/Picture perfect/, pictures of your ‘mothers’, pictures of your ‘fathers’, *a long time ago*

NB: COSATU!

Final Answer

“Living Life Over Again.” DAVID BLUMENFELD. 2009; Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol 79 Issue 2
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122594433/abstract

Compare and Contrast

Although I look a lot like Harry Hopkins (and am, like him, a man on none-too-generous welfare) I’m actually several shades more radical than the New Dealers. However, I’d settle in the short term (i.e., most of my remaining life) for some initiatives like the job-creation program; but advocating for unions, higher wages, etc. during Clinton and Bush has essentially cost me jobs and virtually gotten my ass kicked. If that sort of thing has worked for you, maybe I should take notes, but I suspect I’m not the only person to regret taking “radical” stands on issues — for purely pragmatic reasons.

Post Festum

I intend to discontinue The Fortunes of the Dialectic, as I discontinued my previous web site “OpenSentence” in 2005, at this point. Initially a piece of Popery, the title later came to refer to many things: the fruits of genuine intellectualism, a Fred Astaire movie, una economica populare, life outside cars, “star systems”, and the results and upshot of Hegelian dialectics: however, when one is within “spitting distance” of sobriquetization, one ought to consider “other opportunities”. Including, I suppose, a return to genuine pseudonymity by a man who could, in truth, neither be Jeffrey nor “Jeff” Rubard: there was at least one of the former before, and the “pronoun of laziness” concealed derailed memory traces. I live and breathe, not too comfortably but comfortably within the law; we are now able to hold our elected officials and their bureaucratic “minders” to promises and reasonable expectations, and I have said much more than I hoped to, wanted to, or ever thought possible on a number of things (tho’ unstitching the joys of Kipling may just have been too damn much). It is one country, though we stand in disunity: and like the Spinners, I’ll be around. Be seeing you.

Weekend Gallery: *Harvey*

In the spirit of things, I’d like to direct people’s attention to an American film that was once a central reference-point for discussions of mental illness, but which many people party to the arrangements currently made may not be familiar with: the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey. Adapted from a play by Mary Chase, Harvey tells the story of Elwood P. Dowd, a small-town dipsomaniac who spends his days introducing people to an invisible six-foot-three rabbit named “Harvey”. Although the critical-theoretically minded have been told “It would perhaps be possible for a good movie to be made according to the Hays Code, though not in a world where the Hays Code existed” Harvey is a carefully-crafted and delightfully entertaining look at the way mentally ill people interface with the world: some people may dismiss it as “fantasy”, but those people may indeed not be party to the social compact of American rationality it (or the expression “looney-tunes”) sketches out.