January 24, 2005

A New Addition to the Western Canon

I knew that I had to start up this blog - with the sort of deeply mystical insight usually reserved for Hebrew prophets, Otis Redding and shivering men in rubber rooms who soil themselves regularly and believe themselves to be in permanent conversation with demons named Bruce - the very moment that I read this unutterably puerile article in The Weekly Standard about Bush's second inaugural address (click on the title above to go and take a look at the wretched piece).

So now our President gets props for being a Great Philosopher. Never mind that as far as speechwriting goes, he's even more of a ventriloquist's dummy than most modern presidents. Never mind that his remark about Christ being his favorite Deep Thinker was so callow a piece of political rhetoric that it should have made an eight-year-old sneer. And never mind that Jesus' one genuinely novel idea (not really a "philosophical" one, since the J-man seems to have preferred just announcing his opinions from hilltops, rather than muddying his feet by engaging in actual argumentation) was that you should learn to love your enemies. As opposed to, say, bombing the shit out of them, cutting their medical benefits or disenfranchising them when they try to vote against you.

Could the level of public discourse sink any lower in this country? Clearly what the world needs now is a for a few brave men and women to sit up slowly off their couches of contemplation, rummage around in the cupboard until they find the dusty Bullshit Detectors that they acquired during their college days and oil up those neglected machines for immediate use. I have set myself this chore herein - go now, beloved reader, and do thou likewise.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sweet Methuselah, Mr. Goon! Your voice resonates with just the sort of deep wisdom that our world needs badly in these retrograde times! Speak on, good sir.

1:40 PM, January 25, 2005  

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