Oh, that said, if I could work up the courage, I'd organize the shit out of a resistance. Don't worry, Tia. I'll know exactly where the cyanide capsules are.
I have to say, I think I would have been into it before I had a kid. At least, I've gotten beat up (literally) often enough for standing up for underdogs that it seems to be part of my character. But now the concept of risking my life seems kind of irresponsible, and I suspect I'd keep my head down and try to get along by neither assisting nor resisting the regime.
Lucky I don't take birth control pills anymore, because they look awfully similar.
It did occur to me that sometimes I inspire confidence, so maybe some O'Reilly Youth will get drunk and give me some information about troop movements one night, but that would require the lying. Wait! I'm good at lying in email. I could Nerve date the O'Reilly youth!
I could write snide pamphlets, if someone kept me safe in a basement and gave me strict deadlines. Or, I could deliver messages, but probably not over a distance of more than a couple of blocks, given my uncanny ability to get lost in my own apartment.
I'm not sensing that I'll be a great help to the Resistance.
I have to say, I think I would have been into it before I had a kid.
That does really affect the outlook. I'd been considering enlisting once my kids were in school and my wife had her degree, but having kids was giving me doubts. Of course, the last couple years the decision has been heavily influenced by the whole "this administration is batshit crazy" thing.
Also, on the actual French resistance, the thing is (as I was mentioning recently on my own blog), Pétain had a lot of legitimacy, and DeGaulle didn't, circa 1940/41. So very few people flocked to the Free French cause early on. Once the Germans invaded Russia, in 41, all the communists, who had been sitting on the sidelines, came in. And then as the food shortages/labor deportations really began in earnest, in 42/43, you started to get grassroots maquis activity in the countryside—people just going into the hills to avoid being sent to labor camps in Germany. And then with Stalingrad/El Alamein, it looked like the Allies were going to win, and more and more people joined the underground to be on the winning side. So people reacted to how personally oppressed they were feeling, and responded to changing circumstances.
FWIW, Gswift, Mr. B. got out b/c we wanted to have kids, and I was so very NOT going to do the single mom thing (or I would've just done it without the marriage part). Plus, after you see kids run up to the wrong man in uniform when the guys get home, you just think, no. That shit fucking sucks for the kids.
Not to mention the whole risking your life thing. Screw that.
This is an urgent message: Operation Blue Orangutan is a go. Action code 4-2-...no, 4-9...ah, fuck. (sound of Becks punching keys) This is an urgent message...
The thing about scary dangerous stuff is that (or so is my understanding from books, rather than from any actual direct experience) is that you really don't know if you're going to be decent at it until you're actually dealing with it. As noted in the earlier thread, I lie fairly well, which would be useful. On the other hand, I'm also a huge coward and squeamish about pain, both other people's and my own. I suspect that I'd be completely useless at any sort of violent Resistance activity, but I just don't know.
A friend of a friend wanted to become a DEA agent, but withdrew his application after interviews when he realized that infiltrating a ring of drugdealers might involve beating the shit out of an innocent person just to maintain his cover.
I expect that being in the resistance might involve similarly distasteful actions.
It seems to me that there's something disproportionate to resisting the Nazis because of... patriotism. Here we're talking about one of the greatest evils in human history, and the reason you're going to resist is because you love your country? If your love of country is at such a high level that it overrides all other objections to Nazism, then you're basically a proto-Nazi yourself.
I was a picket captain during a Teaching Assistants' strike. This is certainly nowhere near the level of La Resistance, of course, but there were really stressful aspects of it, like angry people driving their cars into our picket lines and what have you.
I felt like a wreck during the whole thing, but months later I heard that another picket captain described me as exuding "Zen-like calm" on the line.
So I'd probably be somewhat useful in the event of a Revolution.
I don't think so. Patriotism, at its best, is an affection for your country that is similar to the way you feel about your family. You don't excuse bad behavior on the part of either your country or your family. Instead, you're personally ashamed of and hurt by the misdeeds of either. I can see being strongly emotionally motivated, say, as a French person, to resist the Nazis not only, but partially because they were making my country implicit in their crimes.
I don't think I ever understood nationalism until I sat down and thought seriously about how it would feel to see foreign troops galumping all over the Bay Area. The everyday humiliations of occupation might tip me over into action when abstract horror might not.
I know a number of graffiti and print artists whose service I might enlist to the cause. I submit my catalogue and knowledge to the revolutionary propaganda authority. Aux armes, citoyens!
Shit, I ain't gonna be talking about the serious stuff on a blog comment thread. However the first step is propaganda. Most lefty elite Yankees are going to be queasy about torture and collateral damage, so the enemy must be demonized and dehumanized.
Since I think the vast majority of America's problems lie in the corner bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, "All white Southerners are evil scum, or will grow up to be evil scum. The good ones left long ago. Their disappearance would be no loss." If you find this offensive,you are not ready for the war. It should start more subtle, but the adequate callousness should be prepared. Mock the accents. Make fun of NASCAR. Point out how the Dixie Chicks aren't really all that liberal. Write about slavery and Jim Crow a lot, find Generals in the Phillippine and Vietnam wars that were Southern, even if most of them were not.
They have been hating on us for a long time, we need to catch up. As far as what I am prepared to do, remember the words of Patton:"The point is not to die for your cause, but make the other guy die for his."
Since I think the vast majority of America's problems lie in the corner bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, "All white Southerners are evil scum, or will grow up to be evil scum. The good ones left long ago. Their disappearance would be no loss." If you find this offensive,you are not ready for the war. It should start more subtle, but the adequate callousness should be prepared. Mock the accents. Make fun of NASCAR. Point out how the Dixie Chicks aren't really all that liberal. Write about slavery and Jim Crow a lot, find Generals in the Phillippine and Vietnam wars that were Southern, even if most of them were not.
What? I mean, lots and lots of white Southerners are on our side. And lots more people nationwide like them. And I just don't see the political profit in it even if it weren't unpleasant.
Right now, I worry about whether I could do the right thing, but based on my own history--I'm a notorious worrier and am generally more upset by imagining difficult things than by the things themselves--I think that when it came down to it, I'd be there.
I'm pretty sure that I'd be caught up in the movement aspect of it. John McCain's talk about he importance of serving a cause greater than yourself is pretty offensive coming from him, but I do understand the impulse.
Personally,I often find crises easier to deal with than the more routinized aspects of everyday existence. So, frankly, I'd probably welcome it.
And this disgusts me, because I appreciate the ordinary bourgeois values of stability and prosperity. I feel a bit like all those pro war people who found the idea of war thrilling and who found the 90's boring, the so-called National Greatness types.
Yeah. Adam - have you ever lived outside the US? That makes it easier to feel affection towards the country as a whole (to quote Billy Bragg: "What do they know of England, who only England know?") I've never felt as fond of the US as a whole as I did when I was living in Samoa.
Suck it up, Adam. The US rules, and you know it. The basic decency of most people in this country is nothing short of astonishing. Even the ones I hate. And I'm a closer to bob's point of view than I'm at all comfortable with.
how it would feel to see foreign troops galumping all over the Bay Area
Having lived in Lower Manhattan immediately after 9/11, where we were occupied by American troops for about four months, with their machine guns and checkpoints and random bag and ID checks, that was one scary, horrible, demoralizing fucking experience. We had no rights and were treated like crap, and these were troops who were sympathetic to what we had just gone through. I can't imagine how awful an occupation by troops who weren't "on your side" would feel like.
Well, yeah. There is a political problem with the relationship between white Southerners and the rest of the country, but demonizing them as a class is just nuts.
There is a political problem with the relationship between white Southerners and the rest of the country
Don't fall into this trap. White Southerners are hardly monolithic. All you have to do to bob's initial comment is change the object to Muslims or Jews and it's indistinguishable from LittleGreenFootballs or Stormfront.
35: Yeah, same thing during the WTO protests. The fact that I couldn't go out for a walk in my own neighborhood without getting gassed (which happened) really, really pissed me off.
John McCain's talk about he importance of serving a cause greater than yourself is pretty offensive coming from him
I'm no fan of John McCain, but I'm at a loss to understand why this kind of talk should be particularly offensive coming from him. wasn't he one of the few prominent republicans who didn't have better things to do than go to vietnam? *
*not intended as an endorsement of america's actions in vietnam, either.
I'd be crap at revolution, I think, if I had to fight people, but since the Oppressors will be unleashing their fully automated robot army, no problem.
31 and 34: I spent about 6 months in England, and I was acutely aware of my Americaness, but my main feeling was that I just wished that I could stay there. I hate that it rains all the time, and that it's further north than Boston which means that the winter days are even shorter than they are here. I don't think that I could make it through a Scottish winter. (Edinburgh for Hogmonay was wonderful, but I could barely make it out of bed when it was pitch black at 8:30 AM.) I'm sure I'd want to take lots of winter vacations to Italy and Spain, but I'd be quite happy there. I felt more at home in the UK than I've ever felt in my own country.
I'm simultaneously proud of my Yankee ancestors and sort of sorry that they left England.
38: I agree entirely. I think bob's point (and, IIRC, he's a Southerner living in the South) is that it's already been done to us ("the North"), and that's why the Republicans are so successful. I can't count how many Republican blogs I've seen offer some variation of "I can't stand this Administration. I would never vote for a Democrat, but I might not go to the polls in '06."
And his larger point, as I take it, is that until you're willing to do bad things to very good people, you're not likely to be much help to the Resistance. And, thus, ultimately, I probably fall into the "not much help" camp.
38: You're right to say what you did -- I was trying to avoid saying what it sounds as if I did say (that there's something wrong with white Southerners as a monolithic class). But there is a political problem about the relationship between, shall we say, the image of white Southernness as the paradigm of wholesome, normal, Americanness, and the rest of the country.
Oh yes, Becks. I worked on Wall St. back then, and on the few days the air wasn't toxic, I would try to eat my lunch outside, only to get "moved along" by men with machine guns. Not pleasant.
40: He comes froma military family, so that's not really a surprise. I wasn't thinking of his military service so much as the way he got into politics and the ways that he used his wife's business connections. I'm also thinkign of his refusal to do teh principled thing and decry the confederate flag in South Carolina. Basically, he strikes me as an opportunist.
The thing is that the people who talk the loudest about the importance of self-sacrifice tend to be the rich white guys who are already comfortable and have it made. Other people simply do it. Maybe what they're really doing is exhorting themselves to live up to what they know that they haven't achieved themselves.
35 ad 45: I know someone who went out East to do some freelance reporting after 9/11. He described the scene in lower Manhattan just as you both have.
He said that he thought that it was kind of ironic that it was much easier for him to get up close--perhaps too close--to the Pentagon than it was to get to the WTC. The Pentagon was much less militarized than New York.
Living in the designated evil southern quadrant (Virginny), I'm actually more perplexed the red staters in the "fly-over" plains states (what is the matter with Kansas, anyway?). Them corn-fed boys play a lot of football, and I bet they put up a good fight...
Well, McCain was, by all accounts, extraordinarily brave while a POW. I mean, the dude was offered early release when his captors discovered his father's high position in the US military, and he refused unless his fellow prisoners were released also. This from a guy who had been literally bayoneted in the nuts and was badly in need of medical care.
53: "Perplexed" is perhaps not the best word, and this is anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But I've had a much harder time relating to middle-Americans, versus Southerners. Seems like more a cultural gap to be overcome (and it's a lot of ground to cover once the Resistance has to send secret missives into the heart of Topeka). I'm also obviously talking ex recta.
Yeah, but determining who the real fascists are may be a problem. In westside LA or downtown SF, or Sac, the takeover could as easily be brought about by public employee unions and hipster statists as by hick xtian types: Nurse Ratched , on the march! .
What for? I mean, if someone gets bizarrely long-winded and boring, that's one thing, but talking about disemvoweling anyone who's commented once, and not particularly insanely, seems a trifle hair-triggerish.
Is it? That's not my name, but you can be a decent 'liberal" hypocrite by invoking "troll"--and make the goils happy too. And I doubt you could identify Nurse Ratched.
As I said, liberal statists are generally as close to fascism as hicks
(The trucker cap was just a ruse so that the counterrevolutionary infiltrators will reveal themselves as spies. All true children of the revolution will know that trucker caps are so 2004.)
SB: How did you know? I thought you were being a little hair-trigger, but clearly you spotted him. (And what's the origin of the ToS name? I've seen him at J&B's and the Weblog, of course, but I never heard the naming story.)
Ah don't get your state-issued panties in a wad. Ah'm finished phor now. There's this miraculous device called a delete button if you don't care for it. Go on, grrls, git yr J-Edgar on.
re: 55
I think the resistance would be the only thing that could motivate me to go to Topeka. And this is coming from someone living an hour and a half away. Does this make me a Rouge-Bot?
Heh. Yeah there's a lot of whorefare--not so spiritual. But then some of us are not so opposed to whorefare..........rate quotes? rouge schmouge......do it for the cause schwester!
Quine? Doesn't Bogus Benjy W. post around here? He's more of a Quinean than about anyone around the weblog malt shoppe circle--but a closet-case Quinean. Ah'm more trad. Russellian: anyone who shagged TS Eliots' byatch can't be all that bad.
I thought bob mcmanus was referring to the sort of propaganda campaign necessary to convince coffee-shop revolutionaries to take up arms against Southerners: nasty and hate-filled.
That's right, dear: the ToS-- 3/4 irish; 1/4 dutch-- is a lovah, not a phighter. -- except when it's some two-bit joik-off xtian from Cafe Weblog . Youse want me to take of 'em? Awaht we work somethin' somethin' out.
Yass, compared to yr regular janitor du jour, Miss B-PhD, ah'm probably lacking a certain Caponeish sort of quality. Whatevah. When ya want to ride Amsterdam style give the Big ToS a call. Smoochies.
At The Weblog, we have unconditionally blocked him for life, no matter what the content of a particular comment is -- that is, we don't block ideas, we block persons. Every time he shows up on a new site, I recommend to the owner that they adopt the same policy. They always say that he's not so bad and that such a policy would probably be overreacting. I always turn out to have been right -- no one has ever been really glad that they decided to give the Troll of Sorrow a chance.
Anthony named the Troll of Sorrow during one phase of our offensive against his comments -- that is, the editing phase. He thought the name reflected the fact that the man behind the troll is obviously rather pathetic. Now it has been expanded by some to include the word "constant," in an homage to the movie O Brother Where Art Thou.
In short, you must use all the means at your disposal to make sure he never comments here again.
Ooo The Voice of Authori-tay! Phuck you, you pathetic , cretinous, irrational worm whose career depends on lies, misinformation and fallacy. You're no intellectual, no ethicist, no filosophe, Kostco the Screepture Boi--you're another half-witted bible skool flunkie, schoolmarm censor and all-around dim-wit--anyone with half a brain realized that years ago.. But you've managed to convince some dupes online that you have some sort of credibility. What a laff. You're the okie-folkie dokie as well, as all bible-school deviants izz.
a.c.: He's referring to an exchange that started with your story, but B and Apo, and a few others, including me, were playing with the idea. So he's been reading.
I am a troll of constant sorrow
I've been postin' all my day.
Ah bid pharewell to ol' Jowhn Holbo
Ah will try not to act so goldarn'd crazed.
(He will try not to be so crazed!)
On lots of blogs Ah've been in trubble
No fil-o-sofes here on earth Ah found
For in this blog Ah'm bound to ramble
Ah'm a bitch like Ezra Pound.
That's purdy amusing--not. My tastes are more like Bach & Debussy--a bit too deep for you or the Weblog folkie-okie evangelicals. Sidin' with the Weblog liberal xtians, are ya, Cula? You don't know sheiet about me or what ah write about--and surely squat about Pound as well. Follow the par-tay line tho--that's expected of bogus irrational PC leftists these days.
I've actually been playing Debussy and Bach in my car stereo for a few weeks now. Before that, it was Shostakovich and Chopin and more Bach.
Incidentally, my listening is made much easier by this audio plugin I made, so that soft parts aren't so damn soft that you're constantly messing with the volume. This is especially vital for car-listening, as road noise tends to reduce the listenable dynamic range a lot.
like, seriously, Dewdsko, have you realized yet you don't have a real degree. You don't have any credentials. You don't have any intellectual authori-TAY. Screepture is not a valid source of knowledge, nor is postmod or marxism . In effect you're like a Miss Cleo who can barely conjugate etre et avoir. The average RN is quite a bit more intelligent and useful than some pathetic seminarian j-o, or English major mountebank for that matter. Go back to like Padua 1300, fraud. Comprenez-vous cela, chienne ?
Get the ho-speak on, goils--ho-roscopes! Hey, if you can't argue, or put forth any sort of valid claims, or produce anything resembling viable research, at least you can be catty, salacious and snide and plenty of dimwits (like Kostco for one, Berube, etc .) will mistake as you an intellectual--. PheministPhraud.com
let's not ban our gollum. I'll bet he gets tired of us before we him. And in our darkest moments, he'll bite off the offending digit, and save the day.
That's cool, Miss Byatch PhD, Salome du jour , I tired of you like 3 years ago when I stumbled upon your lame site and spent at least 10 mintues or so wincing at your sophistries, sentimentalities and, er, sapphistries. Unlike you, however, I would never pull a J-Edgar and argue that you should be shut down/deleted/moderated: the web needs more tasteless soft-porn les sites, darlin.'
Did ya say IP addy? U go grrl. Ize only got like 30,000 more. Can we Good morning, United Arab Emirates. com? Like, I-shallah, dude.
Me and my dogs been lost along the Trinity River for the afternoon. Y'all seem to have done ok. I originally am from the Great Lakes area near Chicago, and lived in Dallas for thirty years. I am as middle-America as it gets, two generations from the farm, one from the factory.
If we are starting a resistance, who or what is the enemy? I know there are decent Southerners; and I suspect Olympia Snow would be a whole different Republican without Frist and Rove pushing her. The people who like tax cuts and hate Social Security are not a single subset. Germany would have been a much different country without 100 specfic people; Japan not so much; I think you could go thousands deep into the right wing in America and not change a thing. Replacements would be found.
I do sincerely believe that in the next decade we are going into a economic meltdown and a much wider war against jihadists, and things are going to get very ugly in America. The left is not at all prepared as they were by the 1930s. The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts have been exchanged for Bill Gates and Tom Cruise, I can't even hate the rich. Christians, or even Christian Conservatives? Nah, tho it seems to work for some. How do we activate the left to violence, because it was violence, extremism and the threat of them that gave us the New Deal instead of Fascism? Veterans marched on Washington in 1932, and Hoover and MacArthur shot them down, and we got FDR.
The South works for me. It is not something I am proud to do, but hey, when they elect a black Governor or Senator of whatever shade of politics I will give them a break. Til then, I am old enough to be fed up and tired with tolerance.
There's a fine, fine line
Between a commenter, and a troll.
There's a fine, fine line
Between obnoxious, and being droll;
And you never know 'til you've been banned
That you've surely crossed the line.
There's a fine, fine line
Between jest,
And a waste of time.
I do sincerely believe that in the next decade we are going into a economic meltdown and a much wider war against jihadists, and things are going to get very ugly in America.
I believe you. But I have no idea what to do about it. I don't hate the South. On alternate days I take pride in and loathe my Confederate ancestor who walked home to Georgia from the Battle of Chickamauga and who, years later, died an illiterate. If the Resistance needs me, maybe I can rely on him.
More likely, I'd take up drinking as a serious avocation.
I got: The Resistance
Achtung! You are 7% brainwashworthy, 27% antitolerant, and 52% blindly patriotic
Welcome to the Resistance (Der Widerstand)! You believe in freedom, justice, equality, and your country, and you can't be converted to the the dark side.
Breakdown: your Blind Patriotism levels are borderline unhealthy, but you show such a love of people from everywhere and a natural resistance to brainwashing, you would probably focus your energy to fight the Fuehrer with furor, so to speak.
Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would have taken up ARMS against the oppressors. Or even your friends' oppressors. Congratulations!
Less than 5% of all test takers earn a spot in the Resistance!
But then I know that:
1> I can endure torture without breaking.
2> When the Question is asked I can, and have, picked the Rather Die First option. At least three times. Meaning I fully expected to die and choose that over the other options....but did not actually die. Yay. I think.
3> I have stepped in and protected somebody else, complete with loss of blood and broken bones. Not just once.
4> Speaking of which, if I have a given bone, it's been broken. I have very high pain tolerance, am relentlessly loyal and very very stubborn.
5> I know how to blow shit up and kill people.
My first political principle is resistance to tyranny: Royalist, Fascist, Nazi, or Communist, or Midieval Catholic, I say kill them all...before they kill you.
The only problem is, is when is it 'fascism'? Or actual 'oppression'?
More likely, I'd take up drinking as a serious avocation.
There's some hep Black poetess from the '60s, can't remember who now (maybe Nikki Giovanni?), who talks about how even the neighborhood drunk is useful to The Revolution, 'cause he empties out the bottles that then become Molotovs.
I got "you would've missed your Jewish friends, but you would've done nothing about it. Seriously. But rest assured, you would've forgiven yourself eventually." Ack!
Final Solution ...Digby. I take this stuff seriously. Where does it come from? All over. Very unfair to single out the South, but they have political control of the country right now.
I vaguely remember the Kennedy assassination, but clearly remember the Selma march. And the next ten years were crazy times. But what formed me were the last days of Watergate, and pictures of WH interns and young Republicans bawling like babies over the injustice and tragedy of Richard Nixon's resignation.
All over the place on policies (wage-price controls?); personally ugly and unlikeable;with a dozen cabinet members under indictment; there was still a core 25% of the country that would have killed for Richard Nixon. It made me crazy. Permanently.
Now Reagan was a mensch, and his era was tolerable. But I am feeling those feelings again. Who are these people that back this frat punk? How is this possible? I want to find them, and keep them out of power forever. Let me at some regional polls.
You're all such better people than me. Hey Becks, you want to have dinner in the abandoned house of our Jewish friends? We can eat their food and rifle through their things.
Well, is leaving really morally superior? It seems to me that leaving is just a mark of self-preservation, and one of those Symbolic Acts that really doesn't actually do any *good*.
151 and 152 are both true, but I've always been a bit dubious about the moral superiority of simply not participating in something, rather than fighting it. I mean, ok, it's better than tacit participation, but it doesn't do the people who need help a whole lot of good. It's human, and not courageous, and what if one doesn't succeed in leaving? In a way, I think becoming an expat is as much about luck as it is anything else.
Absolutely, but I think in the context of this test leaving is definitely considered morally superior to staying. Do you remember your scores? I don't remember mine, but they weren't very impressive.
But in the actual historical example given in the test, there were Germans who got out and worked for the Allies in the war. A lot of others were non-participants, though, and their moral authority, if any, wouldn't be as strong.
I think I'm saying this more from the pov of thinking of myself as a leaver--I think I would feel (or at least I hope I would feel) that I didn't deserve a great deal of moral approbation for saving my own skin, even if after the fact, and from safety, I fought the political good fight. As opposed to the poor bastards who got stuck behind and ran enormous risks opposing the govt., you know? I even feel like I'd have less empathy *for myself* getting out and working for the Allies than staying behind and keeping your head low out of fear--it's not tough to fight when you're basically safe yourself, you know? Whereas turning a blind eye to things when the only way to fight would be to risk your life and the lives of your family, seems tragic, but eminently human.
Maybe I'm just having an aesthetic reaction to the tragic humanity vs. the grand heroic gesture, or something. I dunno. It's late.
I don't think I entirely disagree with you on that. What's really troubling is that at a certain point, the only people whose resistance from within could have had a serious chance of removing Hitler were themselves complicit in some truly horrific crimes (less so, I suppose, if they had acted before 1939).
On the other hand, after 1956 dissidents had a real impact in many communist Eastern European countries. I know this is stating the obvious, but a lot depends on the particulars of local situations.
Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country.
Oh, that said, if I could work up the courage, I'd organize the shit out of a resistance. Don't worry, Tia. I'll know exactly where the cyanide capsules are.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 9:47 AM
I have to say, I think I would have been into it before I had a kid. At least, I've gotten beat up (literally) often enough for standing up for underdogs that it seems to be part of my character. But now the concept of risking my life seems kind of irresponsible, and I suspect I'd keep my head down and try to get along by neither assisting nor resisting the regime.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 9:49 AM
I'll know exactly where the cyanide capsules are.
And I'll write portfolio-management apps for the revolution, so we can track our P & L in real time.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 9:52 AM
Depends a lot on the code words, the secret handshakes, and the grafitti propaganda. If they suck, I'm totally out.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 9:57 AM
Lucky I don't take birth control pills anymore, because they look awfully similar.
It did occur to me that sometimes I inspire confidence, so maybe some O'Reilly Youth will get drunk and give me some information about troop movements one night, but that would require the lying. Wait! I'm good at lying in email. I could Nerve date the O'Reilly youth!
Hooray, I can contribute!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 9:58 AM
Carl Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan is interesting in this regard. It's available here.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:04 AM
I could write snide pamphlets, if someone kept me safe in a basement and gave me strict deadlines. Or, I could deliver messages, but probably not over a distance of more than a couple of blocks, given my uncanny ability to get lost in my own apartment.
I'm not sensing that I'll be a great help to the Resistance.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:06 AM
I'll be one of those people late to the resistance, but with good cover and contacts on the inside. (Like the baron?)
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:07 AM
I'd like to believe that I'd be organizing the Resistance while looking totally kickass, but I suspect that's just wishful thinking.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:14 AM
I have to say, I think I would have been into it before I had a kid.
That does really affect the outlook. I'd been considering enlisting once my kids were in school and my wife had her degree, but having kids was giving me doubts. Of course, the last couple years the decision has been heavily influenced by the whole "this administration is batshit crazy" thing.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:17 AM
Also, on the actual French resistance, the thing is (as I was mentioning recently on my own blog), Pétain had a lot of legitimacy, and DeGaulle didn't, circa 1940/41. So very few people flocked to the Free French cause early on. Once the Germans invaded Russia, in 41, all the communists, who had been sitting on the sidelines, came in. And then as the food shortages/labor deportations really began in earnest, in 42/43, you started to get grassroots maquis activity in the countryside—people just going into the hills to avoid being sent to labor camps in Germany. And then with Stalingrad/El Alamein, it looked like the Allies were going to win, and more and more people joined the underground to be on the winning side. So people reacted to how personally oppressed they were feeling, and responded to changing circumstances.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:18 AM
FWIW, Gswift, Mr. B. got out b/c we wanted to have kids, and I was so very NOT going to do the single mom thing (or I would've just done it without the marriage part). Plus, after you see kids run up to the wrong man in uniform when the guys get home, you just think, no. That shit fucking sucks for the kids.
Not to mention the whole risking your life thing. Screw that.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:20 AM
Oh, that said, if I could work up the courage, I'd organize the shit out of a resistance.
I can hear it now:
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:22 AM
The thing about scary dangerous stuff is that (or so is my understanding from books, rather than from any actual direct experience) is that you really don't know if you're going to be decent at it until you're actually dealing with it. As noted in the earlier thread, I lie fairly well, which would be useful. On the other hand, I'm also a huge coward and squeamish about pain, both other people's and my own. I suspect that I'd be completely useless at any sort of violent Resistance activity, but I just don't know.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:30 AM
I think I'd be up for some resistance, both nonviolent (preferred) and violent (if necessary).
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:33 AM
14 -- Only one way to find out...
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:34 AM
re: 14
I've met some some battle hardened, tough as nails warriors in my day. They've got nothing on you.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:39 AM
A friend of a friend wanted to become a DEA agent, but withdrew his application after interviews when he realized that infiltrating a ring of drugdealers might involve beating the shit out of an innocent person just to maintain his cover.
I expect that being in the resistance might involve similarly distasteful actions.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:42 AM
Yeah, yeah. You just think I'm tough because I'm rude to you. (But I do appreciate the compliment.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:45 AM
It seems to me that there's something disproportionate to resisting the Nazis because of... patriotism. Here we're talking about one of the greatest evils in human history, and the reason you're going to resist is because you love your country? If your love of country is at such a high level that it overrides all other objections to Nazism, then you're basically a proto-Nazi yourself.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:45 AM
I was a picket captain during a Teaching Assistants' strike. This is certainly nowhere near the level of La Resistance, of course, but there were really stressful aspects of it, like angry people driving their cars into our picket lines and what have you.
I felt like a wreck during the whole thing, but months later I heard that another picket captain described me as exuding "Zen-like calm" on the line.
So I'd probably be somewhat useful in the event of a Revolution.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:48 AM
I don't think so. Patriotism, at its best, is an affection for your country that is similar to the way you feel about your family. You don't excuse bad behavior on the part of either your country or your family. Instead, you're personally ashamed of and hurt by the misdeeds of either. I can see being strongly emotionally motivated, say, as a French person, to resist the Nazis not only, but partially because they were making my country implicit in their crimes.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:52 AM
I disagree with 20 as well. It depends, obviously, on what manner your patriotism takes, and what it is that you think defines your nation.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:59 AM
I don't think I ever understood nationalism until I sat down and thought seriously about how it would feel to see foreign troops galumping all over the Bay Area. The everyday humiliations of occupation might tip me over into action when abstract horror might not.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:10 AM
I know a number of graffiti and print artists whose service I might enlist to the cause. I submit my catalogue and knowledge to the revolutionary propaganda authority. Aux armes, citoyens!
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:10 AM
24: The Bay Area isn't "America" as a whole. Is it really possible to have affection for something so big and abstract?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:24 AM
Shit, I ain't gonna be talking about the serious stuff on a blog comment thread. However the first step is propaganda. Most lefty elite Yankees are going to be queasy about torture and collateral damage, so the enemy must be demonized and dehumanized.
Since I think the vast majority of America's problems lie in the corner bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, "All white Southerners are evil scum, or will grow up to be evil scum. The good ones left long ago. Their disappearance would be no loss." If you find this offensive,you are not ready for the war. It should start more subtle, but the adequate callousness should be prepared. Mock the accents. Make fun of NASCAR. Point out how the Dixie Chicks aren't really all that liberal. Write about slavery and Jim Crow a lot, find Generals in the Phillippine and Vietnam wars that were Southern, even if most of them were not.
They have been hating on us for a long time, we need to catch up. As far as what I am prepared to do, remember the words of Patton:"The point is not to die for your cause, but make the other guy die for his."
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:28 AM
Since I think the vast majority of America's problems lie in the corner bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, "All white Southerners are evil scum, or will grow up to be evil scum. The good ones left long ago. Their disappearance would be no loss." If you find this offensive,you are not ready for the war. It should start more subtle, but the adequate callousness should be prepared. Mock the accents. Make fun of NASCAR. Point out how the Dixie Chicks aren't really all that liberal. Write about slavery and Jim Crow a lot, find Generals in the Phillippine and Vietnam wars that were Southern, even if most of them were not.
What? I mean, lots and lots of white Southerners are on our side. And lots more people nationwide like them. And I just don't see the political profit in it even if it weren't unpleasant.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:33 AM
Right now, I worry about whether I could do the right thing, but based on my own history--I'm a notorious worrier and am generally more upset by imagining difficult things than by the things themselves--I think that when it came down to it, I'd be there.
I'm pretty sure that I'd be caught up in the movement aspect of it. John McCain's talk about he importance of serving a cause greater than yourself is pretty offensive coming from him, but I do understand the impulse.
Personally,I often find crises easier to deal with than the more routinized aspects of everyday existence. So, frankly, I'd probably welcome it.
And this disgusts me, because I appreciate the ordinary bourgeois values of stability and prosperity. I feel a bit like all those pro war people who found the idea of war thrilling and who found the 90's boring, the so-called National Greatness types.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:43 AM
26: I think so. It's beautiful country, most of it. Honestly, a lot of my patriotism is about landscape, which is maybe stupid, but there you go.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:45 AM
Yeah. Adam - have you ever lived outside the US? That makes it easier to feel affection towards the country as a whole (to quote Billy Bragg: "What do they know of England, who only England know?") I've never felt as fond of the US as a whole as I did when I was living in Samoa.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:48 AM
Suck it up, Adam. The US rules, and you know it. The basic decency of most people in this country is nothing short of astonishing. Even the ones I hate. And I'm a closer to bob's point of view than I'm at all comfortable with.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:03 PM
Well, most people in most places are basically decent.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:06 PM
LB's 31 beat me to the punch. I never really felt too "American" until I lived abroad.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:06 PM
how it would feel to see foreign troops galumping all over the Bay Area
Having lived in Lower Manhattan immediately after 9/11, where we were occupied by American troops for about four months, with their machine guns and checkpoints and random bag and ID checks, that was one scary, horrible, demoralizing fucking experience. We had no rights and were treated like crap, and these were troops who were sympathetic to what we had just gone through. I can't imagine how awful an occupation by troops who weren't "on your side" would feel like.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:09 PM
The good ones left long ago.
That's just silly.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:12 PM
Well, yeah. There is a political problem with the relationship between white Southerners and the rest of the country, but demonizing them as a class is just nuts.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:14 PM
There is a political problem with the relationship between white Southerners and the rest of the country
Don't fall into this trap. White Southerners are hardly monolithic. All you have to do to bob's initial comment is change the object to Muslims or Jews and it's indistinguishable from LittleGreenFootballs or Stormfront.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:20 PM
35: Yeah, same thing during the WTO protests. The fact that I couldn't go out for a walk in my own neighborhood without getting gassed (which happened) really, really pissed me off.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:21 PM
John McCain's talk about he importance of serving a cause greater than yourself is pretty offensive coming from him
I'm no fan of John McCain, but I'm at a loss to understand why this kind of talk should be particularly offensive coming from him. wasn't he one of the few prominent republicans who didn't have better things to do than go to vietnam? *
*not intended as an endorsement of america's actions in vietnam, either.
I'd be crap at revolution, I think, if I had to fight people, but since the Oppressors will be unleashing their fully automated robot army, no problem.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:21 PM
31 and 34: I spent about 6 months in England, and I was acutely aware of my Americaness, but my main feeling was that I just wished that I could stay there. I hate that it rains all the time, and that it's further north than Boston which means that the winter days are even shorter than they are here. I don't think that I could make it through a Scottish winter. (Edinburgh for Hogmonay was wonderful, but I could barely make it out of bed when it was pitch black at 8:30 AM.) I'm sure I'd want to take lots of winter vacations to Italy and Spain, but I'd be quite happy there. I felt more at home in the UK than I've ever felt in my own country.
I'm simultaneously proud of my Yankee ancestors and sort of sorry that they left England.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:21 PM
I lived in Oxford for a while.
The difference between rural, suburban, and urban seem to me to be more salient than the differences among most places I'm likely to visit.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:23 PM
38: I agree entirely. I think bob's point (and, IIRC, he's a Southerner living in the South) is that it's already been done to us ("the North"), and that's why the Republicans are so successful. I can't count how many Republican blogs I've seen offer some variation of "I can't stand this Administration. I would never vote for a Democrat, but I might not go to the polls in '06."
And his larger point, as I take it, is that until you're willing to do bad things to very good people, you're not likely to be much help to the Resistance. And, thus, ultimately, I probably fall into the "not much help" camp.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:24 PM
38: You're right to say what you did -- I was trying to avoid saying what it sounds as if I did say (that there's something wrong with white Southerners as a monolithic class). But there is a political problem about the relationship between, shall we say, the image of white Southernness as the paradigm of wholesome, normal, Americanness, and the rest of the country.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:25 PM
Oh yes, Becks. I worked on Wall St. back then, and on the few days the air wasn't toxic, I would try to eat my lunch outside, only to get "moved along" by men with machine guns. Not pleasant.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:26 PM
Or what Tim said.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:26 PM
40: He comes froma military family, so that's not really a surprise. I wasn't thinking of his military service so much as the way he got into politics and the ways that he used his wife's business connections. I'm also thinkign of his refusal to do teh principled thing and decry the confederate flag in South Carolina. Basically, he strikes me as an opportunist.
The thing is that the people who talk the loudest about the importance of self-sacrifice tend to be the rich white guys who are already comfortable and have it made. Other people simply do it. Maybe what they're really doing is exhorting themselves to live up to what they know that they haven't achieved themselves.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:27 PM
And his larger point
Ah. Well, yes. That's probably true.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:29 PM
he strikes me as an opportunist.
You think?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:33 PM
35 ad 45: I know someone who went out East to do some freelance reporting after 9/11. He described the scene in lower Manhattan just as you both have.
He said that he thought that it was kind of ironic that it was much easier for him to get up close--perhaps too close--to the Pentagon than it was to get to the WTC. The Pentagon was much less militarized than New York.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:33 PM
47: to what they know that they haven't achieved themselves s/b "to what they know
thatthey haven't achieved themselves."teh=the, of course, but I'm very annoyed that I don't seem to be able to type "thinking" properly.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:39 PM
Living in the designated evil southern quadrant (Virginny), I'm actually more perplexed the red staters in the "fly-over" plains states (what is the matter with Kansas, anyway?). Them corn-fed boys play a lot of football, and I bet they put up a good fight...
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:55 PM
What's so perplexing? They're Republicans, just like they've always been.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:08 PM
Well, McCain was, by all accounts, extraordinarily brave while a POW. I mean, the dude was offered early release when his captors discovered his father's high position in the US military, and he refused unless his fellow prisoners were released also. This from a guy who had been literally bayoneted in the nuts and was badly in need of medical care.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:25 PM
53: "Perplexed" is perhaps not the best word, and this is anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But I've had a much harder time relating to middle-Americans, versus Southerners. Seems like more a cultural gap to be overcome (and it's a lot of ground to cover once the Resistance has to send secret missives into the heart of Topeka). I'm also obviously talking ex recta.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:27 PM
Really? Where did you grow up?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:33 PM
Yeah, but determining who the real fascists are may be a problem. In westside LA or downtown SF, or Sac, the takeover could as easily be brought about by public employee unions and hipster statists as by hick xtian types: Nurse Ratched , on the march! .
Posted by Noir | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:40 PM
Wow, good point, Noir.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:43 PM
Hey look, it's the Troll of Sorrow!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:43 PM
Damn those hipster statists!
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:44 PM
Is that really the Troll of Sorrow? Should I disemvowel him/her?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:45 PM
And you laugh now, but come the morn, you'd best not be seen by my Bklyn compatriots without your trucker cap.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:47 PM
Psst...meeting tonight in the basement of American Apparel.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:48 PM
What for? I mean, if someone gets bizarrely long-winded and boring, that's one thing, but talking about disemvoweling anyone who's commented once, and not particularly insanely, seems a trifle hair-triggerish.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:48 PM
Is it? That's not my name, but you can be a decent 'liberal" hypocrite by invoking "troll"--and make the goils happy too. And I doubt you could identify Nurse Ratched.
As I said, liberal statists are generally as close to fascism as hicks
get me, girly
Posted by .......... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:49 PM
Ooo, I like the Bugs Bunny accent.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:50 PM
(The trucker cap was just a ruse so that the counterrevolutionary infiltrators will reveal themselves as spies. All true children of the revolution will know that trucker caps are so 2004.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:51 PM
It is the Troll of Sorrow! If he emits any classic ToSisms, we can put them on a coffee cup and sell them—for money! Ho ho ho!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:53 PM
LB, you've gone soft. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to expel you from the hipster statist party. And you know too much, so you see, well...
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:54 PM
There ya go, redski. Yr not only a great marxist but a wit too! Another Bukharin replicant, like most around here. Rouge-Bots.
Posted by ............ | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:57 PM
This is so awesome. Now Unfogged can be like every other comments section in history.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 1:58 PM
SB: How did you know? I thought you were being a little hair-trigger, but clearly you spotted him. (And what's the origin of the ToS name? I've seen him at J&B's and the Weblog, of course, but I never heard the naming story.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:01 PM
Ah don't get your state-issued panties in a wad. Ah'm finished phor now. There's this miraculous device called a delete button if you don't care for it. Go on, grrls, git yr J-Edgar on.
Posted by ................. | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:04 PM
How did you know?
It was the URL, and the drunken typing, and the random monosyllable handle. Pretty much reeked of ToS.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:04 PM
Quine sucks.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:05 PM
re: 55
I think the resistance would be the only thing that could motivate me to go to Topeka. And this is coming from someone living an hour and a half away. Does this make me a Rouge-Bot?
Posted by troll of taro | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:06 PM
In order to become a true Rouge-Bot, you must practice spiritual whorefare.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:07 PM
Quine sucks.
Posted by Rouge-Bot | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:08 PM
Ah beg to differ, puto. Quine gives me teh ORGASM ya liberal wank wad.
Posted by Hank | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:09 PM
Heh. Yeah there's a lot of whorefare--not so spiritual. But then some of us are not so opposed to whorefare..........rate quotes? rouge schmouge......do it for the cause schwester!
Quine? Doesn't Bogus Benjy W. post around here? He's more of a Quinean than about anyone around the weblog malt shoppe circle--but a closet-case Quinean. Ah'm more trad. Russellian: anyone who shagged TS Eliots' byatch can't be all that bad.
Posted by Shank | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:18 PM
I thought bob mcmanus was referring to the sort of propaganda campaign necessary to convince coffee-shop revolutionaries to take up arms against Southerners: nasty and hate-filled.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:23 PM
Ooh, the ToS! All the boys here can flex their liberal hypocrite muscles now. My panties are all a-flutter.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:25 PM
That's right, dear: the ToS-- 3/4 irish; 1/4 dutch-- is a lovah, not a phighter. -- except when it's some two-bit joik-off xtian from Cafe Weblog . Youse want me to take of 'em? Awaht we work somethin' somethin' out.
Posted by ..... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:31 PM
Ok, ick.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:37 PM
Yass, compared to yr regular janitor du jour ah'm probably lacking a certain Caponeish sort of quality. Whatevah. Smoochies.
Posted by .................. | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:46 PM
Janitor?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:47 PM
No, this is good, let's keep engaging. It's working.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:49 PM
Yass, compared to yr regular janitor du jour, Miss B-PhD, ah'm probably lacking a certain Caponeish sort of quality. Whatevah. When ya want to ride Amsterdam style give the Big ToS a call. Smoochies.
Posted by ............... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:49 PM
Wow. We have evidence of editing. I would have thought that this had to be pure stream of consciousness, but I guess not.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:50 PM
Is the janitor for my benefit?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:51 PM
A janitor would benefit us all.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 2:53 PM
I think that Unfogged will be good for him.
At The Weblog, we have unconditionally blocked him for life, no matter what the content of a particular comment is -- that is, we don't block ideas, we block persons. Every time he shows up on a new site, I recommend to the owner that they adopt the same policy. They always say that he's not so bad and that such a policy would probably be overreacting. I always turn out to have been right -- no one has ever been really glad that they decided to give the Troll of Sorrow a chance.
Anthony named the Troll of Sorrow during one phase of our offensive against his comments -- that is, the editing phase. He thought the name reflected the fact that the man behind the troll is obviously rather pathetic. Now it has been expanded by some to include the word "constant," in an homage to the movie O Brother Where Art Thou.
In short, you must use all the means at your disposal to make sure he never comments here again.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:16 PM
Ooo The Voice of Authori-tay! Phuck you, you pathetic , cretinous, irrational worm whose career depends on lies, misinformation and fallacy. You're no intellectual, no ethicist, no filosophe, Kostco the Screepture Boi--you're another half-witted bible skool flunkie, schoolmarm censor and all-around dim-wit--anyone with half a brain realized that years ago.. But you've managed to convince some dupes online that you have some sort of credibility. What a laff. You're the okie-folkie dokie as well, as all bible-school deviants izz.
Posted by ............ | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:23 PM
Ok, Bridgeplate, stop funnin'.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:29 PM
I like troll of constant sorrow.
a.c.: He's referring to an exchange that started with your story, but B and Apo, and a few others, including me, were playing with the idea. So he's been reading.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:31 PM
Unless the signs of editing indicate that it is Bridgeplate.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:33 PM
The MSN thing is suspicious -- normally he'd use Yahoo.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:36 PM
Rouge-Bot, yes. Bible-school deviant, no. I can live with that, I guess.
But what role would the ToS play in the resistance??!? And how do the janitors fit in?
Posted by troll of taro | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:36 PM
I am a troll of constant sorrow
I've been postin' all my day.
Ah bid pharewell to ol' Jowhn Holbo
Ah will try not to act so goldarn'd crazed.
(He will try not to be so crazed!)
On lots of blogs Ah've been in trubble
No fil-o-sofes here on earth Ah found
For in this blog Ah'm bound to ramble
Ah'm a bitch like Ezra Pound.
[chorus] Biaotch! Phuck Ezra Pound
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:41 PM
That's purdy amusing--not. My tastes are more like Bach & Debussy--a bit too deep for you or the Weblog folkie-okie evangelicals. Sidin' with the Weblog liberal xtians, are ya, Cula? You don't know sheiet about me or what ah write about--and surely squat about Pound as well. Follow the par-tay line tho--that's expected of bogus irrational PC leftists these days.
Posted by ........... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:48 PM
we've got our own gollum now.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:51 PM
Okay, seriously, this is too grammatical to be him.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:53 PM
You know what he needs? His own blog. He could call it The Bridge.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:56 PM
I've actually been playing Debussy and Bach in my car stereo for a few weeks now. Before that, it was Shostakovich and Chopin and more Bach.
Incidentally, my listening is made much easier by this audio plugin I made, so that soft parts aren't so damn soft that you're constantly messing with the volume. This is especially vital for car-listening, as road noise tends to reduce the listenable dynamic range a lot.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:01 PM
like, seriously, Dewdsko, have you realized yet you don't have a real degree. You don't have any credentials. You don't have any intellectual authori-TAY. Screepture is not a valid source of knowledge, nor is postmod or marxism . In effect you're like a Miss Cleo who can barely conjugate etre et avoir. The average RN is quite a bit more intelligent and useful than some pathetic seminarian j-o, or English major mountebank for that matter. Go back to like Padua 1300, fraud. Comprenez-vous cela, chienne ?
Posted by ........... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:03 PM
Okay, now I'm wondering if Wolfson's involved somehow.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:07 PM
Do you know, I was just thinking of Miss Cleo earlier today.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:13 PM
She knows you were thinking of her, love.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:14 PM
Get the ho-speak on, goils--ho-roscopes! Hey, if you can't argue, or put forth any sort of valid claims, or produce anything resembling viable research, at least you can be catty, salacious and snide and plenty of dimwits (like Kostco for one, Berube, etc .) will mistake as you an intellectual--. PheministPhraud.com
Posted by ............... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:19 PM
he hates and loves kotsko as he hates and loves himself. I've got a bit of sympathy, for he was something like me, once.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:54 PM
I have to believe he can come back.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 4:58 PM
let's not ban our gollum. I'll bet he gets tired of us before we him. And in our darkest moments, he'll bite off the offending digit, and save the day.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 5:23 PM
I'm already tired of him, though.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 5:49 PM
I very nearly blocked the IP address, but figured that might be presumptuous before checking with the other six posters.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:02 PM
Isn't presumptuousness part of the crushing burden of leading the bloggetariat into the brave new world? Or something like that.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:06 PM
leading the bloggetariat
I'm not a leader. I'm the court jester.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:10 PM
That's cool, Miss Byatch PhD, Salome du jour , I tired of you like 3 years ago when I stumbled upon your lame site and spent at least 10 mintues or so wincing at your sophistries, sentimentalities and, er, sapphistries. Unlike you, however, I would never pull a J-Edgar and argue that you should be shut down/deleted/moderated: the web needs more tasteless soft-porn les sites, darlin.'
Did ya say IP addy? U go grrl. Ize only got like 30,000 more. Can we Good morning, United Arab Emirates. com? Like, I-shallah, dude.
Rilly I tire of this skanky site too.
Posted by Vati | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:10 PM
Me and my dogs been lost along the Trinity River for the afternoon. Y'all seem to have done ok. I originally am from the Great Lakes area near Chicago, and lived in Dallas for thirty years. I am as middle-America as it gets, two generations from the farm, one from the factory.
If we are starting a resistance, who or what is the enemy? I know there are decent Southerners; and I suspect Olympia Snow would be a whole different Republican without Frist and Rove pushing her. The people who like tax cuts and hate Social Security are not a single subset. Germany would have been a much different country without 100 specfic people; Japan not so much; I think you could go thousands deep into the right wing in America and not change a thing. Replacements would be found.
I do sincerely believe that in the next decade we are going into a economic meltdown and a much wider war against jihadists, and things are going to get very ugly in America. The left is not at all prepared as they were by the 1930s. The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts have been exchanged for Bill Gates and Tom Cruise, I can't even hate the rich. Christians, or even Christian Conservatives? Nah, tho it seems to work for some. How do we activate the left to violence, because it was violence, extremism and the threat of them that gave us the New Deal instead of Fascism? Veterans marched on Washington in 1932, and Hoover and MacArthur shot them down, and we got FDR.
The South works for me. It is not something I am proud to do, but hey, when they elect a black Governor or Senator of whatever shade of politics I will give them a break. Til then, I am old enough to be fed up and tired with tolerance.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:12 PM
Ize only got like 30,000 more.
And I got nothing but time, perservance, and access to the delete button, amigo.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:13 PM
I also wasn't blogging three years ago. But it's true that all us girls look alike.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:16 PM
I am remarkably silly. [Edited by my cock for added clarity.]
Posted by ............ | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:23 PM
Oh, apo, as if you ever shied away from being presumptuous.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:44 PM
I am a silly, silly person.
[edited by management for clarity]
Posted by .............. | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:53 PM
Is it the troll of sorrow, or some mischief-maker playing with the the troll-of-sorrow-bot?
was there ever a real troll of sorrow? in any case, it has now become indistinguishable from its infinitely reproducible simulation.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:57 PM
I am a silly, silly person. I can't emphasize that enough.
[edited by management]
Posted by ...... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 7:00 PM
There's a fine, fine line
Between a commenter, and a troll.
There's a fine, fine line
Between obnoxious, and being droll;
And you never know 'til you've been banned
That you've surely crossed the line.
There's a fine, fine line
Between jest,
And a waste of time.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:17 PM
I do sincerely believe that in the next decade we are going into a economic meltdown and a much wider war against jihadists, and things are going to get very ugly in America.
I believe you. But I have no idea what to do about it. I don't hate the South. On alternate days I take pride in and loathe my Confederate ancestor who walked home to Georgia from the Battle of Chickamauga and who, years later, died an illiterate. If the Resistance needs me, maybe I can rely on him.
More likely, I'd take up drinking as a serious avocation.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:18 PM
Bob's beliefs on this issue, which he has discussed at length recently, are probably considerably more extreme than yours.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:24 PM
I'd like to think that I would but I know how I've acted in the past and wonder if I'd have the guts.
Well, you could take the test.
I got:
The Resistance
Achtung! You are 7% brainwashworthy, 27% antitolerant, and 52% blindly patriotic
Welcome to the Resistance (Der Widerstand)! You believe in freedom, justice, equality, and your country, and you can't be converted to the the dark side.
Breakdown: your Blind Patriotism levels are borderline unhealthy, but you show such a love of people from everywhere and a natural resistance to brainwashing, you would probably focus your energy to fight the Fuehrer with furor, so to speak.
Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would have taken up ARMS against the oppressors. Or even your friends' oppressors. Congratulations!
Less than 5% of all test takers earn a spot in the Resistance!
But then I know that:
1> I can endure torture without breaking.
2> When the Question is asked I can, and have, picked the Rather Die First option. At least three times. Meaning I fully expected to die and choose that over the other options....but did not actually die. Yay. I think.
3> I have stepped in and protected somebody else, complete with loss of blood and broken bones. Not just once.
4> Speaking of which, if I have a given bone, it's been broken. I have very high pain tolerance, am relentlessly loyal and very very stubborn.
5> I know how to blow shit up and kill people.
My first political principle is resistance to tyranny: Royalist, Fascist, Nazi, or Communist, or Midieval Catholic, I say kill them all...before they kill you.
The only problem is, is when is it 'fascism'? Or actual 'oppression'?
That is all.
ash
['Is it fucking nine already? Sheesh.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:30 PM
More likely, I'd take up drinking as a serious avocation.
There's some hep Black poetess from the '60s, can't remember who now (maybe Nikki Giovanni?), who talks about how even the neighborhood drunk is useful to The Revolution, 'cause he empties out the bottles that then become Molotovs.
Maybe you could apply for that position.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:31 PM
Maybe you could apply for that position.
I've gotten a lot of practice over the last six years or so. Where should I send my application?
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:38 PM
I am a silly, silly person.
[edited by management]
Posted by ................... | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:38 PM
Ash, I get "you would have bailed and left the country." Who knows, though.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:40 PM
Hey, me too.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:41 PM
And then we could have expat Thanksgiving together, LB.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:44 PM
I got "you would've missed your Jewish friends, but you would've done nothing about it. Seriously. But rest assured, you would've forgiven yourself eventually." Ack!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:45 PM
Yeah, I'm not taking that test. Like I said, I used to be a kiddie Reaganite--I'm pretty sure I would "pass" the test.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:48 PM
I got expat too. Can I come to Thanksgiving?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:48 PM
Luckily, it's an internet quiz with zero validity.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:48 PM
Sure!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:48 PM
I got the same as Becks. About what I expected, actually; I'm no hero.
(In actual Nazi Germany, of course, I would have had bigger problems.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:49 PM
If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country.
Probably. Glamorously, I like to imagine I would've killed myself if I'd been stopped at the border.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:49 PM
We'll sing nostalgic German songs, and knit balaclavas for the RAF.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:49 PM
Knitting, yes. Singing nostalgic German songs, not so much.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:51 PM
silly!
Posted by .............. | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:52 PM
silly!
Posted by .............. | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:52 PM
Final Solution ...Digby. I take this stuff seriously. Where does it come from? All over. Very unfair to single out the South, but they have political control of the country right now.
I vaguely remember the Kennedy assassination, but clearly remember the Selma march. And the next ten years were crazy times. But what formed me were the last days of Watergate, and pictures of WH interns and young Republicans bawling like babies over the injustice and tragedy of Richard Nixon's resignation.
All over the place on policies (wage-price controls?); personally ugly and unlikeable;with a dozen cabinet members under indictment; there was still a core 25% of the country that would have killed for Richard Nixon. It made me crazy. Permanently.
Now Reagan was a mensch, and his era was tolerable. But I am feeling those feelings again. Who are these people that back this frat punk? How is this possible? I want to find them, and keep them out of power forever. Let me at some regional polls.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 9:43 PM
Apparently, I would have left too.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:08 PM
You're all such better people than me. Hey Becks, you want to have dinner in the abandoned house of our Jewish friends? We can eat their food and rifle through their things.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:12 PM
Well, is leaving really morally superior? It seems to me that leaving is just a mark of self-preservation, and one of those Symbolic Acts that really doesn't actually do any *good*.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:21 PM
I assume the test considers it superior; you may not be doing much good, but you're not participating in evil (even tacitly) either.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:24 PM
You can leave and resist, you know.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:30 PM
Maybe you can.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:31 PM
151 and 152 are both true, but I've always been a bit dubious about the moral superiority of simply not participating in something, rather than fighting it. I mean, ok, it's better than tacit participation, but it doesn't do the people who need help a whole lot of good. It's human, and not courageous, and what if one doesn't succeed in leaving? In a way, I think becoming an expat is as much about luck as it is anything else.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:34 PM
Absolutely, but I think in the context of this test leaving is definitely considered morally superior to staying. Do you remember your scores? I don't remember mine, but they weren't very impressive.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:39 PM
But in the actual historical example given in the test, there were Germans who got out and worked for the Allies in the war. A lot of others were non-participants, though, and their moral authority, if any, wouldn't be as strong.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:41 PM
I think I'm saying this more from the pov of thinking of myself as a leaver--I think I would feel (or at least I hope I would feel) that I didn't deserve a great deal of moral approbation for saving my own skin, even if after the fact, and from safety, I fought the political good fight. As opposed to the poor bastards who got stuck behind and ran enormous risks opposing the govt., you know? I even feel like I'd have less empathy *for myself* getting out and working for the Allies than staying behind and keeping your head low out of fear--it's not tough to fight when you're basically safe yourself, you know? Whereas turning a blind eye to things when the only way to fight would be to risk your life and the lives of your family, seems tragic, but eminently human.
Maybe I'm just having an aesthetic reaction to the tragic humanity vs. the grand heroic gesture, or something. I dunno. It's late.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 10:52 PM
I don't think I entirely disagree with you on that. What's really troubling is that at a certain point, the only people whose resistance from within could have had a serious chance of removing Hitler were themselves complicit in some truly horrific crimes (less so, I suppose, if they had acted before 1939).
On the other hand, after 1956 dissidents had a real impact in many communist Eastern European countries. I know this is stating the obvious, but a lot depends on the particulars of local situations.
I scored expatriate, by the way.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:21 PM
For the record, I was 79 ("Hank"), but none of the others. You faithless persons.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:49 PM
A Sorrow, and a Sorrow, and a Sorrow,
Trolled in his petty way this thread today.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 11:58 PM
Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 4:28 AM
Kommandant! woo! monocle!
Posted by Halfway Done | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:43 AM
Oh, what a silly person I am.
Posted by Cula | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:58 AM
less so, I suppose, if they had acted before 1939
Wasn't there some plot that started in 1938 and kept getting pushed back until it got absorbed into the July plot of 1944? I forget.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:23 PM
ITYM "Monocles! Hooray!".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:27 PM
164: A circle of conspirators, with a variety of schemes over time, yes. There's a sort of family-tree of the schemes of these people.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 3:34 PM
157: Yup, that's pretty much how I'd feel. I ain't no Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 5:58 PM
Yeah, all you expats better feel bad, 'cuz I'm so gonna steal all your stuff before I get killed by the advancing Red Army.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:02 PM
I came in as Adolf Hitler, but I lied all the way through it.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 6:55 PM
Apostropher is the Führer!
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:06 PM
I'm too lazy to be an apostrophührer.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-16-06 7:24 PM