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Billy_TParticipant
Oh Billy….take away firearms and I guarantee you will have fascism. And don’t bring up Australia or the UK since I’ve been to both and they are not the USA. The UK may well wish it has a 2nd Amendment with the way that culture is heading.
First off, no one is suggesting that we “take away firearms.” Just banning certain KINDs, which would leave thousands of different kinds of weapons available. IMO, they should be limited to internal chambers only. Which would leave MOST guns available.
Second, if you think the presence of guns in America, in private hands, is what stands between us and fascism, you’re living in a fantasy land. In fact, the easy access to guns currently makes fascism far more likely, not less. And, if you agree with Ben Carson and others about gun control in Nazi Germany, you’re misreading history there, too:
Billy_TParticipantbilly. people do like to shoot weapons just for the sport and fun of it.
you may not understand it. but a lot of people do. i’ve never owned a gun. don’t plan on owning a gun. i have shot an ar-15 before and it’s an amazing piece of technology.
still don’t want a gun. i don’t believe i would be more safe owning a gun. don’t really care much for the right to bear arms.
but i understand why people like them.
so i feel for them. but you also make a good point. when is enough enough? why not sacrifice your own desires for the benefit of our society?
it’s tough.
I know people “like” to shoot guns. And I’m not talking about taking that away from them. I’m just talking about certain KINDS of weapons. In a sane society, we don’t let people have the capability of mowing down dozens of their fellow citizens with ease, and especially not so we can protect target shooters.
Society must constantly make decisions about competing interests and claims, and it should make those decisions with the general health and safety in mind. If it’s ever a choice between saving lives or keeping things people “like to do,” we should go with saving lives.
Think about driving. I used to race cars on the street when I was a teen. We went waaay over the speed limit to do this, and, though we didn’t think of it at the time, we were endangering lives. Should society get rid of all speed limits because there are people who “like to drive fast”? Should they have accommodated us because we really loved driving extremely fast?
Why are guns considered by some as being beyond all common sense laws, regulations and restrictions? Of all the things to exempt, exempting deadly pieces of metal, DESIGNED to kill, is easily the most insane thing about America.
Billy_TParticipantYes the keeping pace with technology was the reality at the time of the Revolutionary War and the BOR and has been interpreted as that ever since through the various advances in firearms technology.
No, bnw. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution or the BOR to support that reading. Nothing. “Keeping up with the pace of technology” does not exist in our “founding” docs. Not implied, suggested, remotely, indirectly, etc. etc. Not implicit or explicit.
And no one but fringe gun fanatics ever push that “interpretation,” which is really cover for an even fringier ideology: That certain citizens believe they must keep up with the firepower of our military in order to crush it, if they deem it “tyrannical.” Of course, the Don’t Tread on Me crowd sees things like taxes and Medicare as “tyrannical,” so they’re not really the best folks to listen to when it comes to government overreach.
And I say that as someone who sees our political system as illegitimate. I see both parties as illegitimate. I want an end to the capitalism regime of terror and oppression. Yesterday. But I want it to end through the democratic process, non-violently, not through guns. The Don’t Tread on Me crowd, OTOH, has a collective Red Dawn (death wish) fantasy, and if we go down that road, tens of millions will die and we’ll likely end up with fascism.
In short, fuck that.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantWashington mandated weapons for the militia, and that citizens pay for these themselves. It was perhaps the very first mandate in American history.
I have no idea why you’re not getting this. There is no confiscation of weapons being proposed by the Dems. None. If we ban the sale of certain KINDS of weapons — weapons of mass destruction like the AR-15 that no civilian should be ABLE to get — you still can buy thousands of different kinds of guns. Your “right” hasn’t been touched. Your SA rights are still 100% intact.
Again, nowhere in the amendment does it say you have a right to any kind of gun your heart desires, without limitations, forever, forever able to keep up with the latest technological advances in lethality and capacity. Nowhere. It’s not in there, implied, hinted at, suggested, implicit or explicit.
So we as a society SHOULD ban weapons that make killing sprees easy. It’s insane not to. No one has any need of such weapons UNLESS they want to go on those killing sprees.
Think about it, bnw. There is no other reason to own one.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantmore than gun control i think there has to be a shift in the way we treat one another. there’s this general contempt for people who are not like us. not this board but people in general. whether they be christian or muslim straight or queer white or black. it’s disgusting.
get rid of guns. fine. but when are we going to treat each other with love and compassion and understanding?
Agreed. But we can do both at the same time. And the gun thing is something we actually have control over. We can’t control the way people think and feel about others. But we can control the availability of weapons of mass destruction.
So while we work on the peace, love and understanding part — which I’m a thousand percent in favor of — we should radically reduce the availability of things that haters can use to slaughter others.
To me, this is just common sense.
Billy_TParticipantNo, bnw.
The right as put forth in the BOR was a collective one. It was ONLY in the context of a well-regulated state militia, for the purpose of protecting that state. It doesn’t say, anywhere, that you get to keep up with the latest technology or purchase military-style hardware, if you’re not in the military.
Yes, you have the right of self-defense. But that was yours centuries before the BOR was written. The British recognized that right among the colonies.
The BOR merely encoded a collective right for purposes of staffing and stocking state militias. And since they no longer exist, the entire rationale for that “right” is gone. It no longer exists, like those slave-catching militias.
We, as a society, have always had the right to prevent people from arming yourself to the teeth and going off on killing sprees, and nothing in the Constitution, and nothing in the BOR transcends society’s right to protect itself from them.
It’s time we grew up and ended our sick gun fetishism and our fear of the NRA. Literally millions of Americans are dead because of that fetishism and that fear.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantRespect for the dead demands we can’t say he is a registered democrat? I disagree. The democrats are using this to try to deny our 2nd Amendment right. You know it too. It was an act of terrorism. You know that too.
No. The Democrats aren’t trying to do that, bnw. Nothing they have EVER proposed would take away your Second Amendment right. Nothing. Nothing they’ve EVER proposed would come within light years of doing that.
Again, you’ve never had a Second Amendment right to an AR-15 or any weapon of you so desire — without restrictions. That’s never existed. Not here. Not in any nation on earth. Never. And if we do someday wake up and realize that it’s utterly insane to allow the manufacture, sale and possession of weapons of mass destruction like the AR-15, and then ban them, at every possible level, we STILL won’t be taking away any of your rights. None. You never had the right to unlimited consumer choice in the first place. There was never a right to the total absence of restrictions on your purchasing and possessing weapons.
Btw, you should capitalize “Democrat.” Hopefully, we’re all “democrats” here. As in, lovers of democracy.
Billy_TParticipantI like Hedges a lot, too. Very strong leftist, and a great activist. He’s walked the walk and risked his life on numerous occasions. But he’s not perfect. Like any person, he has his blind spots — as do we all.
David Graeber points to one here, and it was an important one. Kinda long article, but worth a read. I don’t know if Hedges ever did change his mind about anarchists and Black Bloc groups.
Concerning the Violent Peace-Police
Excerpt:
I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.
I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isn’t.)
I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantIn short, we’ve never, ever had the right to an AR-15. We could easily ban their sale, manufacture, trade, import, export and possession while still adhering to the Second Amendment.
The Equal Protection Clause, General Welfare Clause, Necessary and Proper Clause, and Commerce Clause, all support this.
And we should. We should stop making it so easy for Americans to slaughter each other. That’s just pure common sense. Any sane society would do as much.
Billy_TParticipantRight on, bnw!
I want to exercise my 2nd amendment rights. I want a 40 mm grenade launcher. Better yet, I want artillery, 155 mm. What, I can’t? But why, don’t I have the right??
Please understand, to me, your argument of exercising your 2nd Amendment right with regard to long guns just makes you sound silly.
Exactly, TSRF.
There never was a Constitutional right, anywhere in the world, in the past, or in the present, to unlimited consumer choice of weapons, of unlimited firepower or numbers, without any restrictions. Never. The one in our BOR, which just so happens to be just one of two in the entire world, doesn’t come within light years of creating such a right. It just says you get to keep and bear arms if you’re in a well-regulated militia. Not any kind of arm you desire. But one regulated by that state militia. And since those state militias no longer exist, the amendment is actually null and void.
But even if we do away with the most important part of the amendment, and ignore the militia context, it’s still never been a “right” to a consumer’s smorgasbord of guns. This is the chief way gun rights nuts misread it — willfully or out of ignorance. The second way they misread it is perhaps even more absurd: That the so-called “founders” purposely set things up so the people could topple the new government they had risked everything to create.
In reality, the right to self-defense was already a part of common law, going back centuries. It wasn’t at all needed in the BOR. It was assumed for all jurisprudence that citizens could defend themselves. The BOR just made it clear that militias were to be a part of the self-defense of the state, for the state, by the state, and the chief way this happened back then was to put down slave rebellions.
It was never, not within light years, supposed to be in support of domestic rebellions, as the Ron Pauls and Alex Jones of this world would claim. It was always about the protection of the state, and, especially, slave holders.
And back then the people who could buy weapons was already restricted to white males. Blacks, other minorities and women couldn’t, though they could through the black market of the time.
Billy_TParticipantRegistration = Confiscation
An a-hole can commit mass murder with a suicide vest too. With a car. With a gas can. With chemical reactions producing toxic gases. With an airplane. With a drone aircraft. It is literally limitless and stems from a sick mind not a firearm of any kind.
We have to register our cars. Has that led to confiscation? No. It’s pure alarmist nonsense to try to equate registration with confiscation.
Our government exists to serve business. That is its Prime Directive. Gun sales are BIG business. It’s not going to confiscate guns and destroy that business. It’s nothing but paranoid delusion/Alex Jones conspiracy nonsense to suggest otherwise.
As for the rest. Logic tells us to do our best to minimize the chances of death. To radically improve the odds in the favor of our survival. Parents do their best to “child proof” their homes, for instance. Sure, you still have tragedies. But you have far fewer because smart people move the poison to some place their kids can’t find. We have speed limits not in order to create total perfection and the total absence of accidents and deaths due to speeding. We do it to reduce them to the degree possible.
Tell me, why wouldn’t you willingly trade in your easy access to high powered weaponry, in order to secure the lives of thousands? Why wouldn’t EVERY American make that all too minimal “sacrifice”? In exchange for a modified range of weaponry, and a little bit of extra paperwork, why wouldn’t you jump at this when it means saving lives? And it does. And your continued insistence that we can’t have common sense restrictions on guns means the continuation of tens of thousands of Americans dying because of guns. JUST because of guns.
Billy_TParticipantYou’re against semi-autos. Semi-autos are great. Much more fun to shoot. Much better for hunting, plinking or target practice. More issues in safe handling though. If you’ve ever had to hand load any mags without stripper clips you would know why a well functioning mag of more than 10 rounds is worth it. Even with stripper clips if you have to load enough of them it still is a pain. I like the tubular mags as long as they can hold more than 15 rounds.
A citizen’s right to live without fear of being gunned down trumps your desire to have “more fun” due to how “cool” semi-automatics are. We regulate all kinds of dangerous products in America and ban them. That we don’t ban weapons of mass destruction like those semis is absolutely unforgivable. It’s beyond demented.
Time to get all of them off the streets and close down their manufacture, sale, import, export, trade and so on. No one needs them, and the Second Amendment doesn’t protect them.
Billy_TParticipantbnw,
I’m saying ban all of them. Semi-automatic, assault weapons, whatever you might want to call them. Anything with any kind of detachable, external ammo container, of any kind, of any size. Ban ’em. Ban all accessories dealing with them.
The only allowable guns should be those with internal chambers only, and max that out at six. You should have to load your bullets by hand, one at a time, and no gun should be able to accommodate more than six at a time.
That, to me, is the best compromise. This ensures the ability of all citizens to own weapons for self-protection, hunting and target practice, but it doesn’t give them the ability to rapidly slaughter dozens or hundreds of their fellow Americans.
Throw in licensing and registration, which we do with cars. End the ban on gun violence research, which was a fascist form of suppression in the first place.
Force “smart gun” technology as soon as it’s technically doable.
100% gun checks, on everything, via the licensing system. No exceptions or loopholes. No gun show exceptions, etc.
The above will save thousands of lives each year, and it won’t cost anyone their “rights.” Again, no one ever had the right to unlimited firepower, quantity, consumer choice and so on.
Billy_TParticipantTo be clear, I consider any gun that will fire every time you pull the trigger and has a magazine of over 10 bullets an assault weapon. Why the fuck would any law abiding US citizen need something like that?
There isn’t any need for it. IMO, the best way to regulate that is to ban all weapons with detachable ammo containers of any kind, shape, size, etc. etc. That way, you don’t run into the absurd semantics game that gun nuts love to play. They want us to get hung up on what these weapons are called, and to forget what they do.
Keep it to old-style six shooters, and no higher. Keep it to guns that must be hand loaded, one bullet at a time.
Those will still allow self-defense, hunting, target practice and so on. And none of those restrictions would abridge the Second Amendment . . . which was, afterall, composed within a context of single-load, one-bullet-then-fire worlds. And there isn’t the remotest of a whisper in the amendment that says citizens get to keep up with the latest tech, choose the latest firepower, choose the most lethal weapons available. Not one iota of a suggestion is there about that. It just says “keep and bear arms.”
If we had an amendment that said “keep and wear suits,” and we banned all polyester suits, the right to keep and wear suits would still be intact. Not infringed. Not endangered, etc. etc. Because the right was never about unlimited consumer choice. Consumer choice never had anything to do with it. It was about the ability to keep and wear suits, etc.
A sane society must constantly deal with competing conceptions of rights, responsibilities and desires. It’s pure madness that we allow a fringe group of gun zealots to take away the normal, natural role of society in adjudicating between competing claims. It’s pure insanity that we allow their absolutism to destroy all vestiges of common sense, give and take. We have allowed them to take control and destroy all attempts at sensible compromise and sensible resolutions to those competing desires — and for what? For what reason? So they can play Rambo on weekends, while 33,000 Americans die each year from guns?
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantIMO, America is insane when it comes to guns. We’ve reached the point where the very idea that Americans might trade away their idea of unlimited consumer choice, take on a little bit of inconvenience, in exchange for saving thousands of lives each year, is simply unthinkable. We’ve reached the point where guns have become the one kind of product that defies all the rules of common sense. Hell, we took asthma inhalers off the shelf, because some kids were getting high from them, but we can’t make weapons of mass destruction illegal?
I think we need to do the following, and all of this would adhere to the 2nd:
Ban the sale, manufacture, trade, import, export, gifting or possession of all weapons with external ammo containers, and those containers. Limit legal guns to those with internal chambers only, with a max of six chambers. Limit those legal guns to those which must be loaded by hand, with your fingers, one bullet at a time — again, max of six bullet chambers.
Require licensing and registration for all guns/gun owners. Plus insurance.
Require smart guns.
Have a national gun buy-back program to get the now illegal guns off the streets. Then melt them down.
End the embargo against government studies on gun violence. In fact, require that the CDC and NIH study this in depth, and constantly. Treat gun violence as a public safety issue, and act accordingly.
End the embargo on asking potential victims of gun crimes if they have a gun in their house.
Make these laws, regs, etc. etc. national, and no state can override them.
The above would save countless lives, and at worst inconvenience some Americans. No one’s “rights” would be affected.
Billy_TParticipantbnw,
The Second Amendment does not, and never has, protected your right to buy any kind of weapon you so desire, in any quantity, for any purpose. It’s a very narrow, limited, basic “right,” and it has absolutely nothing to do with consumer choice, much less unlimited consumer choice — which is the way gun nuts grotesquely misread it.
It just says “keep and bear arms,” if you’re a member of the militia, which no longer exist. If we really read it as is, it would be null and void because of that fact alone, because we no longer have or need militias, which, at the time the amendment was written, were primarily used to suppress domestic revolts, especially slave revolts.
But, let’s go with the “modern” reading which isn’t tied to the militia. Let’s accept that this is not a requirement. What we’re left with is a protection of a right to keep and bear AN arm. Not ANY arm. If the American people decided, for instance, to limit gun purchases to one, single-shot pistol, it would easily be in keeping with that amendment. Easily. Again, because it never had anything to do with unlimited consumer choice, or keeping up with the latest tech, or protecting oneself against the government. The latter part is the most ludicrous reading, of course, as the entire point of the amendment was the insure strong militias, in hopes of avoiding a permanent standing army, and for those militias to put down domestic, as well as foreign, attacks against the government — and slaveholders.
In short: Gun nuts don’t have any legal standing for their argument, but they have had, in recent times, a few reactionary, fascist-like judges — like Scalia — who support those grotesque misreadings. That will not always be the case, and eventually enough Americans will get sick enough of the fascist NRA and the entire right-wing gun nut crowd to say, No More!! No more of these massacres.
Billy_TParticipantThanks for the video, WV. It’s a keeper, and something for me to spend some time with.
What did you think of my essay from 2008? I tried to add a Rothko painting here, which is included on my site, but I don’t have the same control over jpeg size, etc. So I deleted it (here, not there).
Bnw,
You might be interested in Susan Sontag’s seminal Against Interpretation. I bought and then read the book a long time ago, and it’s time for a reread. She has a lot of thought-provoking things to say about art, including Warhol.
Billy_TParticipantOn Rothko: I wrote this for my own website back in 2008:
All art is paradox. But Rothko, perhaps more than any other modern painter, embraced the paradox and threw it profoundly in our faces.
The canvas is flat. You can’t enter it. You can’t go through it, if it’s hanging on the wall. At least without injury and perhaps a heavy bill from the gallery. But Rothko continuously tells the audience to do just that. Embrace the painting, enter it, walk into it, let it engulf you and torture you and shake you. Shake the core of you. He wants the painting to be a plane and an entrance way in the same bright moment. Flat and omnipresent. Pressed against the wall as it surrounds you. And he wants you to accept the paradox and reject it long enough to succumb.
“We favor the simple expression of complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.”
Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Russia (now Latvia) in 1903. Rather, Marcus Rothkowitz was born in that place and time. He became Mark Rothko later in life. At the age of 10, he left Russia with part of his family to join the other part in America, arriving at Ellis Island and eventually Portland, Oregon. The culture shock must have been tremendous. From a life filled with the constant threat from Cossacks and the Czar, to one with much more mundane worries. He did, however, have to grow up in a hurry, as his father, Jacob, died not long after their arrival in America. His life from that point on became more and more complex . . .
. . . If one looks only at his most famous paintings, the floating blocks of luminous color, the large canvasses he wants us to enter and celebrate, that person might mistake the surface for stasis, for the lack of evolution and emotion, for a ground that never changed for Rothko. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did his intellectual rationale for his art evolve greatly over time, taking him from an intense study of myths, archetypes, Jung and Freud to Nietzsche and beyond . . . his artistic methods and subject matter evolved as well. Few artists, in fact, changed as dramatically as Rothko, if we look at his career from the 30s until his suicide in 1970. Another paradox. The flat, solid blocks of color, forever floating, and a whirlwind of change before and after.
“I am not an abstractionist. … I am not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. … I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. … The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!”
I have sat for many an endless moment in front of his paintings, most recently in Washington D.C. Rather than make me weep, they generally bring me tremendous waves of calm and peace. Even though I’m guessing he wasn’t shooting for that reaction, he never did want to limit them or define them or jail them. Enter the painting was all. Only connect was all.
“Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.”
Of course, it’s impossible to sum up a great artist. And rather ridiculous to try. But I think, in a nutshell, Rothko sought something similar to other great modernists like Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Pound, Eliot and Joyce. To reinvent myths, reinvigorate them, and introduce them back into the cultural stream. Most of the great modernists seemed to want this, saw this as vital, essential for our health and survival. Some thought this could be done only through collecting ruins, fragments, the remnant of civilization. They sensed a scattering and a loss of cultural potency that could never be reversed. Others thought the disorder and fragmentation could be overcome. I think Rothko falls into the latter category, and his floating blocks of luminous color contain the detritus of civilizations long gone. Paradoxically, they surround us with the future.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantWV makes an excellent point above, one that hit me right after I read your post, bnw.
It’s a major misconception about abstract artists that they do X because they don’t have the “talent” to do Y. Y being, usually, copying nature like a Xerox machine, give or take.
Pretty much every single great painter or sculptor generally called “abstract” worked for years and years to get to that place. They started their training doing “representational” art, copied the masters, copied, perhaps, their teachers, drew, painted, sculpted from “life,” and then decided to go in a different direction. They didn’t do it because they had no other choice. They did it because the artist in them pretty much forced them to. They were driven to express themselves in a different manner, one outside the contemporary box. They did what all great artists do, in all the arts: Add another step on the ladder of human/expressive possibilities. Build upon the past and carve out their own place in the progression. Add their name to the legacy of the new, built upon the old.
Also: in reality, all art is “abstract.” All of it is an abstraction from internal/external “nature.” A vision informed by both, simultaneously. Emphases are generally quite different. But all artists attempt to render their personal vision which comes from within.
IOW, “abstract” artists render their own internal vision, informed by the external and internal. It takes just as much “talent” to do what, say, Kandinsky or Picasso did, as opposed to, say, Raphael. The felicity of their expression, their vision, should tell the tale. Not whether or not someone can “copy” things from the external world like a photo — that guy on NPR can do that, and, to me, his stuff isn’t “art.”
To me, in the post-photographic world, the “abstract” is more and more important. If someone wants photographic “realism,” for example, why not just look at photos? Painting and sculpture can give us something photos — with exceptions — can’t generally do: Bring us a direct vision of internal life, connect us with that vision, directly.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantThanks, Mac,
That’s a really good breakdown. I remembered that you were a student of “conservatism,” as it once was practiced in America.
Billy_TParticipantThe left always gets tagged with much higher standards to live up to. Far, far higher.
If the “outsider” candidate is centrist or right-wing, nuff said. They don’t have to explain anything. But if the outsider candidate is left-wing, honestly left-wing, she is immediately tasked with all kinds of hoops to jump through in order to prove their viability as candidate. “What has she ever done!!”
This is something not asked by supporters of Trump, for instance, who also has never won any elective office.
This is also not a requirement for Ms. Clinton, who, while winning elective office, and publicly supporting all kinds of traditional “progressive” causes — for women, minorities and so on . . . . hasn’t actually done anything to improve the lives of POCs or women.
There are some, in fact, who say it’s quite the opposite. Not sure if you guys already posted this article, for instance:
Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantWell, I see you seeing what I’m seeing as a miss-seeing, so there!
;>)
I don’t see myself as advocating for high-art as a way of unseeing everything else. Or seeing it poorly. Or as snobbery. I’m an artist, by blood and training. Both a visual artist and a poet. So “seeing” is essential to my way of seeing. I see you as saying you see more than I do, more broadly, etc. etc. Needless to say, I don’t see it that way.
Okay, enough of that see stuff. Well, almost. Yes, we “see” things differently. But I’m reading you as saying your way is superior. And I’m guessing you’ll respond by saying, no, that’s not what I’m saying. But it is how I’m reading you.
Regardless . . .
The consumer metaphor is interesting. Even using that, wouldn’t you say it’s a good thing to discern differences of quality, excellence, etc? Even as a mass consumer of mass production, isn’t it wise to see the difference between the consumption of really bad, mass-production food, say, and really good, home-style, locally-sourced food? Let’s say in this case, the prices are the same, and anyone can choose between the two.
Or, mass-produced TVs. Joe and Jane America will usually take the time to read up on the differences between the various brands, perhaps go online and check reviews, compare and contrast, and then buy. Mass produced smartphones, same thing.
Being a consumer doesn’t have to mean engulfing all before you, without discrimination. It doesn’t have to mean the lack of comparing and contrasting, using one’s critical thinking skills to determine levels or degrees of “good or bad.” From where I sit, if a person does that, if he or she just sucks up everything without noticing differences, they’re not really living beings. They’re automatons. As far as I know, ZN, you’re not an automaton.
Or have you been fooling all of us online for the last twenty some years?
;>)
Billy_TParticipantWaterfield,
To me, it says great things about her that she keeps running as a Green. She could likely have gained “power” early on, as a member of the Democratic Party, but that would have meant chucking her principles and selling out. So few politicians, in either wing of the Duopoly, have ever avoided that. It’s basically a preexisting condition of our system, which now requires nearly a billion to just get nominated, to all but sell out before hand.
In short, I don’t see her lack of political victories as important in the slightest. It’s a badge of honor, in my book. If she were to win from that perch (The Greens), she would have done something that virtually no other president has done, at least in living memory:
Avoided the complete (or close to it) sell-out necessary to win elections via the Duopoly.
Here’s her “about” page:
And if you just go by this little snippet, her “accomplishments” already trump Trump’s:
Jill received several awards for health and environmental protection including: Clean Water Action’s “Not in Anyone’s Backyard” Award, the Children’s Health Hero” Award, and the Toxic Action Center’s Citizen Award. Jill has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today Show, 20/20, Fox News, and other programs. She also served on the board of directors for Physicians for Social Responsibility.
She is the co-author of two widely-praised reports, In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, published in 2000, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, published in 2009. The first of these has been translated into four languages and is used worldwide as a community tool in the fight for health and the environment. The reports connect the dots between human health, social justice, a healthy environment and green economies.
Jill was born in Chicago and raised in Highland Park, Illinois. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantLots of food for thought, there. Like:
I never bought the “real art” argument. To me that’s a regime of taste. It is meant to quixotically distance the people who buy into it from their own time and place and culture and history.
We disagree here, too. I see it as a way to get much closer to one’s time and place, by differentiating between the crap for crap’s sake and the really good to great. Yeah, it’s still “subjective” and a matter of taste. But people can learn to see existing aesthetic differences, differences in quality, differences in successful usage of the media and medium in question. One can learn what it means to push the boundaries of that media or medium, as opposed to the reproduction of kitsch.
Example: I entered my Art classes (Studio and History) with a ton of preconceived notions I later discarded. I grew up revering the “Old Masters,” the Titians, Vermeers, Caravaggios, Rembrandts, Raphaels, etc. etc. I had no patience for “modern art” or “abstract art” as a teen.
But by making abstract art, especially sculpture, doing this with my own two hands, painting abstractly, while also taking courses on the subject of non-representational art . . . . I began to “get it.” I went from someone who stupidly says “My kid sister can do that,” to someone who knows, instinctively, as well as intellectually, “No. Your kid sister would be doing something quite different from that. She wouldn’t have the training and the centuries of theory and practice and knowledge of her craft supporting her — yet. Yet.”
In short, I grew to love abstract art, and made it myself, chose to make it myself. Ironically, “popular culture” still (mostly) disdains it, and you still hear umpteen average Joes and Janes scoff at a Picasso, Kandinsky, Johns, De Kooning, Duchamp, etc. etc. . . . with “My kid sister could do that.” The “popular” way to look at things is to limit what constitutes “art” in that case. The supposedly “elitist” way is the one that is actually far more inclusive and welcoming — at least in this case.
Billy_TParticipantThe vast majority of movies are not art. They are a commodity. “Troy” is a commodity.
We agree on that. See, WV? More common ground!!
All art is a commodity. It has value, and is traded for things or money or status or prestige or all of the above.
But taste? That can differ. Within a given range, people have different experiences and like different things.
I’m talking about commodity in the capitalist sense. In the Marxist sense of the capitalist sense. No, not all “art” is a commodity. That implies endless exchange, for the sake of exchange, where the exchange itself, where the result of the exchange (money) is the alpha and omega — and not the art. The sole purpose is to make money, etc. etc.
To commodify something is to alter its purpose to fit inside that box. To be the thing that makes money, and nothing more. If it has “use value” beyond the exchange, that’s just a lucky side effect. The raison d’etre for a commodity under capitalism is to make money for the capitalist.
“Art,” at least from my point of view, is something that radically transcends all of that. That exists prior to those particular economic relations, scoffs at them, radically overcomes them, perhaps even embarrasses and shames them, etc.
Real “art,” in fact, in a kind of meta-narrative, demonstrates the shallowness, the emptiness of culture as commodity*. This has always been an essential part of its tradition(s).
*Milan Kundera’s use of the word “kitsch” fits well here.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantIs Trump really that different than the others? Good question.
Unlike the others he wears his racism on his sleeve, but I doubt his views on race are much different that any other republican candidate. The thing is, I don’t really think Trump really gives a shit about building a wall. I also don’t think he cares about abortion. He says he does because he’s courting the right and they are big talking points with them. What does Trump really care about? Deregulation.
I think that’s a very accurate statement. He also cares about lowering his own taxes, and will, if he’s elected. In short, he’s neoliberal on economic issues, just like Hillary. And for all of his fascist bluster, I actually think he’ll be less inclined to go to war than Hillary, though more inclined to go to DEFCON 2 if he’s in one. Or DEFCON 1 if he’s in two.
Two rotten choices, again. We get more choices with our cereals, and they’re all too much alike as well.
Billy_TParticipantThe vast majority of movies are not art. They are a commodity. “Troy” is a commodity.
We agree on that. See, WV? More common ground!!
Billy_TParticipantZooey was noting how awful the Dem-Rep choice is this time around. But think about it — is it REALLY that different than in past years? Really? Are Trump-the-billiaire-business-man and Clinton-the-insider all that different from the McCains and Kerrys and Bushs and Bill-Clintons and Obamas and Nixons etc? I dunno. I dont think they are that different. Trump has that outsiders ‘talk-radio’ demeanor but is he REALLY worse than GW ?
Perhaps the main difference is just a matter of likability and style. The two current choices are the least likeable (on a personal level) in decades, and their styles annoy the hell out of large numbers of Americans. Prior to his election, Dubya was thought to be very (personally) likeable, for example. Gore wasn’t. Bush won largely on the strength of that, and certainly not his policy ideas. He managed to persuade millions of Democrats to vote for him, instead of Gore, etc. etc.
So, yeah, when it comes to what they actually want to do in office, and will do, it isn’t all that different from the usual. They’ll both protect the ruling class, capitalism itself, the empire, and bomb a lot of people. They’re both “conservatives,” as are pretty much all the eventual nominees from both parties (at least since the 1960s) . . . though Trump has to appeal to people to the right of “conservative” who think of themselves as conservatives still. Clinton doesn’t have that burden. She can be straight up conservative, and still fool most “progressives” along the way.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantTake history. I like, in a rather unsophisticated pure pleasure way, Brit historical dramas. The King’s Speech. Elizabeth. The Queen. Rob Roy. The Madness of King George.
I think we may still be talking past one another. I like those films, too. Loved the first two, especially. Cate Blanchett was otherworldly as Elizabeth, and I noticed how the director crafted sets as if they were 16th and 17th century paintings. Beautifully done, beautifully acted. No. It didn’t bother me that they “took liberties” with history. This is where the “they all do it” part kicks in and makes sense to me.
But Homer isn’t history. His world is larger than life. His world contains myriad metaphors for our lives, and, as with pretty much all the best myth, points to deep psychological dynamics lesser works can’t touch. To me, messing with that is messing with the sacred. I don’t see “history” as sacred, and have never expected movies to stick to that book.
I probably also misread you in another way: I got the sense that you were saying a director MUST make changes to source material, or he or she isn’t an “artist.” I disagree with that take — a perspective you may or may not actually hold. IOW, a film director — or screenwriter — doesn’t have to change one iota of a story in order for it to be “art,” or for him or her to be an “artist,” or for their work process to also be an artistic process. The medium of film is perhaps unique in that way. That the decisions regarding how to visualize a story on the screen aren’t any less “artistic” for toeing the line with original source material. Sticking strictly to it, or deviating wildly from it, isn’t what makes it “art,” or the process artistic, or the director an artist, etc. etc. Other things do that. David Lean, for instance, took liberties with Pasternak’s book, and T.E Lawrence’s, but he created cinematic masterpieces all the same. And, given what he did produce, it’s fair to say, he would have created masterpieces had he been slavishly devoted to the original — though we’ll never know that counterfactual, etc.
Anyway . . . and to repeat: It’s not so much “change” per se. It’s “what” is changed. In the case of Troy, wiping out certain characters with their own set of vital, essential ancient myths (Agamemnon and the House of Atreus, et al) seems almost nihilistic to me. I didn’t see it adding to the movie at all, and it didn’t make sense as a plot device. Going back to the movies you cited, their changes “worked” for me. They worked artistically, etc.
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