Beam Me Back To Relevance, Scotty
What do you do after you hitched your editorial wagon to one of the most unpopular administrations ever and then went over the cliff with it? Take refuge in pop culture nostalgia. Next: a multipart symposium on Dungeons and Dragons featuring Frank Gaffney, Victor Davis Hanson, and Michael Ledeen.
posted by The Cunning Realist at Wednesday, May 09, 2007
11 Comments:
One word:
irrelevant
But hey, I'll read anything in the MSM on Dungeons and Dragons
Please don't forget the keynote by Little Willy Kristol.
It never ceases to amaze me how [neo-]conservatives can praise and take allegorical fiction to their breast, while utterly and completely misinterpreting the fiction's obvious themes and messages.
Star Trek -- multiculturalism makes us stronger -- The Prime Directive: advanced civilizations do not interfere with the affairs of lesser cultures even if it means a bit of sacrifice by the advanced culture.
Conservative Star Trek -- when the Captain blasts those phasers, throws a few haymaker punches, and then sleeps with the exotic women, everything will work itself out for Truth and Justice.
Battlestar Galactica (v.2005) -- If humans(/Americans) were at the disadvantage in a war, we'd resort to terrorism and suicide bombing to stay alive too. People resist their occupiers even when it's tactically pointless, and the occupied never really give up. Our enemies are complex beings with motivations and unique qualities all their own, interacting with them can sometimes increase our knowledge.
Conservative Battlestar Galactica (v.2005) -- Our enemies are inhuman soulless clones which deserve nothing more than extermination by any means we have at hand.
Lord of the Rings -- (a small cute furry protagonist sneaks across million-man armies to destroy the most powerful warlord on the planet with scarcely a fight) -- direct assault by armies is not what settles great historical confrontations; war is destructive, terrifying and to be avoided; and power corrupts even the best of us towards Evil.
Conservative Lord of the Rings -- Evil must be militarily confronted in one grandiose all-out assault no matter how hopeless the odds, because somehow magically the good guys always win military struggles at the last minute.
These people read (or watch) classic works of allegory, then ignore what the author was trying to say and see only what they want to see.
My co-blogger actually submitted T-shirt ideas. My only hope is that he did so anonymously.
This is of a piece with the "Conservative Pop Music" meme so desperately flogged a while back.
Actually I just thought of a T-shirt:
"We're Warping"
Hell. Most of them believe in the ultimate fantasy novel - The Bible.
Bumper Sticker:
US out of North America!
how about bush on the transporter pad dematerializing....
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggg
Bush is known to like video games. One of the reasons our war planning has been so pathetic is that he (and his minions) believe they just hit Ctl-Alt-Del and get to try again from where they screwed up, and again, till they get it right, no problem. (See under: surge.)
Kevin Wohlmut. YES SO CORRECT.
Kevin Wohlmut's comment regarding the topsy-turvy worldview of the 'new' Republican party reminds me also of one of the most prescient pieces of satire I've ever read. It was published in the Onion in January of 2001 and titled, "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'," available at http://tinyurl.com/c4f2x
Keep the publication date in mind when you read it.
Thanks for the agreement. I wonder if TCR would comment further on this idea of [neo]conservatives drawing the wrong lessons from allegory as well as real-life world events... As he's already pointed out, the conclusions remain the same no matter what the observations. Economy humming? Tax cuts. Economy stalling? Tax cuts. Progress towards Iraq self-government? Stay the course in Iraq. Upswing in violence? Stay the course in Iraq. These people see only what they want to see.
Ooops, blogger somehow mangled my weblink to the citation about conservatives drawing the wrong conclusions from Lord of the Rings: It was supposed to be here -- http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2004/02/28/lord/index.html
Also, it should go without saying, but my link about the conservative view of Battlestar Galactica was to a conservative _claiming_ that other conservatives were misinterpreting BSG, not that my link actually misinterpreted BSG himself.
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