Ghost of a flea: Meet me at the Argentine

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May 13, 2009

Meet me at the Argentine

Most often a smart cookie, Camille Paglia asks how assassination of top government officials is fodder for snide jokes on national radio; a fair question, though misdirected.

Instead of asking this question of disaffected Republicans, she might use the wayback machine to travel to those halcyon days of - for example - the last eight years. There have been all too many disaffected ~~Democrats~~ Americans made happy at the thought of the assassination of their President and to whom the annihilationist fantasies of the jihadis were a welcome psychic release.

This bit is good. Though she means it rhetorically.

Troubled by the increasing rancor of political debate in the U.S., I watched a rented copy of "Seven Days in May" last week. Its paranoid mood, partly created by Jerry Goldsmith's eerie, minimalist score, captured exactly what I have been sensing lately. There is something dangerous afoot -- an alienation that can easily morph into extremism. With the national Republican party in disarray, an argument is solidifying among grass-roots conservatives: Liberals, who are now in power in Washington, hate America and want to dismantle its foundational institutions and liberties, including capitalism and private property. Liberals are rootless internationalists who cravenly appease those who want to kill us. The primary principle of conservatives, on the other hand, is love of country, for which they are willing to sacrifice and die. America's identity was forged by Christian faith and our Founding Fathers, to whose prudent and unerring 18th-century worldview we must return.

In a harried, fragmented, media-addled time, there is an invigorating simplicity to this political fundamentalism.

Yes, there is.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at May 13, 2009 09:24 AM

Comments

"Instead of asking this question of disaffected Republicans, etc."

Excuse me? "Instead of asking" ?

Ms. Paglia does ask, or more precisely - comment - on Democrats: "Rabidly Bush-bashing Democrats shouldn't have done it to the last president either" going on to add "but that's no excuse for conservatives".

And it's not.

Note to people on both sides of the political aisle: grow up. The adults are sick of the cheap shots and fruitless sniping and want real adult dialogue.

Posted by: chazzmo at May 13, 2009 02:41 PM

Yes, thanks, I read that sentence.

I also read the rest of her piece. You should consider doing the same.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at May 13, 2009 03:28 PM

The erudite Paglia is a typical liberal who seems never to have read even a bonehead economics book, & will most likely come to be "disappointed" in the Community Organizer, the same way she was "disappointed" with the Clintons, all of whom have always been 100% consistent

It's possible she suffers from the liberal mental disorder known as "white guilt", a narcissistic preening over one's culpability for cosmic wrongs, including, more lately, a belief that one's lifestyle is destroying the planet, & that we need - what else - massive state control to avert catastrophe. Yawn

Posted by: jdpercifield at May 14, 2009 08:47 AM

Cf. Paglia's "shock" that Dems are moving to muzzle AM talkradio, something none of the rest of us are shocked by....

Posted by: jdpercifield at May 14, 2009 09:57 AM

Nicholson Baker must be squealing "Remember me?!"
Or how about smug Seth MacFarlane's shooting of a
Bush portrait in a FAMILY GUY episode by machine gun?

Posted by: Col. Zachary Smith at June 7, 2009 02:48 PM