On the “avant-grade”:
Throughout most of my life, I have been enamored by the idea of movements and revolutions. During the decade I spent studying literature, I was always most excited by experimental, avant-grade work that took place during times of political and social upheaval (you can never read enough early twentieth century artistic manifestoes–fortunately, there is no shortage of them). When I studied critical theory and philosophy, I was always most interested in work that challenged established norms of government, the self, perception and knowledge with radical, but rigorous, new ideas (I was obsessed with Michel Foucault at multiple times during my career in academia). History has always been a favorite hobby of mine, and my favorite topics are invariably revolutions: American, French, Russian, Irish, Indian, Cuban, Eastern European–you name it. Also, no matter how many presidential candidates, members of congress, Democratic Party leaders, or other national figures I meet and talk with, my favorite moments in political campaigns are always large rallies (preferably those organized by volunteers, or those convened to celebrate an electoral victory). I want to be there at the moment when history happens, when the world changes, when consciousness shifts, and when the people rise up and throw off the shackles of the elite, the status quo, and the comfortable. I have wanted that for a long time. Before that happens, I want to be an active member of the small clique, coterie or circle that identified the possibility for massive change and precipitated its manifestation. Whether it is a revolution of the sort Ben Franklin or Tristan Tzara would identify, I want in. As William Wordsworth wrote in The Prelude about witnessing the world change up close during the French Revolution “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.” Man, do I ever envy young Wordsworth. I want working for a candidate to give me a taste of the revolutionary feeling for which I long, and I want my regular job to do the same thing. For a long time, artistic and intellectual endeavors provided me with that spark, but when they ceased doing so I moved onto a career where that feeling was quickly re-establishing itself: online progressive activism. If I am willing to upend my entire life to search for that feeling, the least I should expect from the candidates I support most fervently is that working for them will allow me to sense it.
And the evidence of a supernovaed sense of self-importance accumulates. It’s like the guy’s busy writing Petrarchan sonnets to himself.
And he’ll probaby end up a tax farmer, like WW. Only without the poetry and stuff behind him.
Do you know what, Chris Bowers of MyADD? If you want to be part of a revolutionary movement for democracy, I strongly advise you to join the US Marines. Twipe.
“The French Revolution gaves us a bunch of headless corpses and a tyrant.” —Margaret Thatcher
Translation: I dig candidates who do not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Anything. Ever.
A tour in a combat zone as an infantryman might cure him of his juvenile revolutionary fantasies. He’d get plenty of that “feeling” I imagine.
Or maybe he could take up skydiving or paragliding to get his adrenal fix, rather than upending governments and getting people killed to slake his revolutionary jones.
Somebody, PLEASE, send that guy some paragraph breaks!!
What pretentious drivel.
Agreed, SGT Ted.
T/W himself – as in full of
How’d the show go, Fausta?
Why do people keep telling each other to join the US army? I mean, shouldn’t we be telling each other to join the Iraqi army? So we can finish the mission and get out?
>>I want to be an active member of the small clique, coterie or circle that identified the possibility for massive change and precipitated its manifestation.
And a pony, I’ll bet that he wants a pony too.
That’s not an unreasonable thing to want, but the easiest place to do it is in biz. The YouTube folks got more of that feeling than most candidates will ever dream of, and they’re just the recent most visible ones.
>> I want working for a candidate to give me a taste of the revolutionary feeling for which I long, and I want my regular job to do the same thing.
And here he’s no different than guy who wear athletic team jerseys. Except that they know that they peaked in high school.
Because—presumably—they’re US citizens?
Has Bowers decided yet whether or not to support the millionaire ambulance-chaser from North Carolina by way of throwing off the shackles of the elite? Or has he found some other avant-garde revolutionary who can better fill the void in his soul?
My kingdom for a blogjob!!!
MayBee–
What a difference a letter makes.
Remeber, Chris:
Marxism is the opiate of the intellectual.
And you got a baaaaaaddddd jones, you parlour pink.
Okay, he’s creeping me out:
Actually, you can read enough artistic manifestos – or narcissitic manifestos.
You like big rallies? How about ones with the natural glow of torchlight?
You’ve studied history? Then tell me why a lover of democracy would love either the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution? One gave us Bonaparteism the other Stalinism; neither helped the cause of human liberty one bit.
After reading that all I can conjure up is an image image of Stan Marsh deeply inhaling his farts. I wonder why that is?
He studied literature for ten years?!
Sure beats working. This guy should be flogged for public masterbation.
Go on, he’s not really a student of history. He is just saying that because his little 12 year old followers will believe it. He studied history my ass. Maybe Alphie was his instructor?
Indeed. I always figured anyone who needed to write a manifesto to explain their art probably wasn’t doing a very good job with the art itself.
Somebody’s been watching too many movies, methinks!
I think Chris Bowers got his ass beat A LOT in high school. Hell, probably even in college, in between his 10 years of studying literature. What a pretentious douchebag. Not that being a pretentious douchebag deserves to get his ass kicked, mind you. Hardly. But, maybe his being a pretentious douchebag is the result of being pummeled by the “cool kids”. Thirst for knowledge? I doubt it. Comforting himself with delusions of intellectual superiority and vigor? Yeah, that’s more like it.
These horses seem to die pretty quickly. Next topic? Iran, anyone?
I mean, not to piss on your talking urinal cake, or anything…
Still, the whole issue of avante-garde coteries and such simply begs for a discussion of the important issue of correct beret selection. Just sayin’.
St. Barbaro has been in the ground less than a month, and already with the blasphemy.
Bowers wants a rush, a high that apparently comes from revolution.
In other words, he’s a junky.
*shudder*
Save us from the people who love “movements” and “revolutions”; rarely is there room in their hearts for actual people.
If he is enamored by movements, perhaps he is just a fecalphile. Dirty sanchez anyone?
Movements. I’m with P.J. O’Rourke on this.
There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
P. J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)
Wrong country. Wrong century. Wrong march of history. He’s the anti-Patton. Poor bastard.
This guy would have loved Nuremberg.
Ya think?
For a guy who claims to have studied the history of revolutionary movements around the world he sure seems naive about his prospects first, for success, and second, for survival.
Given what usually happens to the majority of all of those who are an “active member of the small clique, coterie or circle” even when their side is the victor.
But maybe he really wants to be murdered while in exile.
Is that anything like an oral roberts?
But will he sell his bicycle and donate the money to the Dean, I mean, Obama campaign? Because that will show true dedication.
I’m telling you, that icepick hurt!
I hear you, man.
That whole snippet would be a lot less disturbing if he had mentioned anyplace a desire to make the world a better place.
Oh, I know he mentions in passing that he wants to be there “when the people rise up and throw off the shackles of the elite” but two sentences later he follows with “Before that happens, I want to be an active member of the small clique, coterie or circle that identified the possibility for massive change and precipitated its manifestation”.
So what he really wants is for the people to reject an elite to which he doesn’t belong in order to submit to one in which he does. Which perforce is less “comfortable” than what went before.
Psychopathic, really.
Pipe down, you two! I was on top of the world! Then, zwiiiickkkk!
But it will be different this time! We are doing it for the people!
One rarely witnesses a level of self-importance above that of Andrew Sullivan, but I believe Bowers has achieved it.
Finally, the common goals of ”permanent revolution” and being an early Cure fan can be revealed.
Yeah, I wish I had been in Berlin in 1989, too.
Whaddayamean, that’s not what he was talking about?
He should take up astrology and market forecasting instead of revolution.
These lefty bloggers—this twit and amanda whasshername especially—are such . . .
lightweights.
I’d expect better from a sophomore at a middling to poor university, yet this fellow claims to have had some sort of academic career? Puleeze. I keep waiting for him to start talking about Nietzsche, like any other pretentious undergrad.
Cut it out, already!
And while you’re cutting it out, can you get me a beer? Thanks.
<sarcasm>Yeah, he’s a revolutionary, alright. </sarcasm>
I think the situation in American politics may be worse than I thought, if the type of thought he espouses on that site is at all typical of Democrats in general nowadays.
I second you, Mark Poling… All I could hear, through the entire ginormous block of text, was, “Meee! Meeeeee!!! Political candidates exist – heck, politics itself exists – to affirm meeeee! To give meeee a peak experience!”
TW: Born in… I’m thinking88.
Hmmm…. let see. Comfortable. Like having a job, living in a decent house in middle America. How am I shackled to that? Oh, yes my mortgage payment. Well, I guess selling beads and following phish around the country would be better. NOT.
Indeed. The first time I heard the phrase, “revolutionary movement,” I thought of this.
I’ll bet that hurts at least as bad as an ice pick to the temple.
I suspect there’s a lot of buying into the Boomer myth involved in positions like his. “We changed the world, man!” Yeah, but was it for the better?
I’ve spoken to Trotsky, and we agree it was.
We’re revolutionaries, we want to turn this country upside down and inside out, but don’t you dare suggest that anything we write might offend someone.
What a pretentious, ignorant, juvenile ringpiece.
As long as I don’t have to, like, get all dirty or do anything icky, I mean. Otherwise I think I would rather just Tivo it.
Leon, I need to pick your brain a minute.
Oh no you don’t, not this time! Go pick on Khruschev for a bit, he said all those true – I mean – awful things about you after you were safely buried. After your lamented passing.
Fear the moustache.
Why is it always about you, @$$h01e.
What about what I want, Dude?
Those commenters have used phrases such as “slaking his jones” and “peak experience” have it exactly right.
He’s looking to take Rosie’s spot on the View.
I think Chris Bowers got his ass beat A LOT in high school. He deserved it.