The Media

I've been a bit harsh about France. Yes, the French are the kings of bullshit. Yes, their intellectual output over the last two centuries has been a net harm on human civilization. Yes, all things considered, the French might be better off just shutting themselves in madrassa and reciting the Koran, rather than reading Focault and Derrida.

But you can hardly blame them. The French just happened to take intellectual pursuit very seriously, and in a culture where everything is concentrated in the capital, and intellectual pursuits are given high status, market competition is going to reward the most useful and productive pieces of intellectual work. And given that inherent epistemological constraints mean that most people just can't possibly know anything at all except a narrow area of expertise; well any popular intellectual construct must necessarily be complete bullshit. That's what people demand: bullshit to lubricate conversation, to make people talk so that gossip comes out easily, and social alliances can be made. The French were just pioneers in the modern intellectual marketplace. And they paid dearly for it.

But they were only first, not the only ones. Any culture where people read the press, and most social conversation is based on the content on mass media is going to inevitably fall down the French path. See the mighty English. If you have a Twitter account you can do worse than follow this account: https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian

Some samples (disable your AdBlock to see them):

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/671748828668813316

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/679616850905411584

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/679611369809903616

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/679295602736386048

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/678248615870074880

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/677236672367607809

https://twitter.com/SoMuchGuardian/status/672135777602641920

Somebody needs to write an English version of Soumission.

[…] By spandrell […]

Foucault is actually pretty OK. Not a BS artist like Derrida or Lacan (don't read anything from the latter, it will make your brain explode and he admitted on his deathbed that it was all crap anyway). Foucault wrote interesting things on power and social coercion in a non-obscurantist manner. He is more of a libertarian than a leftist, and more of a serious researcher than a "thinker".

Today I realized a right-wing society doesn't have a press, because it doesn't tolerate irresponsible people.

I see plenty of disabled Lego men, amputees everywhere.

Well he being an evil homo doesn't help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French\_petition\_against\_age\_of\_consent\_laws But yeah, no Derrida.

Only by acknowledging the influence of subliminal stereotypes can we eradicate their pernicious influence. I say we start by acknowledging the overt, in-your-face propaganda we have to wade through each day. After dealing with the pro-transgender; homo; feminist; immigrant; anti-white crap, we can move on to the subliminal stuff.

Foucault was not an 'evil homo'--too pansey for that. I read a lot of it, but no longer like much of it. Informative stuff about the Romans, esp. Plutarch, though. And his alter ego Deleuze stills holds forth in fabulousness well after death. I'd say you were all wrong about France, except recently I heard from a friend, a whimpering Swiss who'd just 'been in Paris last week', and he and his sensitive friends were commiserating on the 2 recent attacks--Charlie Hebdo and the Nov. 13 Paris ones. Typically French to ignore the San Berdoo one altogether, even though that's worse for the well-known intelligence failures. I can just imagine them drinking Pastis after Pastis and embodying 'Hiroshima, Mon Amour' images, while cultivating new tolerance for Muslims. He'd just reprimanded me about 'repulsive Trump', so I forbore reminding him that it need not said that he was up Angela's skirts--since his mother Heidrun, Prussian daughter of a Nazi soldier, and his wife, a German nurse, have both instructed him to bide with the good woman's 'inexpensive reparations for our former evil Nazism' while continuing to say certain aggressive frugalities are 'a bit Jewish, don't you think?' (even though they are--that's the discreet charm of NYC's Garment District.) I still think you're mostly wrong about France, though, because they are the greatest artists, and have long been the greatest nation in all the Arts, even had taken them seriously at the GATT talks almost 20 years ago, I think--with results that have been easily seen in film and at the Pompidou Centre. The centralization of Paris is the genius of it. You can't get the greatest cosmopolitan art without fattening hell out of the center. There is the greatest tradition of music except for Germany's, and theirs is more heraldic and also more quantitative; but, as rustics who just want to go to the woods, they were barely even urban before Krupp's cannon, so they skip all that 'prissy French refinement', so decadent. And the painters, of course. I read 6 Derridas, they are all like novels, one of them 'The Secret of the Secret' is not bad, but he's too twee. Fantastic to know about Lacan's deathbed admission, I hate his shit, he was a vicious, evil cunt. But all this luxury was necessary, and I sang La Marseillaise at the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, when the Memorial first opened. 'Star-Spangled Banner' is too ugly, even though I'm an extreme American patriot. How do you expect Paris to become exemplary, become like Toronto? Jesus. 'Admin' should add that one to the 'Singapore and Hong Kong Medley', because Toronto is much cleaner than Switzerland, and has to be cleaner than anything Chinese live in. I think there was some mention of having spent time there in a historical epoch. Yet Toronto is mystifyingly, numbingly dull, and I'm certainly not the only person to have noticed. I'm sure I'd hate Singapore too, but not Hong Kong. Food might be as good there as in Paris. In Singapore, they make those dreadful desserts out of vegetables and uncooked herbs. There is the incredible bullshit, of course. But I'm not going to deny Proust either, just because Peter did. They're selfish bastards, and that's part of their nationalism and their greatness, but that might make them wake up, although it may take another couple of ISIS operations. English examples are hilarious, they've been like that for a long time, but I never heard anyone come out and say 'Of course all white people are racists'. Modern England has very heavy Lesbian atmosphere to it. Inconceivable that they'd have a Trump, or a Le Pen either (very good sign, she's like Brigitte Bardot's political sister, both very fine bitches.)

I'll give you painting and music. And mathematics too, not sure about the rest of France's scientific output. But let's even give you science. Still can't compensate for the utter heaps of malevolent ideological filth that has come out of France since Rousseau. It's pure evil, all of it. A French journalist bitch has just been kicked out of China for saying that France is better than China, because Uyghurs were killing Chinese workers with machetes due to Chinese oppression. But France doesn't oppress Muslims, thus the Paris attacks are wrong, unlike the Uyghur attacks which are righteous. French universalism is so disgusting I sometimes really hope Le Pen loses and France is done forever. Let them fracture in 10 countries and fight each other so they have never the strength left to talk about humanity.

Read the story of Ms. Gauthier, yes, same as the cafe types, except that lots of Western leftists, French, American and otherwise, thought 9/11 was 'deserved', and French selfishness comes to the fore when they start getting up the ass. But apparently not enough yet. But after 9/11, I remember thinking that there had been a change in valuing continental leftism, and that has finally gained momentum in the U.S. But not in France fully yet. They still believe that shit and are startled that Americans are not buying immediate euro-worship anymore; they can't believe that kind of European condescension would actually be rendered irrelevant.

[…] offers some exquisitely crafted bullshit cleaned from […]

[…] The Guardian. […]