April 29th, 2011 / 11:50 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Reynard Seifert—
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” — Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish Statesman
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana, Philosopher from Spain
“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” — Winston Churchill, Former Prime Minister of the U.K.
“People who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” — Ryan Atwood, Fictional Character on “The OC”
“People who don’t read the quotes of people from the past are doomed to say the exact same trite ass thing again.”
those who cannot remember the pabst, are doomed to repeed it
Can this post be titled “entropy”?
Hasn’t Marx been saying the same thing all along?
And by that I mean I’m a dirty commie…. :)
these comma splices are outta control.
“It may be that the universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.” J.L. Borges, yo!
Those who remember the past and learn its lessons also repeat it. What else is new?
Marx says something a bit different and more interesting (which figures) – namely, that the past, as Hegel says, repeats itself, but, as Hegel fails to mention, first as tragedy and then as farce. (Example: Nov. 1980; Nov. 2000.)
Santayana, “Philosopher from Spain”?
Santayana, “Philosopher from Spain”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana
“born Jorge Augustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana y Borras in Madrid”
“lifelong Spanish citizen”
“at the age of forty-eight, Santayana […] moved to Europe, never to return to the United States”
added another one from edmund burke that supposedly goes back to the 1700s
actually only winston churchill’s should’ve had the comma but it is not a splice
actually only winston churchill’s should’ve had the comma but it is not a splice
santana, “guitarist from mexico”
santana, “guitarist from mexico”
nothing ever literally repeats. figured the oc would know that.
what are you, talking about
“splices” are when spouses espouse pouts
reynard the commaleon tyger my, foot
reruns of the oc literally repeat.
you just said that
you keep saying it
repeating something doesn’t make it true, you know
what the anvil?
burke is a great call
burke is ‘one of the women and men’; reflections is one of the great books of the west
if conservetards were in-fact burkean, there would be no vouchers for vouchers
(if it or something near it is burke, it definitely goes back to the 1700s)
sounds a lot like wittgenstein, both studied spinoza, who said “If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
quincas borba, ‘philosopher or dog?’
quincas borba, ‘philosopher or dog?’
lemme ax you
where did spinoza say that or nearly that
“or”?
Vladimir Nabokov, Author from Russia
Personally I like Yeats’ “widening gyre” take on history. Which I guess is just Hegel’s dialectic again anyway…. Oh. OHHHHH.
?
snarklessly,
I was playing with words, commas, and you
i dunno http://bit.ly/juhigj probably it was just in a letter or whatever
“from Russia” or the Russian Soviet Republic, no bout a doubt it
yeah it’s really too bad that conservatives got so into blind nationalism as the main source of their rhetorical power (especially zee germans), burke would have hated where conservatism is today
yeah it’s really too bad that conservatives got so into blind nationalism as the main source of their rhetorical power (especially zee germans), burke would have hated where conservatism is today
For a good time, call 1-900-THE-PAST.
thanks
I’m no expert, but that doesn’t sound like spinoza to me
quote-books often precipipetuate misquotations and reckless attributions
I myself first said “if there’s a bustle in your hedge-row, don’t be alarmed now”
I recommend that spinoza go to the law
i thought you were suggesting that i should have been snarky and said one of those things, ‘what are you, talking about’ would have been good
the nationalism is, eh, regrettable
but the blindness is a systemically Worst Thing
science denial?
fiscal ‘conservatism’? – which is one hundred pounds of shit in a ten-pound tea bag
und so weiter
totally possible, pretty hard for any publisher to fact-check 8,000 quotes let alone (what appears to be) a vanity press
you should go to bat for spinoza deaddog
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.” – Einstein
holy cow the german et cetera, one is empressed
the fact that he was from spain has, i think, significance, and i liked and still like the alliteration, the prepositional variety, and i felt that (unlike nabokov) it would be the first time many people had seen that name and i thought it would be better to present him as spanish rather than american because that is how he thought of himself
“those who cannot forget the past are destined to remix it” — Evie Shockley
I’m reading her great new book THE NEW BLACK (Wesleyan UP) right now…
deus sive natura – Gott oder Natur – a comprehension difficult to argue against
I have rarely been called something better than an “empress”
Huxley: “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.”
Like any banal proverb or platitude it is irrevocably true and never actually followed. Osama bin Laden. We still exist in some sort of fairy tale land where people like him are seen as Bad Wizards who make Evil in the world. Exactly backwards. They were made by an already existing and evolving systemic climate and ideology. By killing him nothing is accomplished whatsoever, he was a just one of the masks over the underlying zeitgeist, we just fueled the fire beneath the surface, he had no actual power, he was an Impotent Wizard. We just made him a Christ to a large population.
By not understanding how bin Laden or Hitler come into being, and instead insisting that they are somehow anomalies (and not totally logical outcomes) and the world can be set aright again by erasing them, we go against this platitude. Don’t be shamed into sucking each-others dicks over this. And every proverb that appears to appear again and again and again has so for a reason, and there’s always more to it than the shell we have made it into by mindlessly repeating it.
Oh, it’s much worse than that. Because the History that’s being forgotten, here, has more to do with how Addy manipulated his own people into going along with his nasty scheme than with the nasty scheme itself. Which is precisely the lesson they *don’t* want you learning… because the trick still works! After all these years (and futile history lessons)!
Or, as I just wrote on Facebook:
“Remember when they whacked Che? They were pretty eager to show that photo of his corpse, weren’t they? Because, you know, who would be gullible enough to take their word for it, right? People who weren’t completely brainwashed into perfect gullibility would never have accepted that the “terrorist” was dead without at least seeing a similar-looking body on that table.
Can you imagine how they would have laughed, back then, if they had said, “We killed Che Guevara! But, uh, you can’t see the body, more the less perform an autopsy on it, because, uh… we buried it at sea! Immediately!” Imagine the mirth! Imagine what Tom Lehrer, alone, would have done with the stupendous absurdity of such a thing (especially shortly before a Presidential campaign)!
Just sayin’.”
In other words,
“Those that fail to learn from history, are the target demographic.”
-Obama bin Laughin
It’s always guaranteed entertainment to hear from a safe crackpot geopolitical theorist contingent, like this thug who hijacked a religion to be a titan of genocide and has finally been dumped in the ocean, it’s really as simple as that, but I get you’re not going for straight journalism here.
So a bin Laden or a Hitler did not arise out of causes and conditions? Were they placed upon earth by the Devil then? I’d be quite interested to know what vaccuum they stepped out of. How did all those people in Germany end up believing in a Hitler as the answer? Why did he seem like the right move, the only move, the move that made so much god damn perfect fucking sense that the keys should be handed over to him? The boogeyman that exists now called “Hitler” and actual Hitler are the same person. Was everyone in Germany fucking INSANE or are we? What about all these Islamo-fascist-fundamentalists? Are they evil-doers doing-evil for shits and giggles or what? Sorry, but saying bin Laden did what he did “to be a titan of genocide” is even more ridiculous, dismissive, and reductionist than saying “he hated freedom.”
Is it at all possible that during the Cold War the U.S. did more to generate the power and influece of Islamic Fundamentaist Fascists than any other force? They were the enemies of our enemies at the time. We practically handed them their power and sway. No, we constructed it, and then handed it to them.
Anyway, you’re making the criminal mastermind out of him. Behold the Titan of Genocide who was singlehandedly able to hijack a world religion. I contend that he was mostly clown, like Hitler, but because of this clownishness (a clown is a replica human) was able to take things to their logical extremes without conscience.
Like how Bernie Madoff IS late stage capitalism, without all the greasepaint and twirlymagigs.
“How did all those people in Germany end up believing in a Hitler as the answer?”
Horribly simple: because they wanted to.
“Was everyone in Germany fucking INSANE or are we?”
The Truth about Evil that Hannah Arendt didn’t quite address is that Evil on the national scale is a crystal the constituent elements of which aren’t, in most cases, evil at all… like a poison compound made of chemicals that are each, separately, harmless. Which makes it very difficult for people who are part of an Evil socio-political crystal to identify what they’re really part of.
Hitler’s Germans felt as right in the persecution of “Jews” as Bush-Obama’s Americans feel in their persecution of Muslims, because they’ve been manipulated into feeling *threatened*. The “Jew” was dramatized in film/texts/song as a sinister/demonic figure that wanted to rape Aryan maidens and destroy Aryan culture/finances. Killing “The Jew” was seen as self-defense… participants in that Evil National Crystal (or machine) didn’t feel evil at all and neither do most Americans, no matter how many Iraqi/Afghani/Libyan (et al) children have their heads blown off. In both cases, the Leadership has a geo-political-economic goal in mind for which they require the backing of the Will of the Volk, so they set about the technical feat of consolidating this backing.
You are being trained, 24/7/365 to admire/love/worship Aryan images (think about the Royal Wedding/ the Thor blockbuster/ the surfeit of “superior” Nordics in pop culture/ the default appearance of the “heroic” “intellectual” or “godly”) and to fear/despise/pity or downgrade certain “ethnic” presentations. “Jews” are now considered “white” enough to escape Hitlerian demonization; “Arabs” are not. The propaganda you’re fed is laughably transparent (eg, “African mercenaries for Libya on Viagra, raping 8-year-olds!” or “Congresswoman Giffords opened her eyes, for the first time since the shooting, during President Obama’s visit!”) but. it. fuck. ing. works.
Fear is not in and of itself evil; the self-defense reflex is not in and of itself evil; the joy of consensus (or herd-think) is not in and of itself evil; being innocent/naive/gullible are not in and of themselves evil states. Yet mix them with very powerful propaganda and a failing economy and you get Berlin, 1930… which leads directly to Berlin, 1939. Or Washington, 1980-2011. Am I comparing what the Americans are up to now to the productive-pinnacle of Nazi Evil? No.
But even the Nazis didn’t *start* with Auschwitz. We are all part of an Anglophone Hegemony (Empire) which is behaving, in many instances, in a profoundly Evil fashion.
History could teach you to recognize the pre-conditions/warning signs but you aren’t taught History in that fashion; the standard approach to teaching History is the “That Was The Terrible Stuff They Did Back Then, But We Don’t Do That Now” narrative. For obvious reasons. A certain moral smugness… a self-deluding Temporal Chauvinism (“see how advanced we are?”) is encouraged and we encourage this encouragement because it flatters us. And we like being flattered.
Which takes me back to my first answer to your question.
I was replying to “guestagain”, I’m unclear on if this was obvious or not. I agree with pretty much everything you said.
Also, yes, the “this was the terrible stuff, so now don’t do it” is exactly the banalization of the proverb (which it pretty much is at this point).
The best insight into these sorts of transitions though are not in “objective” history but insights into specific subjects.
Without knowing about “Black Metal” and Varg Vikernes in particular, this may be nonsense, but I (as well on facebook) called this song “the bleeding, festering, fly-buzzing seam between Romanticism and Fascism”. From last album recorded before Vikernes turned completely from a sort of nationalistic-pagan to a murderer and full fledged Nazi. And the artwork is appropriate, obviously. My statements on here are too wobbly and broad, I know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-BLhf2-2o0
You’d have to look up the lyrics, but they may as well have been directly influenced by the… Pathos, I’ll say, running throughout Heidegger that has been criticised by some as unavoidably Fascistic. I’m one who used to pretty much worship Heidegger, too. I mean, a relationship pretty much ended because of it. Ha!
This correlative to some aspects of what you are talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiTum8eQ51E
I want to point out that Zizek is pretty fascinating to me partly because we agree on so much until a certain base… ontological level on which we depart. I believe it is possible to regain “roots” without being fascistic or deceiving ourselves, and I put a whole lot more creedence in religious orientations, where he declares the only solution is to cut all “roots” away and live in, basically, a pure idealism. But this is about The Sound of Music.
bullshit
depends on your definition of literally. which is more literal, the act or the actors?
does shakespeare ever literally repeat in performace y/n.
i like this no caps thing.
you know. this is the thing that is so weird and unbelievable about nietzsche that runs so hard against common sense… but it’s a tool, really. and you simply cannot say that no this could never possibly happen, if you do you admit your own short-sightedness. do you know that all this didn’t already happen a “zillion year ago”?
okay okay.
This is
A: A reversal of
B: The reductionist version of Hegel.
But, I understand the point you are expressing. I am just an ass on the internet.
see?
there you go again
yes, the muumuuvian mode, chopped and chopping, is ‘fun’, and ‘constructive’ is not out of the question
I think nietzsche’s provocation – eternal recurrence – is an interrogation of commitment – ‘not “what is X?”, but rather “what do you want?”‘
‘what if each decision were a permanent forcing of effects? – what if you were continuously actually expressing what you want? how do these perspectives change your life?’
–
famously, nothing happens twice in waiting for godot
I am in agreement, with this addendum, which may be implied already… in which case it slipped by.
The “what do you want?” question must be asked within the realm of a complete FAITH that what you want (and then have the COURAGE to bring into ACTUALITY)will LITERALLY happen again and again for all eternity.
The caps do not imply yelling, excuse me.
Expression as permanence. Yes, yes.
Sorry, seriously a quasi-autistic over here. It didn’t form itself quick enough.
:/
I think it’s important to keep in mind, in thinking about Hitler’s rise, that that rise happened gradually for years before it seemed to happen suddenly. After losing the Second European Civil War, then losing again at Versailles (sometimes today crazily pooh-poohed as a major cause of political-economic conditions in Germany, as a major weakener of Weimar), and after losing the Depression more brutally than anyone else in western Europe, Hitler’s ‘blame-the-Jews’ idiocy and feel-good-about-militarism rap still didn’t pull a majority in ’33. Then-powerful Germans – and many reasonable burghers – doubted, as I understand things, that Mein Kampf was really a plan, that most citizens would never go along with Hitler when push came to shove, that Hitler’s demagoguery probably was public hysteria masking pragmatic politics, and so on. – a few tufts of snow tumbling from the ridge, that’s all . . .
Steven’s polythetic approach makes sense, though I doubt that most of the constituents of the brew were, on their own, innocuous.
–
I’d also recommend brakes on the Reagan-created-Osama meme. The fist in the puppet did indeed sell – or give – weapons of mass destruction to the mujahedeen, the Ayatollah, Saddam Hussein, and, what the hell, Contra nun rapists and orphanage bombers – at the same time! The grown-ups came to Washington with their clear, coherent foreign policy.
But neo-conservetards did not ‘create’ the sects and schisms of Salafism and Wahhabism or the ideas – and their effect – of Sayyid Qutb – among dozens of imams and theorists and rabble-rousers whose names I wouldn’t recognize. Osama ‘created’ himself some and his world ‘created’ him a lot, to similar degrees as, say, FDR and Stalin and Churchill and De Gaulle and their worlds ‘created’ themselves/them.
One can accurately and profitably blame Reagan or ‘Reagan’ for a lot – but not for the crises of modernity in the many Islams.
“rise happened gradually for years before it seemed to happen suddenly”
“Hitler’s demagoguery probably was public hysteria masking pragmatic politics, and so on. – a few tufts of snow tumbling from the ridge”
-Yes.
“But neo-conservetards did not ‘create’ the sects and schisms”
Yes, bad words on my part. “We” did not create the Golem. BUT, we provided some mud and the bad ju-ju that the spell could be chanted against. The spell was chanted by a certain wing of their own traditon. The actual ENCHANTMENT was uttered by a wing of their “own” tradition.
– and it’s fair to hold the neo-cons responsible for the way their bad acid has contributed to tremendous difficulties not just in Muslim progressivism, but in everyday life from Morocco and Senegal to Indonesia and Mindanao, from Chechnya to Somalia.
But – maybe this is unkindlily selfish of me – I’m more mad at conservetards for fucking America up.
(I don’t agree or ‘agree’ with Steven’s conflation of Rove/Cheney and Obama. If the Left doesn’t take inches – every inch – it’ll never get yards: malign running-dog bourgeois collaborateur – that’s my line.)
America’s fuckedupness, if we have the same vision of what is fuckedup, WAS directly fueling the current enemy, and is CURRENTLY indirectly fueling the current enemy.
If there is an enemy to follow (assuming there is still “America” to rebel against) it will be one we are currently blatantly giving license to.
China. If the End does not come before that, that will certainly be the end. Is that the thanatos in me?
“Steven’s polythetic approach makes sense, though I doubt that most of the constituents of the brew were, on their own, innocuous.”
I should clarify, DG, that I believe that a National Crystal of Evil forms easily enough when most of its constituent elements are innocuous (or even quite noble, in an impotent way)… not that that’s the perfect description of every NCE.
Re: OBL: I think a Literary Critc’s toolkit is the best for analyzing/discussing such a character… the (long-dead) meat behind the mythos is of little importance. The CIA (or whatever the actual acronym is) happens to be the richest, most influential and mean-spirited novelist on Earth. And every single one of Its novels was turned into a Blockbusting movie!
Re: the (false) Left/Right dichotomy: I’d challenge you to a blind taste-test, DG but being right (i mean, “correct”) just wouldn’t be worth it…
“Hitler’s demagoguery probably was public hysteria masking pragmatic politics, and so on. – a few tufts of snow tumbling from the ridge”
I propose that everyone who wants to contemplate/speak on All That should live over here (in Germany) for at least five years, first. “Hysteria” (as defined as an extreme or unusual state) it wasn’t. There are subtle details… tiny-but-key parts in the social machine… that you couldn’t possibly anticipate in the abstract. Much of it having to do, I think (ironically) with possible genetic inheritances… there’s a sort of mild national autism, for one thing. Many expats/tourists talk (admiringly or in a stunned state) about German “bluntness” or “frankness” when it is, in fact, merely an utter disregard for the feelings of others.
My first wife… a real Nordic thoroughbred (from Northern Hamburg: tall, thin, coldly blue-eyed, nervous and glum)… but that’s another thread! Anyway, it’s a fascinating topic, but I’m always a little frustrated that even scholars write on it without bothering to do a little immersed (5+ years) local research…
Guys, Empire has its own inner-life, its own perverse addictions and obsessions… there are games afoot that we can only grasp as scents and shadows. I refuse to discuss The Empire’s “enemy” with a straight face if this “enemy” is on the Empire’s payroll (after graduating from a school the Empire hosts).
Read these things and you get a fleeting glimpse of the shape of something almost real:
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff03172011.html
Ha ha – that sequence of my suppositions/reading of German suppositions was misphrased: I meant that, as I understand things, ‘Germans [in the early ’30s] doubted that Mein Kampf was seriously intended, doubted</i. that most of their compatriots (and themselves) would actually go along with treating Jews like, well, American Indians, and/or supposed that the content of Hitler’s frothing was devious’ – in other words, his rise was enabled by the inability or unwillingness of political-economic elites and many voters in Germany to understand that he was in deadly earnest.
Sorry – that lack of clarity on my part was due to a “genetic inheritance” of the markers of language capacity evolving more rapidly than actual language ability.
in other words – advice from meine Schwester (die in Deutschland lebt, deren Mann ein Türke btw) – “don’t argue with a German about potato salad”
whoa – now a little “genetic” mistyping
or: you can see on the recent comments (for a few minutes) what I’d actually typed!
as I understand things, ‘Germans [in the early ’30s] doubted that MK was seriously intended, doubted that most of their compatriots (and themselves) would go along with treating Jews only a little worse than Americans treated American Indians, and supposed that Hitler’s theatrics were devious’ – in other words, his rise was enabled by the inability or unwillingness of (at least) many elites and ordinary voters alike to understand that he was in deadly earnest
so that’s where Poland went astray
“in other words, his rise was enabled by the inability or unwillingness of (at least) many elites and ordinary voters alike to understand that he was in deadly earnest…”
Nah. That’s the *alibi*. Everyone knew very well what they were getting in to.
“in other words, his rise was enabled by the inability or unwillingness of (at least) many elites and ordinary voters alike to understand that he was in deadly earnest…”
Nah. That’s the *alibi*. Everyone knew very well what they were getting in to.
Mimi-
German discrimination against the German Turkish is *outrageous*. I don’t know how they absorb that constant *ambient/ occasionally explicit* shit without exploding.
Steven –
My sister was interviewed (while visiting the States) about precisely this about ten years ago . . . . . .
Mimi: as I wrote once (re: the sorrows of the German Turkish):
“When Merkel, in Germany, noted the supposed “failure” of immigrants to “integrate”, the question that should have been put to her was, “Shouldn’t we worry about integrating the German Proletariat first?”
Merkel first poo-poohed the rudely anti-immigrant Thilo Sarrazin (still can’t get over the delicious irony of his family name) but quickly about-faced and jumped on the rotten bandwagon after noting the fact that Sarrazin’s immigrant-bashing bestseller was just flying off the bookshelves. With experienced decoding, the antipathy and disgust on display in all this reveals itself as nothing but standard contempt of the Bureaucrat Class for anything under it: all along, the working/ unworking class in Germany has been living a parallel, separate-but-nominally-equal existence perfectly analogous to that of the “immigrants” who have never, since being invited to help rebuild after the war, been also invited to join “society”. But there’s no political advantage to be gained in bashing poor “white” natives, so…
The hypocrisy on display during these cyclical wog-hunts (which, eerily, match neatly to downturns in the economy) is always breath-taking. And “Multi-Culturalism” is a meaningless term, in the 21st century, in that “Mono-Cultures” are impossible.”
http://staugustine2.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/the-endless-thread-8-0/comment-page-1/#comment-4026
I think it’s more that Poles out-Aryan Addy’s bloodline
I wouldn’t assert that bin Laden and Hitler did not arise out of causes and conditions, I take issue with these statements that in removing bin Laden “nothing is accomplished whatsoever” and “he had no actual power”. Hitler came to power because Germany was lost, destitute, and desperate to collect its national identity following the conditions of a humiliating capitulation and collapse of its currency. Hitler was able to move the Jew into place as the cause of all this, which wasn’t difficult in Germany at the time. He then moved to world domination, which is characteristic of the spinning psychotic. Bin Laden opened a base in Pakistan to fight Soviets and gained assistance from CIA-funded Afghan guerrillas. The CIA funded the Mujahedeen because it probably wouldn’t have been the best outcome for the planet to have the Soviets take Afghanistan. Following this war, Bin Laden psychotically spun out to attempt overthrows of Muslim governments, get himself expelled from Saudi Arabia, and finally finds his boogeyman (Jew) in Western culture that he had every intention of destroying, by his own words. These two had the star power (yes) to move their respective disaffected followers into their respective psychotic and megalomaniacal power surges, and Bin Laden will not be easily replaced by the short, ugly, and poorly spoken al-Zawahri. As a mystical aside, both Hitler and Bin Laden were declared dead on a May 1.
So long as I’m here, the attempted equivalence made above between Hitler, German Jews, and the westward expansion and Native Americans has been interesting since, oh, since I was 16, and it look like this still resonates in the grown up academic community, although it isn’t surprising. Fling Hitler out of the 20th century and living memory to draw a furtive equivalence between how nations and territories have been created (taken) and settled since time immemorial and the well designed, purposeful, mass extermination of entire peoples for the sake of hatred and nothing more? Okay, if you want to accept that people who evacuated native populations after fleeing persecution, putative taxes and mad kings have done the same work as Hitler, then congratulations, but I’d rather trust you guys to make fine points worth reading about literature, if you don’t mind.
A limited, limiting analogy is still not an “equivalence”, either “attempted” or “furtive”. Why, an analogy isn’t even a botched “equivalence”, though saying that an analogy is an “equivalence” is a botched “equivalence” — aha!
The Nazis tried to perpetrate “the well designed, purposeful, mass extermination of entire peoples for the sake[s] of hatred” and political-economic advantage.
The American government tried to perpetrate “the well designed, purposeful, mass extermination of entire peoples for the sake[s] of” political-economic advantage and “hatred”.
– not the same, not identical, not equivalent, but similar, generically alike, analogous.
Yes: 19th c. America is, to European-Americans, an increasingly big, mostly empty place; 20th c. Europe is, to Europeans, crowded with people and long historical grievance. The “hatred” of mid-20th c. European Christians for European Jews has many hundreds of years of cruel expression. The “hatred” of 19th c. European-Americans for ‘first peoples’ is comparatively new and little-exampled.
But see the likeness? – racial “hatred” and political-economic advantage; political-economic advantage and racial “hatred”.
As long as we’re all here, instead of an unhappily overt attempt to call a necessarily imperfectly exact similarity an “equivalence”, I’d rather trust you to make fine points worth reading about literature, if you don’t mind.
no, by all means. I usually use “dialectic” in the Marxist sense even when attributing it to Hegel just because I like Marx’s version better, but he wouldn’t have came up with it without Hegel coming first, thus I speak of Marx’s dialectic as if it were Hegel’s. Which is lazy/confusing for sure, but you see, I too am sort of a shit on the internet.
aha indeed
reynard, I found this famous-but-not-to-me quotation today:
James Madison wrote this, the second, paragraph in a letter to W. T. Barry on Aug. 4, 1822 (you can find the whole letter in The Writings of James Madison 1819-1836, pp. 103-110; the book is at googlebooks).
I guess there’s a chance that Marx read this relating of “farce” and “tragedy” before composing his own.
(I would question only that “[k]knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”;
that, you’re going to have to show me.)
(The letter is an expansion of the theme of this paragraph: public education, available to all children of citizens of a “Republic” specifically regardless of their parents’ political-economic status. Madison refers to a “Committee” of Virginians set up ‘to diffuse knowledge’ through class divisions in the form of public education . . . in 1779, ten years before the final adoption of the U. S. Constitution.
American socialism has a venerable history even longer than America itself.)