<p>Or, in other words, Sophomoric Word Salad from the Sophomore (well…she may only be a Freshman; she isn’t yet old enough to vote but is clearly old enough to implicitly know more than any of the well educated adults here). </p>
<p>I find her amusing though, so sometimes play along.</p>
<p>Kluge,</p>
<p>fascist? do you prefer it when Rush refers to feminists as fascists?</p>
<p>As to definitions (for common people):</p>
<p>fascist P Pronunciation Key (f sh st)
n.
<p>adj.
<p>fascism P Pronunciation Key (f sh z m)
n.
<p>Allmusic,</p>
<p>Perhaps in the future you could be specific as to what you don’t like about a specific post of mine, instead of slinging around (again and again) what you don’t like about those you find amusing, like me…I only wish that I could return the compliment.:(</p>
<p>FS, I’ll be honest and unsnarky here. I really do find you to be interesting and intelligent (despite our disparate political views), but with an air of intellectual superiority that really isn’t all that becoming in someone your age. Your posts on this thread to Tahunt are case in point. </p>
<p>I really do appreciate your confidence and security in your world view…to a point. However, you could attempt to participate in the discussion, listen, offer a give and take and admit that there is still something left to learn (because, after all, what will you do up there in Hanover if you already know it all?).</p>
<p>Just a suggestion, which you are free to ignore.</p>
<p>
I’m curious. Are you are referring to FountainSiren?</p>
<p>
DRJ4: I’m curious. Are you are referring to FountainSiren?</p>
<p>
DRJ4: Apparently so.</p>
<p>kluge: I’m not sure what made my father so susceptible to talking media heads. A true Depression Baby, he experienced suffering and severe deprivation. He certainly earned his success the hard way–up until his late 30’s when my mother’s parents died and left them a financial cushion. </p>
<p>Now wealthy beyond his childhood imagination, he does not trust that wealth and hardly enjoys it. I tease him into spending by listing all the frivolous things I am going to buy with my cut of his money. </p>
<p>Still, I am not sure his childhood deprivation led to his susceptibility. He was a community leader during the civil rights movement, setting up free day care centers in low income parts of the city. He still does volunteer work in the community. Perhaps when his ‘Dream’ society did not materialize on the back of his efforts, he then became easy prey for venomous evangelizing?</p>
<p>My mother, equally active in the community in her youth, voted for Eugene McCarthy (!) and George W Bush (in 2000 not 2004). She is a voracious reader and learner. An independent thinker, she leaves the house when my father turns on his media heads. She’s not on anyone’s hook.</p>
<p>I wonder if the spike in community mindedness and idealism in the 60’s was a vapor trail following the horror of two world wars. Now, a generation beyond that trail of sweet utopian dreams, we have our current political climate, with it’s neutered and ineffective Democratic party. Like Lessing, I wonder what the connection might be.</p>
<p>Lessing, who was born in 1919 in Persia, grew up in what is now Zimbabwe and moved to England after WWII. Her recent writings are a reflection on her experience of living an idealistic, radically liberal lifestyle in the aftermath of war and conflict. </p>
<p><a href=“Her”>quote</a> early years were… spent absorbing her father’s bitter memories of World War I… “We are all of us made by war,” Lessing has written, “twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it.”
[/quote]
</p>
<p>True enough. We forget those World Wars–which had an enormous impact on our boomer upbringings. Out of sight, out of mind. After a long absence from New York City, I returned for a recent visit and instantly felt the impact of 9/11–on the much-dampened spirits of long time friends living in Mnahattan.</p>
<p>So what do you call a leader whose "staff’ says the leader is always right…just wondering</p>
<p>Leona Helmsley?</p>
<p>And she was a bit of a facsist i would gather</p>
<p>Allmusic,</p>
<p>As I understand your post, my style and age offend you. </p>
<p>Of course I am hurt;), but to each his own. However, it is worth noting that a famous member of your generation once opined, with some wisdom, *I hope I die before I get old.* As I understand it, the sentiment was all the rage with your swell generationof course the Scribner who penned this famous line has suffered the great misfortune and indignity of actually having to live a rather long life, as counter-cultural lives go. Hes now over 50, shoring up his investments while still raging on righteously about the system. Ring any bells?</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you are actually dealing with the <em>content</em> of this thread, should I assume that you think it good style and erudite form to refer to a class of people as fascist-- as long as you dont like them and think that a good part of your audience wont like them either? That is to say: playing to the cheap seats.</p>
<p>To call someone fascist is not the same as saying they are in error, or simply wrong; it has a historical contextfrom the Nazis to the lunatics who shaved their heads and referred to themselves, appropriately, as skinheads, all the while attacking Jews, Blacks and Arabs and calling for some form of Aryan brotherhood. All the more so when most of the brand-name neocons are Jewish.</p>
<p>I dont much care for neo-cons myself, not at all. Ive said as much here and have been published to that effect elsewhere. Ive even taken some heat for it. However, I do not believe that entitles me to say that many neoconservatives are fascists, as tarhunt has–repeatedly,
</p>
<p>If, for instance, Kluge had said many neoconservatives are fascists I would have taken it as his normal rhetorical bloviating: his boorish, though charming, opinion. And as we all know, everyone has them–opinions–anatomically and rhetorically, and they all stink to heaven. Kluges as well. </p>
<p>But tarhunt claims to be an expert in the fussy matters of political psychology. What to most would be simple vilification, to tarhunt is a matter of science. He is, as he claims, a social-scientists and hes seen brain-imaging and many other things only social-scientists are privileged to see while going about their workaday lives. And he, with his scientific acumen, research and credentials, has apodictically determined that many neoconservatives are fascist without naming a single one of the stooges he so skewers, and even then while claiming there is no authoritative definition of fascist in his arcane field to reference. </p>
<p>These two points combined would seem to exclude tarhunt from rendering a judgment over neoconservatives fascistic psychology, as he called it, or from being the expert in the field he would prefer to be. </p>
<p>If tarhunt doesnt like neoconservatives all he has to do is say so. If he hates them, how much the better; even if he, with his political savvy, prefers to think that many neocons are fascists, I say, go for it slick; but if he claims he is an expert in social science and in the same breath claims that many neoconservatives–whose names escape him–are members of a group he cannot academically define, then he is a fraud. </p>
<p>Its really very simple. Just keepin it real.</p>
<p>Feel free to point out my error/errors in this post. As always, happy to amuse you with my confidence, intelligence and youth. </p>
<p>De gustibus non est disputandum</p>
<p>Hoping not to die before I get old, </p>
<p>FS.</p>
<p>PS,
CGM, way to prove my point! I can always count on you to step in it.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Arrogance has no age limit. There can be young arrogant types, and old ones, and trust me…arrogance is not like a fine wine, gaining in appeal and value with age.</p>
<p>As long as you are clear that your opinions, anatomically and rhetorically, “stink”, just as Kluge’s or mine do, we are surely all keepin’ it real.</p>
<p>Leona Hensley was in a league of her own- male or female…xiggi was funny> but I am sure you know all about Leona and her history…her style was, well, difficult</p>
<p>And while Xiggi and I often disagree, his comeback was clever…the I gather was remember what most of those who worked for her said</p>
<p>but I am sure you remember all that, so no need to explain it to you as you are fully aware of all that has ever happened</p>
<p>It’s a pleasure to read your comments here and on other threads, FountainSiren. I appreciate your attempts at thoughtful dialogue and your restraint.</p>
<p>“Arrogance has no age limit.”</p>
<p>AM, that is absolutely correct! However, isn’t relying on one’s number of summers and winters as a measurement stick for the validity and depth of opinions also a sign of misplaced self-importance? </p>
<p>In the past, posters have found that a younger poster cannot play it both ways: expressing adults thoughts at will, but also seek the elusive protection given to children who get in trouble. </p>
<p>I believe that younger posters do not mind being treated as adults as much as having to endure double and myopic standards. Posters here are only pizelized persona and comments regarding age being important or relevant reflect more on the poster than onto its unfortunate target. </p>
<p>PS Since I am not close to being considered an adult of legal age, you can views my post as an example of my inherent bias on this issue.</p>
<p>Agreed, Xiggi.</p>
<p>I fail to see how a young person (FS is in college, after all - she is not an elementary school child) should be less opinionated or confident in her intellect than an older person. As a student, I find the notion that paying tuition and attending school renders me incapable of having a strong opinion to be utterly noxious. If people went to college merely to learn the opinions of others and to absorb them as one’s own, then college could be made obsolete with a subscription to the local library. </p>
<p>The greatest educational experiences are to be challenged by a professor and to challenge him back. That is not done when one thinks of herself as a vessel to be filled with the ideas of others, and college as a time to sort through those ideas as they churn in one’s head. </p>
<p>I see nothing wrong with learning from those younger than I. I also hestitate to make a college diploma a prerequisite to engaging in intellectual debate, much in the same way that a young girl, before her debutante, was not allowed in society as her own person.</p>
<p>I also cannot help but wonder if FS’s words would have been better-received coming from a man. Seldom do we hear anyone chastise the “stronger sex” for wit, sagacity, and confidence.</p>
<p>The only problem I’ve ever seen with FountainSiren’s writing is that it is ill-suited for a discussion forum; her style is much better suited for the Algonquin with Dorothy Parker or, if one tends towards a romantic bent, memoirs.</p>
<p>Sure, we can all study what say, fascism is, but to assert that others don’t have the right to describe it beyond a dictionary description is arrogant</p>
<p>Look up the word freedom…then ask people what it means
Look up the word republican…then ask people what it means
Look up liberal, conservative, democratic, academic, intellectual
Even the word real</p>
<p>Because of life experiences, education, reading, observations, etc, everyone has their own take…</p>
<p>To me, conservative has several meaning, is it poltical, financial, clothing, religion, attitude</p>
<p>Anyone ever called a boss a fascist, a teacher, the person at the bank?</p>
<p>I would bet many have, that does not mean we are taking the literal definition from a book, it also connotates an attitude a person can have towards others, a feeling of power, autonomy, unquestioned loyalty
You can have a “fascist” principal in a school, I sure did, fascism is an attitude, not just a political style </p>
<p>What I think happens with FS is that she often comes across as feeling her education, her words, her turn of phrase, etc, are somehow superior; that she does come across as arrogant. </p>
<p>It is not because she is female. It is because that is how she comes across. Can posters help it that is the “vibe” we get from her? </p>
<p>She can have all sorts of opinions about how “clueless” other posters are, questioning their frame of reference as somehow being less valuable than hers</p>
<p>She is not shy are critizing others style, correcting spelling, grammar etc, she is not shy at making snide callous remarks, yet when a poster calls her on being arrogant in her posts, somehow that is just bad form</p>
<p>If she posts in a way that many find arrogant, well, that is not the reader’s fault</p>
<p>FS has called me many things in the fast- reactionary, clueless (paraphrasing) I could look up all the words she uses to describe others</p>
<p>To INSIST that an opinion about feeling that a person is a fasicst, considering how words change over the years, (even FS calls herself a (classic) liberal and would never want to be lumped with other liberals- the word liberal has many interpreation) and to insist that persons use of the word exactly matches the definition in a dictionary is absurd. Heaven forbid think she could be an intellectual, that was quite the conversation…</p>
<p>If you asked people that worked for Leona, I am sure one or two would have said fascist.</p>
<p>I have called some of my Hs friends neandrethals, do I mean that in the scientific way, or just that they are hairy, smelly, uncouth men? </p>
<p>And please, to use the sex card…tsk tsk</p>
<p>CGM Posted: “If she posts in a way that many find arrogant, well, that is not the reader’s fault”</p>
<p>Zoosermom responds: Said the pot to the kettle . . .</p>
<p>By the way Ms. Helmsley’s employees were free to either accept or decline her offer of employment. Nice how that works. Great country, America, ain’t it?</p>
<p>From Here to Eternity - starring FS (and xiggi too)!</p>
<p>Wow, just reading your smart postings is enough to render one incapacitated and generally useless.</p>
<p>Only glad you are not running the WHOLE SHOW or Spiro’s characterization of a previous generation would surely apply: “…an effete corps of impudent snobs.”</p>
<p>It is not their youth that is the problem – we all had to go through that – it is the weightlessness of their life’s experience, that naturally makes one consider their “smelly” (not that I noticed, by the way) opinions with a proviso.</p>
<p>I have no problem whatsoever with the opinions of youth, and am not so old and over-the-hillish that I consider myself unable to learn from them. Quite the contrary.</p>
<p>I do have a problem with superiority, arrogance and smugness, which as I mentioned already, are not the exclusive domain of youth. Oh, and ad hominem attacks, since whether one considers a person “boorish” or “stinky” doesn’t really add much to the conversation.</p>
<p>But this isn’t about youth per se…nor women vs men, but an attitude that no one else’s opinion has merit or value, which is problematic no matter how many years an individual as accrued.</p>