Hypermodern International Congress 2175

Remember, it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.

20060406

Famous Davidson Schills: Part 3, Patricia "Patsy" Cornwell





"I literally could kill someone and get away with it" - Patricia Cornwell (quoted in Vanity Fair, May 1997)

Former Davidson student, crime author and lesbian power-broker Patricia "Patsy" Cornwell stands out as a shining example of Wildcat shillry. After failing out of another North Carolina college, Cornwell used her connections with influential preacher Billy Graham to weasel her way into the hallowed halls of Chambers. Weaseling being the preferred method of Davidson admission, she took to the Wildcat way of life with a vengeance. Not long after graduating from Davidson in 1979, Patricia married this Charles Cornwell, and so obtained the last name that she still uses. An acknowledged lesbian today, Patricia now speaks of her ex-husband as a conquest, one more sign of Patricia's power at a young age. In interviews Patricia talks about her seduction of this long-time bachelor professor, as something in which the older man had no choice. Charles Cornwell abandoned his cozy career as a college English professor, and decided to become a Protestant clergyman. After getting a series of boob jobs, face-lifts and other body modifications, the now 24 year old Patsy left her 41 year old husband a broken man. Patricia Cornwell, trying then to be the good Southern wife, gave up her career to move to Richmond, Virginia, where Charles Cornwell began a long program of seminary studies. After penning an unflattering biography of Billy Graham's wife, she moved to fiction. But her new career would require an entirely different set of connections, connections with the government. When Cornwell was beginning her series of crime novels at the beginning of the 1990s, she had also befriended an FBI agent in Richmond, Ed Sulzbach, who provided the introductions that led to Cornwell's long and deep involvement with that agency, and in particular at the FBI's famous Quantico training facility in northern Virginia. An even more powerful contact cultivated by Cornwell was Tony Daniels, for a time the Assistant Director. Another major scandal with an FBI agent, involved Cornwell's relationship with famous FBI behavioral scientist Bob Ressler. Ressler is the veteran profiler of numerous famous murderers, including killers Charles Manson, the Son of Sam and John Wayne Gacy, and Robert Kennedy's killer Sirhan.

Patricia Cornwell's first well-known lesbian affair was with FBI agent
Marguerite or "Margo" Bennett, who was teaching communications at
Quantico. Margo Bennett was married to Eugene Bennett, another FBI
agent, and had two children. Patricia Cornwell has admitted in
interviews that she has given money and gifts and done favors for these
two FBI agents - which is important as a part of Cornwell's broader
history of bribing government officials, and as a part of Cornwell's
influence at the FBI regarding the cover-up of her own crimes.Eugene
Bennett remains in prison to this day, after a kidnapping and gunfight
as part of his attempt to murder Margo. In 2001, shortly before 9/11 Cornwell donated more than one million dollars to one of Barbara Bush's pet projects. A regular guest at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine (where she has no doubt engaged numerous FBI agents in Sapphic love) Cornwell is a serious mover within the Republican Party, and an unswerving advocate of CSI style "law and order." Unscrupulous, sexually predatory, and possessing a massive communications Empire and tens of thousands of loyal readers, Patricia Corwnwell is practically the poster child for Carolina shilldom. The only question is, does it slither?

20060405

Nietzsche and the Second Iraq War (Part II)

(continued from Part I, posted on 4/3/06)

I do not intend to devalue the sacrifice made by U.S. soldiers in the present war, although the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib atrocities can go to hell. If we look to history, however, the American public has far less to complain about regarding loss of life in Iraq than it did during the majority of 20th century U.S. wars. Here, Nietzsche’s observations on pain, which I quoted in Part I of this essay (see April 3rd post below), prove most instructive. American citizens, the majority of whom supported the invasion of Iraq at its outset, have become the “hysterical bluestockings” of whom Nietzsche writes. The subjective pain that our nation feels today, after 2,322 casualties, far outstrips the pain felt by the United States after losing 300,000 troops by V-E Day in 1945.

One could argue, of course, that our involvement in the sequel to the Great War was unassailably just, that in 1945 we defeated the most evil regime of the 20th century, and that the more or less traditional style of warfare waged against the Nazis allowed Americans in combat and on the home front to see victory so clearly they could grasp it. But these objections point to other developments in America’s liberal-democratic consciousness that come into sharp focus under the lens of The Genealogy of Morals. Most glaringly, the United States has developed an extensive case of bad conscience, including distrust of its own motives among citizens in liberal hotbeds and an inability to fulfill the promises it makes due to a growing public distaste for both inflicting and receiving suffering. (When I say that the American public has distaste for suffering, I mean not only peace-advocating leftists but also the sort of upper-middle class conservative fraternity brother whose pro-military convictions would surely wilt if a draft were to intervene between him and his career as a financial analyst.)

Let us face the facts: regardless of any support members of the current Bush administration gave to Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War, by 2003 Hussein had proven himself to be just as venal, contemptible and malevolent as Hitler, though he certainly lacked Hitler’s terrible, systematic vision. (I will spare readers a list of Hussein’s crimes against the citizens of Iraq; they have been trotted out often enough by now.) Yet a majority of people in the world who actually think about these things, including a sizeable number of U.S. citizens, would call what the U.S. did in dispatching Hussein illegal—at least—and probably immoral as well. Americans who accuse the U.S. of immorality in its occupation of Iraq are the nation’s latest wave of bad conscience, earlier examples of which include Civil War-era abolitionists and Vietnam-era protestors and civil rights agitators. The present attack of bad conscience arose in response to the disaster of September 11, a severe, thunderous punishment that descended upon a nation in the midst of post-Cold War prosperity. 9/11 forced many of us into an uncomfortable introspection, a guilt-ridden re-examination of our great nation’s history. Some have taken to the streets with their “No Blood for Oil” picket signs, and some have merely told the pollster on the phone that they no longer believe we can win in Iraq. Confidence (however strained) in the future of the United States, which Reagan provisionally restored during his presidency, has once again lost its luster.

Given these considerations, we are still far from being dominated by bad conscience if we can reelect George W. Bush by a margin of 4 million in the popular vote. It is more of a growing force within our national consciousness, manifesting itself in various ways, some subtle, some less so. I would venture that American bad conscience expresses itself most vehemently in our lack of a military draft. Common sense dictates that for a politician in this age, suggesting a draft would be tantamount to political suicide, indicating that our swollen middle class harbors a broad uneasiness toward violence. Or, in Nietzsche’s never-charitable words, we have assumed “the tired, pessimistic look, discouragement in the face of life’s riddle, the icy no of the man who loathes life…” (again from the Genealogy).

No doubt neoconservatives who still support Bush’s “vision” would see in this essay confirmation of anti-war liberals’ folly, while those same liberals would see in it a description of a necessary moral voice developing within the psychology of our nation. (I say “would” because I’m certain that neither group has an interest in the mild polemics of an aging hypermodernist; eventually one learns to be content with the ear of the gods.) But whatever our perspective, we must admit that America’s cringing in the face of pain does not bode well for our imperial way of life. There is always a more willing polity waiting in the wings.

20060404

It's like the Navy, but with no illusions




"All the money in the world isn't going to clear this planet..."
-an anonymous MySpace group poster

Guys, I've been thinking about joining the Sea Org. For a long time ive been feeling a certain malaise, as if my weltanschauung were somehow lacking. I tried being an artist. I tried being an intellectual. I tried being a druggie. I've always had this nagging interest in military history. And hey, I love discipline as much as the next guy, but what's a disaffected pinko to do in these post commie times. Gone are the days when such as I could go off to fight for the Republicans in Spain, whistling the Internationale. 'twas sci-fi that lead me to it. Look at this enthusiastic letter to the right - is that not the voice of a person who has truely understood their purpose in life? All along my programing had been leading me to believe that so-called "science fiction" was nothing put pulp. How wrong I was. Now, maybe you're thinking, damn, a billion years that's a long time to sign a contract for. But, when you consider how long this sector has been under tyranous influence, it should come as no surprise that we must all commit not one life, but many...to the cause, to freedom and peace. I'm going, and I urge you all to read and print out a copy of this contract - for the simple reason that it's damn possible you already have signed this contract and only years of sessions would you remember. I urge you in the words of Susan to "get into this stuff now."

Reptilian scientist plots genocide

The latest from Infowars: a well-respected scientist has called for a culling of 90 percent of the human population in order to preserve the earth from the destructive effects of humankind's "excessive consumption." The story is reported with characteristic enthusiasm and outrage by Alex Jones and co., but the most insidious (and therefore most relevant) detail is hidden in the middle of the article:

"Think about the magnitude of Pianka's statements. He wants to kill nine out of every ten members of your family and he wants to kill them in one of the most painful and agonizing ways imaginable.

"If Pianka, or 'The Lizard Man' as he likes to be called, is so vehement in the necessity of culling the human population will he step forward to be the first one in line? Will he sacrifice his children for the so-called greater good of the planet? We somehow doubt it."

The reptiles have become more brazen than ever.


LINK

20060403

Nietzsche and the Second Iraq War (Part I)


“Nowadays, when suffering is invariably quoted as the chief argument against existence, it might be well to recall the days when matters were judged from the opposite point of view; when people would not have missed for anything the pleasure of inflicting suffering, in which they saw a powerful agent, the principal inducement to living. By way of comfort to the milksops, I would also venture the suggestion that in those days pain did not hurt as much as it does today…. (It appears, in fact, that the curve of human susceptibility to pain drops abruptly the moment we go below the top layer of culture comprising ten thousand or ten million individuals. For my part, I am convinced that, compared with one night’s pain endured by a hysterical bluestocking, all the suffering of all the animals that have been used to date for scientific experiments is as nothing.)”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Genealogy of Morals”

Does a nation feel pain in the same manner as a human being? We may as well shrug at the question, since none of us are nations and, as such, have no clue as to the nature and feeling of a nation’s subjectivity, assuming it has any in the first place. Strictly speaking, we don’t even know how another person’s pain feels. Yet we can plausibly infer, from certain outward signs—a bead of sweat, a whimper—that someone else is in pain. Perhaps we can infer the same regarding a nation by means of a two-fold comparison: on the one hand, between pain-inducing stimuli at the human level and distressing world events at the level of nations; and on the other hand, between the corresponding reactions of human beings and nations to these misfortunes. For us empiricists, whose sense of duty compels us to bear the twin chimeras of sobriety and prudence, the harvest of such an analogy will seem paltry—speculation, not knowledge; not even true belief. But for good or ill, speculation becomes our primary source of intellectual nourishment in times of pessimism and bad faith.

When we too-human creatures act in a way that brings us harm, we inevitably suffer a failure of nerve and shrink from the act in question when the pain we feel crosses a certain threshold. We might call this limit the “threshold of cowardice,” and define it more precisely as the point at which pain causes us to break the promise of success we have made to ourselves whenever we embark on a course of action. To the extent that a nation balks at an enterprise to which it has previously committed, let us say that such a nation is in pain and reacting to it in the same sensible fashion as other organisms committed to preserving themselves. In the case of the United States and the current war in Iraq, our government has not yet reneged in the face of pain; like a marathon runner who takes stride after quixotic stride despite the hysterical petitions for mercy flowing into his brain from every nerve cell in his body, the Bush administration “stays the course” in Iraq and gives no hint it will do otherwise. Yet American voters and taxpayers, the nerve cells of our own body politic, are firing off negative signals and demands for relief at the prospect of more American deaths, continuing international disapproval of American power, and the free-floating danger of Islamofascist terrorism. In a recent Gallup poll, only 38 percent of Americans thought the Iraq war was going well, with 60 percent believing that it was going poorly.

If we compare these numbers with the results of a March 2003 New York Times/CBS News poll, in which 55 percent of Americans supported invading Iraq with or without UN approval, we can see an astonishing dissipation in the will of the American public. There are, by all means, plenty of reasons to lose faith in the U.S.’s mission in Iraq: from sectarian violence to torture perpetrated by U.S. troops to the flight of Iraqi professionals to the campaign’s enormous price tag, the war has certainly brought the pain. But the icy fact is that, when it comes to the figure that matters most to the public as a measure of a war’s cost—namely, the number of troops killed—the Iraq war has taken a miniscule toll on the American populace compared to that wreaked by World War II and Vietnam. An article by Tim Heffernan in the March 19th Village Voice lays out the numbers: during World War II, 16 million Americans served in the Armed Forces, 13 percent of the U.S. population at the time; 300,000 died in combat. During Vietnam, 9 million served, 4.5 percent of the population; 43,000 lost their lives. What are the figures for Iraq so far? 1 million Americans have served in the Armed Forces, a grand total of 0.4 percent of the population; of those, 2,322 and counting have died.

(to be continued)


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