freecounterpoint: Ayatollayouso

Monday, June 15, 2009

Ayatollayouso

8 comments:

Mr roT said...: Superannuated splotchy boy Hitchens is simply upset that the Obama effect was a zero.; 6/15/2009 1:49 PM
Mr roT said...: The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.; 6/15/2009 1:50 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: As a side note you'll notice that, just like in the United States, backwards reactionary forces find the greatest support in the backwaters and the only hope for progress is found in the more educated urban areas.; 6/15/2009 6:40 PM
Mr roT said...: The urbanites have no children to worry about, or if they do have them, they have the money and education to leave the country.

The ones without kids are mostly taking it up the ass, though some of you do both.; 6/15/2009 7:02 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: >>The urbanites have no children to worry about
hmm.; 6/15/2009 7:31 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: As a side note you'll notice that, just like in the United States, backwards reactionary forces find the greatest support in the backwaters and the only hope for progress is found in the more educated urban areas.

And even if this holds true (and I tend toward your cosmopolitan argument), remember that urban areas are distillations of the material bounty that's grown and harvested from our more provincial areas (or Nature's Economy in Darwinian terms). For example, we wouldn't have a Chicago without nature's bounty from the American West (and so on).

Yet I've met plenty of farmers versed in Rabelais and Cicero (just an example). It's becoming increasingly easier to stay connected to the grand ideas in our provincial areas with technology these days.; 6/16/2009 5:55 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: No argument - I was just overstating my position to piss off aa.

What proportion of the farming population to you think reads rabelais, though ? Great literature for the bible-thumpers by the way.; 6/16/2009 6:06 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: I empathize with your sentiments, Pepe. For example, in Alexander, North Dakota, a visitor is greeted at the outskirts of town by a massive billboard of the 10 Commandments. Perhaps the town intends to threaten outsiders with this? I'm uncertain. But this is a singular glance at what is a much more complex socio- and cultural setting. (For a real good recent work on sorting through and making these complexities intelligible, I'd recommend John Fraser Hart, The Rural Landscape).

To be close to the soil invariably draws thematic continuity with the Virgils and Ciceros and Jeffersons and Darwins across time. Another example might be the local organic food movement that is not merely relegated to a White House garden and Berkeley. A good friend of mine returned to his home state of North Dakota (after 5 years in Berkeley graduate school) utterly disgusted with the back-stabbing and political maneuvering required to ascertain an academic posting after the dissertation is done. So he returned and started a certified organic farm just outside of Bismarck-Mandan. And Jay and I also recruited three other individuals in town (a lawyer, a neo-con professor of rhetoric, and a university English professor), and about every month we get together for what could be a graduate discussion seminar. And in our next discussion group we're bringing in a friend from Mongolia via skype.

But alas: I'd continue on with this post but I need to go pick up some beer before I get over to practice with my local — all original tunes — rock'n'roll band.; 6/16/2009 7:59 PM

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