Friday, December 05, 2003
(8:39 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Jared wins
Those of you who enjoy scrolling a lot might have read my post from last night about wanting to see more "literary and philosophical" materials on blogs. As if in direct response, Jared posted a brief reflection on Wittgenstein. Thus, for today, I declare that Jared wins.
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Thursday, December 04, 2003
(9:03 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
It doesn't pay to be smarter than most boys: Or I want back in the cave with the pretty pictures
Two cents to the faithful reader who can name the quotes above.
Nothing like realizing you don't belong to ruin a perfectly good night. Nothing like realizing that your very passion separates you from the majority of the world and even from those who you wish to communicate with the most. I got in a pretty heated argument over Tolkien's racist tendencies in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and while the whole thing was pretty stupid there was an underlying feeling I got from the whole thing. "You are reading too deep into a work of fantasy." That is, "You read too deeply into life."
I don't know if there is such a thing. I think it is possible to deconstruct, to psychoanalyze, to run through the rigors of the dialectic everything and we must! There is no outside interpretation and we all have our system (or unsystem if you want to pretend) of doing just that. I will even go so far as to say that all of life is translating experiences into one's way of thinking. Thinking well means realizing this and realizing that there are layers upon layers of meaning in everything that humanity has touched. That none of it is simple. We don't live in a Dick and Jane book.
I could be way off. I could be really wrong. Maybe the most intelligent thing in the world is to find some easy job, a nice place to live and a party on the weekend; just ride that wave until Judgement Day and since Judgement Day isn't likely to show up it would make a pretty good lifetime. I just can't do it though, I don't even know if I could start. It is likely my sense of responsibility that keeps me coming back to my thoughts (and thought is action) and actions (and action is thought) and critiquing them. I just can't live well if living well means thinking God is a good way to enjoy life, or "Good" and "Evil" are simple.
Why do we keep thinking though? Why did people like Plato, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Derrida, Zizek, Keen, and Kotsko keep thinking? So few listen. Fewer care. I think many people in this situation realize they are not going to change the world or save it and yet they can't just live well. Why did we learn this language of cross and Being when no one understands it? Now I can't even understand them!
Is there a translator in the house?
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(8:21 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
So You'd Like To... Hate America
I have found the full text of my deleted Amazon guide with the above title. It was contained in the same comment thread that included the comment that I am an America-hating historian. I include it here for the sake of the historical record, because I cannot bear for any word written by me to be lost to posterity:
The time is now.
As a leftist, I am well acquainted with hating America. Often, my America-hating activities begin over my morning coffee. I realize that America is one of the main bulwarks of morality in a world of relativistic Frenchmen, but as a liberal, I am so completely depraved that I actively long for the destruction of all that is good and holy.
There is a rich collection of literary and theoretical resources for those who wish to hate America. In a testament to our national sickness, many of them are likely prominently displayed in your local Barnes and Noble. I have assembled a brief list here, in the hopes that true patriots everywhere will learn to know their enemy through an unbiased look at the very worst leftist demagogues who are currently placing our armed forces at risk. I will attempt to use rhetoric that will make my conservative brethren feel comfortable in what is probably uncharted territory for them.
'9-11' by Noam Chomsky is essential to all America-haters. To follow the usual conservative practice of criticizing a charicature of a book I've never read, in this partisan screed, Chomsky argues that the victims of 9-11 each personally had it coming and regrets that he was not there to drink their blood. He confesses that he molests children and that he prays to a statue of Lenin. Finally, he tells an interviewer that he plans to assassinate George W. Bush with a sawed-off shotgun. In the middle is a valuable discussion of his theory of generative grammar, for which he is rightly famous.
'Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace' by Gore Vidal is also essential to all America-haters. Punning off the title of the neoconservative philosopher Immanuel Kant's essay "Perpetual Peace," Gore Vidal (a distant relative of Al Gore and a high-culture "novelist") instructs us in the many evils of American imperialism. His simplistic polemical "arguments" remind one of the question-begging of "gay rights" activists and those who favor legalized discrimination (i.e., affirmative action). In short, Gore Vidal is a classic Clintonian hack writing an uninformed, semi-Pelagian piece of yellow journalism.
'The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers' by Jean Baudrillard is a touching apologia for the insane murders who attacked our nation in the most cowardly possible way -- by using only the most primitive weapons in hand-to-hand combat with a huge crowd of people that vastly outnumbered them and then sacrificing their own lives. In classical French fashion, he rambles obscurely about Heidegger while neglecting to point out that so-called "capitalism" is the only thing standing between Africa and mass starvation on a catastrophic scale. A truly scandalous piece of trendy, poseurish "postmodern" garbage, perpetrated by a closeted homosexual.
'The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century' by Paul Krugman is a textbook example of the intractable leftism of the American academy. His Royal Shrillness indulges in his trademark "criticism" of the Bush administration, which those of us who grow tired of politically correct euphemisms would prefer to term "hate-mongering" and "outright treason." How do I know he does this when the book wasn't even yet published at the time I wrote this list? I don't "know" that, of course, since only lesbian-loving liberals claim to "know" things -- I prefer to use overblown rhetoric as a mask for my a priori emotional convictions.
'Reading Capital' by Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar might seem like an unusual choice, given that no one in the Soviet Union is likely to have read it. I chose this book, however, because Althusser and Balibar are French, and posting anything critical of Marx would likely seem anti-Semetic. Unlike 100% of all liberals, right-wing demagogues are extremely careful to avoid even the appearance of anti-Semitism, and indeed any playing of the "race card" whatsoever. If we are dealt a "race card" in the card game that is politics, we immediately lay it face down on the tableand attempt to make the best possible hand out of the remaining cards. Oh, also, Althusser strangled his own wife! Did you hear that: he strangled his own wife! It's all too common in France, where The Family has been dealt a critical blow.
'The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster' by John Howard Yoder is a shameless attempt to hijack Jesus and the Bible for the left-wing/communist cause. Claiming that Jesus supposedly advocated an obscure principle called "non-violence," Yoder's pernicious screed reads like an apologia for a romantic tryst between Hitler, Stalin, and Ho Chi Min. To be avoided at all costs, unless you want to be infected with romantic ideas about the supposed "injustice" of capitalism and war.
And finally, if you really want to hate America, I suggest you pick up a copy of 'A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present' by Howard Zinn. A textbook, classic example of the historical blindness of bleeding-heart liberals, Zinn will stop at nothing to destroy America's resolve and sense of purpose by appealling to irrelevant ideas such as discrimination and injustice. A terrifying look into the heart of darkness that is the hatred that liberals bear toward America.
So there you have it. If you wish to hate America, these books will help you along the way. If you wish to defend America, you can read these books and recognize their pernicious and fallacious arguments, or failing that, you can watch for people who have read them and just assume that they hate America.
Thank you for your time.
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(8:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Searching for new blogs
Here's how I got into the blog business: I enjoyed reading This Modern World on Salon. I noticed that it had a link to Tom Tomorrow's "frequently updated web page." I followed the link and noticed that it had a weird format. I started following other links, most of which ended up on my blogroll over there. Since Tom Tomorrow is a political cartoonist, his blog is mainly political, and so are the blogs he reads. My interests, however, are not entirely political. I like to have more of a literary and philosophical edge to things, not to get bogged down in the tedious details (i.e., "actually knowing stuff"). Thus lately I've started to think that I've placed this blog into the wrong circle. If Atrios or Kevin Drumm or Josh Marshall were to stumble across The Weblog, there's no particular reason they should enjoy reading it or recommend it to their readers. I did get that shout-out from SullyWatch that one time, but I think it was pretty much a fluke.
Also, readership issues aside, I get kind of bored with reading snarky posts about how stupid Republicans are. I hate Republicans as much as the next guy, but they do so many stupid things that focussing on every detail doesn't seem to be very helpful. In other words, I'd prefer a more broadly literary or philosophical approach to the matter, such as Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal or Slavoj Zizek can provide -- even if none of them gets it exactly right, their arguments strike me as more productive and thought-provoking than "Man, Bush is still a bastard...." (That's probably why I'm starting to "forget" to read every Krugman column.) I think that partisan conflict is very necessary and important, and I don't mean to insult anyone who wants to engage in it, since I fully intend to engage in it sometimes -- just not all the time.
Plus, it would be fun to read about something other than politics in a blog sometimes. Slacktivist had some wonderful literary analysis with his Left Behind posts, which seem to have stopped, and Matthew Yglesias, who is otherwise an eloquent Democratic party hack, has the occasional philosophical post (sadly, from an analytic perspective) -- but other than that, I come up empty-handed. The Right Christians, like Slacktivist and Jared Woodard, are running more of a Christian political blog than a strictly theological blog (though Jared did have that one post on Rahner, which seems to have been met with complete incomprehension by his readership). So far, I have enjoyed reading John and Belle Have a Blog, based mainly on a very long post in which John dissects the "bad writing" debate (sadly, from an analytic perspective), as well as one post on Unfogged that answers his post from a continental point of view -- but I don't really have a good feel for what those blogs are really about yet. Maybe those posts were flukes.
What is the point of this post, you ask, if you haven't already gotten bored? I guess I'm wondering if I'm asking for things that blogs just can't give. I'd be interested to see book reviews and music reviews and movie reviews and maybe some literary analysis or philosophical or theological argument in a blog. I'll admit I'm a hypocrite because I don't do all of that in my own blog. Maybe if I just start doing that kind of thing, other similar blogs will find me. Maybe there aren't other blogs that fit that. Maybe I should just give up on the blogosphere and get a subscription to The New Criterion or Critical Inquiry or The New York Review of Books. Maybe I need to take the literary magazines out of the bathroom and read them at times when I'm not also taking a crap. What does it say about me that the only time I ever seriously engage with the legacy of W. B. Yeats or read detailed profiles of the most powerful men in our nation or take in a contemporary poem is when I am shitting?
In short, the next movie I watch, I am going to review. In fact, I would review the last movie I saw, if it weren't the absolutely abyssmal Radio. Thinking about that movie longer than the two hours I threw away in the theater is a really depressing prospect. Also, the next album I listen to, I will review, even though Robb's probably better suited for that (he has genuine indy cred, while I had to go and ruin mine by listening to The Strokes in my car the other day).
Note to co-bloggers: I'm not trying to tell you what to write. I enjoy all your posts and am glad to have them on The Weblog. Also, keep in mind that I'm probably not going to follow through on the resolutions expressed in this post.
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(11:45 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Bourbonnais Review of Book Reviews
The New York Review of Books contains a review of a new book by Gore Vidal on the founding fathers. Although I've only experienced Vidal through Internet snippets, he seems to have some good things to say. He quotes a speech from Benjamin Franklin in his book, which was delivered at the Constitutional Convention:
I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a blessing to the People if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
Vidal also calls Lincoln "the first of the modern tyrants." Overall, this review makes for good reading, and it makes me want to read more of Gore Vidal. But don't take my word for it!
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(12:55 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Very Nearly Scrolled to Death
It would be a sad day indeed if Adam Kotsko were scrolled to death on the weblog hosted at adamkotsko.com, but if I don't post this, it may well happen.
I have been struggling with Bonhoeffer all semester. I am in a seminar class that provides good coverage of the whole corpus of his writings, although the class discussions often leave much to be desired. In my opinion, my classmates do not share enough common formation for discussion to be worthwhile -- we have students from three different seminaries and six different countries represented in one class, and everything everyone says seems to be pretty much at random. When coupled with the fact that Bonhoeffer died very young and was unable to fully clarify his ideas, it makes for a very confusing semester.
I liked, to some degree, the Bonhoeffer of Cost of Discipleship. He seemed very Kierkegaardian in the book, while at the same time being very concrete. I enjoyed the Bonhoeffer of Act and Being because of his engagement with philosophy. Most of all, though, I have loved the Bonhoeffer of the Letters and Papers from Prison. That fragmentary, incomplete work is the one that most speaks to me. Sitting in prison, having utterly failed in virtually all of his ambitions, having lost everything, Bonhoeffer writes letters in which he gives more than he has to give. Having devoted his life to the study of academic theology, he admits that theological claims are no longer convincing in our world. Having devoted his life to calling the church to task, he admits that modern man does not need religion.
Although he did not live to see it, certainly he could have predicted that at the end of the horrible moral crisis of the Nazi regime, the church would not be at the forefront of moral reflection. He saw for himself that the church was too caught up in self-preservation to say much of anything worthwhile about the most urgent moral issues of his time. Seeing that institutional Christianity did not have anything worth saving, the only route he could reasonably take was to ditch the whole thing and wait for a miracle -- a miracle that for him never came. As a reader of Kierkegaard, he knew that faith was not simply belief, not simply being able to sign, in good conscience, a form stating that the undersigned affirms all the clauses of the Nicene Creed. In Kierkegaard as in scripture, faith is an act of radical negativity, giving up not only everything one has, but even the self who gives everything else up. Faith is becoming completely abject, denied by one's friends, scapegoated by one's community, given up for dead -- waiting for a miracle that may very well not come.
Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity" is the a rigorous form of the theology of the cross. The Christian is forced to give up even the content of Christianity in order to sacrifice it to the form -- when one cannot believe anything the church or the Bible says anymore, when the claims of Christianity are completely unconvincing and irrelevant, then one has some idea of what it means that salvation is by grace through faith.
I have never read anyone before who had such unflinching honesty about the place of Christianity in the modern world -- but then, I don't actually know anything about theology.
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(12:08 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Dancing with the devil in brood day light
We are now at T-minus two days until I meet with Dr. John Bowling, President of Olivet Nazarene University. I am not really sure what the point of me meeting him is but one thing is certain - it will be akward.
I think I mainly want him to answer some questions for me regarding where he has let the Philosophy & Religion department go and if he tries to give me some bull-shit story about an axhead I may start laughing. Any suggestions for what I should do? Standing him up is still an option.
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Wednesday, December 03, 2003
(1:21 AM) | Robb Schuneman:
I don't need no more warning, the morning's over, and this isn't my room.
I am vying for longer titles here.
Sorry I haven't posted much. In addition to my general whore-ness, I am also in the midst of finals week and pretty busy. However, that crazy Jean Chretien made me post. Recently someone asked him what he might do upon retirement, his quote went like this:
"I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand."
This is making reference to Canada's potential legalization of small amounts of marijuana, meaning, if you have less than half an ounce you get a fine instead of the big stuff.
Here's the article I read. Actually, I read it on Yahoo! News, but I can't find that article right now. Other than that, as a non-user (xSTRAIGHT EDGE IS THE DISCIPLINEx) I really don't have much to say, but I didn't want to fade into oblivion.
Here's some more worthless links in a vain attempt to justify this post:
- Go buy a roman die.
- A lot of NYFD "family liasons" (fellow firefighters who watch out for widowed fire-fighter wives), have taken up with their deceased friends widows, leaving their own families. Or so says the highly dubious, but sometimes okay, New York Post. That's weird.
- Here are some German blog awards. Figure out how to vote us in, so we can be like David Hasselhoff and those hateful DU HAST MICH kids or whatever from a while ago - popular with those really crazy germans.
- A great article on Bill Watterson, the comic world's J.D. Salinger. Perhaps the greatest part of that article is this segment from a letter sent to Watterson upon his retirement from Calvin & Hobbes:
Hi! My name is Michael. You can call me Mike for short. I am a big fan of your books. I read the ad in the paper. I was pretty sad, but I got over it. Oh, I was wondering if I could take over but I would need instructions to draw the characters. If you say yes, Calvin and Hobbes will continue but it will be a little different. If you say No than you don't even know what will happen. Bye!
PS Please give me an answer and please write back. - Finally, Harper's Index has done it again. Some highlights:
Total U.S. military spending the Bush Administration projects it will have spent by the end of 2008 : $3,200,000,000,000 [Office of Management and Budget (Washington)] (I don't even know how to say that number...3 trillion? or is that where we get to the point of Bazillion?)
Total U.S. military spending between 1941 and 1948 : $3,100,000,000,000 [Office of Management and Budget (Washington)]
Percentage of the White House's proposed Afghanistan spending in 2004 devoted to reconstruction : 3 [U.S. Agency for International Development (Washington)]
Number of companies that control the U.S. voting-technology market : 3 [Election Data Services (Washington)]
Percentage of votes cast in U.S. elections last year that were counted by the largest voting-technology firm : 52 [Election Systems & Software (Omaha)]
Campaign contributions that one voting-technology CEO raised to become a Bush "Pioneer" this year : $100,000 [Bush-Cheney '04, Inc. (Arlington, Va.)]
(I love it when they do the build up thing.)
Really, the rest is great too as always, check it out.
Okay, see ya later,
-Robb
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(12:38 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
I don't care, I really like Michael Moore
During Thanksgiving break I watched a lot of TV at Hayley's parents house. Since we don't have cable I try to get my fix when I can and as usual I ended up watching a lot of MTV but at one point, during some long section of rap videos, I caught C-SPAN's Booknotes. Michael Moore was being interviewed about his new book Dude, Where's My Country. I wanted to watch because I've always respected Moore, growing up I remember watching TV Nation when I was visiting my dad in Denver and always laughing when Moore would "get the man." This may have something to do with my political views at present, or maybe we all do naturally despise human beings who oppress other human beings.
This interview was semi-hostile on the part of host Brian Lamb but it never went into the "asshole" zone, just a good hard hitting interview and Moore really impressed me. I learned that he almost became a priest, was really affected by liberation theology and likes to swear. This is a guy I could have a beer with. I think when it comes down to it, people who compare Ann Coulter and her ilk to Moore and those on the left that engage in satire (often confused with libel and slander) are really misguided. Mainly, though sometimes the footnotes aren't on par with say Zinn, his heart is in the right place while Coulter's heart seems to be non-existent. Moore even wrestled, on camera, with his new found wealth that he is at a loss with since, before Roger and Me he made 16,000 a year. Coulter, I think it is safe to say, would never have a problem keeping all her money made off of bad journalism.
Oh, and she's a man.
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Tuesday, December 02, 2003
(2:49 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
See what I mean?
Religion & Ehtics NewsWeekly: Given that [the Church is a different kind of community than the rest of Liberalism], it seems odd to find an essay by Jean Baudrillard, the postmodern theorist, who interprets September 11 as the Twin Towers committing suicide. Did you have a quota for nihilists?
Stanley Hauerwas: I didn't cotton to his essay very much, quite frankly. Obviously you include people like that because of who they are -- to find out what they say, in the face of an event like this. And what you find out is that they have nothing to say!
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(1:49 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Here I sit, for I can do no other
Every since Craig Keen and I had a conversation in Barnes and Noble around this time last year I have been struggling with whether or not I would focus on philosophy or theology (and my order of placement may show which one I prefer). I want, very badly I think, to focus on philosophy though I have beliefs that really prevent me from forgetting about the Church (I am not so sure about God sometimes, God seems to stay so distant it is hard to remember God). I think that's why my interests keep going back to politics and Jesus and ontology and Christology and on and on. Yet I can't give myself fully to theology, I can't say that theology should (like Milbank) become the master discourse because I think it would then be what it has always been - oppressive.
I recently started reading Caputo's Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida and I really like it. It's been really interesting watching myself react to things, because much of what Derrida and Caputo say about God I can't seem to agree with (I still think Derrida is an enlightenment liberal of a higher order) and yet the way I disagree is in that way an adolescent disagrees with their parents - I protest too much. They are right, religion has killed millions upon millions and to an extent faith has to (Isaac for one). Even though I accepted during my freshman year that God does as God pleases, it doesn't seem that God is much interested in world peace as he is in calling for sacrifices. What worries me, when I start thinking like this, is that a theology that stands against the world stands against a world of peace. If God calls us, assuming we are people of faith, to kill then we kill, and even the Church ought not to stop that (if Abe and Soren are correct). So I can't understand why I would ever advocate the Church to have any say over anyone at all and so I don't except for those who have given themselves to the Church! After all, we are still shunning loving people away from our very doors (I speak of our homosexual brothers and sisters)! What can we tell the world at all!?!
It's strange, but it seems that I have to say that the church can only speak up in times of violence and even then it won't. Our undecideability about justice keeps us locked there and if we have the faith to decide we are surely bringing death upon someone.
But that is all, kind of, abstract for me. The main reason I can't really give myself to theology is everyone (save the exception of few) is damn mean towards other thinkers. I talked to Hauerwas about wanting to study philosophy and theology and he went on about how most philosophy departments don't give a damn about theology (certainly this is true) and when I mentioned I was looking at Villanova, a place that has tried to do both faithfully regardless of its failures, he made some snide remark about not liking Caputo's work. I really like Stanley, really, but that whole thing embodied the way I feel about theology as a part of academia and a part of living. On top it all I've been trying to get into Milbank but every time I just see critique after critique after critique of everyone and it drives me crazy! Where deconstruction strives to gracefully open up areas, to allow for thinking with a hammer, most modern theology seems to spitefully tear everything apart (with exceptions). And I just see too much of myself in that and I hate it.
I have struggled my whole life with tearing other people down, and I still can't quite convince myself that they don't deserve it for being so damn stupid. There is a certain kind of resentment inherent in that whole enterprise that is soingrainedd into the way I live and yet I desperately want to not live that way. It seems that theology exists to separate the sheep from the goats among the whole of the world and beautiful people like Derrida and some guy in China I will never meet are being put into the goat category. So, like Job, I cry violence even if I still can not curse God and die.
Yet I can't really side with philosophy either, or this undecideability that is so prevalent in the philosophy I like (excluding Marx) because something tells me that there must be a way to stand against Capital and not losing all sight of love and life in the process (like Levinas would have me do, and maybe God). And then when something does stand, I feel that I can't fully stand with it and that at some moment I will have to cut myself off from that movement to.
So, what do I do? In the words of some band that made millions on being working class, should I stay or should I go?
*Update*
In an unrelated tidbit, it bothers me that some country music rock star has my name and is quasi-famous.
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Monday, December 01, 2003
(8:27 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Hills Hall: Gay Bath House?
Although I have been highly critical of Olivet Nazarene University in the past, there is one area where I absolutely cannot fault the school: the male bonding. The administration spared no effort or expense in making sure that the men of Olivet would find in one another not simply casual friends or people to "hang out" with, but genuinely intimate confidants. With the exception of three horrible hours a week, they allowed us men to have our refuge in all the dorms, but primarily (in my heart and mind) Hills Hall.
Freed from the pressures to put up a front for women, we shared everything with one another. Many lifted weights together; many shared prayer and devotional times together; many gave selflessly in order to help one another with studies; everyone banded together to help those in emotional distress. Our lively interconnectedness was illustrated most perfectly in our community shower time. Walking down the hall in nothing but a towel (if that), rounding up a good group of friends, we would come together in the showers -- there, nothing was out of bounds.
It is impossible to lie to someone who is looking at your penis, we all found, and I think I speak for all Hills residents when I declare that the bonding that took place in the shower was the cement holding my spiritual and emotional life together during my entire career at Olivet Nazarene University. We helped each other get at those hard-to-reach spots, and sometimes, imitating our Savior's blessed example, we would wash the easy-to-reach spots for each other as well.
Our zeal in helping each other knew no bounds -- many would go to great lengths to demonstrate that the body parts they had helped to wash were clean enough to eat off of. And how liberating it was to be in a place where public erections were not a source of embarrassment! We were all men in the very bloom of youth, and the occasional random erection was met with understanding and with help. All of us were familiar with the discomfort of a long-term erection, and so if anyone needed to "finish it off," either on his own or with some outside assistance, that was considered more than appropriate.
Often we would confide with one another about the sexual temptations we were facing with the husband-hungry girls who litter Olivet Nazarene University. Although we all wanted to save ourselves for our future wives, we were sometimes tempted to cross the line with our dates, to soil our souls with a meaningless release of pleasure. Even if we had determined never to engage in intercourse, living in our decadent American culture, we could not help but know about the "options" available to us: oral sex, "dry humping," etc. They were all the more insidious for being seemingly consequence-free -- no one ends up pregnant, even though the soul is fertilized with the seeds of sin.
Often, when one of our number was struggling with the temptation to receive a "blow job" from his date, one of us would step up and demonstrate that it was not sufficiently pleasurable to endanger our souls. From then on, the unfortunate struggler would know that if he was plagued with thoughts of blow jobs, he could receive the momentary relief he needed right in the shower, among his close, intimate friends. The same was true, of course, of dry humping and intracrurial sex (with or without reach-around), but we drew the line at anal sex -- that's just gay.
And so, administrators of Olivet Nazarene University, on behalf of all those male Christian students whose chastity was spared as a result of your foresight and prudence in setting residence hall policies, I can only say, "Thank you."
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(8:05 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Social Justice Can Suck It
Jared wrote an interesting post about the attitude parodied in my title. I have a question in response: granted that it should be blindingly obvious that the gospel is really about social justice, what do we do if people refuse to view their society as unjust? You can hardly throw a bowling ball in an evangelical church without hitting someone who thinks that the American cocktail of capitalism and democracy is the very model of justice. People get what they deserve (and even though an evangelical might not add this, I'll add, "damn it"), and everyone has a chance to succeed. Our rulers are selected by popular vote (usually), and any citizen can run for office if he or she so chooses. The only changes that need to be made are incremental, and by an impressive sleight of hand, poverty is blamed on the very government intervention that aims to "fix" this perfect society. In such a situation, why not just focus on perfecting oneself through a healthy dose of God every week? What possible sense does it make to talk about social sin when we live in a nation that is "founded on Christian principles"?
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Sunday, November 30, 2003
(7:26 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Running buck-wild like a concubine whose mother never held her hand
On the way home, I listened to Beck's classic album Midnite Vultures, and the completely irrelevent title of this post is a lyric from the first track, "Sexx Laws." In my opinion, it's one of his weaker albums, but it does have a couple good songs, particularly "Hollywood Freaks." Another song from that album to which I can relate is "Debra," mainly because of his extensive use of falsetto and his longing for two sisters simultaneously.
This weekend I visited my crazy Grandpa Kotsko, and perhaps inevitably, the conversation turned to politics. My dad was with me, and being the faithful right-wing radio listener he is, he naturally assumed that people who do not support President Bush are Somewhere Else -- California, Vermont, etc. Little did he know that Grandpa Kotsko is completely opposed to the president, for surprisingly sensible reasons. For instance, he noted the fact that the government is running a massive deficit, but apparently there's money to fly the president to Iraq for a casual two-hour visit. He also pointed out the "fact" that the president brought 5,000 companions along with him. This is when things started to fall apart.
Thankfully for my dad, Grandpa Kotsko has it in for President Clinton as well. You see, Clinton has stayed holed up in New York ever since he left office, because he's afraid that if he travelled abroad, he would be brought to Geneva for crimes against humanity, just like Milosevic. His crime? Supporting abortion rights. I noted the many occasions when President Clinton has travelled out of the country since leaving office, the fact that he's one of the most beloved political figures in the world, and the fact that the UN supports abortion rights. He was relatively unaffected. My dad threw in the remark that "liberalism is a religion, and abortion is its holy sacrament," but he recanted after I told him that that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.
After the human rights thing didn't work out, Grandpa Kotsko shifted gears to say that President Clinton may well be elected secretary general of the UN, which seems implausible to me as well, but I'm no expert. We then began discussing Rush Limbaugh's drug use, and this led to a nice discussion of drug laws in general. Grandpa Kotsko has a theory about how the vast prison system and the war on drugs are set up entirely to strip people of their right to vote. He thinks the law against marijuana is "silly," and I tend to agree. My dad and my uncle (who, through a genuinely unfortunate series of events, is living with his parents) started hashing out stories of smoking pot and how it affected them, and I just waited that one out.
Our political discussion concluded with an analysis of the ways that the credit card companies and the Federal Reserve team up to screw people over by means of creating pretend money. The Federal Reserve is a big deal in his world -- it was the topic of a very awkward conversation following the Oklahoma City bombings. Apparently (get ready to feel shocked and outraged) all the ATF and other federal agents who normally would work there were all off work the day of the bombing. Why's that, you ask in your shock and outrage? Because the Federal Reserve Bank Corporation employs the ATF and other federal agents to do their bidding, and the Federal Reserve Bank Corporation masterminded the whole bombing thing as part of their plot to -- oh, I don't know. I was never quite sure how the bombing was supposed to help the Federal Reserve. Either he didn't tell me, or I stopped paying attention.
Conspiracy theories do run in my family. My dad has succumbed to the relatively mild Rush Limbaugh conspiracy, whereas my grandpa's is way off the scales. Right now I'm shopping around for a conspiracy. The Media Whores Online-style conspiracy would be a natural fit, since it's just an inversion of the "conservative" conspiracy I grew up with, but I still don't feel very passionate about the Democrats. Marxism seems to work -- I always enjoy political analysis by Marxists, mainly because they have utterly no stake in either dominant political party or "worldview" (liberal or conservative). They also offer a more overarching scheme than the various single-issue conspiracies, such as feminism, queer theory, environmentalism, the various racial advocacy groups, etc.
That's about all I have to say about conspiracy theories for tonight. Thank you for your time.
IRRELEVANT UPDATE: Atrios is now selling t-shirts.
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