What's Left? - How the left lost its way.

ChineseArithmetic

It is what it is
I think Nick Cohen's recent ranting is as much about him as anything else. As one of the 'pro war left' he's now on a crusade to present anyone who opposed the war as outright apologists for islamic fundamentalism. He seems to be having a bit of a mid-life crisis, mixed in with the inevitable all consuming hubris that seems to overtake anyone who gets a weekly column in a newspaper and some kind of score settling that I know nothing about as I have no involvement with left wing activism, so don't know who he's fallen out with, or indeed care. Some Dissensus types may be able to provide some insight into this.

It is true that those on the left, in following their traditional instincts to oppose discrimination against ethnic minorities and the Republican Party's appetite for war and oil, can end up going down the route of 'my enemies enemy is my friend'. The world is more complex than that, but Nick Cohen is too obsessed with his own agendas to have any more nuanced take on things.
 
Norman Mailer (1923-2007)

Gavin said:
Then why apologize for it with this harping on "trials and juries" as if that somehow ameliorated all the gross injustice of the death penalty, something both conceptually disgusting but also ABHORRENT in its administration through an incredibly unfair for-profit legal system?

Ah, yes, and with apologies for this ostensible derailment given my tangential/tendential mood tonight, but I blame the re-introduction of capital punishment in the US in 1976 largely on ... the now late Norman Mailer! [You can see him in acting-out pseudo-macho action in this clip from a ridiculous film he made in the 1970s. Send in fucking Hemmingway - and his favourite bull]

His overbearingly romanticised central theme of the untamed male libido/id being more virtuous and more deserving of our castrated 'empathy' than educational, mechanical, chemical, or state-sanctioned brutal attempts to regulate or control it - well, he laboured extensively on this topic, and, indeed, it was what motivated him to defend Gary Gilmore's "right" to be properly state killed/executed - rather than rot-away in prison - according to the then ignored - mid-1970s - criminal law, in order for Gary to become a "virtuous" male again, to become, or fully realise, the "real" man mystique through the ultimate masculine goal of authentic self-sacrifice. Not only flushed with success there, but it also later spurred Mailer, ironically, to lobby - successfully again - for the release of another killer "who shows writing ability", and who subsequently went on to kill yet again. Mailer, in later 'more mellowed' years of course, professed his "regrets", the short-sightedness - and the very real, destructive long-term consequences - of his own misguided actions back then. Presumably, then, that's why he never once bothered to subsequently campaign for a reversal of those self-same destructive policies following his cathartic 'regrets.'

But Mailer became the archetypal living instantiation of a certain misplaced literary bias, manifested by what he became, as much for his past 'political interventions'. Of what he became versus what he could have been. Essentially, as he even admitted in his autobiography, he was a failed novelist, having mistakenly settled for the latter after abandoning a brilliant career as a superb and incisive political reporter/war correspondent [and his best writings to this day remain his political commentary, though his more recent contributions were - unlike a Chomsky, say - highly opinionated and poorly researched] to persevere with the anachronism, with the myth of writing The Great American Novel, which never happened and was never going to happen. Mailer seems manacled to a pre-1960s mindset, frantically oblivious or in denial about the social and cultural transformations that began in that decade: his autobiography is riddled with such tell-alls as "when I meet novelists and their wives". Eh, right, Norman. Where was Mailer hangin' out these past 40 years? But I suppose such as Toni Morrison, Nadime Gortimer, Anita Bruckner etc, many superior literary figures to Mailer, were just mere feminist fluff.

He's naked and he's dead, all right.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Whether it's Mailer's doing or not it's impossible to see how a sane society could be built around such a stinking rotten core.
 
Whether it's Mailer's doing or not it's impossible to see how a sane society could be built around such a stinking rotten core.

A 'sane' society that still fully supports 'manifest destiny' and 'white man's burden', now on a global scale, while keeping all the millions of its skeletons firmly tasered in its closets; not sure what you ultimately mean by trivialising what I said about Mailer with a 'Whether it's Mailer's doing or not'. Let's not try to understand, let's just absolutely condemn, it's so much easier, cuz by definition none of us superior-removed beings are ever culpable ...
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
A 'sane' society that still fully supports 'manifest destiny' and 'white man's burden', now on a global scale, while keeping all the millions of its skeletons firmly tasered in its closets; not sure what you ultimately mean by trivialising what I said about Mailer with a 'Whether it's Mailer's doing or not'. Let's not try to understand, let's just absolutely condemn, it's so much easier, cuz by definition none of us superior-removed beings are ever culpable ...
I was saying that I think capital punishment and the threat thereof isn't the basis of a humane, peaceful grouping of people. Attitudes have a way of filtering through and violence breeds violence. It's in the nature of children to see their 'leaders' as tribal elders.

Like I said, I don't know about Mailer and you had prefaced your post as a derailment so I was responding mostly to Gavin's comment about the death penalty.

To be honest I thought you were mostly joking about Norman Mailer being responsible for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
 
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Like I said, I don't know about Mailer


But you didn't say that, you crudely dismissed the reference. So you're hardly in a position to pontificate on the subject. You're sounding like you'd prefer not to know, instead just vacuously moralize.

and you had prefaced your post as a derailment

I did so because the subject is somewhat removed from the thread topic.

so I was responding mostly to Gavin's comment about the death penalty.

An unannounced derailment is not a derailment!
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Oh for fuck's sake. I saw what Gavin had said about capital punishment and I made a brief comment about it. That's all you twit.

'Whether it's Mailer's doing or not' means 'I don't know', because I don't. How is that pontificating?
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Maybe you are been keen for someone to respond to your casting of Mailer as the hub of a cultural nexus that lead to conditions being right for the reinstatement of the death penalty to become possible.

Or at least I think that's what you are saying.

Anyway I was wondering when someone would get around to sampling his bit about marijuana on desert island discs for a cheesy dubstep wobbler.
 
Oh for fuck's sake. I saw what Gavin had said about capital punishment and I made a brief comment about it. That's all you twit.

Now you've viscerally forgotten what you've just written.

No, you were responding not to Gavin's but to my post when you made the knee-jerk dismissal.

'Whether it's Mailer's doing or not' means 'I don't know', because I don't. ?

No, it means that you think that such crucial historical matters are irrelevant to any discussion of capital punishment in the US. Which of course they always are for 'twits'.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Sorry gov, you can't tell me what I was responding to. And you can't tell me what I meant by it neither. I've explained and it's plain to see anyway.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Is this thread a joke? It's the left that is PRO economic reparations, and ANTI-warmongering "involvement" in third world conflict only when there is capital gain to be had by the self-interested.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
how about it? indefensible IMO. however at least those executed in America for instance get a trial with judge and jury - somewhat different to the arbitrary torture and executions practiced elsewhere in the world.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Those executed in America get fucking set-up by Rockefeller drug laws, thrown into jail at high enough bail so they'd never make it and have a fighting chance at a fair trial, can't afford decent lawyers (many court-appointed lawyers fucking SLEEP through their "clients'" trials), and then are sent into the vicious cycle of: get through a sentence alive and without too much PTSD from being raped and tortured in prison, go back to the real world unable to secure a job with a living wage and without any marketable skills, get involved in a life of crime again to afford living or simply because it doesn't matter any more because your life is over. Get sent back to jail. Repeat cycle endless times.
 
Maybe you are been keen for someone to respond to your casting of Mailer as the hub of a cultural nexus that lead to conditions being right for the reinstatement of the death penalty to become possible.

Or at least I think that's what you are saying.

.

Your thinking is wrong. I wasn't 'casting' Mailer in any role; I was stating the widely-documented campaign he orchestrated for the re-introduction of the death penalty in the US, a campaign he came to subsequently 'regret' [though did absolutely nothing about it] when he realised that it would also be systematically applied to those who have no wish to be so executed/murdered by the state 'in a manly way', especially the innocent.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Your thinking is wrong. I wasn't 'casting' Mailer in any role; I was stating the widely-documented campaign he orchestrated for the re-introduction of the death penalty in the US, a campaign he came to subsequently 'regret' [though did absolutely nothing about it] when he realised that it would also be systematically applied to those who have no wish to be so executed/murdered by the state 'in a manly way', especially the innocent.

HMLT is right.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Your thinking is wrong. I wasn't 'casting' Mailer in any role; I was stating the widely-documented campaign he orchestrated for the re-introduction of the death penalty in the US, a campaign he came to subsequently 'regret' [though did absolutely nothing about it] when he realised that it would also be systematically applied to those who have no wish to be so executed/murdered by the state 'in a manly way', especially the innocent.
Well good, good. I'm very glad you were able to state that in a less convoluted way.

And I'm pleased to read and talk about it.

But -

I . was . not . talking . about . this . when . I . very . simply . registered . my . disgust . at . capital . punishment.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
HMLT is right.
Whatever, I wasn't disagreeing with him, just making an attempt to understand what he was going on about. Something I was only doing because he got all neurotic about me 'dismissing' his post when I was responding to something else.

Sheesh.
 

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
Is this thread a joke? It's the left that is PRO economic reparations, and ANTI-warmongering "involvement" in third world conflict only when there is capital gain to be had by the self-interested.

No joke Nomadologist. What economic reparations are you (and some on the left) advocating? And why exactly?
 
Sorry gov, you can't tell me what I was responding to. And you can't tell me what I meant by it neither. I've explained and it's plain to see anyway.


I Am Telling You, and Demonstrating It, and it is plain to see. You stated:

Whether it's Mailer's doing or not it's impossible to see how a sane society could be built around such a stinking rotten core.

That was a response to my post, not Gavin's, as I don't recall any reference to Mailer in Gavin's post.

And all you 'explained' was your eagerness to avoid the subject [Mailer's collusion in the re-introduction of the death penalty] in order to engage in suitably meaningless, pious platitudes.

And I'm neither your 'gov' nor you 'twit.' [And, to be quite frank, if the death penalty were to be introduced in your country tomorrow, you really wouldn't lose any sleep over it, would you?]
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I Am Telling You, and Demonstrating It, and it is plain to see. You stated:

Whether it's Mailer's doing or not it's impossible to see how a sane society could be built around such a stinking rotten core.

That was a response to my post, not Gavin's, as I don't recall any reference to Mailer in Gavin's post.

And all you 'explained' was your eagerness to avoid the subject [Mailer's collusion in the re-introduction of the death penalty] in order to engage in suitably meaningless, pious platitudes.

And I'm neither your 'gov' nor you 'twit.' [And, to be quite frank, if the death penalty were to be introduced in your country tomorrow, you really wouldn't lose any sleep over it, would you?]

Last word, and just to clear this up in case anyone else is bothering to read.

My intended meaning in saying 'Whether it's Mailer's doing or not it's impossible to see how a sane society could be built around such a stinking rotten core.', apart from the brief and polite acknowledgment of what you had written above was very simply:

"I DON'T LIKE THE DEATH PENALTY'

Edit - in fact I'm not going to trivialise my own point because I believe I was saying something of more substance than a 'meaningless, pious platitude', but maybe that's how a heartfelt abhorrence reads to you. You took my acknowledgment of your post AND simultaneous admission of insufficient knowledge to comment ('whether it's Mailer's doing or not') as their precise opposites, dismissal and pontification. Indeed you are the one who dismissed my point - that the vileness of the death penalty spreads through a society. And while we're on it, although I did not know about Norman Mailer's campaign, and that is indeed interesting, surely this is somewhat simplifying what has to be a more complex series of events and causes?

I am no longer concerned with what you think I meant, but if you refuse to accept my explanation of my own statement then you are calling me a liar and you can sod off.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
No joke Nomadologist. What economic reparations are you (and some on the left) advocating? And why exactly?

For example: some people on the left advocate reparations for slavery. Many on the left favor economic 'free trade' reform so that the severe asymmetry of power within the WTO can be somewhat counterbalanced. Many favor social programs that attempt to give an economic leg up to those who are born underprivileged. There are several thousand of these I could mention.

The reasons why are complex and vary by example, but they are usually quite obvious. People on the left favor economic reparations and countermeasures to class stratification because it would benefit the lower and lower middle classes, and in turn help level the playing field for people who want to achieve success and financial stability in life but otherwise would simply be unable to do so.
 
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