FEATURING……
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST…..!
Categories: Cartoons
BATTY-MAN!
About This Site
In the spirit of the Large Hadron Collider our aim is to create a “collision space” (as opposed to a “safe space’) for critical thought and artistic expression. We welcome fellow travelers on our ever evolving journey towards “a more perfect Union.”
For a site that is supposed to intelligent thought from both sides, perhaps you might think how you look to people besides yourselves. Pretty much all the content here is as guilty of the same infantile thinking that the woke crowd you choose to attack is guilty of. There is no critical thinking here, no attempt to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s head at once. This is a shame as I once respected at least one of the publishers as a teacher and thinker.
Agrimony (but given your comment, perhaps you meant a “c” instead of a “g”?) you chose to criticize our site, so, as the editor-in-chief, I will respond. I am in no position to, nor would ever censor or cancel you, pester or black ball you, spay or neuter you; in other words, I’m not a spiteful neurotic waiting for an opportunity to deform your person, so why did you hide behind a pseudonym? If you have a rejoinder to any of our pieces, I will be pleased to publish it, rest assured. As a former student or colleague of mine, as you imply, maybe even a friend, you know full well there is nothing I enjoy and welcome more than healthy discussion and debate.
You think that in general we mirror the close-minded and unsophisticated, childish even, approach of The Woke. Your comment appears under the recent satirical illustration by Reverend Snuff; it includes Democrats and Republicans + Fauci as Batty-Man, clearly ‘non-partisan” in its pillorying of the D.C political and institutional class. Satire, of course, exaggerates, and mocks. If it is infantile it mirrors the infantilism of the object it is satirizing. I’m sorry you didn’t like it, but each to their own.
You write that “there is no critical thinking here.” In response, I might ask you to read my piece “The Passing of Liberalism and the Rise of Post-Marxist Ideology” which attempts to reframe Wokeness in terms of Lukacsian Marxist ideology, and argues that early variants of Wokeness are in fact a poisoned appropriation of Foucault and post-modernism. Nobody has made that argument before. You might have read my “Suess Suit” where I reveal and critique the deeply flawed scholarship and logic that animated the war against Dr. Suess, a logic that is spreading across this country threatening to devour much of the literature and life that we hold sacred; or you might have read the numerous essays by Philalethes and appreciated their unique form and unexpected leaps and conclusions, their brave attempt to balance an embrace of America in its essence and at the same time hold it accountable to its past sins.
You might have also taken notice that we predicted the inevitable and weird doom of the “Portland protesters,” the Seattle commune “CHAZ” project, Antifa, and all the rest; how progressives would turn their backs on them once their political ends, vanquishing The Prince of Darkness, had been achieved; that we were perhaps the only magazine in the country to bring to light the (laughable) document used to determine which school names would be changed or remain in San Francisco. We have also published numerous poems, short stories, and creative-nonfiction, many by extremely talented writers who have never had a venue to publish in before.
Perhaps you failed to note that we launched our publication with a Manifesto. I encourage you to read it before coming to any conclusions about our project, agree with it or not. There we said that we were writers from all sides of the political spectrum who had one aim in common: to protect freedom of expression and thought, the foundations of this Republic. from the ideological mob.
Speaking of manifestos: did the Surrealists, Futurist, Dadaists, or Fluxus “hold two contradictory ideas” at once? Did they say, “hold on a minute; we didn’t consider it from the other side? Stop the press!” Did they stop to think what they would look like to people other than themselves? When and where we are strident it is because we have conviction, and believe that TODAY “holding two contradictory ideas at once” is in many instances out of touch, a scholar’s luxury, an attitude that should be encouraged when each side operates under shared rules of debate and when debate is considered the foundation for arriving at “truth.’
But what is at risk is the right to have a debate at all. The Social Justicers’ goal is to turn back the clock and returns us to the dark ages. They are well on their way to eliminating speech and thought which they deem “hateful” or “harmful” or “racist” or “phobic” or “sexist.” This level of censorship and intimidation—by now well documented, incontrovertible, and increasingly institutionalized—is new in any of our lifetimes. It is a threat to this republic and artist and thinkers everywhere. If we mirror the Woke it is only because this breed of fascism demands pushback by a force equal to it. Nobody but most the morally and spiritually somnambulant were talking about “seeing it from two sides” when the Nazi war machine in all its self-congratulating horror was barreling towards Russia. A similar horror, not as physically violent, but just as insidious, morally and spiritually destructive, is barreling over our own country today. You decide which side you are on. We know our side, and we will protect it.
Yours,
Aris
Thank you, Aris, for articulating these sentiments. To quote the over-quoted-for-good-reason Orwell, ” some” are not “more equal” than “others.”