The Crow's Eye: A neoliberal and a neoconservative

"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Mar 31, 2011

A neoliberal and a neoconservative

...have an argument over who can best make the case for imperial humanitarian intervention:

12 comments:

John Caruso said...: Nice one.; March 31, 2011 at 1:28 AM
senecal said...: What a perfect parody of adult behaviors these kids are! Wah, wah, wah, you took my socks! Wah, wah, wah, you're an idiot! Wah, wah, wah, you're hurting my feelings. wah, wah, I'm terribly sorry. Wah, wah, wah, I'm getting very angry! Wah, wah, wah, Oh yeah, you're just a twirp.

All this accompanied by politician-worthy physical gestures -- clenched fists, finger pointing, flailing the air.; March 31, 2011 at 11:02 AM
Jack Crow said...: Thanks, Mr. Caruso.

Sen,

I especially enjoyed 1:50, where the twin on the left makes a giant explosion gesture.; March 31, 2011 at 11:06 AM
Randal Graves said...: Definitely deserving of more than two 'hehs.'; March 31, 2011 at 11:34 AM
senecal said...: you mean the big sweeping the floor gesture? -- "I spit on you and throw you to the dogs!"; March 31, 2011 at 2:01 PM
Big Bad Bald Bastard said...: Sadly, neither baby makes references to conversations with cabbies, or talks held on a Mumbai golf course.; March 31, 2011 at 2:42 PM
Al Schumann said...: The one on the left presented a perfect Wilsonian argument, while the one on the right was obviously inspired by William F. Buckley.; March 31, 2011 at 2:42 PM
Frank Partisan said...: Come to think of it, is there a difference between neoliberal and neoconservative?; April 1, 2011 at 2:33 AM
Al Schumann said...: They sometimes disagree on procedural niceties, but never to the point where acrimony keeps the cruise missiles from flying.; April 1, 2011 at 5:01 AM
Jack Crow said...: Buckley might have had reservations, Al. Go with the sure bet, and pick a Kristol.; April 1, 2011 at 9:46 AM
Frank Partisan said...: I've become closer to your Libya position. See my new post.; April 1, 2011 at 7:49 PM
senecal said...: Frnkly, I saw the smaller, quieter twin on the right as the liberal, Arthur Scheslinger, Jr, for example, expecting the debating coach to intervene any moment, while the big guy on the left I saw kind of as George Meany, fuck you with your Ivy League niceties. The fact that the little twin is missing one sock, and is distressed about it, to the point of not being able to concentrate on the furious gesticulating coming from his opponent, means something too, I feel.; April 2, 2011 at 12:11 AM

Post a Comment

This one took a while to put into words.

I don't kid myself that I've stumbled upon a unique insight and I have little doubt that someone has already written or said this better than I. Five minutes after I hit the "publish" button, I'll probably regret the choice of words more than I already do now - because it's difficult to get my head outside of English language usage, to comment on a problem with that usage, whilst using the English language to do so.

In the interest of not making more of an ass of myself than necessary, I've pared a very long thesis down to a paragraph:

I find it troubling that, using English, I have very limited choice in expressing how I relate to people with whom I have ongoing interaction. If I want to reference the nature of my relations with the woman who has challenged me to grow in ways I never imagined possible, the woman who howled with a primal, gorgeous, earth shattering, mother bear of a refrain, transcending pain and pleasure in act of creation to which I will never be immediate party, who has with her defiant and proud womanhood still intact forged a family out of disparate parts - I have to write "my wife." I have to reduce her to property. That really pisses me off. I don't own her. I don't fucking want the title or the claim. I don't want to express possession, simply to refer to her (without writing a discursive dissertation). I don't like one bit that the short hand for "association" in English is expressed in the possessive. I don't own my wife or my children. They're not mine.

So, fuck you Latin and Germanic branches of the Indo-European language group.

That is all.