Mike Lester for June 04, 2015

Don’t forget to include the exhibit of all the police officers who returned fire at suspects. .Pausing so our liberal friends can change their panties...Just don’t expect a side show on the economy shrinkage, Isis fumbling, health care disaster, record numbers of out of work minorities, etc etc.Pausing so our liberal friends can sip their latte’s, cut wind, and yawn.

Hiram … it’s “fear” in the sense of “reverent awe”, and understanding what He could do to us if He didn’t love us. So, yes, we “fear” AND worship Him. And I’m profoundly sad that you can’t comprehend that – or at least be tolerant of it without belittling it.

And all the police officers who daily “return the fire” of unarmed suspects.

^There are good people of faith, but when it comes to the radicals, whether “conservative Chrisitans”, “ultra-orthodox Jews”, or “radical Islamists”, the real secret is these nut fringe minorities do NOT represent their faiths, and carrying their faiths to extremes, and violence against the innocent, violate them all.

To me the cartoon is just a reversal of positions and not meant to offend anyone but make people think. It is a world where the norm is transgender and non transgender people are the freaks. The reverse of transgenders being the freaks.The whole thing gets lost though with many messages Conservatives, Church, Two Jobs, Freedom, Loving Freaks, etc. I guess in this world, the transgender father is against all this. It is not a particularly good cartoon as it could have been clearer.

I see no evidence indicating Hiram is from my country.

This cartoon, I think, is an excellent example of rather skillful ideological naturalization. By which I mean that ideology (of a certain sort) attempts to claim that something which is social and the product of history, and therefore subject to critique and change, is natural and timeless and therefore not subject to critique and change. I begin with the lovely “dog-faced dog.” Of course a dog is dog-faced. They always have been. We all know that. It would be a denial of nature to suggest otherwise. Likewise, monogamy and the modern nuclear family are just as obviously natural and timeless as the idea of a dog-faced dog. And a stable family structure means that boys should play with toy guns. And those who deny climate change are also on the side of nature and the obviously correct.But in fact, even though dogs are naturally dog-faced, the modern nuclear family is the creation of a particular historical moment, and those who deny climate change are themselves opposed to nature. His equations don’t work, except that they buttress the false consciousness of those who already believe his false equations.

I’m glad you found it interesting. I actually learned how to do this kind of ideological analysis from one of my classics professors. A lot of the theory behind this approach comes from some more or less Marxist critics, particularly Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton, but it fits well into classics because a major part of the project of classics is trying to understand ancient literature in the context of ancient society; so, for example, we look at the poets of the Augustan period partly in terms of the social upheavals of the late Republic and the early Principate. Vergil obviously fits right in, but even the love poets, Propertius and Ovid, for example, are writing very much in a social and political context. Classicists have always been interested in the contextualization of literature, but the methods of the ideologically minded critics, such as Williams and Eagleton, have helped me become more clear about how to go about this kind of analysis. You can use the same techniques on Vergil’s Aeneid and on a cartoon by Lester.

fwolf said “@Bandusia: Hiram Bingham, the “Austrian,” is only his latest incarnation. He was originally DrCanuck, and has been DrCanuck’s Little Sister, Captain Vancouver, English Teacher, KlondikeMike, WaterBuffalo, NeoConMan, Sheik Yerbouti, APerfectGentleman, and some others. All banned by the mods, and each time with him returning illicitly under a new account, defying the ban. So who’s the troll again?”

Tut, tut, watch the blood pressure, Greggy.Or was it Julie, or Phoenix, or fwolf, or Gregg or Cheri Sun… I forget, you’ve used so many monikers here I forget which I should use.I also see you’re back to the ol’ hit-and-run type posts i.e. post, delete soon afterwards. (‘cos you didn’t like the idea folks might record your posts, or something. But you like us to know you’re watching us. Like a hawk! Or wolf.)Man, you really make us roll our eyes.

Oh, I do recall.

““Sei vorsichtig.”

”As if occasionally calling out posters for violations of the TOS equates to “stalking.”

“Occasionally” ? :-| If that’s occasional, I’d hate to see concerted. I’m slightly amused by all these threats. I’m just curious what flags will be engineered against me. I might be annoying the guy for not taking him seriously and holding him in utter contempt but would that consititute grounds for a vanishment and/or a banning?I wouldn’t think so, he has high principles afterall. :-|

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I don’t know much about the Duggars and I wish I knew less.

That’s exactly what I was wondering about…that I would vanish through an engineered form of flagging.

If I’m reading your posts, not yet ;-)@hiram I agree that flagging is to draw attention to a post but the moderation in the past seemed highly subjective and/or easily lobbied. The decisions were strange. IF the moderation has changed tack, or hands even, then I’m inclined to the original intent of flagging being more efffective and my fears of an engineered flagging and vanishment unfounded. Perhaps our complaints of their moderation finally found some ears.

I suppose there should be rules to control really vicious comments, but I’m not in favor of much disappearing. Several of those on this list I found pretty unpleasant, but I’m not sure they should have been banned. And some bannings are very puzzling. I say, Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, even if some are stinkweek.