Thursday, June 07, 2007

Deconstructive Nihilism and the Democratic Party

After the World Wars, a new social war began in earnest; the war upon the bourgeoise. As returning veterans were glad to be home, safe, and alive, relieved to do something easy and non-life threatening like buy a cute little tract home, get a job and raise a family, another group desired in every way to separate themselves from everything that smacked of Middle Class. The more avante-garde the rejection of middle class values, the more the fashionable set applauded as Tom Wolfe observed in New York art scene in The Painted Word.

As artistic realism was deconstructed, highbrow art became not the actual painting, but the action that created it. Likewise out in society, mass meetings such as Woodstock were not so much a method for musical bands to get recognition to sell LP records, but rather the entire event was the happening. Directed by leaders in the anti-American movement, the gullible partying attendees had their personal memory of the event shrewdly replaced. As historians tell us, Woodstock had nothing to do with the music, it was about the in-your-face rejection of the values of Middle Class America. While Woodstock certainly became that, it was a manufactured reality.

In deconstruction terms, the happening became less about being there and more about being there. If all this is true, then the attendees of the happening were just window dressing for the camera, the real artists of the painting were nothing more than manipulative tent revival hucksters preying upon the emotions of their clueless marks.

Happenings became the method to re-educate the masses into believing something happened other than the simple congregating at a specific place. Sometimes, riots were instigated because the manipulators were as shrewd as Jerry Springer in collecting the class of people bent on unruliness and then tossing a lit Molotov cocktail into the mix. The art was The Happening, the action, the riot. The intent was to scare the Middle Class into submission. The unwashed mass of actual attendees thought it was all about being there and enjoying the rowdy party.

This generation steeped in the art of manipulating their witless believers are now in charge of the Democratic Party and the MSM. Every action or sound-bite is a scheduled happening to direct the supposed stupid bourgeoise they have risen above. Meanwhile, the pretentious MSM gasp at the revelation of the happening like a hopelessly rich tech investor scouring the pits of bohemia looking for art that is both not middle class and ridiculously priced. How else could the MSM know the highbrow art authority other than by the event director's rejection of the opinion of Middle Class America or by the power they command? Deconstruction has removed all factual content and the ability of elementary prioritization from the entire process.

This is why I’ve come to fear Obama over Hilary. While the nation is fully aware that Hilary is a contrived, over-processed, structured event, Obama has the dangerously glib charisma of a happening. His campaign events are inflated with the helium of him being, as Joe Biden (D-DE) has described him, a “clean and articulate black man.” The attendants to these events are given to believe the only gravity Obama faces is prejudice. However, helium makes a voice sound funny as Obama strings together brainless platitudes about higher education, nonsensical foreign policy ideas and deconstructed religious ideas that devolve good or evil into a circular argument morass, unless of course the activity was done by George W. Bush. And the tout le monde MSM reports that the helium inflated event was heralded by applause! Oh, joy! The happening happened!

Everyone knows that Hilary Clinton’s moral compass doesn’t point due north, but it would appear that Obama doesn’t even have a moral compass. He is nothing but a deconstructed helium balloon, evidently giving Mrs. Bill Clinton a little more of a challenge than she expected. What is causing people to listen to gibberish and think it profound? It is because the ability to stage an event has nothing to do with content and everything to do with hype and the being-there mentality pumped up by the MSM. They have found the deconstructionist’s dream—a poor down-trodden half-minority who looks good in a suit and can perfectly pronounce every word in a sentence with no content. With Obama in the Oval Office, it would be like Jim Jones had been elected president. Where’s the cut glass punch bowl?

10 comments:

Yaacov Ben Moshe said...

Nance,
This is very good. I would offer this one distinction, that the main offering of Obama’s campaign is not so much the nihilistic deconstruction of the progressive left but the subtler and, maybe more corrosive, Kitsch of received thought and canned emotion. http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2007/05/understanding-vs-nonthought-why-left.html
You touch on this very insightfully when you refer to “This generation steeped in the art of manipulating their witless believers are now in charge of the Democratic Party and the MSM. Every action or sound-bite is a scheduled happening to direct the supposed stupid bourgeoise they have risen above.” Good job that.

Jewish Odysseus said...

Nancy, a very perceptive essay, and as I like to say, when we finally understand the "reasons" behind this hatred of...uhhhhh... A NORMAL, PLEASANT, FRUITFUL LIFE, they will turn out to be not logical, but PSYCHO logical.

I wd expand the scope of this problem to the pre-WWII period--the great Spaniard Ortega y Gasset identified near-identical issues in his 1930 classic, "Revolt of the Masses."

Nancy Coppock said...

Yaacov,

I see Senator Obama as the end result of a generation that demanded, and pretty much received, absence of content and meaning. His mind is an empty and therefore dangerous floating helium balloon, i.e. airhead, of moral relativeness. You are absolutely right about the "subtler and more corrosive, Kitsch of received thought and canned emotion." This is why Senator Obama 's campaign is so dangerous. I will check out your post and leave a comment there.

Nancy Coppock said...

J.O.,

You have the ability to twist your mind in order understand this "situation".

As scripture would explain these mental cases with power:
'...since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.' Romans 1:28

Thanks for the tip on Ortega y Gasset. I'll check it out.

Jewish Odysseus said...

Twist my mind? Ohhhhh, those b@st@rds on Planet Liberal did their best to brainwash me for 12 years, but it never took.

When I was in 3d grade I asked our student-teacher (Miss Waldstein), "What is communism?" "Oh, communism is SHARING."

I asked my Mom--know what she said? "Communists tell you who you have to vote for." How do they do that? "They have guns, and they shoot you if you don't."

Then high school, peaceful insecure surrounded peaceful Soviets, blahblahblah...until they invaded Afghanistan...they just pretended IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

Then ~20 years of having the Boston Glob spewing its uber-demented leftist pap into my face every single day, less intellectual honesty than Pravda...So the end result was very simple:

I TRULY KNOW HOW THESE B@ST@RDS THINK.

Nancy Coppock said...

J.O.

And they say resistance is futile! It is sort of like living in an alternative universe isn't it? Pod people are everywhere it seems.

I am due to write my own Beast story for YBM at http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/. Maybe this week as Mr. Jackalope will be gone on a business trip.

I also note for you the radicalness in our burrow, as we celebrated our 22 wedding anniversary last Friday. grin. As you say, Just trying to live a normal, pleasant, fruitful life.

Long live the Resistance!

Anonymous said...

Hello Nancy,

This is an interesting essay. The points you've made here definitely applies to certain aspects of the Democratic Party. I think part of what you are saying here also applies to ratiocination, when Man turned his reason upon himself, as if unscrewing his eyeballs to look back on himself.

If I'm not mistaken, this occurred sometime during the turn of the 20th century and which came into artistic fruition in the expressionists and abstract expressionists. Especially with the visual artists, they became much more interested in the action of their painting than in the aesthetics of the paintings themselves.

A Jackson Pollock can convince people to throw down real money for mere splatters of paint on a canvas because he convinced them that the action his painting, the happening, was what art was really about, not the byproduct image.

It took a while to reach the average American, but it took eventually. You see, I think the point you've made here applies to wide swaths of our populace irrespective of political ideology. I think you are right in that the happening is the means in which people amend, transform and otherwise re-write history, both on the individual level in spasm of subjectivism and on the marco-level of national politics.

But like I said, I think this point goes well beyond just politics...

Nancy Coppock said...

Thomas,

Thank you for the very interesting post. Naval gazing is definitely the philosophical search of the day. However, I do see a rebellious group of young people that think naval gazing is worthless and are looking for something worthwhile and meaningful.

A new romantic realism is coming back. In art there is a reemergence of the quest for a utopia, while being cognizant that history shows more people die in the quest for utopia than in any other human endeavor. We live in a very exciting time, as I note in the previous post.

Anonymous said...

Nancy,

Exciting times indeed... The whole world is going KABOOM around us and we're talking about the fate of Paris Hilton. Not that she's unimportant--- after all she is an immortal being made in the image of God--- but as far as national news is concerned, I'd rather be hearing news about Russia's renewed Cold War with us.

But that's just my rathers.

Nancy Coppock said...

This most excellent comment was sent as an email.

The author is Christopher Chantrill and he blogs at roadtothemiddleclass.com and his book The Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Many chapters of this book are available for viewing on his site and the jackalope recommends it highly.

Nancy,

My own take starts with the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He inaugurated
the modern era with his notion that you can't know
things-in-themselves, you can only know appearances. Notice the
cleverness here. It can apply to God as well as the material world.
We cannot know God as He really is, but we can believe in His
revelations.

The question is, can we know anything? Today science takes the
position that all knowledge about the material world is contingent; it
is good until a better theory comes along. The truth of the
deconstructionists is to point out that all knowledge is polluted by
the knower. We see what we want to see, and what we see is heavily
influenced by our culture which tells us what to look for.

The solution is what Christians have been saying all along. You
cannot live by knowledge; you must live by faith. Oh and by the way it
helps to throw in hope and love too.

I feel that the Democrats are in a very difficult position, and I have
tried to show it on my website www.usgovernmentspending.com.

Amounts in billions of dollars, all governments, 2007
Pensions: $872.7
Health Care: $844.4
Education: $744.8
Defense: $646.7
Welfare: $433.0

Since Democrats hate defense, that adds up to about $2.8 trillion in
spending primarily directed at Democrats that must be defended to the
last billion every day.

Democrats tell us that people who care only about money are
mean-spirited. They are right; they should know. Their problem is
how to put a happy face on the desperate daily search for the next
fix. They did it with Bill Clinton. They failed with Al Gore and
John Kerry.

What is the solution? Barack Obama! Why didn't I think of that?

Best wishes,

--Chris