Enlightenment

The "light" clicks on at unexpected times.

Edward St Aubyn has written Lost for Words, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It's a fun look at literary prizes.

On page 137 one finds this sentence:  "Impulsiveness always points to the absence of spontaneity."

In context it's a very amusing sentence.

Out of context it provides the essence of just about every thought process of the reigning panoply of ideas emanating from the convoluted "conservative" discourse of American politics.

What does the sentence mean? It means that there is nothing spontaneous about a moment of impulsiveness.  It means being impulsive does not allow for spontaneity. It means...some sort of circular thinking where there is no there there.

It means nothing.

It has no meaning.

It exists only to amuse.

Now one can understand what's being done to conservative thought.

Conservatism of the early 21st century has no meaning.  It amuses.

If only it weren't so dangerous.

Thinking without thought is dangerous for the body politic.

Let us hope for a click soon in the think tanks of the conservative movement in America.

Info-novel

Lou Dobbs an James O Born have collaborated on a novel, Border War.

At least it's in the fiction section of my local library.

One doesn't get far into the book until one begins to sense that not all is quite right (as in correct). On page 12 there's this: "...where would you be if not here..." "At home watching Bill O'Reilly."

Huh?

Then there's the "popular TV host" who "drives both parties nuts" a newly elected Senator from Texas who is the child of immigrants and who "loves the sound of her own voice..." is "educated and knew the subjects [of terrorism and immigration] from all angles."

Guess who those two are supposed to be in "real" life.

The border problems are serious. There is no serious treatment of them in the first 44 pages.

It's a shame. The story itself is interesting, but Dobbs and Born have couched it in right wing blather about the inefficiencies of the FBI and Homeland Security and government in general.

It's in Info-novel. It's self-aggrandizing and facile in its criticisms.

Is Dobbs even on TV anymore?

If you finish it, let me know who won.

It's baaaaack

At the beginning of the Obama administration, the new president said he was interested in ushering in a new tone in Washington.

In deference to that policy, I cancelled the blog I'd started with this address. I never liked the reason for doing it (and I still don't): it was in response to the vitriol set free by such as Ann Coulter and other right wing nut scum types.  (They know who they are.)

It was a very nice group of years, vitriol free.

Now, though, it's time to acknowledge that regardless of how much "nicer" the president has been, his, and our, right wing nut scum fellow citizens have never intended to participate in a civil debate about policies which need debate, much less a new tone. The old tone worked very well, thank you.

Here we are, then. The right wing just won't stop until January 20, 2017, and that might not end it, either.

Their lies and distortions cannot go unanswered.

So let loose the dogs of vitriol.