Nope. Not Gonna Try To Listen to Loury's Speech.

Firstly, listening to only one person talk?  I am a really hard grader.  If I don't like the voice a lot, I am more likely to stop. And if I also don't like the message?  I got better shit to do than hurt my pretty brain that way.  And both Loury and McWhorter are on provisional mute for me.  Mainly on account of that whole hurts my pretty brain, part.

Both "black guys on Bloggingheads" keep on repeating, over and over, words that convey the idea, directly or indirectly, that these two (may I use the moronic term McWhorter uses in his book?)  "elect," Ivy League professors, who are living so far up the pyramid, they are living better than 80% of the population, have what I call "buy in," to the abstract idea of America, and the very comfortable version of it they live in.  I repeat.  Better than at least 80% of the country;  not just the Blacks and browns.

Acknowledging my unfairness in going off on him with out listening to his speech, but at least I know his act.  And that is, as a sort of post modern Il Dottore, of Commedia dell'Arte fame, be the voice of the establishment, and try to get the rest of us to support the powers that be, and the social order as it is. You all know  that it is not so much that I believe all of it has to be burned down, literally.  But I am not invested in the current social order.  Tear that shit down!  And that is what is so fucking tiresome about Loury, and most well fed conservatives.  They exist to conserve the current social order.  Tiresomeness at its most damaging, to the rest of us.

But if I could speak directly to him I would ask,"Do you really think that telling the vast majority of Black and brown people who have little to no buy in, that they should buy in to the American myth, has a chance of  accomplishing anything?  Negro please!"

So I am going to have to pass on the speech.  But as my Commedia dell'Arte reference belies.  I have a perfectly adequate education. I am well versed in the features and components of Western Culture;  more so than most as I have an earned BA in Theatre, and we have to learn all that shit!  Conservatives tend to blur the line between culture and nation.  I assume he does that in his speech, as he has done so in the past. I think that is one of the many perception errors  conservatives make.  But they are the morons who keep fighting  this thing they call the culture war.  Granted.  There is a stream, a subset of American radicalism that is anti Western Canon.  But that is a noisy, pesky few.  It is not mainstream liberal orthodoxy.

I am happy to report that I like my European culture.  Shit, just this past Saturday I was at the Metropolitan Opera House watching Turanadot.  It was sublime. But buying into the culture of the culture, is not the same as buying into the social order.  I still want to tear down the toxic, corrosive, exploitative social order.  But leave the opera house.  Oh, and give nice, fat, dollar for dollar matching tax breaks that match contributions to keep the opera houses and such other high culture institutions up and running!

Anyway.  Assume that this is less of a crabby slam against Loury, than it is about . . . the need to fight the current social order.  And that means I take the occasional swipe at people who defend the social order.  Conservatism is the enemy of progress.  Conservatism is less of a philosophy than it is a system that seeks to protect the few at the top, and exploit the rest of us. If someone is selling that shit, I ain't buying. Even if I will gladly go to the opera and hang out with the mink coat ladies.  

Oh. And the American dream has been a myth for most Americans for most of the nation's history.  Please stop selling that shit!  Sure.  People need to make decisions, and hopefully they will turn out to be wise enough decisions.  But for most of America, since a bunch of slave owning land owning elects broke away from the British?  They set up a system that deliberately favored the haves over the have nots.  Let us never forget that. 

I'm done with my radical writing for the day, here at least, I suppose.  Oh. To explain, the image shows the topical break down of Loury's speech.   I don't think I will ever get to listening to it, even in chunks.  Too much hurts my pretty brain shit, I can easily tell.