Today's Lileks

A blog I read once stated “I don’t link to Lileks. I figure you either read him, or you don’t.” And it’s much the same with me. James is a daily read, and although I’ll suggest you go have a look once in a while, generally I don’t. Today, however, is one of those days where I feel compelled to link him. Today’s entry is worthy of the Screedblog (which you should also check out for his take on the “new” Democrat message), and was prompted by reading a quote from Ang Lee, director of “Brokeback Mountain.” Two grafs:

Well. We always have our catastrophists and hysterics; there will always be people who sit in cafes and bitterly complain about the impending revocations of personal freedoms – and then dutifully go outside to smoke a cigarette in the cold, because that’s the law now. (It would be an act of civil disobedience to light up in the café, but it wouldn’t be cool. Your girlfriend’s sister has asthma.) What’s unique – and maybe I’m wrong; happens daily – is that the entire America experience past and present is now irredeemable. For a while the present was okay, because the right people were in charge, and there was a change we could attain Utopia with the right pieces of legislation. When that was the case, it was understandable to unload on the old benighted past, because that led up to this, and this would absolve the land.

(I never understood why 18th century America was castigated for not manifesting the values of the 20th, even though 18th century America held forth ideas that would be radical to 20th century Africa, and paved the way for those 20th century American values to exist and flourish. We’re always held up to the most peculiar standards. Our motives are base, our freedoms illusory or rationed or insufficient. It matters less that a freedom was granted in 1920; what’s truly illustrative of this rotten house is the fact that it wasn’t granted in 1871. As thought the world has always been free, kings died when the first Caesar was stabbed, Papal bulls since 500 AD have boiled down to “oh, whatev” and the entire world was a grand placid Sweden, where civilized people nibbled on crackers and tried to ignore the rude Yank on the lawn firing off his blunderbuss for no particular reason. You can site a hundred stories about French racism all you like, but it won’t matter because they applauded Josephine Baker’s nightclub routines in Paris in the 20s.)

There are a couple of typos; James acknowledged that he simply “dashed off” today’s entry. Damn, but I wish I could just “dash off” stuff like this. The man is a freakin’ genius.