'All. Although I don't like the title of the album, I am, as usual, really impressed with Travis, somewhat bashful about it as though I had a crush, and a little unsure why I don't listen to his music more. For those of you who don't know Travis, he was the leader of the Dismemberment Plan.
I'm also really pleased with a new CD by The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, which I got on a whim after seeing it reviewed in an AMG newsletter and listening to the first song. They're pretty similar to the great, seemingly unknown Comet Gain. I guess it's indie punk: really melodic and bright-sounding songs with a dark undercurrent, tight playing, good lyrics, and poppy elements. Both bands are British. Both bands come up with excellent melodies for both verse and chorus, with varying male and female lead singers, and always lots of energy even on the slower songs. They're both inventive, using all sorts of rhythms, tempos, and supporting instruments, occasional vocal harmonies, and daringly poetic lyrics. I particularly love the Comet Gain, who are reminiscent of the Fall, the Pastels, the Go Betweens, and Dexy's Midnight Runners all on the same album.
Since I got my new job, I've been reading a lot of political blogs because I usually don't have any work, but I can't read books or magazines (I think--I still haven't asked). I'm particularly fond of The Daily Howler, which aggressively presents the case that the mainstream media reports conservative or Republican issues with a free pass, while they treat Democrats and liberal causes shabbily, to the point of lying and distorting things Democrats say in order to keep pounding away with story lines like "Gore is a big liar" or "Hillary is a ruthless faker". Somehow, though, I find that no matter how much time I spend each day reading about news and politics, be it blogs, newspapers or magazines, I never seem to have a good grasp of any issue. I guess I'd have to pick one issue and read just about it for a while, rather than generalized commentary or reporting from people who have been following all sorts of stories for years. Or are there other options? With the few months I read the Economist my knowledge of the world (from basic things like geography, to complex things like the after effects of the cold war) expanded greatly, but I found that it left me no time to read anything else, and I still didn't know much about domestic issues. What do my (what, like 5?) readers suggest?
3 comments:
Gregger,
It's hard to know what to suggest. The more I learn, the more I despair of knowing anything--though there are rays of hope. With regard to political issues, it's not a matter of epistemological Socratic ignorance, but of the ridiculous quantity of noise and propaganda that exists to keep one from understanding the relevant facts and what's at stake in the "theories" presented in dominant public discourse about those facts.
A highly polemical but basically right-on discussion about some of the structural underpinnings of our widespread confusion is available
here. In his ideology, this guy is a kook, sort an authoritarian-libertarian hybrid from what I can tell...but again basically right in his description of how our current situation manifests Rieff's rule that "the rot always starts at the top."
Two major themes here: the irresponsibility of our elite classes, including our political classes; and the striking degree to which politics, the struggle for power, is conducted under other names in our time.
This is a very indirect answer to your question, to say the least, but it's a good place to start--or at least an important guiding mindset for any properly skeptical discussion of contemporary politics. I have been shocked and happily surprised to learn this semester that people (a few of them, anyway) write about these things in an informed and thoughtful way.
Perhaps something called political sociology is relevant here. I don't know much about this field but hopefully that will change sometime soonish. I would say that the academic literature in general is worth considering. The neutrality of the social scientist is a myth, of course, but it is not the most false one. And there are a lot of people who do strive for that fabled neutrality, and their work can help one understand the "phenomena" of political life--even if they are overwhelmingly philosophically tone-deaf and unlikely to help one derive anything like a clear "ought" from the reams of "is"-data.
Also, I hear that William Saletan of Slate fame has written a pretty good book on abortion. Myron Lieberman, this crusty old guy who has had a luv-hate thing with teachers unions for decades, has a new book on education that is supposed to be pretty good.
So in sum, I would recommend skipping getting riled up about the political arguments of the commentariat--yeah, those ones that I spent years getting riled up about--and finding some terse, dry academic literature by political scientists and sociologists.
Let's try
Okay, something keeps screwing up and preventing me from linking properly. Google the words--mencius moldbug iron polygon--and it's the first listing.
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