* RADIO RANT: Stoicism--(get it right!)

Well, the good ol' Mormons have offered another FYI "pro-family" radio segment, this time concerning "stoicism." The spot's narrator says that "stoicism" issues from the Greek & Roman times, and is characterized by a denial of both pleasure and pain. This is wrong, they ultimately conclude; one should express one's emotions. (Duh.) . . . I would offer some corrections. Stoicism as a philosophy per se didn't flourish until the Roman times. Moreover, it was much more than some glum sufferance of pleasure and pain; it was a brave acceptance of the knowledge that there is no afterlife, that this "veil of tears" is all we have. Hic labor, hoc opus est. In sum, it is a much more courageous (and truer) modus vivendi than some blithe belief in a heaven in which you'll meet your anointed spouse, etc. Thanks, Mormons, but from what I know of the natural world, give me Stoicism any day. . . .

* Children & Animal Extinction

* SPEAKING of EXTINCTION (and morbid children's books)--here's an ad from the BITS & PIECES gifts catalogue (Holiday 2007). How casually the young are indoctrined into an "everything's-all-right" attitude regarding the extinction of other species. The phrase "don't exist in the wild anymore" even intimates that these animals are still safe, in zoos or in rich people's backyards, perhaps. The Dodo on the cover is especially ironic in this regard, as perhaps the most famous species driven to extinction by humankind's own handiwork. But, "whatever": it's "Hours of dot-to-dot fun," all the same!

* U.S. Pontificates on Genocide

So—the U.S. House of Representatives wants to "declare" the "slaughter" of Armenians by the Turks during WWI "genocide." Gee, that was less than a score of years after the Wounded Knee massacre. I don't care how many times "our government" has apologized for its own attempts at genocide; "we" shouldn't be allowed, even today, such a facile moral high ground.

* Life in an Open Boat

Why are those "Funniest Home Videos" TV shows still so popular (in syndication, at least)? Maybe because they're the closest thing to a real reminder that humans aren't truly in control of their own destiny? Or better—we really don't want to know this truth about ourselves; it's far preferable instead to project this anxious knowledge upon others (e.g., the dad catching the ball from his son's bat in the groin). No one wants to recognize that, at last, we're all sailors in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," forever at the whim of the random farts of fortune.

* RADIO RANT: The Savage Within

Michael Savage admonished godless liberals last night (8/27) for not understanding something about good Christian conservatives, shouting, half-apoplectically, "Why do you think people worship God? To control the animal within!" A pretty scary (self-)admission, and a pretty poor reason to believe in a deity.

Ergo—some Quots. of the Day:

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. . . .
    --William Blake

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
    --Nietzsche

The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.
    --Nietzsche

* John & Martha X; Barbaric Discourse

* "DEEP Ecology"

I'm sure all of you got tired of listening to that glib sleazeball capitalist, Utah mine-owner Bob Murray, on the cable news. What an asshole. I guessed immediately that this was Mr. $$ doing a cover-up operation, despite all his cant about his company's great concern for the trapped miners' families, etc. Worst of all—let's blame it on "Mother Nature," Bob says; besides some purported originary "quake" (refuted by real seismologists), it's them damned "NATURAL" movements in the earth, them damned seismic "bumps" that won't let us progress upon our savior mission. Did you ever think—duh, you KNOW you knew, you bastard!—that all that ground activity is BECAUSE of your (questionable) mining practices? I don't even wanna witness all the tracks-covering you'll be performing in the next week or so: think I'll bury myself in my schoolwork.

* RADIO RANT: Carrot-&-Stick Ethics

A relatively new commercial on the radio seems innocuous enough: it's for http://www.getgoodkarma.org, and asks one to be "civically active"—to vote, to volunteer, etc. But the "goodkarma" part of the URL is the sticking point for me. Why be civic-minded, ethical—ultimately, GOOD? Well, you'll be rewarded for it, for "stay[ing] on the universe's good side," as the web site tells us. Or punished for being "bad," apparently: "So play nice. You won't like the universe when it's angry." This is merely a New Age/Asian metaphysical version of good-old-fashioned Christian theology, which says to the unwashed masses: "Be good—SO you can get to Heaven. Don't be bad, or you'll earn eternal damnation." I'm against any such carrot-and-stick ethics because it is just a grander displacement of the child's early "ethical" development: be good, and Mommy will hug you! Be bad, and Dad'll beat your ass! This isn't being ethical at all; it's being a pawn of operant conditioning. (Thus Freud saw Western religion itself as part of an earlier, "childish" stage of human evolution.) At least from Kant on, philosophers have spoken of an ethics for its own sake as the real "Good," in contrast to behavior dependent upon an external set of reinforcers. In sum, how is volunteering at the homeless shelter—to guarantee some good karma for yourself—in any way ethical in a fundamental, intrinsic sense?

(An objection: "Maybe the 'karmic' discourse of this whole web site is just good-naturedly tongue-in-cheek, just tryin' to get people more positively involved." Well. Okay. . . . Or IS it okay, to "play" willy-nilly with such serious things as worldviews, as if they were mere Pepsi or Coke t-shirts to be donned and doffed at will in this postmodern era? I don't have a sense of humor in this realm. [Geez, I'm becoming a curmudgeon, as the Minnesota Twins continue their losing ways!])

* RADIO RANT: Women's Rights vs. Animal Rights?

Paul Zeise, a beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has created a new round of controversy in the Michael Vick saga by uttering the following on a Pittsburg talk show: "It's really a sad day in this country when . . . Michael Vick would have been better off raping a woman [rather than running a vicious dog-fighting racket] . . . . Had he done that, he probably would have been suspended for [only] four games [rather than a year] and he'd be back on the field." To me, the meat of this new controversy is that several national sports commentators have come to Zeise's defense (e.g., John Fricke), via at least the implication that the current atmosphere of "political correctness" has led to a privileging of wild animals over our own women.

On one important level, these people are right, of course: Kobe Bryant and the legion of athletes charged with rape and spousal abuse have been getting mere hand-slaps from their leagues & teams, as the patriarchal game of wink-wink continues. They should be getting much more severe penalties. However, this issue is really independent of the Michael Vick episode; and the stance above, in its ostensible attempt to be anti-sexist, reveals once again an utter anthropocentrism: i.e., a human (woman) is more important than another animal. I, for one, believe that being instrumental in the violent deaths of many individuals of another species is a greater crime than the sexual abuse of any single member of our one species (whatever the gender). There, I've said it. Zeise, Fricke, et al. are wrong; it is hardly a "sad day," but a positive evolution in the general consciousness, in my mind. What is sad is that this debate seems to force one to pick & choose between women's rights and animal rights. But again, they're separate issues.

Of course I'm completely wrong in the "separate issue" thing, but this twist of an admission takes the argument to entirely different level. A major tenet of ecofeminism is that what the patriarchy does to women and "animals" (and to Natives and the environment) comes from the same source, an imperialist White male need to identify and ostracize an Other, including a propensity to commit violence against "her"—to maintain at last a master/slave, Self/Other, civilization/nature hierarchal binary, to reassure the Self of its superior status. What is truly surprising, then, is that these commentators are speaking of the two crimes as if they were fundamentally different things!

* RADIO RANT: A Demagogue's Spleen

One of Michael Savage's current promo spots contains one of his characteristic diatribes against the "leftist" government+media establishment, against which he pits himself and all other Americans, apparently: "WE are the backbone of America!" I would limit the breadth of that populist "WE" a good deal, and modify the metaphor. No, Mr. Savage, you are rather the SPLEEN of the American body politic, and your toady-acolyte of an adoring audience, the BLACK BILE thereof. (A dangerous—but ultimately hackneyed—remark follows: I sometimes feel that I'm listening to some crank in Germany of the 1930's; seriously "bad—and scary—vibes, man.")

Savage's clever demagoguery was in full splendor last night (8/1/07), as he fed his masses suggestions that the Minneapolis bridge collapse was "perhaps" an act of Islamic terrorism. As he repeated a bald attempt at sarcasm—"but we CAN'T consider the possibility of terrorism because the government TELLS us it isn't"—his callers became more and more rabid in their speculations. "There's a huge Muslim population right in that area!"; "I've lived in Minnesota, and they're so liberal and P.C., they're a perfect target!" To all such (il)logic, Savage was cleverly "reluctant" to draw his own overt conclusions, repeating his sarcastic mantra above, but it was all too clear that he relished his rhetorical power over his slavering/salivating lackeys. (Historical analogy: screaming rhetorician finds scapegoat, and whips followers into a frenzy against said scapegoat.)

Another of Savage's populist slams last night was against "the old white-boy hegemony." For one thing, people who pronounce hegemony with a hard "g" shouldn't be using the word in public. Secondly, if Savage's own tired & predictable sexism, racism, and (lip service to) morality-driven conservatism isn't part of "the old white-boy hegemony," I don't know what is.

* RETARDED

As an advocate of the developmentally disabled, I despise those comedians who must say "RETARDED" over and over, as part of their limited & relatively talentless shtick: e.g., Carlos Mencia. (And hey, Carlos, no Indian with any self-respect would mock his own race like you mock yours.) I've also noticed, in this decade, that the use of the word "retarded" among the general public—and above all, MY STUDENTS—has become even more blatant. I always stop them in class when they use the word: "you mean 'developmentally disabled?'" Obviously, they're trying to redefine a term in a way that I both resent and deny. Ditto "gay," as my students say: "that's so gay." I ask them: "you mean homosexual, and in an obvious negative connotation?" Nope, they have no clue thereof—things are just "gay"—I guess because, like Paris Hilton, they haven't got outside their six-friend, six-video-game, 600-pop-song, 6,000-word-vocabulary "retarded" lives. Excuse me for my language.

* YouTube Debate: The Unasked Questions

I believe that tomorrow night is the CNN "YouTube" Democratic debate, for which "home youtubers" can send in their video questions for the candidates. Questions you WON'T hear in the debate:

1) What should the government be doing about Silicon Lizard? ["Silicon Lizard" = the title of an old surrealist poem of mine]

2) Please raise your hand if you think all this talk about religion in the primary debates has been a bunch of disingenuous, pandering, hypocritical bullshit. [Assuming no hands are raised, a follow-up question (the one that Larry King asked Paris Hilton!):] What is your favorite passage from the Bible? [Then:] How many minority groups does this passage alienate & ostracize?

3) Would you consider a gay Native American paraplegic as a running mate?

4) Please raise your hand if you really consider George W. Bush to be an illiterate nincumpoop who will certainly be remembered as the worst president in history by far.

5) Tell us what you think—or know—that the candidate to the right of you likes to do in bed, as his/her most lascivious & taboo turn-on. (The candidate on their far right can speculate instead on whether metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.)

6) When did you last beat your significant other?

7) If elected, do you promise never to serve, and to leave the country & never come back? [a paraphrase from somebody else's poem, by I forget who]

8) If you idiot Democrats couldn't even beat George W. Bush in two straight elections, what are you wasting our time for, again? (Shouldn't we select a candidate, at least, whose first name is CHAD?)

9) Given you liberals' great concern for global warming, will you promise to campaign around the country without the use of fossil-fuel transportation? (Hey, it'll work those hips & bellies off o' some of yu'.)

10) Will you PLEASE promise never to end a speech with anything close to "God bless America"? If not, could you define both "God" and "America" in your campaign materials? If no to both, could you please read Dante's Inferno and accustom yourself to the most nether circle of Hades, because that's where I'm telling you to go?

* RADIO RANT: Dog Eat Dog; Rich Wear Fur

The outrage by the talking heads on sports talk radio and cable news regarding the Michael Vick dog-fighting scandal was understandably vehement—but so self-righteous. That is, all these people can be "right," but for the wrong reasons. "How inhumane! I'm a dog lover! All Americans love dogs!" But when the occasional "nut" called in suggesting that shooting deer and pheasants is no less barbaric, such discourse was dismissed as beyond the pale. Worst has been the pompous&supercilious attitude of ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd, whose elitist/urbanite biases distinguished themselves: pit-bull fighting is a despicable sport practiced especially by the poor, the rural, and the Southern (and the—shshshsh—black). You're so right, Colin. You city folk are immune to such first-hand visceral cruelty, with enough money to distance yourself from the inhumane (such an ironic term) factory farming that provides you with your veal parmesan and chicken Kiev, while your pasty-skinned lazy Euro-jet-trash-of-a-wife can't decide whether to wear a dead fox or mink, to cover her pastiness.

All this outrage is also completely anthropocentric: that is, it's all about us humans—including "man's best friend." There would certainly have been less outrage if Vick had been involved in cockfighting. Or how about terrapin matches? (Yeh, probably very lengthy affairs.) Or cricket bouts, to the death?! My point is that, if humankind has an innate biophilia (love of all life), it's still quite mammalo-centric: we love the animals that remind us most of us, that have fur, and cuddly babies . . . and maybe milk that we can feed to our own babies. And so, following my niece & nephew around the zoo gift shop last week, I wasn't surprised to see that nearly all of the stuffed animals were mammals. The few birds seemed unnatural and stiff and "distant"; the reptiles and insects were intentionally rubbery and "alien."

In fact, though my book-in-manuscript spends pages on end explaining the poets' age-old obsession with birds, I'm still rather surprised when people actually grow attached to them as pets. (I refuse to do so, being against caged birds in general.) But my wife, for one, treats her budgie as her best friend, though it shits on her shoulder all the time and bites the hell out of me when I show up. (Well, at least we and birds are both vertebrates: so, yeh, birds still kick ass on locusts as pets.) But I wonder if the average human mourns as much when his/her lovebird flies out the window in the middle of winter and never returns, compared to when old Fido gets run over by the neighbor's car. Birds, I guess, are somewhere between our mammal-compatriot dogs and cats—and that goldfish whose tombstone is the toilet-bowl lid. ("Mom! Where's Jimmy? He's not in his bowl!")

I've wandered far from Michael Vick to illustrate how problematic "animal rights" is. I don't even like that term ("rights" is a human legal construct, after all), preferring Lawrence Buell's phrase, "nonanthropocentric ethics." But that won't fit into a talking point or on a bumper sticker.

[Added same night:] Wow: it's pretty fascinating to learn, then, that Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank's reaction to his quarterback's legal problems has been belated because the fellow has been on vacation. In Africa. On safari.

* Humane Slaughter Wins!

I'm not even awake yet, really, but I just heard on the radio that those bastards at PETA have once again maligned our good people at Omaha Beef (or someplace like that, business-wise): those godless radicals are wrong again! Our good local meat people have been judged by the authorities to have "done nothing wrong against the 'Inhumane Slaughter Act'"! (God, I never knew there WAS such a law. . . . and thank the Good Lord once again for all acts of HUMANE slaughter, wherever they occur. . . .)

But then, I do have a problem w/ PETA, as I do w/ most so-called "animal rights" groups: they are often so damned "mammalo-centric" (to quote a term coined in my book manuscript), and/or so infatuated w/ the "big" animals of either size or number that I gladly prefer the even greater (and truer) radicalism of Deep Ecology. . . .

[P.S., later this morning: I'm not even sure that there is such a thing as the "Inhumane Slaughter Act" now; I may well have been (partly?) dreaming? This quit-smoking nicotine stuff says that it may cause "vivid dreams"—in which case, one should stop using it immediately and consult a physician. Huh?? What civilization/culture before/besides ours has been so dead-set against "vivid dreams"?!

But a web search for the "Inhumane Slaughter Act"(!) confirms the fact: I manufactured an entire blog entry—complete with initial satire and and subsequent arguments of some vehemence—around a nicotine hallucination, apparently, around two or three heard or misheard words on the morning radio news as I was just waking up. But it all seemed so real!

And of course and finally—those on the right could well claim that I've only been tilting at windmills all along, and chasing chimeras from day one; but then they must have missed the poetic truth of everything written above. And below.]

* Killing to Live

George W. Bush speaking yesterday (6/20/07), in opposition to federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research: "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical." But I perceive a contradiction here: if this is indeed an ideal, a categorical imperative, of the Christian conservative right, then they should be just as vehemently against the death penalty, and opposed to waging any (even "just") war; for a major justification of these latter is that killing the murderer or a few (thousand) barbarian Jihadists is okay, since such "destroying" acts save in the long run many a good (life-affirming) Christian soul.

* RADIO RANT: "The man that hath no music"

Michael Savage was harping on the 60's hippies movement again last night (5/22/07), as the major impetus of contemporary liberalism—itself the ruination of the nation. As a true conservative, Savage even asserted that Plato was right in kicking all the poets and musicians out his his ideal Republic. (An overgeneralization: music of certain less "emotional," more "rational," modes [scales] would still be allowed, if I recall. But no doubt the modern "blues" scale would be verboten.) Plato was "on to something," Savage continued, because artists (read: liberal artists) have always been dangerous to "family" values and social order.

But if you've read Plato's Republic, it's pretty clear that this conservative utopia borders on a police state, run by philosopher-kings whose claim to a greater rationalism is only rivaled by certain contemporary radio-talk-show hosts; social order would be maintained by a military class (the "brawn" to the elite rulers' "brains"), who would keep the workers in line, since this third class could only be mindless bundles of emotions & appetencies (cf. the "lower animals" in Orwell's allegory).

Yes, by God, I'd keep Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix out of the ears of such masses, so easily turned by metaphor and melody. Let them only read (if allowed to do so) lame treatises in support of the party line: this is Savage's true calling, after all, to provide the propagandistic accoutrements for a latter-day politbureau; and as in Stalin's day, such soporifics would be officially dubbed the only "good"—because "true"—art.

Finally, it was rather strange that Savage put forth—uh—Joan Baez?? as the epitome of 60's aesthetic radicalism. The bourgeois coffee-house drivel that was much "folk-rock" of that day was already smug co-optation, the kind of the stuff Savage himself probably enjoyed at one time. I prefer(red) "hippie" music that employed a distortion pedal, at least; but that, too, was quickly co-opted, as "Purple Haze" became a bumper tune for Rush Limbaugh—and (later) Metallica, a musical segue for the Savage-meister himself {1}.  [Impromptu Quot. of the Day: "You know you're gettin' old when your favorite teen-age-rebellious rock anthems start showin' up as background music to car & ketchup commercials." --TCG]  So, really—NOT TO WORRY, Mr. Savage: the radical artists that you fear have damned little chance to "corrupt the morals of the youth" when the youth are corrupted from the crib already, interpellated into the Law of the Father from day one. . . . Quot. of the Day:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
    --Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice 5.1)

{1} In fact, one wonders why all that speed/goth/death-metal bumper music is allowed in the great "Republic" that is the "Savage Nation"—a rabid, visceral, arational subtext that rather deconstructs the message of this man who dons a mask of reason.

* RADIO RANT: Conservative Literary Criticism

Kipling's "If" is not a "great poem": it is wretched didacticism, a series of bromides & anodynes set to verse.
I see that I have been truant in my role as chief tormentor of Michael Savage. (Well, I'm sure that plenty of others wear the same mantle, so I don't worry unduly in this regard.) But last night (5/18/07), "Doctor Savage" raised my hackles once again, in praising Rudyard Kipling's "If" as a "great poem." "If" is not a great poem: it is wretched didacticism; "If" isn't even poetry, really (in the post-Coleridgean sense of the word): it's a series of prosaic bromides and anodynes set to verse. (Frankly, I would think that even most college freshmen today have more "taste" than to put up the poster-art of such verbal schmaltz in their dorm room.) Savage's judgment is no doubt colored by his fond childhood memory of having memorized this doggerel in school; it certainly isn't based on any accepted criteria of literary criticism. (The criterion that a fine work of art should have a "good, moral message" went out of fashion a century ago. But this was probably due to the onslaughts of amoral liberalism, Savage would no doubt claim.) The good Doctor did acknowledge that Kipling was ultimately criticized as a blithe spokesperson for British imperialism, but Savage couldn't fathom how being such a spokesperson is an—uhm—bad thing. (Rather, he ironically goes on to boast about how he's imparting "greater knowledge" to his listeners, about poems and such.)

To go beyond Savage to better objections to my objection—yes, recent critical theories of alterity (e.g., postcolonial theory, feminism, queer theory, and ecocriticism) ARE political/ethical stances in their own right, liberal & idealistic defenses of the "underdog." As a poco/eco-critic, I am inordinately conscious of my own ideology, as but one aspect of a multitude of contemporary discourses—NOT as the norm that sets itself up as a theo-philosophical "Word" for the rest of the world, as Savage's nostalgia about (and deification of) his smugly-content-because-blindly-monolithic Euro-American classroom & neighborhood of a half century ago does. (Boy, that was one god-awful sentence I just wrote.) "IF" only, Mr. Savage: "IF" only you could look at the "Other" and be more able to better see yourself. . . .

* RADIO RANT: Christian = Jew ≠ Native American

Yet another conservative talkshow host, Michael Medved, didn't let me down this early morning in his irrational close-mindedness. To the possibility that GW Bush might actually sign onto some federal "apology" to Native Americans, Medved was vociferous in his opposition. As is my wont, I only listened for about ten minutes—the most I can handle of these people before I want to put a revolver to my temple—but I was surprised how even several of his "fans" actually called him on such insensitivity. He ultimately retorted, in disdain: "I don't hate Indians. I hate multiculturalism."

Hmmm. And yet you a member of a minority group, Mr. Medved? (He's Jewish.) But you are for "monoculturalism"? Which would thus be an ultimate erasure of any Jewish ethnic identity? . . . Medved reminds me of another Jewish conservative, "Dr. Laura," who eternally conflates Christianity & Judaism into some moralist melting-pot that would rule the universe—some essentialist "right way of behaving" that all good Christians & Jews adhere to—to the detriment of any cultural difference between even, oh, say, Irish Catholicism, and Utah Mormonism, and Hassidic Judaism (and common sense). . . . In sum, in trying to deny the Native American any historical "exceptionalism," Mr. Medved, you've denied your own heritage, too. (Or, just as bad or worse, you've claimed that your heritage is the norm for all humankind.)

And of course, your argument is ultimately an attempt to erase any guilt regarding Euro-American colonialism per se. "We—uhma—SAVAGES, Mr. Medved, outside your—ughh—enlightened morality. Save—ugha-ugha—us! (And teach us, above, all the fine sophistry of employing theology to support true asshole bourgois materialism!")

* Mormon = Christian? = ?

A new poll out today (regarding Romney's candidacy) says that a good third of Americans don't believe that Mormons are Christian; another third do; and another third don't know/aren't sure. This correlates well with my own experience with college undergraduates, who—Christian or not—have little notion of the history of (even Western) religion. Thus I often get comments from well-meaning Protestants that not only are Mormons a wacko non-Christian sect-of-a-nut-job, but so are—Catholics! (And never mind any knowledge of the history of Protestantism.) Maybe I'm thankful that I don't get so many student essays quoting the Bible as their only source anymore—but maybe not: this new generation of Christian irrationalists seems to have acquired its entire ideology from parents and conservative media—and they have little idea of the actual tenets of whatever sect they adhere to, short of "I'm anti-abortion," "I hate faggots/queers," and "I'm 'agin' all that evolution-monkey talk." (Recall that, at the recent Republican presidential-candidate debate, when asked who DIDN'T believe in evolution, three of the ten old-white-males actually raised their shaky, Bible-toting hands.)

Likewise, my students also have written me, on occasion, that the Lakota Sun Dance is an inhumane cruelty of a ritual—usually the same students who claim that The Passion of the Christ is one dang fine edifying movie. . . . (I remember that at least one Christian web site was selling commemorative "spikes"—to be worn around the neck—during this movie's heyday; I also recall that I didn't buy one, however tempted. [Wait, my wife did buy me a cheap "facsimile" thereof for my birthday or Christmas—it was "so kewl."])

* RADIO RANT: Symptoms of Society

There is an unconscious Zeitgeist working among the young, a general intuition that not only is Western Civilization no longer "quite right," but the planet itself is in dire straits.Last night [4/23/07] Michael Savage brought up a news story about a fellow who lopped off his own penis in a London public venue—which Savage perceived as a literal manifestation of a larger "truth," that is, support for his own frequent harangue against contemporary Britain as emasculated, as a pathetic after-lingering of a once great (because macho-aggressive) Empire. Well, from a postcolonial point of view, I'd consider this a good thing!? But I have to admit that Savage does perform, at times, some intriguing figurative thinking of this sort.

But what does he see, then, in Columbine and VA Tech? What do these events "say" about us Americans? Cho's ethnicity aside (though Savage can never let that be), Savage's answer has been predictable: these slaughters are symptomatic, of course, of an over-liberal/indulgent society going to hell in a handcart, bereft of any solid religious and moral grounding. (But again, I even consider this current relativistic "plight" to be a good thing, by and large, at least in contrast to a monocultural theocracy.) And yet I'd still read the school-shootings phenomenon only slightly differently, in a more "ecological" fashion, if you will. (Think lemmings.) I believe that there is an unconscious Zeitgeist working among the young, a general intuition that not only is Western Civilization no longer "quite right," but the planet itself is in dire straits. What future, then? Ergo a pandemic turn to depressant drugs, suicide, school shootings—violence directed both inward and outward, towards a "thinning out" of a "botched" species? This despair may even be exemplified in our retreatist last-gasp immersion in the virtual realities of the web and video games. . . . Hmmm: at last, my reading may be even more pessimistic than Savage's.

The very thought of pessimism, by the way, always makes me think of Schopenhauer—who would put all this yap about British & American "character" in its proper perspective (Quot. of the Day):

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country.
    --Schopenhauer