Smart People Discuss Politics

"You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a President encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the 1 percent—you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it." - Mitt Romney

"Taking a quick trip through Twitter reveals that the same people who don't trust the government to verify that their food, drink and pharmaceuticals aren't deadly, to teach their children or to administer their healthcare are—as is the case with at least 100,000 Iraqis and counting—absolutely king-shit stoked to let the U.S. government decide when to murder the fuck out of non-white people." - Mobutu Sese Seko

"It is considered declasse in our higher politics to mention this, but there actually is a class war underway in America, and it doesn't need politicians to stoke it. It happens in millions of battles every day, over mortgages, and college loans, and retirement, and the granite-like impassibility of the country's elites in the face of what's happening to the great mass of people. Now, it's possible that our firmly purchased political system may be able to continue to divert the energies of that war in the directions most amenable to maintaining the status quo. (Blame the black people, the regulators, the drum circles, public school teachers, the Community Reinvestment Act, Van Jones!) But, sooner or later, someone's going to be desperate enough - or bold enough - to grab that energy and ride it to glory, and we all better goddamn hope that person has a good heart, because those kind of things can go awfully badly wrong. What the Wall Street casino is playing with is not house money. It belongs to all of us. They are gambling not merely with currency, but with the stability of the political system. Someone is going to pay." - Charlie Pierce

- Yours Truly

Day 16-17: The Fat Lady

“I remember about the fifth time I ever went on ‘Wise Child.’ I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast–remember when he was in that cast? Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast. Seymour’d told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again—all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don’t think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and—I don’t know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.”

Franny was standing. She had taken her hand away from her face to hold the phone with two hands. “He told me, too,” she said into the phone. “He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once.” She released one hand from the phone and placed it, very briefly, on the crown of her head, then went back to holding the phone with both hands. “I didn’t ever picture her on a porch, but with very—you know—very thick legs, very veiny. I had her in an awful wicker chair. She had cancer, too, though, and she had the radio going full-blast all day! Mine did, too!”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Let me tell you something now, buddy . . . Are you listening?”

Franny, looking extremely tense, nodded.

“I don’t care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I’ll tell you a terrible secret—Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know—listen to me, now—don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.”

For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.

- Franny & Zooey, JD Salinger 

Finished reading this for the second time today. Hated it the first. Realized how wrong I was.

Say what you will about his characters (too neurotic?) and his themes (too juvenile?) Make what you will of his vanishing act. A great writer does not work from some lofty perch of moral or intellectual authority. Great art comes not from above humanity but from within. And this is a guy who chronicles all that lies within a soul better than almost anyone else. Holden Caulfield was not at all like you - and yet you related to him, right?

You wonder how a recluse could portray such humanity. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe understanding what it is to be human requires one to also be alone. To be human is to be alone? To be alone is to be human?

It seems that's the struggle any creator faces. A successful public life is a war against self-consciousness; a successful creative life is a wallowing in self-consciousness.

It seems the two generally don't go together.

In that regard, Salinger doesn't give you hope. But let's ponder the nature of genius another day; let's celebrate it for now. So what his work wasn't sophisticated? So what he didn't take his own lessons to heart? The cranky old fuck just wanted to write. He did so pretty fucking well.

Day 8-10: Random Bullshit

If I weren't lazy and surrounded for hours and hours with a TV, an Xbox, and abso-fucking-lutely nothing else, this blogging every day thing would work out. Alas, FIFA 11 (because I'm too cheap to get the new one and will be too cheap to get the next one too) has been calling, along with reading a book on North Korea that I must discuss with little freshmen next fall. Moral - Mizzou is oppressed hellhole like DPRK, right down to the alcoholic tendencies of respective Glorious Leaders Kim Jong-Il* and Gary Pinkel.

* * *

Twitter tells me the Rams released Justin King. That Justin King was ever paid to play cornerback will forever boggle my mind and forever give me hope that I can land a job for which I'm way underqualified. Maybe a newspaper will pay me to write words for them! Maybe they'll let me write for free, just for the shits and giggles and resume building! (So far, no dice - but not for lack of trying.)

In other Rams-related news, Jeff Fisher has set a goal for his defense: break the all-time single-season sacks record. Your response, Dwight Schrute? 

* * *

"Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information."**

Thought this was a ballin' quote. Too bad I found it in one of my 77 daily checks of Twitter.

Is it hypocritical to call oneself a hypocrite?


*Before you ask - of course I know The Glorious Leader Kim Jong Il has passed on. I also know that I do not pass up chances to reference his outrageous Hennessy consumption. Just one of the many reasons I hope to be just like him when I grow up.
** Because of course Kurt Vonnegut is tweeting from beyond the grave.

Should You ♥ You?

"The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era- but nobody guessed, back then, that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything."

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

We're a long way from the Acid Era, but that hangover hurts worse than ever. Except today the frightened illiterates aren't a subculture- they are the culture. They are all of us.

Not that Liking Yourself is bad or that self-loathing is somehow noble. Of course not. Of course not. But now it seems like everyone doesn't just suspect himself of the cardinal virtues; we're also sure that nobody else possesses them. The Self must always be Right and Righteous. The man that disagrees is a European socialist intent on destroying the meager scraps left of the American Dream. The haters just can't handle your phenomenal swag.

But this is total and utter horseshit. Sometimes we are Wrong about things. And sometimes we are also unhappy or unenthused or (gasp) alone. That's fine. If there's anything wrong with being Wrong or Sad or Alone, then a) there's something wrong with being Human; and b) there's something wrong with Truth. That's terrifying.

(And then there's the more complicated issue of wanting Other People to Like Us so we can confirm that we are worthy of being Liked by Ourselves. It's the goal of every advertiser pimping consumerism as the Way to Happiness, of every passive-aggressive bitch posting man-hating Facebook statuses in search of self-affirming comments, of every no-good two-bit snake-oil salesman that wants your son to play basketball at the University of Kentucky. It's very complicated, very paranoid, very Nixonian- and damn dangerous. Paradoxically, it also seems to make ourselves less likely to Like Ourselves.)

The takeaway- it's OK to be wrong. Being pissed-off, not knowing what to do or where to go or whether to laugh or cry or both, is totally natural. Liking Yourself is natural too. What isn't OK is cheating yourself. Don't dismiss other people and points of view just because they're different. Don't think your shit smells that much rosier than the other humans you share 99% of your genome with. Take others and their strengths and faults and quirks as they are and find ways to like them, and then do the same with yourself.

Have faith, not fear. And most of all, be real.

(I don't even fully get what I'm saying, so now I will shamelessly ask for y'all to comment and argue with me below. This would affirm that this post was Worth Something, and by extension that I, the writer of this post, am Worth Something, so that in turn I may Like Myself. Plus, I'm always up for a good circlejerk!)

I Wish You Way More Than Luck

"Here's something that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship- be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences now."

--David Foster Wallace*

David Foster Wallace turned 50 today.

There was, of course, no celebration for the man. He hanged himself three and a half years ago. His words- in speeches, novels, essays, articles, interviews, the monstrous thing they call Infinite Jest that I haven't yet worked up the courage to read- those genius words are the David Foster Wallace that lives on.

People given extraordinary personal freedom are ultimately then overwhelmingly and painfully alone. It is a trade-off we must confront, a double bind we must accept, a battle we must fight more today than ever. And nobody laid out a better path to consciousness and humanity and, dare we say it, happiness in the tragicomic clusterfuck that is life in modern middle-class America.

David Foster Wallace lost his long bout with these modern demons. Doesn't mean we mortals are fucked, just that life is hard, really hard, and doesn't get easier. We can avoid our own demise by staying conscious of one last paradox- the message of the man who couldn't follow his own advice.

Thank god words live on.

Most Important Meal of the Day

"I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned-beef hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours, and at least one source of good music…all of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked."

-Hunter S. Thompson 

Say what you will about the good doctor- the man lived. His life was one great fucking time. Even though he ended it all himself, I don't think, as he raised the gun to his head, any regret passed through his mind. And that's when you know you've done something right.

I want his words. I want his life.

Think Less/Say Yes

"In the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit 'real' except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion does not matter. 

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes. 

I say yes, and if that makes me the enemy, then good, good, good. We are evil people because we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things. I say yes when my high school friend tells me to come out because he's hanging with Puffy. A real story, that. I say yes when Hollywood says they'll give me enough money to publish a hundred different books, or send twenty kids through college. Saying no is so fucking boring. 

And if anyone wants to hurt me for that, or dismiss me for that, for saying yes, I say: Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers, finally, finally, finally."

-Dave Eggers*

Eggers is a pretty smart motherfucker and, while sometimes a bit overwrought, one of the better writers out there today. After about half of his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I'm beginning to think the title may not be an exaggeration.

His point here is one I think about a lot, though I have little success implementing it. Even though we have greater ability to communicate today than ever before, we seem even more separated and fragmented and distant than usual. I guess it's because every time we communicate we're putting a little piece of ourselves out there to be judged, and that fear doesn't go away even for the most self-assured. In an era of constant communication, those pieces eventually add up to a paralyzing fear of opening up to new people or revealing new aspects of our lives to those we do know. And it all leads to the routine and stagnation we humans seem to naturally crave.

Eggers says, and I want to say, "Fuck that." If you want to do something, do it. If you're happy smile. If you're sad cry. If you're angry buy a Mitt Romney cardboard cutout and punch the hell out of it. If you're masochistic watch a Rams game while listening to Nickelback. Don't lie about how you feel to seem normal or to gain some perverted sense of community. Fuck the haters and the potential haters. Stay true to yourself and you won't have any regrets. Appreciate yourself and eventually others will follow suit.

Listening to the haters breeds regret, but so does not listening to the inviting call of opportunity. Better to do something and hate it than not do it and always wonder. So do things you've never done. Go outside. Laugh at others, laugh at yourself, laugh at life. You'll sleep when you're dead.

Now, if only I could listen to my own advice more often.

(song vaguely related to the larger point-you can figure out how, my genius readers!)

((plus, Japandroids are fucking awesome, so you really should listen!))

(((that is all.)))

*Eggers is a UIUC graduate! This is a fact that will hopefully please roughly one-third of our readers!

The Search

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life . . . To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

What do you seek- God? you ask with a smile.

I hesitate to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting myself a goal which everyone else has reached- and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. Who wants to be dead last among one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2% are atheists and agnostics- which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker. For myself, I enjoy answering polls as much as anyone and take pleasure in giving intelligent replies to all questions.

Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of questions: Am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind them? That is to say: Have 98% of Americans already found what I seek or are they so sunk in everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?

On my honor, I do not know the answer.       

-- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer