The importance and impotence of language, #28 in the series
Tuesday, March 26th, 2019[ by Charles Cameron — metaphor, that Owen Barfield thing that undergirds Tolkien, who gives us our hero myth at highest, truest pitch — see final section ]
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One for the arc archive:
There is not a word in the American lexicon for such gatherings—the semi-spontaneous assembly of people in the wake of tragedy, who are united by both grief and by anger, and whose public mourning serves to reaffirm their civic bond to one another. But we need such a word..
That’s an important point.
**
Look, large events have — what do events do, transpired? no — eventuated, actuellement, actually, which is to say, right about now..
From MTP 3/25/2019:
Chuck Todd:
At this point it seems pretty clear that, while politically Democrats have been perhaps, if not check-mated, a pretty touch check on the chess board here, politically..
Chuck Todd:
None of us have read the Mueller report. None of us have got a single complete sentence of the Mueller report.
Jake Sherman:
It’s certain that Democrats run the risk of beating this drum too loud collusion on the collusion thing. The collusion angle, politically, was the singular focus of this investigation. That’s why it started.
Is this going to be like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, buried in some warehouse in New Mexico?
If they find something, a hundred of them jump on it — it’s the bandwagon effect ..
The Beat, Ari Melber:
Ari: Is Barr departing from those preedents?
Preet:*****
He [Mueller] punts to Congress, and then Bill Barr runs on the field, takes the ball, runa in for a touchdown for the President..\
Holder:
I think Preet was wrong there..
Rossi:*****
Using a football analogy, that’s what Preet did, I want to use a basketball analogy. We have a jump-ball, we’re giving it to Bill Barr, who’s taking the ball, he already decided the possession arrow..
Preet, Holder, Rossi — a touch of Calvinball, one game becoming another?
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Let’s take a break:
Malcolm Gladwell, Thresholds of Violence
Thresholds are — in Latin — limina. Here a shooter threshold, a limen — a red line which, having been crossed, now shifts towards the susceptible:
The kid .. requires a finely elaborated script in order to carry out his attack .. : the effect of Harris and Klebold’s example was to make it possible for people with far higher thresholds — boys who would ordinarily never think of firing a weapon at their classmates — to join in the riot.
The caption to the illustration heading Gladwell‘s piece reads:
In the years since Columbine, school shootings changed; they became ritualized
That’s what my piece on Tarrant as a follower of Breivik was about.
Here too, from Gladwell, is a serpent that turns to bite its tail when SWAT arrives:
I would detonate when people were fleeing, just like the Boston bombings, and blow them up too. Then my plans were to enter and throw Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs and destroy everyone and then when the swat comes I would destroy myself.
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And serpentine sinuosity in the Mississippi at English Bend, the great river’s tail not quite bitten? Another border blurred, line receding…
The plane took off to the north, over Lake Pontchartrain, and looped back toward New Orleans. We picked up the Mississippi at English Turn, the sharp bend that brings the river almost full circle. Then we continued to follow the water as it wound its way into Plaquemines Parish.
Eh?
The control of nature? Good luck with that.
**
Back to business — a rush of chyrons, with a couple of texts:
Booker to Ari:
I have had you on background in many of the rooms I’ve been in
There must be a lot of thoughts about who the umpire should be ..
the letter came from somebody who was already suspect and should have recused himself ..
Booker:
We’re seeing a lot of dots that seem to be directing us toward a real problem, a potential collusion that continues to seem tom be smoldering and that might result in a real fire..
Let’s look at the fact pattern ..
— that last is an interesting phrase —
Just a couple more from Sen Cory Booker to Ari Melber, then we’ll take a break.
Sen Booker:
This is a sacred constitutional moment for us ..
That’s an excellent quote***** for USian civil religion ..
A call to creaate what King calls “a more beloved community”
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At a later stage in the evolution of consciousness, we find [the principle of living unity] operative in individual poets, enabling them . . . to intuit relationships which their fellows have forgotten-relationships which they must now express as metaphor. Reality, once self-evident, and therefore not conceptually experienced, but which can now only be reached by an effort of individual mind–this is what is contained in a true poetic metaphor; and every metaphor is “true” only in so far as it contains such a reality, or hints at it. The world, like Dionysus, is torn to pieces by pure intellect, but the poet is Zeus; he has swallowed the heart of the world; and he can reproduce it in a living body.
See here the relationship with Tolkien? with poetry, with HipBone Games?
**
Out.
