eye of the storm

ok white guys the long version:

Identity Crisis For White Men
By Crispin Sartwell

     Black women face a profound choice of identities in the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Do they keep faith with their gender or their race? During the beauty-shop interview, you're not a real woman if you don't vote for Hillary; and you're not black enough if you don't vote for Barack. It's like being drawn and bifurcated.
    What's more rarely appreciated is that we white guys face precisely the same existential crisis around the inverse question: whom do we oppose? Do we go with our sexism (and reject Hillary), or do we go with our racism (and ditch Obama)?  If you vote for Hillary, you're not a real man. If you vote for Barack, you're not white enough.
      Where, in short, does our fundamental loyalty lie, to our gender or our race?
      Here's how my demographic in small-town Pennsylvania are thinking about this profound dilemma, in which the political becomes all-too personal.  We ask ourselves:
   To which group of incomprehensible Others do we owe more of our economic/social/political privilege? From which have we drawn greater profit and prestige: the exploitation of black people, or (e.g.) the unpaid homemaking labor of women? It is, of course, a matter of honor that our wealth, such as it is, is built on a heritage of slavery and sexual slavery, i.e. marriage. We kicked your ass!
    No demographic segment can be expected to vote against its own interest, so it is axiomatic that we white men should fight to preserve the more profitable of our oppressions. I wish there were reliable statistics on this matter.
    Perhaps more to the point, who, black men or women in general, do we ultimately regard with more condescension, or dismiss as more parochial, ignorant, and concerned with trivial and reprehensible matters?   
    Which do we regard with more derision and contempt: women or black men?
    Whom do we loathe more?
    I personally have a bigger gripe with women. But perhaps that's just because I don't hang around with black men.
    Who fills us most fully with an almost supernatural quasi-Freudian phobic fear? This would be an easy question of there were an (openly) gay candidate. But no.
     Our dilemma is made even harder to come to grips with because both our racism and our sexism are entirely unconscious; this whole electoral dynamic happens only in the deep interminable sub-conscious of the beer-swilling male American. Yet it is likely to determine the future of America.
    We wish black folks and women well, but the prospect that we'd be ruled by them is, obviously, absurd. And devastating.

Crispin Sartwell is Director of Polling at crispinsartwell.com.

an attack on jeremiah wright is an attack on the black church itself. i accept that. and i want to say that an attack on crispin sartwell is an attack on . . . yourself. on your own mother. on god. on america. on decency and solidarity. on the internal revenue service. on all the aluminum cans that ever were. on miley cyrus. on square circles and circular squares. on mediocre poetry. on childhood. on...oh fuck it.

all the protests around the olympic torch in various countries are not as damning to the chinese state as is its enthusiastic welcome by the government of north korea.

just to keep you apprised of the monstrous texas state kidnappings, a few washpost pieces. here's my favoite:
the initial complaint was entirely fabricated
but also
mothers separated from small children
and
raises constitutional questions
and
mothers plead to see small children

we white guys face a dilemma. hillary or barack? do we go with our sexism (and go barack), or do we go with our racism (and go hillary)? chick or boy? where does our fundamental loyalty lie, to our gender or our race? for example, to which do we owe more of our economic/social/political privilege: the exploitation of black people, or (e.g.) the unpaid homemaking labor of women? obviously, voting like everyone our own interests, we should fight to preserve the more profitable of our oppressions. and more to the point, who do we regard with more derision and contempt: women or black men? who do we loathe more? who fills us most with the most psychologically profound existential fear? this is a hard situation for us because both our racism and our sexism are entirely unconscious. we wish black folks and women well, but the idea that we'd be ruled by them is of course absurd. or devastating.

communist totalitarianism has stacked corpses and broken minds. but one has to admit that all that is compensated for by the hilariousness of its prose. the communist party of china is a kind of ogden nash  of oppression. stop it, man, you're killin me!

In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Party authorities have launched an education drive focused on officials and Party members, the official Tibet Daily reported on Monday.

The campaign to "fight separatism, protect stability and promote development" would focus on "unifying the thinking and cohesive strength of officials and the masses, deepening the struggle against separatism and counter-attacking the separatist plots of the Dalai clique," said the paper.

occasionally, one grows concerned about the fate of american english. here is an actual sentence from the actual new york times: "I feel a palpable papal disconnect." inferring from the context, i believe that this poor sap is trying to mark his own alienation from the papacy, which is less a tragedy than are the words in which he tries to express it. personally, i am glad to be disconnected from the pope, and i would be glad, too, that my disconnect be palpable, if there were any such things as "disconnects," and if, if there were, they might be palpable or impalpable, papal or impapal.

a "major web inititiative": a site devoted to american radical abolitionist, anarchist, antinomian, advocate of Indian rights, animal rights, etc. nathaniel peabody rogers (new hampshire, 1794-1846).

link to the suny page for against the state.

i hope all my friends will regard me with forbearance. it's not easy hanging out with the american professoriate. but this is why liberals should be tortured slowly to death (well, at least verbally abused from time to time). let's call taxes "dues." and while we're at it, liberals, let's make them voluntary, or (socially) "contractual." do you understand that your "dues" are being used to kill people, for example? to maintain a nuclear arsenal capable of incinerating the world? to kidnap children from their parents ? that america has a higher per capita rate of imprisonment than any society ever with the possible exception of holocaust germany or gulag soviet union? or whatever the hell they feel like using them for, after they confiscate them from you. let's call you a sad bunch of idiots. or an ethusiastic bunch of slaves. calling them dues will, at least, emphasize that you, liberals - the kind of folks who think taxes are too low - are enthusiastically responsible for all these things.