Bear with me, I know this is off-topic.
A year ago I read a comedic article where some genius at UC Berkley was trying to get academic funding to study "conservatives" to see if there was a genetic source for their apparent lack of cognitive skills.
I started thinking about how much different the world is now as compared to twenty or thirty years ago. That abberations are the now the norm and are celebrated. Our strongest social interaction apparatus is now a fluid and undefinable media octopus. And like those that wouldn't dare tell the king that he didn't have any clothes on we just turn our face away from that which was deemed inappropriate milleniums ago by the forebearers of our overlapping cultures and in most of the present world is considered an offense. We are applauded by the left when we do look the other way, because we can "see" the value of being non-judgemental.
Scott Johnson writes in his "Powerline" Blog...
I think the June issue of the New Criterion represents the conclusion of the magazine's twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. If so, it ends on a high note with articles including Roger Kimball's "Why the art world is a disaster." Roger takes as one of the two epigraphs for his essay a sentence from Randall Jarrell's Pictures From an Institution:
"Some of what she said was technical, and you would have had to be a welder to appreciate it; the rest was aesthetic or generally philosophical, and to appreciate it you would have had to be an imbecile."
As the epigraph suggests, Roger's explanation of why the art world is a disaster -- particularly with respect to "the domestication of deviance" -- applies beyond the narrow world he discusses in the essay.
I understand the problem in the art scene... I am an "artist", both practicing and a fairly well known art teacher. One of my former students who attends Northern Arizona University came by last week (out for the summer) and was discussing the problem she has selling her work in Flagstaff. Students always need capitol and she said that she was willing to bend her "art" a little to sell but she realized that her work was just never going to be dark enough. Of course, her work is fantastic, perfect illustrative work suitable for publishing. Not dark enough. In order to "stand out" she would have to out do her competitors in some "shocking" way.
I think I'm on to something.
Whenever I'm talking to a friend who is a liberal or an outright communist. I catch myself cutting into their skulls and extracting various tissues, examining hollow areas, tapping on solidified constructions, and weighing possible reprogramming techniques. I am always astounded at the "moral" stance, even in the face of facts.
Just this morning I met a guy who I went to Palm Springs High School with about a million years ago. We were reminiscing about the "Easter Break Crusing" of our youth and some of the named groups who used to perform when he launched into a tirade about Sonny Bono. After running a string of well-rehearsed one-liner invectives about Sonny, he concluded first with, " Sonny personally killed Palm Springs Easter Break by outlawing thongs and then with how it was appropriate that Sonny was killed running into a tree."
Of course, there was that strange lag in the conversation when he must have noted by my tilted head and open mouth. Yes, there were thoughts going through my head. A couple of instant "very dark" invectives for my friend (unspoken) and the burning question, "Do you believe in the death penalty?" I know what his answer would be, "Of course not, how can someone willingly take someone else's life? Only a neo-con would consider it." So, follow along here.... I do have a point.
It is unthinkable to put to death a repeat offender who rapes and kills a ten year old girl but it is perfectly natural to celebrate the death of a "thong" disliking mayor and Republican.
The thought process is way out of line. My one time friend doesn't see it. In order to be noticed he has to take the road that sets him apart. In his pushing the envelope he by-passes a millenia of social mores concerned with social balance. Does he care? No, in the next statement he strides out into another even more repugnant exclamation on a completely different topic.
There is something wrong. It isn't that extreme liberals suffer genetic deformation it is that they are clinically anti-social. Yes, even the stoutest Trotskyite (murdered by agents of his best friend) socialist.
