Today’s hero in popular culture is a corrupted version of Milton’s Satan, a collaborator with the rigged game of a tyrannical God. His errors are the violations of God’s law, but God does not really mind since he knows that humans could never follow these arbitrary rules. Satan is God’s deniability.1
In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.
It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda.
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
— Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
William Burroughs is the dystopian most adept at confronting Einstein’s spooky actions at a distance, the origination point for much of what ails us.
The earth-bound’s been well-addressed. Huxley sussed the drugs. Orwell and Bradbury were good at the jackboots. But is the door still there to be kicked in, or did social media dissolve it in a vat of cyber-stew? Book-burning is so de rigueur especially when Amazon hides the more combustible texts from Kindle. (Now there’s an epiphanous product name.)
Big show tonight, returning guests Jim Goad and Jay Dyer air their thoughts on Host Al provides commentary on politics, culture, news, and events. This show is fun as hell. Be sure to subscribe to the channel because there are surprise streams throughout the week!
Guest post by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY Stephen Greenblatt has struck upon a sheer and stupendous idea: to retell the tale of the first couple of the Christian world, Adam and Eve. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve is a sweeping work with a remarkably ranging scholarship, galloping through centuries in minutes. The tone and … Continue reading Adam, Eve, Art – Neither Belief Nor Unbelief: Prasanta Chakravarty
Ghalib has fascinated generations of people and they have tried to understand/ interpret his poetry in their own way. For any such individual it is really difficult to recollect when and how Ghalib entered her/ his life and ensconced himself comfortably in one’s heart. This wanderer still faintly remembers how many of Ghalib’s shers were … Continue reading ‘Why Ghalib appears so contemporary even today ?’ : Interview with Hasan Abdullah
The autumn of the patriarch, man, thinking hard about Marquez’s book, thinking back in lamentation bursts, going back in time when I met him at the University of Texas at Austin, and how he spoke to me as a young person, hopeful that I would be something as unique as he was, using what I told him was my West Texas/Chihuahua “magic realism,” founded on what I learned from his One Hundred Years of Solitude.
[ This post is based on updates posted by me on my Facebook wall ] A great kerfuffle has ensued ever since the recently elected independent MLA from Vadgam, Gujarat and Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch activist Jignesh Mevani gave an interview in which he had some choice things to say about the Prime Minister and … Continue reading Jignesh Mevani, The Meltdown of Modi-Men and Dadhichi’s Bones
I confess to being troubled rather than elated by the daily rumble of idols falling to accusations of “sexual misconduct,” the morbid masscult fixation that conceals private titillation, knowing smirks, and sadistic lip-smacking behind a public mask of solemn reproof.
