HOWL!
Writing for the clod hopping masses, I enjoy discovering such a writer as Joe. Hat tips to Counterpunch for turning us on to him.
"Then too, there is a huge number for whom America's university system is a sheltered workshop; people who simply could not survive in the real working world, which, miserable as it may be, nevertheless demands a modicum of practicality and some scant ability to socialize. I once dated a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics who, honest to god, let her Irish wolfhound shit all over the house and completely destroy every piece of furniture in her place until she was forced to sleep in the attic crawlspace in a sleeping bag, and actually did not understand why nobody ever accepted her dinner party invitations. She was not, by the way, brilliant or eccentric. Just completely helpless and out of it in her own little corner of academic goo-goo-land. Yet out there on the plains of Washington State University hers was a reasonably respected intellect."
Oh, there is much more:
"Those who do see the system for what it is are either worn down by the sheer mass of our institutions, or construct elaborate mental architecture to bridge over and avoid the truth. While their efforts are often applauded taken up by fellow intellectuals -- post modernism has been the latest of these, and like all such constructions, contains a maybe one or two fly-shit sized specks of truth -- they are utterly lost in the national machinery of fabrication. Text is not reality. Hell, reality isn't even reality in this country.
It is not too hard to grasp why unlettered but intuitive -- and not a little bit vengeful -- Chinese peasants in their revolution killed, humiliated and imprisoned the intellectuals. If Mao got one thing right it was that those intellectuals who pretend to ignore the existence of class, or refuse to live at the level of the most common class, are actually class exploiters, and entertain the pretense at their own eventual peril. No amount of text, no amount of ideology or pretense can ultimately protect us from reality, something which Americans are about to learn the hardest way possible."
Pursue the link at: Joe Bageant: A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard
"Then too, there is a huge number for whom America's university system is a sheltered workshop; people who simply could not survive in the real working world, which, miserable as it may be, nevertheless demands a modicum of practicality and some scant ability to socialize. I once dated a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics who, honest to god, let her Irish wolfhound shit all over the house and completely destroy every piece of furniture in her place until she was forced to sleep in the attic crawlspace in a sleeping bag, and actually did not understand why nobody ever accepted her dinner party invitations. She was not, by the way, brilliant or eccentric. Just completely helpless and out of it in her own little corner of academic goo-goo-land. Yet out there on the plains of Washington State University hers was a reasonably respected intellect."
Oh, there is much more:
"Those who do see the system for what it is are either worn down by the sheer mass of our institutions, or construct elaborate mental architecture to bridge over and avoid the truth. While their efforts are often applauded taken up by fellow intellectuals -- post modernism has been the latest of these, and like all such constructions, contains a maybe one or two fly-shit sized specks of truth -- they are utterly lost in the national machinery of fabrication. Text is not reality. Hell, reality isn't even reality in this country.
It is not too hard to grasp why unlettered but intuitive -- and not a little bit vengeful -- Chinese peasants in their revolution killed, humiliated and imprisoned the intellectuals. If Mao got one thing right it was that those intellectuals who pretend to ignore the existence of class, or refuse to live at the level of the most common class, are actually class exploiters, and entertain the pretense at their own eventual peril. No amount of text, no amount of ideology or pretense can ultimately protect us from reality, something which Americans are about to learn the hardest way possible."
Pursue the link at: Joe Bageant: A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard
No comments:
Post a Comment