Your first sentence says: At least their absurdity has a small, plucky magnitude."
O.K. but doesn't the absurdity emanate from somewhere?
Poverty and the sad status highlighted on my bus ride, like the sad status of, say, a super-posh Range Rover, have been with us forever. But I I would argue it is much worse in the last few decades and that is not because a Trans kid is swimming as a girl.
I agree with you, life is bound to break people. But our systems breaks people too. That breaking is more obvious to see in the bus riders than in the Range Rovers, but both are broken. And I do not say this (or anything) because I think I i'm anyone's helper but because it is so obvious that our system now breaks more people more than it did, breaks them more severely, and breaks people far more than the system I lived under in The Netherlands. There are A-Hole rich people there and homeless poor there too, but a lot fewer of them. (And maybe one reason for that is that there the bus or the tram or the subway comes all the time, not once an hour.)
I suppose everything I am saying argues against your, "What I am saying is it is bad all the way down, beyond the bone, and into bottomless hell ."
I mean, I can't deny that your view is possible--perhaps even sensible in a world of terror small and large. But at some point we are either suffering or not, growing wise from suffering or retreating into superficiality and hedonism. We are either cutting each other to shreds and dropping nerve gas on one another or having coffee and reading the paper. The former may be inevitable and the latter easy to cast as decadent, but your view is so dark I am not sure it permits even the pleasures of your own typically brilliant, historically astute and cleverly incisive prose.
Finally, I am not sure if you mean to be patronizing or I just sometimes read what you write that way. My mediocre impressions and fuzzy water colors don't mean much in a world that needs X-Rays, but you seem to see me as wanting to be a doctor, not being a better doctor, and not shooting myself and my subjects too. Not seeing the misery, not putting everyone out of it, and not striving to insist on it are not the same, even if my take is facile or naive.
But I do not praise current libs and have said often that Hilary made an ego driven mistake to think she deserved a spot more than Sanders.
I am really not sure how you get to this fantasy that I imagine how you feel or see you as an SS guard.. I would have to read over everything you’ve said and I’ve said to try and glean that which would take too much time. All I can say is I have no memory of thinking any such thing and, as I recall, have praised your eloquence and insights, even if I continue to be confused by your tone and what I read as contempt.
again, skipping over the main, I’ll just say that whatever Steiner’s pointed reviews of the the camps or “the Jewish Perspective” wasn’t he pretty attached to the myths you claim I do nothing but defend, even though I actually have little idea of what you are talking about.
Your first sentence says: At least their absurdity has a small, plucky magnitude."
O.K. but doesn't the absurdity emanate from somewhere?
Poverty and the sad status highlighted on my bus ride, like the sad status of, say, a super-posh Range Rover, have been with us forever. But I I would argue it is much worse in the last few decades and that is not because a Trans kid is swimming as a girl.
I agree with you, life is bound to break people. But our systems breaks people too. That breaking is more obvious to see in the bus riders than in the Range Rovers, but both are broken. And I do not say this (or anything) because I think I i'm anyone's helper but because it is so obvious that our system now breaks more people more than it did, breaks them more severely, and breaks people far more than the system I lived under in The Netherlands. There are A-Hole rich people there and homeless poor there too, but a lot fewer of them. (And maybe one reason for that is that there the bus or the tram or the subway comes all the time, not once an hour.)
I suppose everything I am saying argues against your, "What I am saying is it is bad all the way down, beyond the bone, and into bottomless hell ."
I mean, I can't deny that your view is possible--perhaps even sensible in a world of terror small and large. But at some point we are either suffering or not, growing wise from suffering or retreating into superficiality and hedonism. We are either cutting each other to shreds and dropping nerve gas on one another or having coffee and reading the paper. The former may be inevitable and the latter easy to cast as decadent, but your view is so dark I am not sure it permits even the pleasures of your own typically brilliant, historically astute and cleverly incisive prose.
Finally, I am not sure if you mean to be patronizing or I just sometimes read what you write that way. My mediocre impressions and fuzzy water colors don't mean much in a world that needs X-Rays, but you seem to see me as wanting to be a doctor, not being a better doctor, and not shooting myself and my subjects too. Not seeing the misery, not putting everyone out of it, and not striving to insist on it are not the same, even if my take is facile or naive.
I don’t have time to respond to all of this.
But I do not praise current libs and have said often that Hilary made an ego driven mistake to think she deserved a spot more than Sanders.
I am really not sure how you get to this fantasy that I imagine how you feel or see you as an SS guard.. I would have to read over everything you’ve said and I’ve said to try and glean that which would take too much time. All I can say is I have no memory of thinking any such thing and, as I recall, have praised your eloquence and insights, even if I continue to be confused by your tone and what I read as contempt.
again, skipping over the main, I’ll just say that whatever Steiner’s pointed reviews of the the camps or “the Jewish Perspective” wasn’t he pretty attached to the myths you claim I do nothing but defend, even though I actually have little idea of what you are talking about.