Jonathan Franzen

[rich]

I don't disagree with any of this, Ian. I just wish Franzen, who seems
to have been anointed as the great American novelist, would be a bit
more sensible.

at this stage in the US I fear the crap being spewed by the media and
lobbyists and interest groups (and with a welter of funding behind
that) has so misinformed an already self-satisfied and spoiled or
downright scary dumb electorate that all we're left with is laughing
with jon stewart (which alot of the so-called lefty youngins get most
of their news from--how can anyone like that take anything seriously
when you only have satire to teach you. I mean you gotta know what's
being satirized. maybe i'm painting a bit too broadly here myself. its
sort alike modern artists today. with no craft to learn all art today
is modified satire. all they know is satire. except what are they
satirizing but themselves. is that why I think so much of art today is
so insufferable? what the fuck do  know)

rich

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> And my point is that, right or wrong, public debate is vital. It is
> precisely the absence of public dissent that gives the aristocracy
> latitude act according to the self-serving principles that led to the
> Iraq war and the 2008 fiscal coup d'etat that put so many people out
> of their homes. My forebears escaped an unwelcoming Europe aboard the
> Mayflower, and, on my Pa's side, one came over with John Smith to
> settle in Virginia. I'm about as American as a white kid gets. Some of
> my forebears were early American statesmen. One worked with Jefferson
> to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. None of this qualifies me for
> anything so long as I abdicate my rights and responsibilities to a
> powerful band of self-appointed aristocrats. I don't care who says
> what, if they are right or wrong, or if the media focuses on the sound
> bites that make them seem hysterically ignorant or outrageously
> ingenious. The debate is what shapes the outcome. If the debate
> ceases, the aristocrats do what they will and the politicians are
> powerless to oppose them because the people, by their silence, consent
> to the leadership of the day.
>
> Franzen does appear naive here. So did the kids in the streets in the
> sixties and seventies. But the greater naivetee is apparent in the
> current trend of relinquishing the power of the voice to the few. If
> we the think the few will serve the many, we admit to a most grotesque
> refusal to learn the lessons of history. When people say, geez another
> idiot gets it wrong, they point three fingers back at themselves and
> never get around to doing anything to oppose the status quo.
> Disestablishmentarianism should be the steady screech of the people
> who hide under the oppressors' skirts, but instead I hear mostly the
> dull drone of consent.
>
> I mean, just sayin'.....
>
>