"My" wing-nut
… has posted a significant chunk of someone else's opus, "A genealogy of anti-Americanism" By James W. Ceaser (errors in capitalization belong to it, I just cut and paste), in the comments to the post immediately below. Though dropping in some eight off-topic comments is supposed to be some slap at me, the thing actually has an interesting point or two that can be addressed.
With notable perspicacity, Gobineau foresaw the Tiger Woods phenomenon. The natural result of the democratic idea, he argued, was amalgamation. America was creating a new "race" of man, the last race, the human race - which was no race at all. Gobineau modeled his system on Hegel's philosophy of history, substituting blood for Spirit as the active motor of historical movement. The elimination of race marked the end of history. It presented - and here one could, in his view, see America's future - a lamentable spectacle of creatures of the "greatest mediocrity in all fields: mediocrity of physical strength, mediocrity of beauty, mediocrity of intellectual capacities - we could almost say nothingness."
There's a couple of levels on which Gobineau's fears can be responded to. You can deal in his own words (or at least the words in this text) "the human race - [is] no race at all." A statement I take no issue with. Gobineau feared his own extinction, and the extinction of all he saw as distinctive in himself and his culture. The foolish, foolish man didn't understand "there is nothing new under the sun," which refers to the nature of man, not technology.
My wing-nut, however, seems to have no sense of irony… or a very high sense of it. Since his first, um, comments were things like "ah, plays othello wit great, big blubbly lips," it casts itself firmly in the Gobineau camp and hence as the only anti-American whose words are on this site.
I'm deleting the comments to respect the copyright laws (I believe my excerpts to be within fair-use provisions, though the cartoons may get me in trouble one day… that's why I gave up on the "cartoon of the day" idea and when I
do post one it always links back to the site I found it on). If anyone is interested though, the full article my wing-nut stole is
here in The Public Interest magazine.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/6/2003 05:21:37 AM |
Posted by P6 at July 6, 2003 05:21 AM
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