Sunday, January 1, 2012

Crappy New Year!



... The old order is rapidly fadin'... *


This New Year will bring us another BS-filled presidential campaign, expected to be the dirtiest and most expensive on record as we are napalmed with lies, damned lies and poisonous partisan rhetoric.  We'll all be wanting to pull an Elvis on our TVs before it's all over...

The Euro will most likely collapse; Iraq will descend into a barely-controlled chaos; Afghanistan will remain unchanged, as it has since the dawn of time; the denouement of China’s Potemkin economy will be the centerpiece of a new global recession; and our politicians will continue to promise us lollipops and rainbows, unicorns and free money forever…

A Reasoned Look Back

Ducky has wondered aloud at the rightwing Christian fascination with Christopher Hitchens. And rightly so. My short answer is that Hitchens did not wear ideological or partisan blinders. He was a lover of truth and liberty and those were his guiding lights. We relished it when he took a rhetorical flamethrower to our enemies, but oh how it stung when he turned his rapier intellect on us! But even then, he was just so damned witty and well-reasoned! He made me change my mind on a few things, and caused me to view other things in a whole new light or with a more jaundiced eye.

I can say the same of libertarian magazine, Reason. They will skewer or defend people, politicians and movements based not upon partisanship or ideology, but on liberty and truth. No intellectual exercises to try to rescue a political hero or a cherished program, just cold-hard analysis that is also hip and funny. As they say, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll burn with rage, but you’ll never be bored with the content at Reason.

I tire of all the year end “best of” and “worst of” lists, but Reason's The Five Worst Op-Eds of 2011 is worth reading.  It starts off with a delicious lambasting of full-of-himself progressive pontificator Thomas Friedman, lampooning his famous and fulsome false-mixed-metaphor-dilemmas.  Gene Healy riffs on the headline to one of Friedman's billowy intellectual fluff pieces, "Are We Going to Roll Up Our Sleeves or Limp On?"
If you think about it, we can do both.
You know, Friedman's standard fee is $75,000 a speech. It almost makes you want to go join a drum circle in McPherson Square.
He uses Peter Beinhart’s defense of Anthony Wiener to remind us why we should eschew any sympathy and instead rejoice when a rat fink politician is caught …
Bah, humbug. Political sex scandals are entertaining and edifying—they remind us not to cede power to the political class, whose members are often less responsible and more corrupt than those they seek to rule. Why not kick them when they're down? They kick us when they're up.
I love this anti-establishmentarian slam to the New York Times (moderate) House Conservative, David Brooks’ call for “Service to our Nation.”
This piece from the Times's resident "National Greatness Conservative," won largely on the strength of one line: "Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation." What can you say? Sounds better in the original German?
Strap it on; it's going to be a challenging year...

* - Bob Dylan, The Times the are a changin'

21 comments:

Ducky's here said...

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.
Bob Dylan

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

I got rid of my TV in early 2011.

I've never been more informed.

Z said...

I'm not sure you saw my Bette Davis post from yesterday but we were thinking alike about the coming year: Instead of "strap it on; it's going to be a challenging year..", I couldn't resist ol' Bette's (Margo's) line from ALL ABOUT EVE "fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night"...

Regardless, HAPPY NEW YEAR, SF, I'll be happy to strap it on and share the bumpy ride with you and the other good bloggers in our corner of the blogosphere this year. x

Finntann said...

Happy New Year

Sounds better in the original German? Had me rolling.

Anonymous said...

I think Doctor Laura (remember her?) had it right when she advised one of her more notably masochistic callers:

"Okay, so if you're determined to have a crappy day, make it HAPPY Crappy Day."

So HAPPY CRAPPY NEW YEAR us all!

~ FreeThinke

PS: The verification word is CRONISH. can you believe that? - FT

Anonymous said...

Let the battle begin. It has been a very long three years waiting for it to start. Either way, this too shall end. A Happy New Year, and may it turn out the best ever.

98ZJUSMC said...

"Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation."

Tell that to the Vietnam Vets being spit on by self-absorbed Leftists, Mr Brooks. You need to get out more.

Silverfiddle said...

And the funny thing is, USMC, that he wasn't even talking about military service, the only kind of service to country denigrated by progressives.

tha malcontent said...

Happy New Year to you and all my friends out there.

Ducky's here said...

Give it a rest marine. The spitting stories have long since been debunked.

Didn't happen.

Sorry Silverfiddle, but pimping for big oil, corporatist and defense contractors doesn't constitute service.

Nice weapons sale to Saudi last week. Defense contractors are making a fortune of this Iran crap and you ain't getting a cut.
And it's not going to change till you wise up.

Silverfiddle said...

@ Ducky: Sorry Silverfiddle, but pimping for big oil, corporatist and defense contractors doesn't constitute service.

Yeah, anybody who's ever served was doing nothing but that. And there is no way to prove that people did not spit on Vietnam vets returning. You can't prove a negative, so put away the lefty tropes.

Also, what you said does nothing to refute the post, which ridicules Tommy Friedman, David Brooks and the other big statist progressive gargoyles.

Anonymous said...

Ducky,

The furious battle you continually wage with your ever-growing army of straw men is getting more amusing every day -- in the sense that a freak show at the circus amuses the hoi polloi in an atmosphere redolent of tanbark, sweat, pathos and animal dung.

Thank you this New Year's day for continuing to provide material that never fails to give a sudden feeling of superiority to those unsympathetic to perversity.

Your devoted fan,

FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

If David Brooks -- whom I don't dislike, because he has a generally more benign, constructive, good-humored outlook than his blood red Bolshevikian colleagues -- had only said, "Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to each other," I'd be glad to go along with him.

But when one of these dudes starts talking about Service to the State which is what Mr. Brooks means, my hackles rise -- and so should yours.

The New York Times is the Flagship Publication of a Crypto-Marxist media establishment devotedly in service to the Crony-Capitalist-Corporatist-International-Banking Cabal [What else could you call it? Give me a better name, and I'll use it.] who has been planning the demise of America's sovereignty and the rise of a One-World Socialist-Style Dictatorship for the past hundred years.

Disbelieve this at your peril.

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

A new-minted offering in homage to the New Year:

On New Year’s Day


Our hope would be to take the roadblocks down
No more to have to hide behind the walls
Negativity built with a frown,
Even though she smiles in gleaming halls
Welcoming all with fawning falsity,
Yet yearning all the while for something solid.
Excitement dies in stuffy halls at tea,
As hypocrisy makes discourse witless, stolid.
Rarely may we speak without a filter.
‘Tis safer not, lest someone take offense.
So, fearing to be thought bizarre –– off kilter ––
Daft –– depraved –– or simply too intense ––
A fear of ostracism serves P-C,
Yet makes a moribund society.


~ FreeThinke - January 1, 2012

Kid said...

I'd say you've got a pretty accurate prediction there in the first two paragraphs. I just don't see Germany and France hauling the log for the parasitic rest of them, and doubt that it even could if it wanted to. (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, formally known as the PIIGS)

Jersey McJones said...

Happy New Years, guys. We're in for an interesting year. I hope the right continues to fracture. It's about time. To many of the righties have been bought and sold by the MIC, the corporatists, and the churches. It's time they grow up and start thinking for themselves. Just maybe that is starting to happen.

It may be a very interesting year...

JMJ

Always On Watch said...

A few lines from the TV show House:

Character X to Dr. House: "Merry Christmas."

Dr. House: "And a happy go to hell."

If the Right continues to fracture and ends up with a third political party, America will go to hell due to the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama.

Anonymous said...

A sad AMEN to that. AOW!

A very sad Amen.

~ FreeThinke

Trekkie4Ever said...

Amen, AOW! I was going to add something of my own, but that about covered it.

Bring it on, 2012! Happy New Year, Silver.

Silverfiddle said...

@ Jersey: It's time they grow up and start thinking for themselves.

That's rich coming from someone who routinely leave msnbc droppings wherever he goes...

dmarks said...

Jersey said: It's time they grow up and start thinking for themselves. Just maybe that is starting to happen."

If they did start thinking for themselves, they would stop being fascist and support free trade, and they would worry about real threats instead of inconsequential "corporatists". And stop the destructive lies about the real problem being our military, not the maniacs it defends us from.

It may be a very interesting year...