Saturday, December 16, 2017

Culture: support, extend, transform

I get Jordan B. Peterson’s point here but not his larger point:



"When someone is proud of his culture despite having done nothing to support it, extend it or transform it." I suppose everyone I know could write a novella, a short story, a poem, or a comic book, but not one in a thousand could write one that others would willingly read. Still, I have frequented fanfic communities (to pick a random group), and will testify that, yes, Sturgeon's Iron Law is still valid, but some people do manage to bang out readable, enjoyable fiction, and, further, a few people in those communities can write fiction that one reads, keeps, and adopts, whether as a favorite story or a model for one’s own writing.

To write something that other people adopt, even a few people, even in a transient fan community, is truly an achievement that extends one’s culture, at any scale. But not one in ten thousand can achieve this, and many who can never do: too busy, too discouraged, too, too … gainfully employed.

And to transform one’s culture, I think perhaps no nation on Earth has ever had more than ten of those creatures alive any given instant, even including science and engineering, where a few Newtons and Maxwells are followed by diligent craftsmen working out the obscure, but life-changing, derivations of the giants’ ideas.

Finally, we come down to support. I wonder what Mr Peterson means here, since most of the neo-Reactionary/Alternative Right pay income taxes to the kinds of schools that hire Mr Petersons, and to Government Art Agencies that use their glorious, tax-funded largess to shove crucifixes into bottles of piss.

Does he refer to the support from men accomplished at working in the heavy, frictious world of things, where piles of lumber stubbornly refuse to become houses without large inputs of thought and work, where “cleanliness is next to Godliness” fights the Second Law of thermodynamics, where the wrong kind of dirt changes building plans, causing us to mutter, as we have since time out of mind, “The Devil is in the details”?

Does he refer to the ad hoc funding Joshua Bell famously failed to receive in the D.C. Metro? Or the education that relegated classical music to “dead, white male” status?

Does he refer to the paying audiences that gave American television, movies and music a global reach?

Call me “curious red.”

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Roy Moore loss

Everyone starts with the primary, but that is too late.

Luther Strange lost the Alabama Lt. Governor election to a Democrat, then later won Attorney General, a much lower profile. He won one AG incumbency, but incumbents are a different beast so I do not count them.

So, a candidate with a 50% loss rate is run for a U.S. Senate seat. Like George H. W. Bush, he had little electability.

Strange took 33% in primary, while Moore got only 39% (Also like Akin, who got 35% in primary, with two opponents each with 32%.) Moore took the run-off 55-45. The bottom line:

  1. The loss begins with the governor nominating his AG, a move supported by Karl Rove.
  2. It continues with Moore failing to defend himself effectively. He can't even stop his wife from babbling "some of our best friends are Jews." (My God, it's CURRENT_YEAR!)

As we saw with Akin, good Christian credentials are important in the South, and elsewhere. But "too much Jesus" does really exist.

Now: candidates like Moore and Akin are fundamentally unavoidable. So long as we have primaries, we will have them, but the Party is expected to head them off without calling its own voters bigots or religious nuts.

The National GOP should have been at the governor's door, asking his price for a solid Senate candidate, as opposed to a buddy.

You can also lay a little blame at Trump's door. He should have asked about the possible replacement for Sessions. I am sure he won't make that mistake again. I feel bad for him, he must be seeing US CEO as a completely thankless job.

Modern Grotesque

Stephen Green compares, properly, San Francisco's Planning Commission to the Red Guards : “In a 5–0 vote, it ordered Johnston to build a...