Bruce Fancher on Fri, 11 May 2001 02:14:16 +0200 (CEST) |
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RE: <nettime> Amerika for Theorists (fwd) |
Understand first of all that we are intellectuals and as such we are entitled to judge the rest of society and when we find it lacking to dictate how it should be properly organized. Never mind that we live and work cloistered away in ivory towers, detached from the lives of most the people of this country and the world. Understand that real actual reality does not matter, all that matters is our perception of reality as distorted by our self-hatred and wish fufilment. Understand that those who disagree with us will be attacked and demonized as racists, sexists, homophobes, fascists. Understand that those whose lives we feel entitled to shape and distort using the coercive power of the state are desperately in need of our help, despite what they or anyone else might believe. We will disregard the destruction we have brought on them and instead blame the failure of all of our earlier efforts on the malevolence of our enemies. Understand that while living the good life made possible by free markets and democracy in the most peaceful, free, tolerant and prosperous country ever to exist in the history of the world, we will attack the very system and citizenry who make our level of freedom and material comfort possible. We will hold our society up to impossible standards, demanding utopia, but ignoring the day-to-day and year-to-year improvements in the lives of ordinary people. We will ignore the freedom and wealth, beyond the wildest imaginings of our ancestors, which virtually everyone in our society enjoys. Understand that we will ignore the 100 million innocents murdered and the hundreds of millions more who have led lives of poverty and repression in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua and everywhere our beliefs have actually been put into practice. Understand that although we defended those regimes and held them up as examples to be emulated, we will pretend that those crimes had nothing to do with us or our beliefs. We will delude ourselves into believing that next time someone puts our beliefs into practice it will be different, like an unrecovered alcholic who believes that next time he picks up a drink he will be able to control himself, despite all past evidence to the contrary. Understand that the death, destruction, poverty and repression we have visited upon people here and abroad are nothing but abstractions. What is truly important is our vision of "social justice," not the actual lives of the people who have suffered under the conditions our vision has brought about. Understand that we will detemine the validity of all truthes solely on the basis of whether they support our belief system. We will ignore all evidence which is contrary to what we wish to believe and denounce as a bigot and liar anyone who dares to speak against us. > -----Original Message----- > From: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net > [mailto:nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net]On Behalf Of Alan Sondheim > Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 1:49 AM > To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net > Subject: <nettime> Amerika for Theorists (fwd) > <.....> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net