jriggenbach

I was going to say something, then I decided I'd better not. Shayne I second Shayne's decision not to say what he was thinking about saying. Frankly, I'm shocked to learn that he was even thinking about saying such a thing. Dismayedly, JR

The human ability to see what it wants to see is truly amazing. I look forward to the day when the next presidential election has come and gone and at least a few of those now going mad all around me return to their senses and realize that nothing has changed. As Emma Goldman put it, "if voting could change anything, it'd be illegal." JR

It's been a long time, Carol. I haven't read any O'Hara in nearly 40 years. I remember reading Frank MacShane's biography of O'Hara back in 1980 and thinking then that I'd like to re-read Appointment in Samarra and rethink the whole thing. But I've never got around to it. I can see my poor, neglected copy sitting forlornly on the shelf from where I sit. The title - and the snippet of Maugham from which it's taken - is a masterpiece. JR

A number of these titles are, as I'm sure you know, either dark or tragic or both. I'd include in this The Mill on the Floss, The Trial, Death in Venice, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Madame Bovary, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (odd that none of these groups choose the best Hemingway novel, A Farewell to Arms, or a selection of the short stories. You can read The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls til the cows come home and, though both contain some memorable passages, you'll never get the best Hemingway has to offer). JR

Okay. I can't say I'm that interested in the continuing fights, myself. I'm just sayin' . . . JR

Some readers might draw from this the conclusion that it is probably a bad idea to take at face value any discussion by any high-ranking Objectivist (from Ayn Rand herself on down) of any novelist or philosopher (Immanuel Kant, for example), without doing one's own reading and making one's own judgment. Some others would probably never even consider such a conclusion. It didn't hold me right to the end. I did not wish it had been longer. I'm inclined to regard Steinbeck's shorter work (his short stories and his shorter novels like Of Mice & Men) as his best work. How could you possibly know that? You haven't even read a representative sample of the American novels most knowledgeable people would regard as in the running with The Grapes of Wrath. I could name American novelists of that league that I bet you've never even heard of. You haven't even read any of Steinbeck's other novels. Yet you know how this one ranks relative to all those you've never read and, in many cases, haven't even heard of? JR

Oh, you might be able to get by with it if you obviously knew a lot about writing. JR

Then why not keep a journal, rather than posting online? Like Mike Marotta, I'm rather bemused by that. It is arbitrarily selective that the person asking a question doesn't merit a reply, but a general interest by others - which is hardly possible to ascertain - does. Why should numbers matter? Anyhow, in general, engaging on forums, apparently one can take two approaches: either a direct communication with one other person, or a broad appeal to the dozens or hundreds, who will be looking in. Or some combination. For me, I'd probably get self-conscious if I kept in mind that this is a public forum, visited by, gawd! a lot of people. That's enough for writer's block to set in, and three posts a month all she wrote, from me. (Which some may think not so terrible to contemplate... ) Of course, this is no more that a perception, but I direct myself at that one member, or at most a handful with whom I've had pleasant/provoking/well-intentioned exchanges in the past. To each his own, and many are comfortable with a general audience. I'm just a one-on-one type, I guess. Tony Marotta's question is, of course, notably ignorant, since I already explained why I post here. Anyone who bothered to read what I wrote before asking irrelevant questons already knows the answer. There's no mystery about it. And "numbers" have nothing to do with it. If Xray asks me a question, why am I supposed to assume that anyone else is interested in reading what I might reply to such a question? If another person, who is not Xray, asks me the same question, I'll answer it. But if I have no reason to believe that anyone is interested in the answer, why should I bother to write it? JR

Out of seven paragraphs, I would like to have seen more on Tibor's personal background prior to seeing the movie and less on the movie itself. JR

Do you ordinarily have this much trouble distinguishing between what is wrong and what you don't like? JR

As I said, Phil, if you don't like my posts, read somebody else's. I'd think you'd be too occupied with your dancing to pay any attention to them anyway. JR

C'mon JR, on a public discussion forum you always answer to all those too who read your elaborations on a subject. Which is why your 'I'm not talking to you' argument is not convincing. What does it matter whether a poster whose take on an issue might not happen to match yours agrees or not with what you say? If your arguments are convincing, how can it matter to you how this poster may react to them? You can't read at all, can you? I'm not making an argument. I'm not trying to convince anyone. If you ask me a question, it goes unanswered for the reason I stated. If I'm unaware that anyone else is interested in what I might have to say about the question, why bother writing a reply? JR

Well, Phil, I can't say I can recall ever ridiculing any of your literary choices. My recollection is that the worst I've thought and perhaps said is that you probably wouldn't think quite so highly of some of them if you had done more reading - knew more about literature generally. It's not that these choices are bad - it's merely that they aren't really as magnificent as they may seem to someone who hasn't yet read widely enough to recognize their actual merit. Whether we talk further about Light in August is entirely up to you. It's been a few years since I last read it, so it's not fresh in my mind, and I might not therefore have much of any real interest to say about it. JR JR: mindful that you are not a performing monkey, I would love to hear any thoughts you have on Graham Greene. His light-hearted stuff doesn't interest me much, but his serious fiction seems first rate. Anybody who can come up with the line that "his smile was like the painful reopening of a wound" has something figured out... PDS, I regret to report that I've read none of Greene's fiction, either the "entertainments" or the "serious novels" (I regard the distinction as meaningless, myself). I have some of the "entertainments" on my "to read" list, but haven't got to them. I haven't thought of the "serious novels" as something I'd likely be interested in reading, because of my (perhaps erroneous) belief that they largely address themes which an intelligent person could find compelling or even interesting only to the extent that he or she was a Roman Catholic or found it possible to take seriously Roman Catholic (or, for that matter, any religious) doctrine and the "moral" conflicts it can lead to in people's lives. As I say, I could be all wet about this. It's an impression I've received from superficial reading of commentators on Greene. But it has made me more reluctant to give his work a try. (If being a Catholic is making you miserable, recognize it for the load of crap it is and scuttle it!) I have read some nonfiction by Greene. He was a fine writer, there's no doubt whatever about that. JR

No, Phil, "everyone" does not "know this." Not everyone here has the intention of "adding something to an argument." Therefore, they do not "defeat themselves" by engaging in behavior that would defeat them if they were trying to participate in an argument. This point is so simple, it absolutely defies belief that you (and a number of others) have such extraordinary difficulty grasping it. Let me try another way of saying this. There are a number of possible reasons a person might join a group like this and post occasionally. In my case, I find it interesting to read what some of the others on the list have to say about the topics they choose to write about. I also find it useful in my own professional work to keep up with what is going on in that branch of the libertarian movement known as Objectivism. Reading this site is a good way to keep up with such news. Occasionally, I comment, usually in the spirit of correcting an error of fact or clarifying some point I know more about than most people. If people ask me questions about what I write, I usually attempt to answer them. The main exception is people like Xray, who (so far as I can see) have no interest in learning anything but only in getting other people to use certain phrases so that she can triumphantly jump on them with her Philosophy 101-level "proofs" that this, that, or the other point about Objectivism as Xray "Understands" It is incorrect. (She actually "understands" almost nothing, of course, in part because she can't be bothered to read anything any longer than a post on a discussion list.) I never post in an effort to join an argument or to present an argument or to convince anybody of anything. Let me say that again: I never post in an effort to join an argument or to present an argument or to convince anybody of anything. Let me say that again: I NEVER POST IN AN EFFORT TO JOIN AN ARGUMENT OR TO PRESENT AN ARGUMENT OR TO CONVINCE ANYBODY OF ANYTHING. I competed in interscholastic and intercollegiate debate when I was in high school and college. I loved it back then and did pretty well at it, but I no longer have any interest in it whatever. Now, let me make my next point as clearly and unequivocally as I know how: Since I am not trying to convince anybody of anything, I do NOT "defeat myself" by expressing myself as I see fit. Since my purpose is expressing myself as I see fit, I do the exact opposite of defeating myself by expressing myself as I see fit. By expressing myself as I see fit, I attain my objective of having expressed myself as I saw fit. If anyone is "unconvinced" by what I write, fine. I never meant to "convince" him or her in the first place. If anyone is put off by my sarcasm or my choice of words or anything else about my chosen way of expressing myself, fine. Let that person go read someone else's posts instead of mine. There are others who find what I write witty and amusing. There are even a few who agree with its substance. I hope all this is clear. (But of course, I know damn well that it isn't. Clarity is helpless in the face of Invincible Ignorance. There are those here, who, I suspect, have an enormous emotional commitment to the idea - absurd on its face - that everyone is here to join in a discussion by presenting arguments in favor of their views in as convincing a manner as possible - that this is, after all, the only possible reason any of us could be here - and that all this discussing and arguing must - simply must - be conducted with certain prescribed steps, in a sort of ceremonial dance, rather like the Minuet, called Civility. Such people will not allow any explanation, however clear, to interfere with this all important commitment.) JR

My objective is to insult and vilify all the most thoughtful posters on OL, until they either leave the list or stop posting. JR

WTF does WCE mean? World Class Expert. It's the initials Phil chose for himself after asserting that his wide reading in the literary realm made him an authority on the subject. JR

I've offered no arguments, Phil, so I can't be guilty of any fallacies. I know you often have difficulty distinguishing between statements and arguments. I recommend that you try harder to understand the difference. Helpfully, JR

Who has been alleged to be "literary experts"? Phil, you're wasting you time when you claim to be quoting others without posting links to the comments. You have a reputation for misrepresenting what people have written, so you can't be trusted. If you want anyone to take an interest in your opinions and judgments of people who have been critical of Atlas Shrugged, then you're going to have to provide links so that people can easily check for themselves if you're telling the whole truth. J I am shocked and deeply saddened to see my old friend Phil Coates accused of misrepresenting the arguments and other comments of those he disagrees with. If only we had the WCE around. He would set a proper standard for intellectual integrity, one which could not be questioned (except, perhaps by some wielder of "ad hominems," of whom the less said the better). What I'm wondering right now is what the WCE would say the theme of Light in August is. He has already shown us that he can identify the theme of a novel whose author has announced what it was in one of her essays. I wonder if he can identify the theme of a novel when he doesn't have that assistance from the author. (WCE that he is, I don't doubt for a moment that he can. I mean, after all, how could he be so sure that there's useless repetition in Faulkner's novel if he has no idea what theme that novel is concretizing?) JR

Are you under the impression that I'm trying to convince somebody of something? JR

Oddly, I was making much the same point last night in response to a world class expert on literature who recently declared on another thread that William Faulkner repeats the same thing over and over again. Small world. JR

I don't support the war in Iraq, but our (misguided) purpose in fighting it was a warped view of our own self-defense. That's nonsense. The purpose of fighting the war had nothing whatever to do with self-defense, warped or otherwise. War with Iraq was advocated by the Project for a New American Century during the Clinton administration. 9/11 provided the justification the war advocates had long been seeking. The actual purpose was to replace Hussein with an American friendly puppet government and to establish military bases in Iraq for use as a forward area for further American influence in the Middle East. That purpose has been achieved beyond the warmongers' wildest dreams, as the U.S. has constructed massive military bases in Iraq which it intends to occupy with a permanent garrison of American soldiers. The war has also enriched the military industrial establishment, all at the expense of the American people who will have to pay for this entire war crime. Of course it was a war of aggression. The only moral justification for going to war is self-defense. Since the war had absolutely nothing to do with self defense, it was a war of aggression. The U.S. government attacked a nation that was absolutely no threat whatever to it, leading to over a hundred thousand Iraqis being killed (exact death toll unknown, some estimates are as high as one million), an unknown but undoubtedly huge number of Iraqis wounded from the war, over two million Iraqis driven from their homes and turned into refugees, many of whom fled Iraq to Jordan and Syria, and massive destruction of Iraqi infrastructure. Iraq was carpet bombed ("shock and awe") and attacked with lethal weaponry, including white phosphorus and depleted uranium. All of this was done with no justification whatever, just to enrich the U.S. empire. According to your twisted definition of "pacifist", a pacifist is anyone who is opposed to starting wars of aggression. "America" is not evil. The U.S. government is evil for engaging in this war crime. You commit the all too common fallacy of equating the U.S. government with America, as though they are one and the same. Using such rhetoric, anyone who criticizes the U.S. government can be accused of being anti-American or of hating American, since, of course, they are treated as identical. A perfect argument from intimidation to stop anyone from criticizing the U.S. government, no matter how criminal its actions. Your question is idiotic on its face. The U.S. government didn't just get rid of Hussein. It launched a war that led to a mini holocaust. You don't just push a button and get rid of an evil dictator, without this little thing called "collateral damage". A good analogy would be if Russia launched a nuclear attack against Washington, killing hundreds of thousands of Washington residents, including Obama, in the attack. The Russian president, to justify this attack, could say, "You really think Russia is evil for getting rid of Obama?", ignoring the fact that he also killed several hundred thousand innocent people in the attack. Your argument is even more absurd, given that Hussein was a one time U.S. government ally. How many Americans are even aware that the U.S. government aided Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, a war which led to the death of about one million Iranians, all with assistance from the U.S. government? So we had to start a war in order to remove a brutal dictator whom we helped in another war. This is consistent with various other instances of brutal dictators who were one time allies of the U.S. and who the U.S. subsequently removed after they turned against us. Manual Noreiga was a one time U.S. ally who was on the CIA payroll. Bush ended up launching an invasion of Panama in order to remove this dictator whom the the U.S. government had at one time supported. There are other such examples. How many Iraqis would you like for the U.S. government to have killed? One million? Five million? Ten million? Maybe we should have just nuked the entire place, killing every man, woman, child, dog, and cat, leaving nothing behind alive but cockroaches. That would have been a really excellent "final solution". All launched against a country that never threatened us and never could threaten us. That's interesting. I always thought that objectivism was a philosophy based on ethical individualism, in which people are only held morally responsible for their own actions, and in which there is no such thing as collective guilt. To say that they allowed their country to be run by a dictator implies that individual Iraqis somehow had the power to overthrow their dictator. Now, of course, if millions and millions of Iraqis banded together against Hussein, they could probably have overthrown him. But, from the perspective of an individual Iraqi, should he/she try to overthrow Hussein alone, he/she will almost certainly end up being run through one of Hussein's shredders. Since an individual has little power to convince millions of others to join the rebellion, choosing to do this on one's own is certain suicide. But let's go along with your assumption that individual Iraqis are somehow morally responsible for living under a brutal dictatorship. Does this responsibility extend to children and infants too? During war, lots of children and infants are killed as well as adults. Are the children and infants fair game, sharing moral responsibility for the crime of living under a dictator? Since you don't give a rat's ass about the Iraqis, you presumably don't give a rat's ass about the children and infants killed either. Your compassion, humanity, and just plain decency are noted. Ayn Rand lived in the Soviet Union under a brutal communist dictatorship. Was she responsible for this fact? Would it have been morally justifiable to kill her too, since she allowed her country to be run by a madman? Lets take your moral principle a little further. If Iraqis are morally responsible for living under a dictator, such that it is morally justifiable to massively kill them and to feel indifferent to this loss of human life, wouldn't we Americans also be morally responsible if we lived under a dictator, such that it would be morally justifiable to kill us? Of course, we're not living under a dictatorship, at least at this moment. But a future dictatorship is more than just a hypothetical possibility. One more terrorist attack here and the president could declare martial law, commandeer the state national guards, and establish a totalitarian dictatorship in the United States. If this were to happen, suppose that a Russian objectivist, espousing exactly your philosophy, were to argue that it's okay to nuke the United States, even if this means killing millions of Americans, since they are morally responsible for living under a dictatorship with a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Would you agree with this reasoning? It is somehow much easier to concoct moral justifications for killing other people than to concoct moral justifications for other people to kill us. Of what point is your "basic arithmetic" if you're killed by a suicide bomber? You're still dead. Will those who care about you be sitting around saying, "Oh, it's okay. To defend ourselves, we killed lots more of them than they did us. We are still ahead of them in the numbers." My point is very simple. Your whole argument hinges on the absurd idea that attacking Iraq was somehow an act of self defense. Well, my point is that, by any objective analysis, the U.S. was much more of a threat to Iraq than Iraq ever was to the U.S. Not only has the U.S. killed far more Iraqis than Iraq has killed Americans, but the U.S. has orders of magnitude more fire power than Iraq. So, if you're going to justify a "preventive attack" on Iraq, based on what it might do to us, than Iraq would be far more justified in launched a "preventive attack" on the U.S., given the relative risk of attack faced by each nation against the other. So talk of our occupying Muslim territory is tantamount to insanity? Does this mean that we're not actually occupying Muslim territory, or that it's insane to talk about it? Of course, if Iraq built a huge, heavily fortified embassy in an American "green zone", built permanent military bases, and garrisoned thousands of soldiers in their military bases on our land, you would probably think that we were under occupation by Iraq. But, of course, it's just wrong to apply the same standards to us as to them. We're special! We're Americans! They're just so much dirt under our feet. They should give us candy and flowers for being nice enough to show such a special interest in their country. The ungrateful bastards! I'm glad you can have a sense of humor about all of those dead, wounded, and homeless Iraqis. Yeah, that's really funny. Of course, it's easy for you to laugh about it. You can sit here safe in your cocoon, watching the devastation your government has inflicted on a people who live far, far away. And in your spare time, you can write moral justifications for this carnage. And you can pretend to be a highly moral person, an exemplar of the highest principles of objectivist morality, a believer in freedom, liberty, and individual rights. Except for those other nonpersons, that is. Martin Obviously no one is laughing at the "dead, wounded, homeless Iraqis." (I'm touched that you only care about the Iraqis. I guess you can ignore the Americans who lost their lives because they are the evil servants of the Great Satan.) There are endless jokes made about any and every war that has ever been fought, and they are often told by the men and women fighting them. To suggest that such humor amounts to "laughing at the dead" is just sick. People are laughing at the irony and absurdity of life. If attacking others while twisting reality into that kind of ugly perspective makes you feel like a "moral person," please don't expect anyone to give a damn about meeting your wacked-out moral standards. I'm touched that you care so much about the Americans who lost their lives, not to mention those who are permanently wounded. Of course, had the war never been started, as I have clearly advocated, all of those Americans would be alive and uninjured today. Because of people like you who come up with moral justifications for going to war, these Americans were sent into the meat grinder of Iraq to fight and die for nothing. And why shouldn't you be "laughing at the dead" Iraqis, being as you have stated quite explicly that you don't give a damn about any of them. Martin Bravo, Martin. I'm glad you can summon the will to write a detailed reply to such a tiresome opponent. Of course, they're all tiresome with their collectivist crap about "we" and how the U.S. government and anything it does is "America." But they aren't all this pompous and puffed up with their own supposed importance. JR

Shayne, I very seldom agree strongly with anything you say, but here's an exception. Bravo! JR

Oh, yes, oh, yes, indeed. Nothing could be more important that getting a bunch of statists who shout libertarian slogans during election campaigns to get behind the Atlas Shrugged movie. What would we do without the invaluable contribution of these contemptible statists? Wonderingly, JR

I always used to tell the more serious of my students in San Francisco that the first sign your receive that you are making progress in learning about a field is when you begin to realize how much there actually is to know about it - and how much there is to know that, up to that moment, you had never even dreamed existed at all. I'm sorry, Phil, but I've known you long enough and had enough literary conversations with you to know that, where literature is concerned, you've never yet reached that point. You have no idea how much more there is to this subject than you have supposed. You believe you know far, far more about it than you actually do, and, sadly, this renders you incapable of learning as much more about it as your native intelligence would otherwise permit. It does, however, leave you able to take umbrage at what you believe are needlessly insulting remarks about your alleged ignorance. I suppose there's some consolation in that. JR Now wait a minute. Knowledge of literature and study of literature and wide reading are usually concomitant, but not always. There is no more subjective, contentious area than Great Books and Great Authors; after 400 years readers and critics have managed to mostly agree that Shakespeare was great,but he still gets criticized, and some smart people don't like him. (Ayn Rand didn't). A reading-discussion group is the exact place to expand your knowledge of books and get the first impression of them which is most valuable. If you like them you might want to read another book by same author, if they knock you out you will want to read them again, if they don't hold your interest, next book please, life is too short. There is a time to learn to appreciate the finer points of authors and literary movements, and a time to discover the writers who can draw you into their world and enchant you. Neither is a time to worry about other readers' reader's credentials. I am not talking about evaluation of authors or works. Nor am I talking about what anyone likes. Of course, people should read what they like and avoid what they don't like - unless they fancy that they have a scholar's knowledge of literature and can speak knowledgably about it among those who actually know the subject to some extent, in which case they should probably broaden their reading somewhat beyond what they merely like. To persuade those actually in the know about literature, they'll also have to demonstrate the capacity to grasp what the admirers of authors they don't like are seeing in those authors. To criticize Faulkner, in Light in August, for example, for being "long-winded" or "repetitious" - really, one doesn't know where to begin with such a remark. It's as though one were dealing with a person who said of Atlas Shrugged that it is "simplistic" or "black and white" or "like a comic book." One knows immediately that one is dealing with a person who, on a very fundamental level, did not understand what s/he was reading. This is no crime, of course. With complex novels, it is commonplace. It is not, however, commonplace to find people who can't understand complex novels posing as experts on literature. JR

Minding my own business is my primary focus. It is none of my business what happens to some semi-theocratic socialist state on the other side of the world. Furthermore, I don't give a shit what happens to it. I reject the idea that rushing mindlessly to the defense of a semi-theocratic socialist state is "protecting the good." It's better than its Arab neighbors, do you say? I say: does that make it "the good"? I think not. I think a great many people, including some around here, feel smugly self-righteous when they call for "standing with Israel," and they like that feeling, so they do what they can to enjoy it more often. It's a bit tiresome, but certainly they're within their rights to do so - particularly when it's their own living room they're doing it in. JR