The modern political landscape is much more complex than you realize. The complexities are recent in coming. Do you know what they are?
It is generally true that most abstract or general principles are best illuminated by getting down to cases, the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts of the thing. Take the Dershowitz-Prager debate, for instance. Though the subject matter is ostensibly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its import transcends this by now all too familiar and perhaps over-discussed topic; what is being said is far less interesting or important than what is being left out. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this exchange, let me recap.…
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— go to most recent comments76 - Cindy D
they'll destroy each other for it. what kind of blessing is destruction?
77 - Cindy D
that stuff bores me. if i want to play a role, let's see, i'll pick something...
78 - Cindy D
can't think of any but acting in a play... that would be fun
79 - Cindy D
waiting for godot...
i could do that play
80 - Roger Nowosielski
I was talking only in anthropological sense, as to how it evolved, nothing else. But whether you're an atheist or not, a line from Hamlet to Horatio comes to mind. There ARE forces in the universe that we have no concept about.
81 - Cindy D
so no blood sacrifice at the black mass? what you're not allowed to tell?
82 - Cindy D
sure. i believe in invisible forces
83 - Cindy D
like gravity, for example...
84 - Cindy D
you know, some new agers told me that they like what they do because otherwise life would have no mystery.
how sad, life has so much mystery.. and that's what i think you mean.
85 - Roger Nowosielski
Well, there are psychic forces too. I could make objects move by wishing it. And don't ask me to explain it. I freaked out.
86 - Cindy D
maybe it's just what i mean.
87 - Cindy D
hey roger my article is up. have a look. yours will take me awhile, i read once thru now i have to go slowly.
88 - Dan(Miller)
Cindy D,
Don't believe everything you read. Scientists insist that protons have mass. However, there is absolutely no evidence that protons are even Catholic.
Dan(Miller)
89 - Roger Nowosielski
Yeah, it's a sad comment on these people. So they do it for entertainment or amusement? That's fake. Believe me, I didn't desire what happened. But I found myself in a spider's web. Or perhaps it was, looking at it from hindsight, total disintegration of the personality. Which brings to "The Beautiful Mind." Apparently, advance schizophrenia produces vivid hallucinations. Such people go through living hell.
90 - Roger Nowosielski
Dan (Miller),
I'm glad you broke this happy horse shit. The voice of reason has finally spoken. So let's get to business for a while, shall we? Cindy, to be continued . . .
91 - Cindy D
ha! shall i light the cigars?
92 - Cindy D
LOL Dan (Miller) I have been seriously thinking of collecting your posts and putting them into a book format.
93 - Dan(Miller)
Cindy D,
Thanks. Where is your article? I don't see it in the politics section.
Dan(Miller)
94 - Cindy D
it's about Oscar Grant, that's my pen name.
95 - Roger Nowosielski
Tell him you're Tolstoy's cat!
96 - Dan(Miller)
Cindy D,
That's cool; but where the Hell is it? Gosh darn, I mean you know, like what section of BC? Or, I mean, where?
Dan(Miller)
97 - Dave Nalle
Um Dan, it's been the first item listed in the Politics section since the sun went down.
Dave
98 - Roger Nowosielski
Shame on you, Cindy. You usurped first place in the Politics section by sneaking up on me like that.
99 - Dan(Miller)
Oh. Tolstoy's cat? Oy Fey.
Dan(Miller)
100 - Roger Nowosielski
That's all she's willing to tell you about herself, Dan. Look up her personal data: it's a two liner about the cat, that's all. I tried to pump her, but to no avail.
101 - Cindy D
I want my articles to be published on my own site. I don't use my name their I use that pen name.
That's why.
102 - Clavos
Um Dan, it's been the first item listed in the Politics section since the sun went down.
Cause and effect??
103 - Cindy D
Oh shup you.
104 - Cindy D
Roger,
I'm really taken with your idea of Kent State as a defining point. But, I'm having trouble thinking about it critically.
Do you have any criticism of your idea? Or doubts?
105 - Roger Nowosielski
Cindy,
I'll respond and try to deal with it tomorrow. Thank you for your interest.
106 - Cindy D
"who made the pictures?"
Tom Noonan.
107 - Cindy D
Roger,
Why O-hai-O?
You must remember Ohio, right? Neil Young? The song about Kent State?
I was going to just post a video of the song. But, I found this video quite powerful. (The song appears after about 4 minutes.)
108 - Roger Nowosielski
Cindy,
Very powerful. It kind of reawakened old feelings. Especially Nixon's announcement and justifications. Compared to him, the present occupant sounds like a buffoon, a joker. I'm sure the same convictions are there, but he can't even deliver how serious he is about his own convictions. And to think that 35 years later we're using the same kind of reasoning to get into and stay in this war. Even now, it's beyond belief that the country let those neocon a....s get away with it ... and they're still off the hook. The Democrats, all politicians, are spineless.
To answer your earlier question, I suppose it's subjective. But it was a tipping point. Even those who were on the sidelines finally made up their mind. When you have the National Guard facing the students and something like that results, there can no longer be any doubt what the state had come to: all those words about defending democracy and our way of life become meaningless. You finally see the truth. So it's not a historical analysis in any scholarly-convincing sense, nor did I attempt to come up with something like that. Just my impressions and understanding of the events as they happened.
Roger
109 - Cindy D
Roger,
Okay. For me. Kent Sate was the end of the hippies. Sort of. People started to change right after that. I think. They accepted establishment values.
But, I see that maybe they could do that, in part, because of the change in the larger culture you're talking about. ???
110 - Cindy D
Here Roger. Something I like. You might like it too.
111 - Cindy D
Oh, make sure you select "high definition" on the bottom of the video on the right side.
112 - Cindy D
RE # 109,
I was 10, my aunts and uncle were between 6 and 15 years older--and I knew them (sometimes even lived with them in California).
They all changed before I was 12. Which is when I had any sense of the world or what was happening in it. And if there was a movement of youth then, we weren't in the mainstream.
113 - Roger Nowosielski
Sorry, Cindy.
You were out of the blogosphere for a while, so I was posting my piece to my own weblog.
I was on campus at the time - not Kent State but Brooklyn College, undergraduate, and it was truly memorable. The time stood still and a great many people afterwards have changed their majors. I, for one, moved on from Math to social sciences, Sociology in particular. So I do have ten years on you, give or take. Still younger than Neil Diamond by two years or so. I wouldn't mind if I had his money. Nothing would stop me.
About the video, YES; the buffering doesn't work. What was the name of that song, anyway. I wasn't that much into the rock 'n'roll scene - didn't grow up with it! It was just part of everything of everything else, everything was in the air. Cat Stevens, the Beatles, Elton John, Bob Dylan,Janice Joplin. I loved all those songs. They all meant something. Bygone era.
No, not at all. It may have been the end of hippies, as you say. But the middle America, even those who were on the fence before, finally saw what this country was coming to. Within a year, negotiations fro truce with Vietnam have commenced by none other than Nixon. Kent State WAS the turning point.
Roger
114 - Cindy D
Roger,
That (the idea of Kent State) of a turning point of the mainstream intrigues me.
The song is called "World" by Five for Fighting. But the video says more the the song.
My uncle was a 17 year old soldier in Vietnam. He's the oldest of my mother's siblings.
115 - Cindy D
So, maybe that's how it goes. A resistance, an absorption, and then blahhhh. Nothing. Acceptance.
116 - Roger Nowosielski
No! I disagree. No acceptance! The Left is very much alive and well, if not the original elements, then at least the descendants. Don't forget, all the liberal arts colleges were populated by the activists; they transmitted their values to future generations. That's why people like Dave, I suppose, and a great many others, will never understand what this country is truly about. One can never understand America unless one had lived through those times. It was and always will be the pivotal point in our history.
Roger
117 - Cindy D
Roger,
I was a liberal arts major. My first year was in CA. Humanities/social science. We told them [the school authorities] we wanted to amplify our music on the central lawn. We did it.
We gathered there. There were the children of the children of the 60s.
I took human sexuality courses that included having transsexuals come give lectures at our classes and discuss their views. In 1978.
I moved east in 1980. The east is no California. The values of my aunts and uncles is well alive in me--not them. They only give their own family (flesh and blood) every consideration.
I [personally] will always have a place to live with my family.
Some of them [or their spouses] are ruthless. My aunt in CA talks about Mexicans as if they are invading her mind.
She is completely..whatever she is...it's not good.
118 - Roger Nowosielski
Cindy,
I'm not exactly understanding what you're getting at or where are you at.
I'm not disputing that some of the old folks who lived through those times didn't get hardened. Of course, many of them did, and that's the voice of reaction. But the young carry the banner.
Why, do you think, all conservatives, from Limbaugh to God knows who, keep on harping against liberal education. They know their days are numbered. Worry not! The Left will prevail, so long as it doesn't push too hard.
Roger
119 - Cindy D
You think? :-)
I might feel better then.
120 - Cindy D
We'll see.
I don't have much faith in people, in general.
I only know what's right for me at this point.
My whole stupid family is always praising me. While they become more and more...limited in their views.
121 - Roger Nowosielski
You wouldn't believe how bright some of the young are; at least in their instincts. These values have been inculcated. They hate injustice.
One can't be anything else but hopeful. Even racial differences dissolve.
122 - Cindy D
But the young carry the banner.
What young? Where?
123 - Cindy D
My nephew hates injustice. He thought suicide might get him out of injustice.
You'll make me call my friends from college. I'll find out and let you know how California likes these ideas now.
124 - Cindy D
You know, directly from the staunch counterculture.
125 - Roger Nowosielski
These ARE California ideas. The East is stagnated and too much into its own past. It's alleged supremacy is a thing of the past.
California has been on the cutting edge for thirty years and counting!
Why do you think I miss it so? I never had any idea I was so rooted there. It's the closest to heaven as you can get.
I know rednecks from there, SO TO SPEAK, from Virginia and other places; and they've all converted. "Once you're in California, you can't go back," is what they say. The diversity, meeting all kinds of people; it changes you. You'll never be the same, ever again!