RE: [xmca] an interesting take on bullying

I know what you were referring to, i was stating it tounge in cheek and
referencing the fact that in today's world of media driven angst that we
vulcanize ourselves into 'those' people who think 'that' way and it isn't
'my' fault that the world has such horrible leadership. I seriously have a
hard time understanding why it so fashionable to embrace the
anti-republican rhetoric, as if to say, "hey it wasn't my fault, i voted
for Gore or Kerry." Gore or Kerry would have brought there own baggage
into the office that the Krugmans of this world would have ripped on just
as rigorously. At this point in time in America there should be a push
away from placing blame on the politicians at the federal level and a more
concerted effort to increase the involvement at the local level. Krugman
could do us all a favor and write about a city councilmember that decreased
crime in a neighborhood or solved a public housing mess. I didn't like it
when pundits referred to Clinton's 'oral' office and I don't find it the
least bit amusing that Bush has been denegrated to a lowbrow hick. I must
insist I am not defending Bush but rather the office of the President of
the United States.

eric

                                                                                                                             
                      "Peter
                      Smagorinsky" To: "'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      <smago@uga.edu> cc:
                      Sent by: Subject: RE: [xmca] an interesting take on bullying
                      xmca-bounces@web
                      er.ucsd.edu
                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                             
                      08/11/2008 10:09
                      AM
                      Please respond
                      to "eXtended
                      Mind, Culture,
                      Activity"
                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                             

No, I like Krugman. I mean the ways in which US Republicans divide the
world
into macho men (themselves) and effeminate, latte-drinking, elitist, etc.
others (Democrats). They try to bully people rhetorically into becoming
like
themselves, at least them-rhetorical-selves. They often talk a tougher game
than they play. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTAqUwYHnec&feature=related (for people from
outside the US, a "chickenhawk" is a "hawk"--i.e., someone who pushes for
wars to solve political problems--who is a "chicken"--i.e., one who is
fearful, which in this case means one who never served in the army himself
and often went to great lengths to avoid military service).

Peter Smagorinsky
The University of Georgia
125 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602
smago@uga.edu/phone:706-542-4507
http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/faculty/smagorinsky/index.html

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 10:08 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] an interesting take on bullying

Peter:

Are you referring to the name-calling by the author as the bullying?

eric

                      "Peter

                      Smagorinsky" To: "'eXtended Mind,
Culture, Activity'" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      <smago@uga.edu> cc:

                      Sent by: Subject: [xmca] an
interesting take on bullying
                      xmca-bounces@web

                      er.ucsd.edu

                      08/08/2008 06:38

                      AM

                      Please respond

                      to "eXtended

                      Mind, Culture,

                      Activity"

Know-Nothing Politics

By PAUL KRUGMAN
<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/pau
lkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Published: August 7, 2008

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three
months the party plans to keep chanting: "Drill here! Drill now! Drill
here!
Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!" O.K., I added that last part.

<
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogi
n#secondParagraph> Skip to next paragraphAnd the debate on energy policy
has
helped me find the words for something I've been thinking about for a
while.
Republicans, once hailed as the "party of ideas," have become the party of
stupid.

Now, I don't mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than
their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don't mean to question the
often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism - the insistence that there
are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem,
and
that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests
otherwise - has become the core of Republican policy and political
strategy.
The party's de facto slogan has become: "Real men don't think things
through."

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling
would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week
Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil
prices: "The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,"
said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would
take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that
even then the effect on prices at the pump would be "insignificant"?
Presumably they're just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the
Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, "want Americans
to
move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their
government jobs."

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don't count on it.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and
mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was,
"They attacked us, and we're going to strike back" - and anyone who tried
to
point out that Saddam and Osama weren't the same person was an effete snob
who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let's also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a
cult
of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man
who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. "Mr. Bush is
the triumph of the seemingly average American man," declared Peggy Noonan,
writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. "He's not an intellectual.
Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world."

It wasn't until Hurricane Katrina - when the heckuva job done by the man of
whom Ms. Noonan said, "if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and
help" revealed the true costs of obliviousness - that the cult began to
fade.

What's more, the politics of stupidity didn't just appeal to the poorly
informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were
more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the
flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious
to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average
voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express
privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly -
that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but
because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show
Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought
into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that
Republicans, despite Mr. Bush's plunge into record unpopularity and their
defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may
be right.

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political
traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor
expanded offshore drilling - and 51 percent of them believe that removing
restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

The headway Republicans are making on this issue won't prevent Democrats
from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains -
and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show
a much closer race.

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to
partisanship, for working together to solve the country's problems. It's
not
going to happen - not as long as one of America's two great parties
believes
that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

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Received on Mon Aug 11 09:08 PDT 2008