A correspondent says, after a lengthy exchange launched by mutual outrage and commiseration over the latest dumb-assery out of Tennessee (via), this:
I have some theories, but they haven't anything to do with politics. Modern economic reality, IQ distribution, automation and digitalization - I think average people have the sneaking suspicion they are doomed. And they are. So they are growing to despise those who are smarter, and the concept of being smart, and they are turning to people and institutions that abjure rationalism and critical thinking. Ergo, church, and Sarah Palin.
To which I replied (with an [added] bit that should have been there the first time I typed it):
I am aware of that aspect of your thinking. I don't completely deny agreeing with it, but I think, at least, this is hardly a new thing for humans, and maybe also, that if there is something different this time around, it is that this is the first time where the Luddites could take full advantage of the very technologies that represent their obsolescence to complain about their looming obsolescence.
On a very closely related note, this recent interview of Ken Layne bears a careful read, even if you are not as plugged into (dependent on) the Wonkette as I am.
I think on a really good day, I could listen to you and Ken talk about modern America for almost an hour before happily setting myself on fire.
On the upside, this recent online thing has for the first time in my life made me [realize that I am] NOT the gloomiest person I know. So there's that.
Drinking Irish whiskey right now. Tomorrow I will go fill a prescription for another substance which a trained professional, or at least an accredited one, tells me will make me feel even better about things in general.
Soma!
Till then, penguin.
1 comment:
Shocked by it too, Brendan. (I used it to post a bunch of silly photoshops of Sarah Palin. See you in San Quentin.)
The kewl parallel is that Palin and Jesus seemed to be the people, or images of which, I thought Southerners would have been outraged about and self-convincing of hysterical legislative protection from the interlolz bunch, too.
The effort's shocking, un-American, unconstitutional and other things as well. The fact it got signed is a gob-slapper. But majority still rules, at least until rational judges toss the whole thing into the recycle bin. Or unplug their work computers.
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