Post-Mortem America and the Hard Way Ahead

 Criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred, Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France

Chris Floyd on how democracy died in America while we were discussing giving, or the Super Bowl, or whatever it was that preoccupied us as consumers and citizens over these years since 9/11. The hard way ahead will have few philanthropists, I am afraid, but many givers. Those who create a new currency of conversation and show us how to live in truth without paying a high price for it will be the most valuable.  I have no idea what I am talking about and would suggest that you have no idea either.  By way of bibliography you might find these helpful.

• The Parable of the Sower, by St. Mark
• Robert Frost, Directive
• Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
• Bakhtin on dialogism, heteroglossia, and carnival
• Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing
• James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance
• H. Peter Karoff, Sleepwalkers
• Inspector Lohman, Rebuilding Invisible Comic Community
• Tomasz Rozycki, translated by Kombinat!, The Castle
• Catherine Austin Fitts, Tapeworm Economics
• The Happy Tutor, Why Laundering Drug Money Through Philanthropy is Good for America

To this list I might append the life and works of Paul deMan.  My fellow citizens, we are all collaborators now. In the spirit of the liberal arts, the arts of liberty, let us collaborate for the world we want.   

Comments

[bUM fREE]

I had a dream about Dick Cheney last night. I liked him. He thought I was funny. It was almost collegial.

I don't know who I was. But it was my dream.

I remember looking at his teeth while he talked. Close up. Not perfect. Very human.

What a night.

[Phil]

He is as good a man as you or me, maybe he just lost track of what matters somewhere along the way. Or maybe he is keeping faith as will be revealed when the secret transcripts are finally published, if they ever are.

[Kombinat!]

'Reductio ad absurdum' - comes to mind and works of Paul Feyerabend, especialliy 'Conquest of Abundance'. I weep...

[Phil]

Good Soldier Schweik comes to mind also.