![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
History is a Madonna, not a Whore!
Jan. 14th, 2005 12:06 pmSex bomb, sex bomb, you are my sex bomb!
The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.
Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.
Apparently the American government is not content with defending The Institution of Marriage/The Public/Morality etc. from Homosexuality; it is also using Homosexuality as a tool of Offense. Well, at least they are consistent.
While we are at it, can we talk about the reification/anthropomorphization of, like, sociological phenomena? In a reply to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slanderous yesterday I mentioned an atrocity I saw in a copy of The Weekly Standard that somehow made its illegal contraband way from my mother's Bush-loving friends' house in New Jersey to my apartment last year via my mother. The item in question was...a piece...(I am at a loss as to whether classify it as an op-ed or an "ad" (but, like, a meta-ad because it does not promote an exchange of money for an object or service except in the most meta way of global capitalism and its narratives))...a letter from History (with a capital H, natch) to Uncle Sam asking Him to defend and absolve It. Um. Yeah. Also, to quote The Man Who Made The Farrago That Was My Motherland, the ur-terrorist of Social Engineering, V. I. Ulyanov, nee Lenin, What Is To Be Done? I mean, we have the academic/disciplinary distinction of History with a capital H = Recorded History and history with a small h = unrecorded margin history. If you record/"illuminate" (in a flash of lightning, as it were?) the small-lettered history, does it then trot over to its newly apodictic destiny in category 1: Destination Hegemony? Seemingly, since the pomo and the poco counterdiscourses pivot on histories--plural, small-case. But that way lies another hell to be manipulated and invoked, glowing bright red on the tip of the cliff where absolute relativism converges with the Stanley Fishes contentedly swimming around in their Ivory Tower tanks.
One solution is "doing a Buffy"--making a metaphor literal and involving vampires, as a tactic succesfully employed by Ali G in his latest turn as Borat, a Swiftean creation hailing from "Kazakstan" who, in transcedental cross-cultural exchanges leads new Southern friends through steps of a dance called "Beat The Gypsy" or gets them to enthusiastically harmonize with him to the chorus that goes "Throw the Jew down the well / so my country can be free..." etc.
This time Borat/Ali G/Cohen nearly got lynched for his trouble
No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center.
But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry.
Introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America. A film crew was with him, doing some sort of documentary. And he wanted to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to show his appreciation, the announcer told the crowd.
Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd - it was a rodeo, of all things, in Salem, of all places - that he supported the war on terrorism.
"I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards," he said, according to Brett Sharp of Star Country WSLC, who was also on stage that night as a media sponsor of the rodeo.
An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd.
"And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq," he continued...He then told the crowd to be seated, put his hat back on, and launched into a butchered version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that ended with the words "your home in the grave,"
The wife of one of the rodeo partipants said, as wives who get quoted in such situations are wont to do: "It's a wonder one of these cowboys didn't go out there and rope him up."
I guess A Cowboy is Uncle Sam's Wingman when it comes to protecting America(na) (NB: In Russian the word "Americana" is gendered as female. Just as it should be.)
Oh yeah, and obviously the Sex Bomb was nixed because it didn't fit with the Fundie Family Falue(re) program. Like, war can be Sexxy but only Phallically so (with penetrator drones and other tropes of war porn). Not Sex Bomb sexxy.
The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.
Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.
Apparently the American government is not content with defending The Institution of Marriage/The Public/Morality etc. from Homosexuality; it is also using Homosexuality as a tool of Offense. Well, at least they are consistent.
While we are at it, can we talk about the reification/anthropomorphization of, like, sociological phenomena? In a reply to
slanderous yesterday I mentioned an atrocity I saw in a copy of The Weekly Standard that somehow made its illegal contraband way from my mother's Bush-loving friends' house in New Jersey to my apartment last year via my mother. The item in question was...a piece...(I am at a loss as to whether classify it as an op-ed or an "ad" (but, like, a meta-ad because it does not promote an exchange of money for an object or service except in the most meta way of global capitalism and its narratives))...a letter from History (with a capital H, natch) to Uncle Sam asking Him to defend and absolve It. Um. Yeah. Also, to quote The Man Who Made The Farrago That Was My Motherland, the ur-terrorist of Social Engineering, V. I. Ulyanov, nee Lenin, What Is To Be Done? I mean, we have the academic/disciplinary distinction of History with a capital H = Recorded History and history with a small h = unrecorded margin history. If you record/"illuminate" (in a flash of lightning, as it were?) the small-lettered history, does it then trot over to its newly apodictic destiny in category 1: Destination Hegemony? Seemingly, since the pomo and the poco counterdiscourses pivot on histories--plural, small-case. But that way lies another hell to be manipulated and invoked, glowing bright red on the tip of the cliff where absolute relativism converges with the Stanley Fishes contentedly swimming around in their Ivory Tower tanks.One solution is "doing a Buffy"--making a metaphor literal and involving vampires, as a tactic succesfully employed by Ali G in his latest turn as Borat, a Swiftean creation hailing from "Kazakstan" who, in transcedental cross-cultural exchanges leads new Southern friends through steps of a dance called "Beat The Gypsy" or gets them to enthusiastically harmonize with him to the chorus that goes "Throw the Jew down the well / so my country can be free..." etc.
This time Borat/Ali G/Cohen nearly got lynched for his trouble
No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center.
But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry.
Introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America. A film crew was with him, doing some sort of documentary. And he wanted to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to show his appreciation, the announcer told the crowd.
Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd - it was a rodeo, of all things, in Salem, of all places - that he supported the war on terrorism.
"I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards," he said, according to Brett Sharp of Star Country WSLC, who was also on stage that night as a media sponsor of the rodeo.
An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd.
"And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq," he continued...He then told the crowd to be seated, put his hat back on, and launched into a butchered version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that ended with the words "your home in the grave,"
The wife of one of the rodeo partipants said, as wives who get quoted in such situations are wont to do: "It's a wonder one of these cowboys didn't go out there and rope him up."
I guess A Cowboy is Uncle Sam's Wingman when it comes to protecting America(na) (NB: In Russian the word "Americana" is gendered as female. Just as it should be.)
Oh yeah, and obviously the Sex Bomb was nixed because it didn't fit with the Fundie Family Falue(re) program. Like, war can be Sexxy but only Phallically so (with penetrator drones and other tropes of war porn). Not Sex Bomb sexxy.
