The point here is not that these classic writers had no quarrel with America, but that they seem to have had nothing but that to quarrel about.
Having adopted the culture’s controlling metaphor—“America” as synonym for human possibility—and having made this tenet of consensus the ground of radical dissent, they redefined radicalism as an affirmation of cultural values. For the metaphor, thus universalized, does not transcend ideology. It portrays the American ideology, as all ideology yearns to be portrayed, in the transcendent colors of utopia. In this sense the antebellum literary renaissance was truly, as Matthiessen said, both American and “the age of Emerson and Whitman”; the conjunction is embodied in The American Scholar and Democratic Vistas, both of which, in the very act of chastising the nation, identify the American future as utopia, and utopia, by extension, as the American Way.
Dull Academic Incessant Liturgical Yapping: Philosophical Orations on Order & Reaction
TOEFL student finally met his match with this passage from Sacvan Bercovitch' The Rites of Assent: So molded, ritualized, and controlled, utopianism has served here as elsewhere to diffuse or deflect dissent, or actually to transmute it into a vehicle of…
GUYS I'M GONNA NEED AN EARLY LIFE CHECK ON THIS SACVAN BERCOVITCH GUY!
Forwarded from Timothy
UP syndrome.
A beautiful bit from a researcher working in the field of random number generators:
They were produced by a combination of several of the best deterministic random number generators (RNG's), together with three sources of white noise, as well as black noise (from a rap music digital recording).
Newsflash: historically terrible place continue trend. Tune in next week for more.
Making TOEFL students listen to me talk about Maistre. I'm thinking we might need more foreigners.
No, Windows, I do not want to log in to Microsoft Teams.
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VIEW IN TELEGRAM
Are the Zoomers doing a good thing here? What do y'all think? I will hold onto my thoughts for now to avoid biasing.
People who work in hiring: what would your estimate be for the percentage of job applications that are obviously copy-pastes from ChatGPT or some other AI?
Scott is profoundly deluded and thinks that having more appetites makes him superior to other people, when the truth is that if David can survive and thrive on a Dunkin' wage while Scott can't, Scott is the one who appears inferior, deficient. What's wrong with Scott that he can't subsist on that while others can? Should we perhaps feel pity for him? Was he born defective? How sad.
Under my regime, a company has to pay you for your time when conducting an interview. Interviews will have a national rate of $100/hour. You will certainly be called to fewer interviews, but you will also save much time (and likely earn a few bucks).
Hello, Subscriber. We're about to do some surgery on your brain. It's urgent. Fatal if left untreated.
You live in an evil society, a heinous state of crime and villainy. We're going to cut out the chunk of your brain that cares what it thinks about you, that cares about being successful within it, that respects its standards. Definitionally, most of the High Church of Official Truth's standards will be poor ones, so as long as you can find different, better standards to live up to, your life will improve.
Goodnight.
...
...
...
The surgery was a success, dear Subscriber. You can't get an important job? The People's Socialist Democratic Proletarian Republic of Washington has handed a bunch of money and important and respected positions to blacks, immigrants, and sexual degenerates? You no longer care.
Before, you fought back. You angrily shouted up at your rulers. "This is America! The greatest country on Earth! Follow the Constitution! Give me what's mine!"
Now, you politely nod. "The Bureau of Managed Chaos murdered half a million children last year... I think I'd rather be a loser."
Welcome to your new life.
You live in an evil society, a heinous state of crime and villainy. We're going to cut out the chunk of your brain that cares what it thinks about you, that cares about being successful within it, that respects its standards. Definitionally, most of the High Church of Official Truth's standards will be poor ones, so as long as you can find different, better standards to live up to, your life will improve.
Goodnight.
...
...
...
The surgery was a success, dear Subscriber. You can't get an important job? The People's Socialist Democratic Proletarian Republic of Washington has handed a bunch of money and important and respected positions to blacks, immigrants, and sexual degenerates? You no longer care.
Before, you fought back. You angrily shouted up at your rulers. "This is America! The greatest country on Earth! Follow the Constitution! Give me what's mine!"
Now, you politely nod. "The Bureau of Managed Chaos murdered half a million children last year... I think I'd rather be a loser."
Welcome to your new life.