Procrastination Redeemed
I recently re-read Paul Gilroy's excellent book Postcolonial Melancholia. (nerd book; from the non-nerd recent reading stack I wholeheartedly endorse Philip Roth's Plot Against America) One of the many topics Gilroy covers is the recent rash of imperial apolgists, who use their ostensible credentials to argue that the world is a better place when the white people control the brown ones. Such apologists come in many forms, from (insert favourite neo-con hawk here) to British historian Niall Ferguson. Caveat: I have not read Ferguson's Colossus: The Decline and Fall of the the American Empire, but my general familiarity with Ferguson's work leads me to take Gilroy's assessment of him at face value. Nice to not have another book to read, you know? Yes, that's lazy scholarship, but Ferguson is enraging and Gilroy's awesome. Anyway, all this backstory leads me to this afternoon's time suckage. After several hours of detailed note-taking, I was procrastinating picking up the next book and somehow wound up at fametracker, where I found the following description of Ferguson's recent Vanity Fair article (in the issue with the TomKat alien baby pics), which I assume is largely based on Colossus:
"Oh, good Lord: Niall Ferguson is writing on the inevitable decline of the American Empire. Um, we don't want you to read this. We don't even want you to read a summary of it. We heard the rough outline of this argument once before, around a campfire at a Christian camp where the counselor explained that, by not legally punishing sodomy, America would be heading down the same path as ancient Rome, toward decadence, decay, and doom.
Ferguson builds on this basic structure but goes further, linking the inevitable fall of Western civilization with feminism, NASCAR, credit-card debt, widely available birth control, Muslim emigration, lazy Scottish people on the dole, Grand Theft Auto, the fertile Chinese, America's limp-wristed refusal to institute a draft...hmmm, are we missing anything here? Basically, anything that happened since 1685.
You should also understand that Ferguson equates the dominance of Western civilization with the period during which the West controlled that largest proportion of the world through colonies. So, the short version of his argument: more colonies, more troops in those colonies to control the monkey people, and our lady folk should hand back their Pills and get back to popping out some white tots. Otherwise, the brown-skinned barbarians infiltrate our countries, take over our schools, rape our women, change the lyrics of our favorite drinking songs, and jostle us as they pass with their strange plates of exotically spiced foods, leaving splotches of odd sauces on our old school ties.
Seriously. Niall Ferguson is officially retarded."
http://www.fametracker.com/blue_moons/mediator_2006_09_18.php
You gotta love it when brainwork and wastetime come together like this.
And now I've sucked away even more time by posting about it, so it just gets better and better.
"Oh, good Lord: Niall Ferguson is writing on the inevitable decline of the American Empire. Um, we don't want you to read this. We don't even want you to read a summary of it. We heard the rough outline of this argument once before, around a campfire at a Christian camp where the counselor explained that, by not legally punishing sodomy, America would be heading down the same path as ancient Rome, toward decadence, decay, and doom.
Ferguson builds on this basic structure but goes further, linking the inevitable fall of Western civilization with feminism, NASCAR, credit-card debt, widely available birth control, Muslim emigration, lazy Scottish people on the dole, Grand Theft Auto, the fertile Chinese, America's limp-wristed refusal to institute a draft...hmmm, are we missing anything here? Basically, anything that happened since 1685.
You should also understand that Ferguson equates the dominance of Western civilization with the period during which the West controlled that largest proportion of the world through colonies. So, the short version of his argument: more colonies, more troops in those colonies to control the monkey people, and our lady folk should hand back their Pills and get back to popping out some white tots. Otherwise, the brown-skinned barbarians infiltrate our countries, take over our schools, rape our women, change the lyrics of our favorite drinking songs, and jostle us as they pass with their strange plates of exotically spiced foods, leaving splotches of odd sauces on our old school ties.
Seriously. Niall Ferguson is officially retarded."
http://www.fametracker.com/blue_moons/mediator_2006_09_18.php
You gotta love it when brainwork and wastetime come together like this.
And now I've sucked away even more time by posting about it, so it just gets better and better.