"Sex/Nudity: We see the wolf reading "Pork Illustrated" (a play on the wolf and the three little pigs) and hear a comment about him being "gender-confused". We see Shrek and Fiona rolling around kissing on the beach (and kissing several times later on too). Donkey refers to Shrek as a "love machine". We see Shrek in his boxers a few times. We see the Fairy Godmother mixing "passion", "desire", and "lust" into a potion (we see a large bottle labled "lust"). "
posted by Old Stallion at 6:51 PM
Once called "Professor Romance", "the Six Day Kid", I strive to engage with the external world with as much sincerity as possible. I quake with interests, opinions, and words, delighting in sentiments, passions and moods.
7 Comments:
oh man, its on!
Alright, here is the deal with the "kernels":
I, contrary to you, buy the claim that taxation is in essence a form a slavery. Benevolent motivations aside the legitimacy of taxation is the legitimacy a powerful master who takes away the product from your labour to serve its own ends, possibly contrary to your own. Most people would agree life would be better if all the great things taxation produces could be accomplished without the coercion or threat of force that the enforcement of tax laws necessarily implies. Most socialist even feel there is something ugly enough about taxation, that they work very hard to justify its imposition.
The"Sex is rape" metaphor, I just completely reject, not because I find there is something bad about sex that is outweighed by benefits, and hence not worthy of being called rape, but because I like sex, and I think the analogy is bullshit all the way down. Anyone who thinks sex is essentially rape has never got it on with me.
So back to Christian versus Islamic fundamentalism. Yes. They are both fundamentalist movements. They are both stupid and dangerous. But if we are capable of distinguishing between different forms of fascism, or able to prefer Leninism to Stalinism, we should be able to recognize differences between a christian cult and an Islamic cult. I grant that many of the most significant differences are accidental to the movements themselves (the historical, and economic situations from which they emerged). However, I think there are also big time differences between the essential characteristics of the different fundamentalist streams: the christian emphasis of non earthly power and post life justice--a devote christian fundamentalist can give unto Caesar what is Caesar's without betraying his god. Islamic fundamentalism can tolerate no distinction between the political and the spiritual. While militancy can obviously be tacked onto Christian thought, it is not essential to it. One can envision Christian fundamentalists separating themselves from a decadent pagan culture. Militancy however, is essential to Islam--It is Islamic Law to destroy paganism/secularism not merely to avoid it.
So our disagreement is this: I think taxation is a pretty ugly thing: I think it is the best way to resolve conflicts inherent in the property conception, but it is definitely antithetical to a robust conception of individual autonomy. It's ugliness however, doesn't come close to resembling even the nicest plantation style system of slavery. I, contrary to you then, think there is a kernel of meaningful substance in this analogy overlooks the importance of degree.
I think Islam differs from Christianity in an essential way that goes beyond the mere shared kernel relation to fundamentalism and the accidental add ons of history. I agree religious fundamentalism is stupid...but do you really want to assert that the content of what the religious people are fundamentalist about does not matter? That the Dahli Lama is the same as Schneerson is the same as Pat Robertson is the same as Nasralla is the same as the Pope? All are fundamentalist and place the highest priority upon their religious doctrine, yet to say their similarity as representatives of religious nuttery outweighs any legitimate differentiation between their various positions is absurd. I reassert it is tantamount to being oblivious to the difference between slavery and taxation. Christian fundamentalism certainly isn't benign, but this fact does not reduce it to the violent legal system of Islam.
That being said, if, as you claim, you really don't think that there is anything at all about taxation that needs justification or is somewhat objectionable, then yeah, you are right, my metaphor is completely unconvincing.
I initially read the word "hermeneutics" as "hermenautics." Hey, everybody! Look at me! I'm a hermenaut! Additionally, anyone who thinks sex is rape obviously has got it on with me. Ha ha ha! Delightful! Seriously, though, the only thing I've ever raped is a plate of tacos ... with my mouth.
Good show, gentlemen. I enjoyed your debate. I would weigh in, but growing up in a small town has rendered me inarticulate 4 life! I had a horrible education. McRibmust sandwiches for all!
"As the Irish poet, George Russel, once stated the form of the predicament: 'We become the image of the thing we hate." And the great dialectician, Coleridge, has observed that rivales are the opposite banks of the same stream. And it was dialectically, or dramatically, necessary that the devil should be an angel; for were he of any less noble substance, the Christian agonia would to that degree have fallen short of thoroughness in imagining a common ground on which the two great conflicting motives, good and evil, can join battle." -K. Burke
I wasn't going to reply (for reasons of time), but then I bumped into this passage. So now I belive in the divine. But I am still not a "fundamentalist," which is, again, what I think the heart of our disagreement is, not Christianity versus Islam versus the Dahli Lama versus Bob the Snake Handler vs. Stalinism vs. Kruschev's left nut.
Or, to put it another way, just because the Christian fundamentalists are 1) lazy and 2) winning is no reason to distinguish their motives. And we've already heard this laundry list. It's just that they don't have to call on their practitioners to bomb and kill, or find that damn red calf, because God is already taking care of it. God is sending Hurricanes. The God-stork is delivering strokes. God knits homosexuals the AIDS quilt. And, luckily, they have, as they see it and as the President certainly wants them to see it for the easy votes, a few billion dollars a month in firecrackers being dropped on the heads of their enemies.
Elect a gay, half-Jew, anti-Israel, African American, pro-choicer to the White House in 10 years and see how many death threats he gets--even if their such pussies that they can't carry them out (which, again, is not a difference in motive, and, likely, is a condition of education [ironically, not enough] and slothful non-poverty). And the motive will be literal interpretations of Biblical texts that say we must live according to scripture here on Earth in order to ascend to heaven (the beat down, tolerant, peasant version is not evangelical Christianity--peasants don't have the time or dough to give a shit about anyone outside of their own family--and is why the Pope ain't a fundamentalist)and you can't let the others stand in your way (which, currently, is sort of minimized to gays and muslims, but give them time).
So, right now someone is doing their work for them and they like their X-boxes and SUVs too much to really do anything. But once a dirty bomb goes off in Chicago, or, say, a country next door to Iraq figures out a way to move the world from U.S. Petrodollars, or almost everyone in a country decides to spend more than they take in and usher in a New Great Depression, then maybe Sally and Bobby Left Behind True Believer will decide they aren't winning and start doing what they are pretty much saying that they should be doing.
Of course, my notion about "fundamentalism" isn't at all to say that I don't think I have strategic interest in letting "my" fundamentalists go after the other ones. It's just that, after/if they win, I think they'll be all frothed up and ready to take care of God business at home.
On the other note: I actually don't equate taxes with slavery, unless you want to use a definition of taxes which is undisputably slavery, which would be taxation without any form of meaningful representation (which i wish didn't rhyme, probably with whips. Otherwise the power differentials are too far off to bear equation. (In the modern era, I usually think of taxes as "dues"--but, again, this is unresolvable definitionally since you will define taxes by an outside term that keeps the taint of slavery and I'll define it with one that doesn't; you'll bring up medeival or Roman taxing procedures [which I will argue weren't really taxes, but we lacked the proper historical context of slavery or fuedalism or whatever to call them what they should be called, though I nominate ghost farts] and when I bring up taxes in the current Western sense, you'll say that I'm substituting anomalously benign practices that ignore the historically confiscatory nature of taxation, etc. etc. Unless you want to say that taxes, in the U.S., are somehow, in any terms including the craziest Foucaultian notion of power, equatable to slavery, which I think is sort of Ayn Rand nincompoopery, a la sex is rape, a (fake) argument which is advanced because of bizarro ideas about inherent power relations in the heterosexual sex act.(Although this is what Dworkin actually said: "Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, violent. But I'm not saying that sex [tax] must be rape [slavery]. What I think is that sex [tax] must not put women [taxpayer] in a subordinate position [else slavery]. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man [government] looking only to satisfy himself. That's my point."
Which I also why I'm cheating on the fundamentalist definition, letting it connotate the able-crazies and not the others. But I feel ok with this because, after all, how else are we constructively using fundamentalist? (You're obviously not referring to the Cincinatti Imam who impotently hurls arabic expletives at episodes of Will and Grace, but I'm sure he's there.)
So let's just agree that adbusters is the devil instead.
I just wanted to add that while my post may have looked liked an argument directed towards a particular italian greyhound, it was not. I meant no offense. It was just an phrase I used towards a particular philosophy department (daily Kos reading) guy. I also want to add that a typo made unintelligible the entire crux of my argument in my first response. I agree with you that it is a stupid equivocation to call taxation slavery...but for reasons different then you. I think these different reasons lead me to see a similarity with the christian/ Islam equivocation that you (the italian greyhound) do not. As such, it is perfectly fine for you (the greyhound) to uphold both positions, but not fine for me or the daily Kos dude. That being said, I still think that there are different degrees of jackassery associated with different fundamentalist streams. These differences may be as meaningless as the difference between cobra poison and rattlesnake poison (I think both are fatal?)--which is what I think you believe...me, I am not so sure this is the case. Far be it from me to defend christian fundamentalism, so I won't bother. and anyway if, as you wrote you think there may be a strategic reason to treat them differently (let our crazies fight their crazies) then god bless us both--we have no real disagreement beyond tastes.
I don't really understand the Burke quote, but I'd rather just ask you about it in phone conversation.
Salud
Dan, you make too many assumptions. You assume, for example, that rape exists. Can a horse rape another horse? How much foreplay must be involved before penetration? If the female horse (Pony?) doesn't want to have sex with the male horse (Zebra?) can she instead request payment, like a human-hooker does when needing money for the arcade? See, Sir Schneider, it's not so simple is it? Next time you should think about the plight of the UNTAXED HORSE.
okay. i finally actually read through this.
whew.
save a few McRibmusts for me, my brain needs some musty bbq replenishment.
Post a Comment
<< Home