[lit-ideas] Re: resentment
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:35:05 -0500 (EST)
-----Original Message-----
>From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Feb 26, 2007 2:54 AM
>To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: resentment
>
>On 2/26/07, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>
>That said, Lawrence winds up saying (or, at least, this is what I
>hear), look what I did. The subtext is clearly you should be able to
>do it, too, and if you don't I will despise you.
>
>An analytic aside: This attitude is common among, in particular,
>moderately successful people who fear losing what they have struggled
>to obtain. It gives voice to an anxious desire to be grouped with
>those who are far more successful and a terrified fear of being lumped
>with those who have, in the speaker's eyes, been failures. What I
>pointed to in my reply was another common characteristic, claiming
>that modest success was based solely on personal talent and a
>willingness to work hard, omitting completely the time and place
>without which neither talent nor hard work would have guaranteed
>success.
>
It may also tie in to the extreme need for the U.S. to be perfect and strong.
All the bad stuff is split off and projected elsewhere, whether on Clinton (bad
daddy) or onto "the enemy". All the good stuff is reserved for the good daddy
(Bush) and for one's country with which one identifies to a fault. There are
no shades of gray. We're all good; they're all bad. (To which Lawrence will
reply, but of course we're all good and they're all bad.) Even when confronted
with our incompetence, it becomes someone else's fault, such as the "Leftists"
or Iran. We botch Iraq but it can't be our fault; it's Iran's fault so we
better invade them and make it better (Seymour Hersh), or teach them a lesson.
Split off our badness onto them and then destroy it. (Except they're not a
punching bag and they will hit us back, as we will to our chagrin again learn.
But that's neither here nor there.)
As far as illegals and Social Security, they use false or stolen SS numbers.
Someone was just arrested as a major source of illegal SS numbers. I don't
know whether that staunched the flow of illegal SS numbers. There's obviously
not a high level of respect for law among illegal immigrants, by definition,
however hardworking they purportedly are.
As far as motivation for learning, I've always loved to learn stuff. I
remember as a kid being envious of Marvel comic book characters who were able
to travel in the universe and learn everything there was to know. Since 9/11
though, my compulsion to learn has focused on world politics and has taken on a
Nietzchean motivation, probably driven by anxiety. It might have been a will
to appropriate and dominate, an effort to control what seemed out of control by
understanding it. Unfortunately, my anxiety has deepened now that I know that
the U.S. took one terror attack by a relative handful of nuts and destabilized
the world with it. I'm resolved to that now, though. Learning about global
warming caused anxiety as well, but that's also pretty much resolved. Maybe
learning about something deeply does shrink it down to size, or maybe just
repeating it over and over is therapeutic. I'm learning that it's probably
better sometimes not to know, to just plod along thinking all is well, that
we're king of the heap, the way the U.S. is doing, even if it's a fantasy. I
imagine that's the way it was for the Russians in the Soviet Union. One day
they woke up and they had no country...
>Personally, the longer I live the more I realize how much of the good
>life I live is a gift received from others and an accident for which I
>can, at best, claim only partial credit. And I'd rather live in a
>society with a decent safety net and serious opportunities for the
>poorest among us to get ahead. If that makes me a Leftist, then proud
>to be a Leftist I am.
>
We are so dependent on circumstances. Just the circumstance of had Gore been
elected in 2000, how different things would be, or even Kerry in 2004, we
wouldn't be facing invading Iran. On the other hand, had Gore or Kerry been
elected, we'd never have appreciated what we had. Maybe that's the key to
happiness, knowing what you have before it's gone.
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