Fushigi na Sweet Escape.

The title is a line from Crystal Kay's song, "Sugar Rain."

Three terms to make up for not having any recently:

Tendentious -- having or marked by a strong tendency especially a controversial one; "a tendentious account of recent elections"
Milquetoast -- sissy: a timid man or boy considered childish or unassertive
Sturm und Drang -- (the conventional translation is "Storm and Stress"; a more literal translation, however, might be storm and urge, storm and longing, or storm and impulse) is the name of a movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in response to the confines of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements.

I ran into all of those on MyDD alone. Part of me is really incredulous that I still run into so many English words that I don't know-- it makes the notion of becoming erudite in any other language so forboding. Even after spending years and years reading, I guess you're never really independent of the dictionary. I know that there will always be words that you don't know but I prefer to think I'll never run into them-- that they'll stay in their corner of the unused world and will never bother me. But then they show their ugly prefixes...

But yeah, onto bigger things.

I know, I know-- I should be making a post about life, or the lack thereof, in Japan.[BUZZ! That should be a clue to the negativity and frustration you'll see I have about Japan when I do write my entry.] But I've been up since 5 AM or so, reading news about America and stuff. Stuff about the primaries specifically, of course.

A few things:

Are Americans actually willfully ignorant? I'm not so sure, but I keep hearing this repeated and am pretty sure this meme shapes the narrative to some degree. "Americans are lazy, so dialogue will get us no where." "Other Americans don't care, so obviously we're just going to hear this talking point repeated for the length of the election."

Reallly, though? I just wonder how people draw these conclusions-- I took a Law/Government class in high school and I think I might remember some pie charts about how influential thirty second talking heads and simple advertisements are. But at the time, I don't think I was savvy or invested enough to figure out how accurate these stats were, or if they didn't possibly represent other voter correlations, or who knows. I'm wondering about this meme specifically because it leads to a type of cynicism for inquiry-- "we can't continue to question this, because it will turn into a talking point for them; it will ruin the electability of our candidate; it's not unifying; etc."

This could just be me being naive and running off of Atlas Shrugged, but anything that discourages inquiry and thinking seems categorically immoral. That said, there probably are many facetious memes running around, along with messages crafted to have certain effects, but I disagree with the paternalistic "we don't need to talk about it because other people won't be smart enough to dissect it and figure things out for themselves" attitude.

This was prompted by reading MyDD's coverage of Obama's association with Pastor Wright.[I've long since stopped frequenting DailyKos as much as I used to-- I don't think I can deal with all the spin, even as an Obama supporter] If I were home, my aunt would definitely be living it up and would demand me to defend my candidate. I don't know how exactly I would-- I've known about Wright already. I'm unsure about why the story is only making big waves now, but there were smaller waves in the blogosphere months ago-- he's been related to this man for twenty years.

It might be that Obama really did have a free pass for so long. It might be that it's more profitable to build a candidate up and then have him crash down. I'm sure there are other possibilities.

Anyway, I've been wondering about this line of guilt-by-association for a while now. I was talking to Steven about disavowing the views of one's supporters late one night, that politicians are and should be expected to do all within their power to reject and denounce the view of anyone who might be construed to be a surrogate for their views. "Complicity is immoral." There was a reason for talking about it I think-- at the time, I was saying that McCain's non-endorsement=\= rejection, or whatever it was that Hillary was demanding from Obama when he received Farrakhan's support.[By the by, does anyone know any good sources for news? I've been trying to get access to actual transcripts, or at least things more substantial than one-two line quotes that you might find in articles. Or are those really the only ways people get news-- blogs, articles, tv, radio? Thanks.]
I think I forgot where I was going with this. Essentially where guilt-by-association begins and ends, I guess, because I think that we're supposed to compromise on some things, right? When two people of different faiths get married for example, assuming both parties aren't mutually committed to religious apathy or one party decides to convert. Or I don't know, maybe that's not as good of an example. I guess to draw an extreme case, I think I would be expected to still associate with my mother even if she was an extreme racist or Holocaust denier, for example.[Of course, this is different from Obama having Wright on his spiritual council, or whatever]

My point is, at some point guilt-by-association becomes null. I'm thinking about this now because I'm friends with people who have views I don't support-- "pro-Life"[I put the term in quotes because I believe the term is misleading]/pro-war/pro-gun rights/pro-communism/what have you. Of course, I'm also not a politician running for president and I don't have any of these people working as mouthpieces for me, trying to endorse me for this or that, running fundraisers for me, etc. But at some point compromise plays a part-- for me, I try to make friends with people I disagree with because I want to hear other people's views, because I'm wrong about a lot of things and I usually find out after hearing from other people. Hmm.

The dialogue about all this is, or was, a lot more developed in my head, but I seem to forget it as soon as my fingers touch the keys. Instead, I'm left with intro sentences that were supposed to lead to more thoughts that are no longer there.

I'm also wondering if I believe that idea about being complicit if you don't firmly state your position for or against something. I suppose I just don't remember why this is supposed to be a convincing argument, the whole complicity being wrong idea.

I had other non-Japan topics to discuss but, as is typical with me, I forgot them.

I also wonder what all this politics-stuff means for me-- I know I used to care more about politics in high school and became apathetic in college. The apathy seems to have disappeared during the primaries, especially now that I don't have class. It was the other day, while I was still in America, that I admitted out loud that I would like to be a politician-- especially after talking with my aunt about "compromise" when choosiing politicians, since politics is inevitably filthy and about choosing the lesser of two evils. This is really why I was wondering about my own guilt-by-association-- if I ever did run for politics, how many of my friends could be used against me? Of course, it's a little early.

My admission came from hanging with Perris before I went to Japan. I need to blog about him, I guess, though the edge is off now that we're in different hemispheres.[Right? I assume Japan is not Western Hemisphere, but geography was never my strong suite, ahaha. I guess I just find the idea that the Western Hemisphere is pretty much North and South Americas, with maybe of some Africa and Greenland, while the Eastern Hemisphere is everything else to be partly weird. The Earth is spherical, right? Hmm. Wikipedia time, perhaps.] Anyway, Perris is sort of a weird mix. About 70% Shawn-- nice/funny, but in a different way, from California, vegetarian, half-black/half-white...and something else that I forget. Then there's at least 20% Nakeefa since he's into public policy and has a similar sense of humor, I think. 10% is other, since he's short and relatively forthcoming about his sexual habits? I guess.

Sometimes, like now, I wonder if I'm too truthful in this rag, since I know at least some of the people I discuss or mention possibly read this thing. I think Summer was telling me once about how too much honesty can be a bad thing, or that being so forthcoming about things might show a lack of concern for the feelings of others-- what brought that conversation on was when I was name-dropping in other entry. But I guess I still have trouble wrapping my brain around it-- honesty is such a perfect maxim[Oh Kant, how right you were in this regard] that I can't help worshipping at its altar. I guess that presentation is supposed to be an important part of communication-- that rudeness is not a necessary component of honesty, that there's a proper way to present one's opinion. I guess I just wonder what "rudeness" is, exactly-- it's certainly not an objective thing, and I don't think I've ever come into an entry with an intention to hurt anybody. Maybe? Haha. It's also that the only people I know who might read this thing, I usually have no intention of hurting. So if I've been rude, I'd guess that rudeness can at least be independent of intention.

No rhyme or reason, just me letting some rambling thoughts spill from my head.

Hopefully I'll make my next entry about Japan. I even took pictures!

Later.