Letters to the Editor
Reilly
Published Letters: 250
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sysprog @Orwell - "So also with all other jokes, which always centre round cowardice, laziness, dishonesty or some other quality which society cannot afford to encourage."
[Read the article: The fun and excitement of civilization wars (fought from afar)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or admit to in it's leader.
Thanks sysprog, that's good stuff.
I just read Kristol's op-ed and then the Orwell essay he bases it on.
Orwell's essay is exceedingly deep and rich with insight into Kipling, Imperialism, class, the left, and poetry.
Seeing how little Kristol chose from that tapestry and then rereading this from his Times piece; "And, if I may say so, the quality of thought of the Democrats’ academic and media supporters — a permanent and, as it were, pensioned opposition — seems to me to have deteriorated as Orwell would have predicted.", makes one shake ones' head.
Kristol's first use of an Orwell quote refers to Kipling as “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting”, but leaves out the preceeding five words it would have taken to quote the sentence entirely; " Kipling is a jingo imperialist,...".
And, of course, a jingo imperialist like Kristol can't afford leaving that in and drawing attention to himself.
For anyone who hasn't had the chance to read the essay, here's part of the fifth graph:
Kipling spent the later part of his life in sulking, and no doubt it was political disappointment rather than literary vanity that account for this. Somehow history had not gone according to plan. After the greatest victory she had ever known, Britain was a lesser world power than before, and Kipling was quite acute enough to see this. The virtue had gone out of the classes he idealized, the young were hedonistic or disaffected, the desire to paint the map red had evaporated. He could not understand what was happening, because he had never had any grasp of the economic forces underlying imperial expansion. It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed "natives," and then you establish "the Law," which includes roads, railways and a court-house. He could not foresee, therefore, that the same motives which brought the Empire into existence would end by destroying it.
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No martini for Kristol
[Read the article: The fun and excitement of civilization wars (fought from afar)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When 'alf of his bullshit flies wide in the ditch,
Just call Billy Kristol a crossed-eyed old bitch.
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"When things are hard for me, I become impatient, brutish, whiny and overbearing and impossible to deal with. Ugh."
[Read the article: I'm acting like a monster so my friends are deserting me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And things are always hard for you.
Ugh is right A-hole.
Go here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqSiLL8U3vo&feature=related and listen to "Burning Bridges" by the Mike Curb Congregation sung over the closing credits of "Kelly's Heroes".
It'll feed your sense of drama while making your maladaptive, self-involved, negatively manifested narcissism seem heroic.
Unfortunately it's not. It's simply anger directed towards the people who aren't tuned in to the fact that you're the Protagonist of the World.
It's tough dealing with those blind bastards who can't see or refuse to admit your inner greatness.
When that happens you need to get right in their faces and scream "Acknowledge Me!"
Yor're handling it just fine. Keep it up, only child.
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--Anonymous@10:54 AM
[Read the article: I'm acting like a monster so my friends are deserting me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No I'm not The Authority, I'm just a commenter, although admittedly my comment was given in a fairly unequivocal and straight-forward way.
But that's precisely how I viewed this.
Besides the quote I highlighted in subject line of my previous post, here is how PTM describes his relations with others:
"Most of (a number of long, solid relationships with friends)have now fallen apart at the seams due to my own Neanderthal behavior."
"... when things got tough, she withdrew and I started bugging her..."
It bothers me, though, that I brought the situation on by being, once again, overbearing and needy and confrontational.
The effort to stop my habits of being so hard to deal with are frankly making me pretty hard to deal with.
Not to mention the title of his letter:
I'm acting like a monster so my friends are deserting me
Not only is he clearly the one acting on and destabilizing his relationships, he clearly knows this to be the case.
Whereas you think it "sounds more like he just needs to stop being so hard on himself", I take him at his word and believe he has identified the cause of his problems as his own behavior which I characterized previously as "maladaptive".
The question from my standpoint then is this; Is he unable or simply unwilling to adapt to behaviors which would encourage rather than discourage relationships?
Personally, I believe he is simply unwilling. An unwilligness which stems from a "negatively manifested narcissism", as I previously stated. No where in his writing did he allude to any other influencing force as a cause for his current crises. He never even infers that his friends are overreacting.
As far as my use of "Protagonist of the World", I was, of course, referring to his world.
The definition of protagonist - the main character in a drama -seems perfectly fitting for someone who says of himself; "Drama is kind of my natural state of being."
Sometimes being cognizant enough of ones' own negative behaviors to speak openly about them isn't so much a cry for help as it is just another way to keep the drama and attention on oneself, to continue the self love and narcissism which is driving the personality.
Anonymous, I liked the tone of your reply to my post (the mild snark about The Authority wasn't a problem) and that's why I wrote this. But I think the hard-edged and facetious style of my previous post cuts more to the heart of the matter.