StephenKMackSD's Blog

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-16/israels-palestinian-arab-spring-jews-and-americans-losing-ability-to-shape-mideast/?om_rid=De4wA2&om_mid=_BN0RySB8bL8aQb

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/syria-and-lebanon-border-clashes-are-not-start-of-third-intifada-1.361966

Here are two views of the Nakba observances, demonstrations at the borders of Israel. Are we witnessing a paradigm shift, that storied notion of the great philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, transposed into political terms in the ‘Middle East’? Are the old centers of political leadership teetering on the edge? Will the new social media eclipse all old style leadership models, organizations and lead too semi-autonomous democratic  self- generating political change i.e. a leaderless model based upon an immediately shared and agreed upon political consensus via electronic devices? Will the vanguard be made up of thousands, whose opinions and actions resonate with entire populations emboldened by The Arab Spring: weary of a sclerotic leadership that has not delivered on the same tired old promises? The question of why thousands assembled at the borders of Israel might be a question that some in the American Foreign Policy Establishment would shy away from, but Mr. Beinart is not one of them.

 

       

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/demagoguery-101/2011/05/12/AFu6CV1G_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

 

For all his pretense to political respectability ,The Good Doctor (TGD) has a penchant for the political roughhouse, for a bit of old fashioned name calling and unproductive, but satisfying, hyperbole. Demagoguery 101 of May 12, 2011 is a case in point. One can almost see TGD’s argument that President Obama used his recent speech on immigration to his political advantage: to compare and contrast his own policies and that of a Republican Party enmeshed in xenophobia and just plain hate of ‘illegal immigrants’ from south of our border with Mexico. Is the Republican Parties stand on immigration solely based on that porous border with Mexico and a flood of poor brown people, ‘illegally’ seeking a better life in the ‘North’? There are many more serious and thoughtful questions to be asked in this context but TGD manages to marinate in a pathetic fit of political distemper. In contemporary American politics, race has been a factor in the Republican Party since Richard Nixon’s adoption of ‘The Southern Strategy’ in 1968, so denials of an active component of racism, in the contemporary parties makeup, is nothing if not self delusion and in fact must be viewed as a glaring instance of bad faith. 

   

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/history-lessons-for-obama-and-other-liberals/2011/05/11/AFXxmdsG_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

 

The Great Will  (TGW) is reliable in his partisan loyalties and given to lecturing ‘Liberals’ who are really New Democrats on the virtues of ‘History’ as elucidated and rhetorically framed by himself. Now, the difference between ‘Liberals’ and New Democrats is probably too fine a distinction for our thinker to bother with, but to an old leftist like me it is revelatory. Which is really to say that Reagan was the great teacher of the New Democrats, who deserted the imperatives of The New Deal for the temptations of their own political ambitions, recognizing that their electability depended on a  recognition of a newly conservative mood of the electorate: a simplistic formulation ,but an adequate description. The point of TGW’s latest essay is not to school ‘Liberals’ in American political economy but to promote his candidate, of the moment, Mr. Paul Ryan the Great Fake Republican Budget Master, The Nine Trillion Dollar Man. Here are illustrative quotes, with commentary, from his diatribe that might be more aptly titled ‘Against the Liberals’:

‘The hysteria and hyperbole about Ryan’s plan arise, in part, from a poverty of today’s liberal imagination, an inability to think beyond the straight-line continuation of programs from the second and third quarters of the last century. It is odd that “progressives,” as liberals now wish to be called, have such a constricted notion of the possibilities of progress.’

TGW’s political enmity against The New Deal and The Great Society is a manifestation of his unapologetic advocacy of The Free Market Ideology that brought the economic implosion of 2008, an occurrence that he has never hand the honesty to even mention: alluding to ‘poverty of imagination’ and ‘constricted notions’. And as for ‘The Ryan Plan’ it qualifies as utterly unserious election year propaganda.

‘Liberals think Medicare and Social Security as they exist are “fundamental” to the nation’s identity. But liberals think the Constitution — which the Framers meant to be fundamental, meaning constituting, law — should be construed as a “living” document, continually evolving to take different meanings under whatever liberals consider new social imperatives.’

Social Security and Medicare are fundamental to the nations identity as a resounding answer to the negatives of unfettered Capitalism and its’ inherent anti-humanism, its’ dog eat dog moralisms , that TGW regularly dispenses. Consider, also, the back handed aside about the ‘liberal interpretation’ of the Constitution construed as a ‘living’ document, as part of the sclerotic, reactionary counter interpretation provided by The Originalists:  a homegrown American Political Romanticism .    

    

  

I was very excited,and looking forward to reading Professor Gutting’s book, when I first saw it on the Oxford University Press website, and then ordered it, on its day of publication. I have not been disappointed, in fact it is one of the best books I’ve read on this subject. Let me list them for establishing a definable credibility for my thoughts.

French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism by  Ferry and Renaut
Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger,Foucault, Derrida by Allen Megill
Introduction to Phenomenology by Dermot Moran
The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction by Herbert Spiegelberg

As a reader I can’t think of higher praise for a book than that it made clear, what had been obscure or unintelligible, until the moment of my readerly engagement. Professor Gutting does not, at any point, engage in pointless forms of hagiography, as regards any of the thinkers that he writes about, in this indipensible history of philosophy. There is wit and salt here to enliven the inquiry and a healthy dose skepticism, in service to making clear some of the most obscure philosophers,thinkers, writers ever to put pen to paper;he even suggests a methodology for reading any obscure writer, that emphatically strikes a chord with a beleaguered reader. In short, invest your time and money wisely, in reading Professor Gutting’s book first followed by Ferry and Renaut’s and then Professor Megill’s. If you are really interested in Phenomenology be sure to read Professor Moran’s lively and witty Introduction, whose virtue is also an enlivening skepticism, about many, but not all, of the thinkers covered by Professor Gutting’s book. Professor Spiegelberg’s history is also worthy of the time of any serious inquirer.

Best regards,
StephenKMackSD

I spoke to my friend Victor at the gym yesterday morning. Now, Victor likes to take the high road and loves to crow about certain political subjects, he is brash and loud. Also, one of the reasons I and many others tolerate these characteristics is that he is Nigerian and his voice is deep, resonant with the music of his beautiful accent, it is an experience to simply listen. He is a Mock Conservative when it suits him. So, yesterday as I said hello he started to sing the praises of President Obama and the bin Laden assassination: What do you think about your President and the death of Osama? or something to that effect. I immediately got angry about being cornered and told him that if he defended that position, that the President has the right to order the murder of anyone, even an American citizen, that I never wanted to hear him mention the Law, as Conservatives are constantly doing, as a defense of their self-righteous  punitive political dispositions, on all kinds of political matters. I mentioned Carl Schmitt the Nazi jurist, as demonstrative of the deeply held notion of the exception and the relation of that to the destructive operative political idea of American Exceptionalism. Well, that brought I’m disappointed in you Steve in a very condescending patronizing way. I mumbled something about not really caring what he thought and went toward my first workout station and ignored him. He came up to me as I was moving from one station to another and announced to me that he was going to speak to me for thirty seconds about his disappointment with my ingesting the political propaganda of Michael Moore and unnamed others. I pointedly told him that I have my own mind and that I can think for myself.  It occurred to me that sometimes people want you to simply mirror their opinion as proof of your membership in the clan, in our case to celebrate our mutual membership in Clan America by celebrating the death of bin Laden. I made it a point to call out to Victor as I left the gym and waved to him and he waved back and said goodbye. We humans are very complicated beings.