Ah well.

-Ts

As for appealling to selfish interest… each individual is a special interest group by themself. A bunch of individuals migrate together to achieve a common goal, and you will find they have the same interests as well. College students care about affording their education. Find me one who doesn’t, I’ll find you 100 who do. That the letter appealed to these thousands of students is logical and strategic. How can you find fault in that?

Hitler used Gleiwitz as a pretext for invading Poland in 1939, telling germans that Germany was in imminent danger

On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content on the message). The Germans’ goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs..

In order to make the attack scene more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.

Hitler wanted to make Germany the world’s dominant power as per Mein Kampf.

Bush/Cheney wanted to make the USA the world power as per PNAC.

How are the 2 cases basically any different?

Let’s use simple words and concepts. Either

(a) the U.S. is the dominant power; or

(b) the U.S. is not the dominant power

of the 21st century thus far.

If (a) is true, then none of the tripe you post matters one bit, because we already are the dominant power. If (b) is true, then you need to name some of the other “powers” that are more powerful than the U.S. or at the very least, equally powerful.

And what any of this has to do with Obama and Clinton and the upcoming civil war in the Democratic party is beyond my ken… but then, I guess I’m dealing with a seriously advanced case of BDS….

-TS

The Bush/Cheney invasion of an oil rich Arab country on the pretext thay it had something to do with 9/11 did not help the USA on the path to becoming the the undisputed power of the 21st century..

Hitler had a plan for Germany to become the undisputed power too.
Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland was eerily similar to the Busg/Cheney invasion of Iraq in 2003.

-TS

It has not quite worked out that way.

I don’t suppose anyone is interested in knowing which persons thought that.

With all due respect, I’m not sure that you even see the problem. I have no issue with the fact that you and students at Temple, UPenn or wherever want to encourage activism in college students.

I take issue with the fact that you guys appealed to the most selfish interests possible and essentially defined ‘college students’ as a special interest group.

If you and the others used opposition to the War in Iraq as the issue to generate activism, I don’t have as big a problem with this. And you should know by now that I oppose your perspective on Iraq quite vigorously. But at least that’s an issue of importance to everyone.

Cost of college may be ever-increasing, but are you seriously suggesting that this is the most important and pressing issue facing Americans today?

Basically, what your group has said is, “We really don’t care what his positions on other things are, as long as Barack gets us the gubmint booty.”

Special interest groups erode democracy, erode responsibility, and erode community. And college students — especially college students at elite universities — won’t be college students in a couple of years. Rather than thinking of yourselves as Americans first with American interests to discuss and get active on, you chose to latch on to plundering the treasury as much as possible.

That is both shortsighted and despicable.

-TS

I guess we’d better get used to it….

The cost of a quality college education is ever-increasing, and a college educated population is that which this country needs the most to excel in the world. We should all encourage the government to do whatever it can to make college a bit more affordable instead of tearing down those who speak up.
http://sethandray.wordpress.com

I did say it was a crazy idea.

On the whole couch potato image… I don’t know that that’s a horrible thing. Honestly, McCain is energetic enough for any ticket, no?

I just thought McCain suffers from a bit of the “hard-and-brittle” image issue. He could use a bit of softening to make common people relate to the man. I’m pretty elite as things go, and I have trouble relating to McCain. He’s a genuine American hero, a fighter pilot, Senator, statesman. There’s nothing soft and fuzzy about the guy.

But I do agree with simpson — ain’t gonna happen.

-TS

1. Not going to happen
2. ….not going to happen

I don’t know what else to say.

Meanwhile, I think of something like bebop jazz — a music form pretty much invented by black jazz musicians who came up with it so the white bandleaders couldn’t play it.

Breaking with the past is ever the role of the artist in any culture. But in American art, I get the sense that the artist — and not just the contemporary no-talent ones — is actively trying to destroy/trash the past. Warhol or Pollock, for example, have a different feel to me than say Joan Miro — who was creative, but somehow I feel he’s trying to respect the past traditions in his use of colors/space.

Of course, once we get to the contemporary era, it seems like everyone everywhere is trying to be some hip-hop fuckdaworld type of thing, so it gets confusing. But then, even that attitude is something foreigners learned from American culture, no?

-TS

I didn’t get that you were saying American art was characterized by trashing things. Violating established norms or boundaries is one thing, but of course trashing culture is another thing. Not that such isn’t worthy of being called art, but I wonder at this definition as being the defining characteristic of American art.

See, I differ with you there. In many cultures — take the Korean or Chinese cultures for instance — there is no sense of the ‘transgressive’ in their arts. There is creativity, to be sure, but not the kind of transgressive creativity that characterizes American art. Much of Asian art attempts to extend tradition, to interpret it in a new way, but never to trash it the way American art does routinely.

Again, I submit that this is because other more organic cultures have a shared sense of aesthetics that Americans lack, being from such disparate cultures.

-TS

-TS

First, I agree with simpson this would be a great fit at Redstate. Second, I wish to quibble with a relatively minor point in what is, as usual, overall an excellent essay.

You remark that, “In the arts, what distinguishes American arts is that very lack of respect for customary or proper bounds or limits. ”

I would argue that this is what distinquishes art period. The Renaissance artists depicting Bibilical scenes were as revolutionary then as Van Gogh was at his time. Art is best as a confrontational escape from boundaries, a challenge to look at something anew, and an expression of vision. This is equally applicable to poetry.

Like every single other culture in the history of mankind, America has contributed to the Arts. Art is beauty, art is simplicity, art is complexity. Be it Aztec gold engravings, Michelangelo’s Mona Lisa, or Warhol’s soup cans, art is what art is. Art has always known liberty. It is the liberty of the soul, bled out on to canvas and verse to its ill fit in the mind of man. Art is art. America is no less or more than any other culture in this regard.

absentee