A first report from the hinterlands:
And an answer to ouaguabonita on a subthread that devolved into questions about me and “sockpuppets.” (From my recent post The Old Line DNC: Pt. II [http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2019/2/18/101712/769])
Ouaguabonita replied:
While I assume that’s true, I don’t think it’s the whole explanation here.
When I’ve bothered to look, most recs of ag “standalone articles” (LOL!) have been by voice, oui, or “Karl Pearson”. The first two are obviously doing factional-solidarity recommendations (in the same manner that oui has openly admitted deliberately abusing the ratings system for this same purpose):
Any trollratings will be uprated by me without a second thought. . . . Quite often I will pre-empt . . . troll ratings by handing out a “4” with no regard to post content. Therefore . . . my “4s” are NOT an endorsement of the content.
I doubt either’s an ag sockpuppet, though.
It’s Karl that’s the mystery to me (as I’ve noted before). On the extremely rare occasions when I’ve noticed he’s actually written something here, he has not come across as either dishonest or an idiot (which contrast with ag argues against KP being an ag sockpuppet, either). Why he nevertheless chooses to be a serial enabler of ag’s garbage (by frequently recommending it, even though the content is ridiculous) looks inexplicable to me. Still, I think also not a sockpuppet.
Read on for my reply:
For once, the insult comedian/comedienne ouaguabonita is right.
I have no “sockpuppets”, including Karl Pearson. My own sense of personal honor and honesty precludes playing those kinds of games. The entire thrust of my arguments here is about not using lies as a way to win. Not on any level.
I barely have time enough to make my arguments without wasting even more time to get “recommended.” In point of fact, if for some reason I were to come to the conclusion that this blog is worthless as far as I am concerned, it would be a burden lifted from me.
I stay because…although Martin and I disagree on many things…I consider him an honest, intelligent, well-meaning and perceptive writer and student of the U.S. political game.
He has apparently elected to let the disagreements here play out in the open.
Good on him.
We have yet to see how it all plays out in the real world.
My bet?
The Dems will once again cop out, nominating another “smooth [Obama-like candidate] with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics.” (Adolph Reed Jr, 1996)
Will that candidate be able to win the election?
After the awful mess of Trumpism?
Probably.
Will it be a landslide win?
I doubt it.
Will the corporate world still operate the federal government and the mass media as wholly-owned subsidiaries?
More than likely.
Thus…will it really be a “win” or just another band-aid applied to a growing, ever more cancerous sore?
The latter.
Too bad.
Sometimes the fact that “the centre” holds…rather than not holding, as in Yeats’s poem below…is as bad or worse than it would have been if it did not hold.
More centrist decay and the continuing death of a thousand cuts for the republic.
So it goes…
I am presently working in a prosperous, university-dominated town in Central PA this week. Three days in…including a 4+ hour car trip through the boonies with the radio on “search”…I have not heard a serious word about the politics of this country.
Not a peep.
Everybody seems to have simply given up in the face of all of the competing teams of liars, and those who might have something to say are loathe to say it because:
#1-It would almost be impolite to break the willing silence.
and
#2-In a major Big Education college town, the really “politically correct” thing to do is to keep your mouth shut and agree with whatever the administration deems non-threatening.
Right on down to the help at chain restaurants and hotels…almost all college students.
Always polite; never open.
Welcome to the New America.
A nicer, gentler 1986.
The media is winning.
Too frightened to take a stand lest larger, more powerful versions of the neocentrists here try to rip them a new asshole, they surrender.
Sad.
Later…
AG
THE SECOND COMING (1919)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I repeat…centre holding or not holding:
The ceremony of innocence [has been] drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yup.
So far…
