Double Dialectics

The First Dialectic

THESIS "War as good." George S. Patton's ambivalence, resolved approbatively in favor of war as "our general". Tough, mean, smart, field tested commander, inspiring loyalty and discipline. The type of military man America will ever require to defeat cruel Nazi type enemies.

This war is (good/bad).

ANTITHESIS

Not: "(This) war is good"
****

Antithetical factions classified by type of S* (sign-use) strata

Existential types: pacifists (opposed in principle, perhaps on philosophical reasons, as conscientious objectors) Hippies, homosexuals, femininists, 'liberalism', University Intellegencia (UI) (domestically: anti-white racism, racialism; disapprobative Southern militarism, e.g., Bull Conners, George Wallace, Right Wing Senators: everything the 60's revolution stood for. These issues did not break out so much in the military.)

One existential type, barely represented openly, but there, could be labeled True American Jesus Trip believers, taking a theological stance against the perpetrators. These lacked clout and organization, since the signs and slogans of national identity were co-opted and used against us. The anti-abortion movement, which began in downtown Binghamton as a theologized existential counter force to militant Harur College antithesists


Political types: Democratic party, socialists (YSA, SDS), some student leaders, some outspoken Catholics and New York intellectuals. Street people "Leftists".

Philosophical types:

America* (group identity token)
The Trip (narrative history turn: America The Trip*)
The Communication revolution (post-positivism: Hot.Com condensation. (America The Trip for Me 'n You*)


SYNTHESIS: Patrick J. Buchanon's "Southern Strategy", connecting Southern Bible Belt Republicanism subsumed under Nixon's infamous Silent Majority, with old line Orange County (Ca.) Hollywood Americanism (Yggsdril, on the Paleocon boards) .. joined by moral rebounders against the perceived 60's excesses, plus carpetbagging religious entrepreneurs (TV preachers; later right-wing radio talkers), and a strain of genuine traditional (pre-Vietnam) culture (Ex. of 19th century SouthWest, Lubbock.)

It was this last that I represented at Harpur college. This traditional cultural strain was opposed, deeply and profoundly, and virtually unknown, by another thread of ethnic cultural identity, the Jewish influence. It was far from loud, or open or oppressive (to me), but it was in fact metaphysical, resting on different assumptions about reality only later to become 'totalized', with the help of the Big Glitch.

2. The Second Dialectic (Post-Synthesis of First Dialectic) --


NEW THESIS

WEDDED TO BOTH LOVE AND HATE

The confluence of post-Vietnam Americanism and the BIG GLITCH explains what followed, and the form of the New Antithesis.

1 Introducing the Neoconservatives

The Big Glitch was incorporated into American group discourse when the neocon Jews joined forces with the already distorted Americanism of Buchanan republicans. Conjoining TORAH! -Talmud specialists with morally challenged-but-holy Nixon supporters, not just forgiving but silently glorifying those who got the names of the dead carved into the Vietnam veteran's memorial wall, reversed the disapprobation and need for punishment their sin called for. It wasn't originally a Jew thing. The Vietnam war was a sin against the soul of America, and the liberal-to-radical Jews saw that, without calling attention to themselves as such (as none of us did, except the Catholics, which gave the peace movement a kind of comraderie ).

There was nothing particularly Jewish about the anti-war movement at all, except the exceptional talent and intelligence suddenly unleashed on several cultural fronts. They probably excelled in far greater numbers proportional to other ethnicities and cultures, as it is certain that their numbers and influence far excelled any other's in the neocon movement. Quoting Heilbrunn "Despite the fervent protestations of its founders and adherents, it is anything but an anti-semitic canard to label neoconservatism a largely Jewish movement." (p. 14) He qualified by saying he refers to "a cultural proclivity specific to American Jews of a certain generation, not about something that is "essentially" Jewish in either a religious or a racial sense." -- although use of "Zionism", and propagandizing Jerusalem in local children-of-all-colors celebrations argue against such constrained use; but we understand it. Israel* and the holocaust* have become sacralized tokens of a new politico-religious milieu the neocons would facilitate. As Heilbrunn notes himself, recent critics of the Iraq war have claimed that it results from foreign policy "pushed by neocon's "Jewish" concerns with Israel.' (p. 10) It is, in fact, crucial to understand that a particular strain of "Jewish" is, in fact, melded into the POST-SYNTHESIS (new THESIS) by THE GREAT GLITCH. It is a kind that uses the splits elicited by the names (the "J" words) to approbiatively disambiguate the metaphysical totality. As Heilbrunn notes regarding the inner split between Jewish factions coming out of the 60's:

"The best way to understand the phenomenon may be to focus on neoconservatism as an uneasy, controversial, and tempestuous drama of Jewish immigrant assimilation -- a very American story. At bottom, it is about an unresolved civil war between a belligerent, upstart ethnic group (the New York CCNY Trotskyite intellectuals) and a staid, cautious American foreign policy establishement that lost its way after the Vietnam War. The neoconservatives always had an uneasy relationship with the WASPs who had launched the cold war but lost their will to wage it during Vietnam." (p. 15)

2. End of "the Vietnam War Syndrome"

A "syndrome" is a psychydynanic feeling-toned complex attached to a persistant, there-or-not episode eliciting a strong characteristic instinctual response when referred to by words or pictures (most often traumatic, Ex. a child witnessing the primal scene).

When "syndrome" is used obsessively as a predicate, it can be called "the "syndrome" syndrome", manifesting the same compulsion to repeat at a second (meta-) level of self-observation. Such a doubling may be used to defend (be dismissive of) the charge of being obsessive-compulsive ("it's just a syndrome, you know").

The feeling toned complex to which "the Vietnam War syndrome" was/is attached is the totality brought back by "McCain and the 60's" -- the contradictory opposites predicated on in the '08 election. The two sides of the metaphysical split disambiguate the approbatives differently.
For those who followed Buchanan, Buckley, Reagan, Bush ...identification with the Lost Years he spent in suffering categorically opposes, as in a parallel (for it, non-) reality.

A DOUBLE DOUBLE take-out of the "syndrome" syndrome is in Eric Alterman's "The "Never Mind" Syndrome." Never mind the dark side of McCain's record; the flip-flops; the contradictions. The Suffering Son complex splits these off from consciousness, like the smell of Teen Spirit. "Getting over the Vietnam syndrome" actually sub-texts to "Getting over on the 60's baby boom sexuality, again" syndrome -- that which is forever disapprobative. The 60's* are forever on the HATE side of the Right Wing mentality because it* defines that mentality as such. THEY LOVE (the father: twisted reaction formation). WHOEVER hates them HATES LOVE (is twisted, themselves). The NEW THESIS is LOVING McCAIN.


THE NEW ANTITHESIS

Confronting Self-Contradiction Squared; Yablo McCain

A graduate philosophy student on the Phora website posted a logical paradox called Yablo. Without going into its content in detail, it occurred to me that the form of refutation of the New Thesis here might be illuminated by interpreting it into the first four segments of a fibonacci-type sequence (1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21- etc.), correlating the original pair of 1's (for sign-uses) with 1-and-its-opposite (1~1)*. With this change, 2 correlates with a predicate of a self-contradiction (1~1)2, and 3 correlates with the predicate of a predicate of a self-contradiction ((1~1)2)3.. Assume a stratification of predicate type-levels (predicates of predicates of a higher type are not per se predicates of individuals of lower type).

To interprete this, let the sign "McCain" be taken as predicate correlated with 2, predicated of "war hero~war hero" as 1~1.

This expresses the illogical (but easily constructed) idea that the same man both is and is not a war hero (both and/or neither, depending on how application of the name as a predicate is disambiguated higher up.)

Next, let "President" be taken as a predicate correlated with 3 as predicate of 2, as 2 predicates of (1~1) as name of (both or neither), taking McCain~McCain as instance. "President McCain" will have two instances, depending on whether the one taken is war hero or not; and also two other instances, depending on the opposite assignment: four in all.

At this point, a "approbative disambiguator", say "is good", may be predicated: "Presidents are good" (as Presidents --
"honor the system"). Since "President McCain" does not go with "anti-war hero McCain" it follows that if McCain becomes President, he will become a war hero, rather than the opposite. The predicate he has in the past is determined by the predicate he is given in the future THEN, in the present Now.

In order to avoid what is predicated today from being reversed by approbative disambiguation tomorrow, the names, facts and how they are conjoined must be specified. That is what the Big Glitch would forever prevent, if it is permitted to be squared.