I love Hope and Change and permanent military bases and the world’s largest Imperial fortre…, er, embassy in Iraq.

And I’m betting (I wonder what the odds in Vegas are) those 17,000 extra troops bombing Afghanistan will find Osama and declare Victory this time, despite those uncooperative Canadian socialist peaceniks cutting and running.

Maybe some funds for a Pinochet memorial?

Lakoff: The economic crisis is also an opportunity. It requires Obama to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the right things to do.

Didn’t I read this in Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” with the names changed?

I also found Dan Savage’s Savage Love brilliant social satire. Which reminds me I must go back and read his columns.

Now I have been dragged down into a boys locker room and can’t get out. I know I have been comprised when a psychopath tells me he enjoys my posts. I feel like Clarice.

While I, on the other hand, actually do appreciate your horse shit.

No, its little academic hacks like you who just like to shout about what you have read with no ability to integrate any of it in any meaningful way.

And I wasn’t implying Marc was stealing, Balter. I had posted an excerpt in the previous thread that happened to have put in a load about Lakoff. It was “under moderator’s approval” before it got posted. Maybe cause it was too long. Who knows. I have never heard of Lakoff previous to that article. As stated it was only an article on the subject at hand and had a juicy Jung quote which was–and is–quite relevant to all that gets discussed here. It was obvious that the mention of Lakoff turning up may have suggested a blog topic for Marc or perhaps synchronously something caught Mar’s attention about Lakoff.

Dial it down, Balter.

Except for one thing: Lakoff, like Mike Lux and all those other dreary knee-jerk liberals, likes to argue that his own political opinions, to the exclusion of everyone else’s, are THE “real” American political values.

This presumes, among other delusions, that American political values are somehow a) pure b) simple and c) a Good Thing. (Or would be, if it wasn’t for all those pesky people who disagree with him.)

In reality, he’s just another starry-eyed American idealist who thinks this country and its politics are special and/or blessed by a higher power.

The truth is, American politics are messy and frequently ugly, like every other country’s. Not only does the ideology of exceptionalism forever butt up against any number of awkward realities; the very fact that people believe in it becomes a cover behind which a lot of very ugly stuff gets both done and excused. (We’re the greatest country in the world, so these accusations that we’re monsters CAN’T be right…)

Not only is Lakoff misguided, he isn’t even as much fun to kick around as he used to be. (Am I right you are a tad disappointed by that, Marc?) He used to be absurd. Now he is just a windbag.

Actually, this might underestimate the number of salamanders, as many of them live in rotting logs and may not have poked their heads out to be counted–unlike Tom DeLay.

Its what my friend George said (that I tried to clue people to in the education argument thread) that education now is no longer lifting ones self out of the much but one pig teaching the other pigs how to eat from the trough. Lakoff is a literalist. The American disease is literalism.

But, Obama was wearing an American flag pin last night. Maybe he’s catching on about traditional patriotism–unless it’s an act.

Um. Also out of instinct I felt Obama’s campaign was as calculated and “framed” as anything ever put in a bottle with a label on it. I wouldn’t discount a Lakoffian perspective at all.

We always feel things have to be marketed here. People were sold “hope” and “change” without much else behind it. The difference– maybe– is that the Obama campaign knew to have to deal with the reality discussed in that article I posted and used the tools of a marketing campaign and knowledge of mass psychology to at least win the election and then try to do “the right thing”. Its a risky ploy. American’s respond to bullshit. For real change to be implemented there has to be an awakening. Which, to some extent, there was.

I still think its gonna get real ugly for awhile. Just the disbursement of all that dough. The chicanery that will ensue. I am tapping my foot waiting for the reports. But…it has to happen.

What President Obama has been attempting in his speeches is a return to the original frames of the Framers, reconstituting what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, to be a citizen and to share in both the sacrifices and the glories of our country.

This is inaccurate and contradictory.