Frank Rich -- posted in the Nation

These remarks by Frank Rich in todays NYTimes Week in Review are most pertinent:

1. "The split between the Republican's outward homophobia and inner gayness isn't just hypocrisy; its pathology." He doesn't elaborate, but in Freudian terms that pathology would be: to externalize what is inner in themselves, and punish it in a "id representative" (others needing punishment: liberals, Arab/Muslims, all children in Iraq, Iran and N. Korea and domestic "extremists"). In order words, the Re-pubes have 'dumped' into the electorate the fear of their own inner gayness (their sh!t)-- gaynxiety, one pundit called it -- then dedicated themselves to waging war to eradicate it. ("it's not in us! -- its out there, in them!")

2. "...(G)ay people did not "infiltrate" the party apparatus -- they are the party apparatus."

In other words, the "Gay Old Party" (Rich's barb) is an instrument for the American people as a group to cleanse themselves of felt sinfulness for raging homosesual desire, repressed, by projecting it into this borderline actual case (Foley and Hastert's wrongdoing) and PUNISHSING THEM LIKE HELL. The re-pubes, who got Bush elected and started the Iraq war are expected to lead the purge.

Note: psychodynamically, wars are always unconsciously waged on the children (inner id-representatives of the old). Tokens of sexy youth and virile males (soldiers) must be beforever killing and dying, because in group-fantasy, they ...and of course all "liberals" -- are sinful animals in essence, and out of control. Wars are a guilt-purging ritual -- in America, this one, for the late Clinton years + '60's "excessive exuberance" blowout ... so much sin, so much blood needed to atone ... bodies of dead children are turning up alongside roads, in schools, University campuses .. in Iraq ...

And here is the kicker Rich delivers: "We now learn from "The Architect", the recent book by the Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, that Mr. Rove's own (and beloved) adoptive father, Louis Rove, was openly gay in the years before his death in 2004. This will be a future case study for psychiatric clinicians as well as historians."

Let help them along. I am a Freudian + Jungian psychohistorian.

First, one notes that Rich relates this spasm of gaynxiety, architected by Rove's huge ambivalence toward how you show honor to father, to the Jewish question, in two places, both interesting. 1. He compares "the grotesque canard that homosexuality is a direct path to pedophilia" to "the kind of blood libel that inanother era was spread about Jews." 2. "...(T)his attack was soon followed by another classic from the annals of anti-Semitism: the shadowy conspiracy. "The secret Capiton Hill homosexual network must be exposed and dismantled"" Rich quotes Cliff Kindaic of Accuracy in Media as saying.

But let's stop the kidding around right there (just kidding around) Rich ses self-hating re-pube homophobic homosexuals in a way that's goog for tyhe Jews? His first comparison is bizarre. Accusing re-pubes of pathological twistedness is like accusubg Jews of drinking Christian children's blood? ...ugh ? maybe they did. As for the second comment, call it conspiracy or not, the butt-banging apparatchiks surely could tell Rove was basically one of them, his own father, for crissake! This is surely like the underground connection between Aspens in the Libby Lobby. There have been two raging conspsiracies: reverse gays and Jews. As for reverse Jews: consider the anti-Semitic slurs scrawled in the student dormitory at SUNY Binghamton, for which police have charged one of the residents, Justin Friedman, who was apparently doing a hate crime hoax, menacing the straight white Christian male kids. (The President issues a letter declaring it "An attack on the entire community" -- then prosecutes it as a misdemeanor.) This happened in September and is under adjudication. Jewish dirty tricks for Re-pube politics, aided and abetted by State Universty dip sticks

So much for Rich's rambling. He sees the connection between queerness and Jewness as the most powerful unconscious components, but does not see their basic similarity in point of conscious reversal (sacrifici8ng their own kind for group solidarity). By linking them, he plays a positive role, conjoining what is "above" (conscious) with what is "below" (the punishable hate impulses).

But by juxtaposing them,as he does, ignoring the ing the way Jews politicize victimhood also, he performs a serious disservice. He obfuscates the way re-pube-ism, in general, represents a homosexual-Jewish apocalyptic metaphysic foisting itself off as America's inner child; and how that, as a dominant force everyone panders to, is what has brought us down.


Posted by JONES 10/15/2006 @ 2:36pm