Letters to the Editor
FinFangFoom
Published Letters: 84 Editor's Choice: 4
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Narcissism Hurts the One You Love
[Read the article: Is it too late to start a band at 45?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Substantial personal relationships make you want to 'commit suicide,' your coworkers are 'robots,' now you think the solution is to become a performance artist and bask in the nonreciprocal worship of strangers. Fortunately, you're smart enough to know that this may not be sustainable for a 20-something Nietzsche-misinterpreter, but you don't know whatever path to take. The only path to sustainable happiness is love, and love is reciprocal, it's often painful, and entails sacrifices and, yes, humility. Are you capable of reaching outside of yourself? Are you capable of giving on an empathic level? I don't know, but I can tell you that a life dedicated to spiritual masturbation will never be fulfilling.
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The man is crazy
[Read the article: Don't worry, be Mike Gravel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The whole rant about nukes just demonstrated that he's consumed by the sort of conspiratorial thinking that is a prominent characteristic in many entries of the DSM-IV, especially his laughable assertion that Obama and others were speaking in "a secret code". The fact that he ran to the right of Gruening on Vietnam just shows what this man is: an opportunistic narcissist. This article confirms my prior belief that he sees a presidential run as a good way to draw cash from naive youths and aging hippies that see a romanticism in a demagogue who has ran to the gates of Hell and back to avoid ever doing an honest day's work. I do not hope, however, that Gravel is denied from attending any further debates or forums. His presence sharply demonstrates the foolishness and lack of critical thinking of that bygone era of boomer-liberalism. Read the piece on Obama in this week's New Yorker, then compare it with this. Gravel is the anti-Obama, in terms of both rhetoric and personal character, and he makes the Democrats' need for Obama's brand of unifying, Rawlsian liberalism all the more apparent.
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No, actually...
[Read the article: Don't worry, be Mike Gravel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that sort of black or white thinking would just be a continuation of the naive zealotry that we have suffered under for the last eight years. Believe it or not, just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're less informed or evil. This is the problem with idealogues like Gravel. They view everything in terms of good or evil, black or white, patriots or traitors, us or them. Namely, they narcissistically view themselves in terms of 'good', and anyone who doesn't submit to their presumed intellectual authority is accused of possessing dark and malevolent motives.
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And above
[Read the article: Don't worry, be Mike Gravel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You the exact sort of paranoid conspiratorial thinking that I'm talking about.
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Thoughtful contrarian arguments are welcome
[Read the article: What Democrats need to learn about power]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sadly, Mr. Galen's editorial is just meaningless.
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"Government is not letting them"
[Read the article: Ron Paul is blowing up real good]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You mean the corporations of the 'free market' are using the government as a tool to shut down the one, solitary company that wants to employ reasonable health standards? Somehow that doesn't strike me as a compelling argument for the libertarian position. While Ron Paul seems like his upstanding gent, I agree that his positions are loaded with naivete, both practical and theoretical. No man is an island, liberty is a product of law.
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The Myth of the Myth-Drunk American
[Read the article: Better to be Hamlet than President George]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This article seems to be reliant on the very sort of broad generalizations that it warns against. It's yet another in Salon's recent spat of conservative-tinged opinion, this one gleefully glossing over history. What part of JFK's self-doubt encouraged to get involve in Vietnam? What part of FDR's drove him to intern thousands of American citizens on little more than racist suspicion? The truth is that the general problems discussed in this article have been systemic in human civilization since the start, a truth that rings especially true if one takes a look at American history. Distorted information has always been present in our White House, as has been hubris and cruelty, we're just now better suited to recognize it and combat it. The first step is to point our fingers at the real problem: that being right-wing media monopolies, not this mythical portrait of the 'average American'.
And the shot at emo just seems out of place and weird... let the kids have their rock & roll. Need I remind you of what your parents thought about Led Zeppelin or Duran Duran or whatever 'racket' you listened to when you were that age?
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And in the process of 'demolishing' my argument
[Read the article: Better to be Hamlet than President George]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Pazure uses "Chinese people" in the comprehensive demolishing of the "FDRs mistakes were just like Bush's" argument,"
Pazure, and apparently yourself, walked into accepting the premise that Japanese-Americans had something to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor (after failing to challenge my Vietnam analogy with anything more than some mythical hot air about Kennedy). Perhaps you should step back from your histrionic ranting and reflect on the fact that your hatred of Bush, albeit justified, has led you to agree with Michelle Malkin. Again, the pervasiveness of a lack of genuine self-doubt and the capacity for mature discourse ("another rotten grape"? seriously, grow up and get an education before you start flinging clumsy metaphors at people), on both sides of the political spectrum, reveals itself.
Then again, my overall point (which Pazure seemed to miss in his rage) is that Birkenhead's thesis on how a uniquely modern epidemic of 'lazy Americans' allows is this is simply false, constructed on a myth. Look at Bush's approval rating and the 2006 elections for Exhibit A, and for Exhibit B, look at how past presidents have carried out atrocities with the consent of an uninformed and morally weak electorate.