#Yeetler

 About that livestream...

The Most Accurate Image Ever Posted on the Internet

I really cannot believe that I have people reading my Telegram channel who don’t get what Ye just did [in his interview on Thursday], so let me pretend it is possible to break a rhetorical effect down dialectically so that you can feel smart again. I doubt it will work—I tried for years on my blog to describe why Milo did the performances he did, and I STILL have colleagues in academia convinced that a) Milo is nuts, and b) I am nuts for defending him—but, as my mother always loved saying, I am Missouri-born and therefore stubborn as a mule, so take this as DONKEY WISDOM about Ye. 

What is the greatest taboo in our culture? Is it saying, “I love Satan”? Is it saying, “I love Judas, I would have kept the 30 pieces of silver”? Is it saying, “The Trinity is a nonsense doctrine invented by Rome/Saul-the-Fake-Apostle/paganism”? Is it saying, “Jesus was a fraud who is now in hell burning in excrement and I would kill him again”? NO. The greatest taboo in our culture is CHALLENGING THE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ON WHICH THE POWER OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WAS FOUNDED. 

Empires rely on casting an image of inevitability (“Manifest Destiny”) and ideological legitimacy (“Pax Americana”). Empires also rely on their subjects believing that a) they have no choice but to pay taxes, and b) they will be crushed militarily if they try to leave. Everyone alive on earth right now has spent the greater part of their lives under the sway of the American Empire, whether as immediate subjects or in opposition to it. Americans don’t see this. Americans see ourselves as the Good Guys. Americans are shocked—SHOCKED—to learn that other people in the world do not look to us as the Model of Democracy by Which All Good Peoples Should Live. 

I learned this lesson abruptly back in 1987, when I was a naive 22-year-old on an archeaological dig in Italy with a British digging team, and there were hired workers on the team who were British Socialists and HATED America. I had spent my entire childhood proud to be an American (sing it), but when the socialist challenged me to name something good America had done, all I could blurt out was (I kid you not), “McDonald’s.” (He had been talking about Chile and CIA backed revolutions, what did I know?!) When I reported back to my family at Christmas how much people in Europe disliked America, I was told I was crazy. That same autumn, the Iran-Contra scandal broke (how many of you remember that?!), and I learned even more about how much my fellow students at Cambridge distrusted the American Empire—for good reason. 

Fast forward to post-9/11 and WMD and I was sending money to MoveOn.org to help fight Mr. Bush’s Imperial War. If you remember anything of the past 75+ years of world history, the one thing you should remember is how the American Empire exerts itself against anyone who tries to resist its “mission”. Think Saddam Hussein (funded in his war against Iran, only to become a Novus Hitler when the USA decided it wanted a war in the Middle East). Think Muammar Gaddafi (sometime praised, then vilified; again, declared a Novus Hitler to be executed by the USA). Think Vladimir Putin (our current Novus Hitler, except he is fighting actual Nazis in the Ukraine, whom we are sending money, for the moment, anyway). 

Everyone loves quoting 1984, but somehow nobody ever puts two-and-two together and realizes who our Emmanuel Goldstein really is. (What a name, eh? “God-with-us Goldstone”?!) YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO THINK OF HITLER AS A HUMAN BEING. He must be the WORST ENEMY THE UNITED STATES HAS EVER FACED IN WAR. Worse than Joseph Stalin. Worse than Chairman Mao. Worse than Emperor Hirohito. 

This is why we are not allowed to say anything other than “I hate Hitler.” Because the legitimacy of our warmachine depends on being the Good Guys who killed the Monster.

Now consider what Ye is fighting. He is fighting the PROPAGANDA MINISTRY of the American Empire. The Ministry that has spent the past 75+ years making art (coughTriumphoftheWillcough) about how We Are the Good Guys. But that Propaganda Ministry, as Ye and others have been trying to tell us, is grounded on SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. And always has been. Look up Shirley Temple or Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe. This is the same ministry that has spent the past 75+ years making movies about Nazis as the Bad Guys. 

Are we allowed to call out the abuse? Are we allowed to recognize how the United States has projected its power through the same kind of propaganda that the Nazis used? Art, architecture, movies. Have you watched The Triumph of the Will and compared the images from the Nuremberg Rally with ANY POLITICAL RALLY YOU HAVE EVER ATTENDED? Ye was saying he likes Hitler. Do you like political rallies with speeches and stage settings and the triumph of the Will of the People? Ye is at least honest about the effect that Hitler had on the aesthetics of the 20th century. 

Is Ye being silenced now (de-Tweeted) because he said he likes Hitler? Or is it because he is calling out the Propaganda Ministers for their trauma economy, and they need us not to see what he has shown us about how the Ministry works?

—Originally posted on my Telegram channel, December 4, 2022 (part one; part two)

Spot the Nazis

Kilts and I have been collecting pieces of this part of the mosaic on our own livestreams these past couple of months. Come, take a cruise on the Mosaic Ark for more Donkey Wisdom!

Recommended episodes: 

Mosaic Ark 16 Ye Holy Fools

Streamed November 9, 2022 (UATV; YouTube)

Mosaic Ark 19 Gaslighting 101

Streamed November 30, 2022 (UATV; YouTube)

Comments

  1. whitewallFebruary 12, 2023 at 2:50 PM

    Rachel, when this subject appears in print, I naturally think of you....Medieval I mean.

    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/02/writer-of-going-medieval-turns-her-attention-to-periods-attitudes-on-sex/

    Robert

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense

Image
Here be dragons. And doves. Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always out of fashion because, of course, it is not a longing for the world, and the world knows it. We know what the world wants. The world—by which we mean Satan, the Lord of the World—wants above all our obedience, a jewel so precious that he will do anything to get it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, pretend to social standing, pretend to insider knowledge to get us to consent to his influence.  “God lied to you. You will not die.” And suddenly we are anxious about having other people dislike us, about losing prestige in our social circles, about other people being more popular or influential or successful, about other people having secret knowledge, about our own influence and fame. “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And with that temptation, our first parents fell. The irony is cosmic. There they were in the Garden, privy to conversation with God face-to-face, ...
Keep reading

Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

Image
1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a...
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in ...
Keep reading

Draco Layer Three: The Moral or Tropological Sense

Image
Learn to discern. We all know what sin is, right? Right?!  Once upon a time in the desert , the hermit Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399) set out to make a list of the most deadly ones, albeit he called them “deadly thoughts,” not “sins.” You probably know the list, even if you don’t think you do: gluttony, impurity (a.k.a. lust), avarice (a.k.a. greed), sadness (a.k.a. feeling sorry for oneself), anger or wrath, acedia  or sloth, vainglory, and pride (two different things).  Not quite the list you were expecting? That is because some centuries later—we’re talking ancient times here, when centuries passed like decades do now (or vice versa)—Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) revised the list, somewhat accidentally, in his commentary on Job.  Gregory had been expounding Job according to its multiple layers—yes, that’s right! Job, like Shrek, has layers! —and he happened somewhere in book XXXI to mention the “seven principle vices” to which Pride,  the “Queen of S...
Keep reading

What's in a name?

I knew it was a mistake involving myself in political commentary*, but having taken the plunge, I guess I have to keep swimming, at least until the election. One of the things that has mystified me for years is how the label "liberal" came to be associated with support for government regulation of business, e.g. environmental and worker protection measures, or even (heaven forbid) financial transactions. I know that my colleagues in political science would have an answer to this, and I suspect it goes back to sometime in the 1980s, when Berke Breathed did all those comics about the General [my bad: the Major; it's been a long time] and Milo hunting liberals in the meadows of Bloom County. But knowing the little that I do about the history of the concept of liberalism as it developed in the 19th century, I must confess myself rather confused. This is the way John Stuart Mill (as Wikipedia puts it, "one of the first champions of modern 'liberalism'") s...
Keep reading