The Once And Future Yoshida
We subscribe to a few right-wing news services, via email and RSS, but mostly use them for background. That is, the daily parade of teh stupid is usually so consistent that it hardly seems worth posting about Outrage #10,052 of Type F, subclass B, when a dozen more items will have flown past in the time it takes to type “Jeesh, look who’s at it again,” or “Are these people stupid or evil? I can never figure it out,” or any of the appropriate and standard codicils. So what we try to do a lot of the time is to use the daily swirl and babble as a way to take the temperature of the wingnut corpus — what are they mostly up to, or predominantly shrieking about? What are the interesting exceptions to the stock narratives?
We don’t always do a good job of it, but we do try. And I’m beginning to realize lately that a flaw in this method is that we’re often so immersed in the context of the items we post about that we don’t remember to say what they represent, or why they seem notable.
Here’s an example. I was just going to put up this link with some title like, ‘The Burning Of The Alexandrine Library.’ And then I would’ve been, “Yoshi’s lookin’ over here but he won’t get it out me, y’all,” like from that Nelly song, and then hit the ‘post’ button and went to go play slot cars or something.
But unsaid would’ve been that human knowledge has suffered a palpable loss. The archives of adamyoshida.com are gone, erased. No more to be seen are Yoshida’s definitive and architectonic ‘policy analyses,’ so tonally attuned to those in the respectable journals and editorial pages, yet so jabberingly insane in their calls for nuclear first-strikes against Iran and/or North Korea, for the imprisonment of Bush critics in concentration camps, for killing, maiming, torture, and ethnic cleansing.
Above: Due to a lack of color photos, Yoshida is trad-
itionally depicted as a genocidal Kure Kure Takora
I have trouble describing Yoshida’s importance because I’ve known him so well and loved him so warmly. To attempt it in simplest terms: It was impossible to read Adam Yoshida without understanding Charles Krauthammer for what he really is. Or Michael Fumento, or Mark Steyn, or Victor Davis Hanson, or (in a larger compass) Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld — all of that wide coterie whose hands are, to various degrees, on the levers of American foreign policy and therefore on those of the American ethos and conscience.
Yoshida has been a definitive and priceless batshit-insane wingnut, a Goldwater-grade bellwether, in that he perfectly tracks the positions of the policy elite while voicing their carefully unexpressed (and unspeakable) premises and implications: He reads in some tainted journal article that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat to America, and will conclude — like Goldwater with the Soviets, quite logically — that if life or death is the choice, then the US should destroy its enemy utterly and at whatever cost. If liberals are threatening the President’s success in the War on Terror, then liberals should, for the common good, be purged from the body politic. If global radical Islam threatens to destroy Western Civilization, then let millions of dead Muslims, right now, serve as a merciful warning against future and more dire holocausts. If our freedoms threaten Freedom, let them be amputated like gangrenous limbs. The rule of law is not a suicide pact; force and the free market are the guiding facts of history; survival is for the strong.
Above: Yoshida, often asked to
guest post, has so far declined.
Yoshida may be a hurtling fruit wagon, but he has that peculiar stupidity that verges on genius — the reducto-expansive stupidity of a Nietzche or a mature Marx, which clearly sees both the forest and the tree, but somehow always seems to be looking at the wrong one. As a Libertarian he believes in individual freedom, and thus large corporations must be allowed to do as they please, free from regulation. As a foe of tyranny, he supports unrestricted government surveillance and extrajudicial imprisonment. His economic ideal is to eliminate taxation of individuals and businesses, while having ‘the government’ support massive defense spending. Democracy is our inalienable heritage, while an election represents an ignoble attempt by the bad people to seize power.
Yoshida. The right-wing thoughtscape always made better sense somehow when you saw him make his effortless, intuitive leaps, the way he played the sonatas from memory. (Try it yourself and you’ll find that it only looks easy.) The ultimate Shorter of any Adam Yoshida essay — and by extension, of any such essay by a neocon or a neocon enabler, or by what used to be called a fascist, back when believing in the principles of fascism accorded the use of that term — might go like this: “Now look what those barbarians are making us do!”
Let’s hope together that Yoshida’s ouvre comes back to us, so that we can again learn and be better through his guidance.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
AND YOU WILL KNOW ME BY THE TRAIL OF BROKEN LINKS AND BLOODY CHEETOS
What a fucking program. I liked it very much.
You missed the key paradox of Yoshida’s existence: as a Canadian, he believes that the United States is the only nation fit to rule the world. That was what distinguished Adam from the common tufted wingnut back in the ancient days of Usenet. (Ah, the stories old-school Yoshida-watchers could tell!)
This —
Yoshida may be a hurtling fruit wagon, but he has that peculiar stupidity that verges on genius — the reducto-expansive stupidity of a Nietzche or a mature Marx, which clearly sees both the forest and the tree, but somehow always seems to be looking at the wrong one. As a Libertarian he believes in individual freedom, and thus large corporations must be allowed to do as they please, free from regulation. As a foe of tyranny, he supports unrestricted government surveillance and extrajudicial imprisonment. His economic ideal is to eliminate taxation of individuals and businesses, while having ‘the government’ support massive defense spending. Democracy is our inalienable heritage, while an election represents an ignoble attempt by the bad people to seize power.
— is one of the finest paragraphs I have ever read. Kudos.
WHOA, whoa whoa whoa. Not looking for a nerd fight or anything, but I’m way too much of a fan of Nietzsche’s writings* to let a breezy equivalence between him and a useless sack of shit like Yoshida pass by quietly without some sorta elaboration.
*I’ve never had a problem with his inconsistencies or unfinished thoughts, because I always saw him as more of an artist than philosopher per se.
You know, the phrase “take the temperature of the wingnut corpus ” gives a person nasty visual imagery first thing in the morning…
Perhaps Yoshida has gone to batttle the pink robots. You might not believe me / but he wont let thsoe / robots defeat me.
Sorry. I think of that everything I hear Yoshida brought up and I might not get the chance to say it again.
Above: Yoshida, often asked toguest post, has so far declined.
Didn’t he actually do a guest post once? And make fun of Swankster? I’m too lazy to look.
I always had to admire/pity Yoshida for his unerring faith that if his brand of fascism was ever allowed to take over completely, his Asian ass wouldn’t be tossed in an internment camp forthwith. If you think about it, he’s kind of like Michelle Malkin only with Malkin’s last tiny vestiges of self-control removed.
OH NOES!
Don’t worry Gavin, Yoshinda’s genius is preserved intact in all its brilliance over at archive.org.
YEAH!
In the Illuminatus trilogy, there was a beautiful essay on “Look at what you made me do”. Anyone know if there is a link to it on the internets?
I clicked the link to adamyoshida.com and there is “Test Blong Entry” [sic] posted there.
Could it be that Yoshida is moving to the next level, transitioning from mere blogger to BLONGER? I for one look forward to watching this development closely over the coming months.
You had me till you knocked Nietzsche. And, even worse, dumped him in a bag with Marx, more or less proving you’re not even talking about Nietzsche. You’re talking about the cartoon character crazy german wannabe viking all the cool kids rag on. Less Foucault, more Nehamas and Schacht. I know I’m geeking out unnecessarily over a single line, but fuck if that wasn’t a stupid line.
Let me just add my concurrence to nashtbrutusandshort’s comment. That was an excellent description of right wing myopia. Kudos again.
Hey, a different brad! I geeked out first! Wait yer turn!
But I’m in grad school studying Nietzsche. Waaaaaaah, I wanna go first.
N as to whether he’s a philosopher, depends on what you mean by philosopher.
Metaphysician? No, not unless like Heidegger you think he really did have a theory of the will to power. One who’s concerned with the art of living and the history of thought surrounding it? Most definitely.
Regarding throwing Nietzsche in a bag with Marx, well, huh?
Marx was a teleological thinker, basically a Hegelian with a different narrative. If you think Nietzsche was attempting to say, no, this is what history was and is leading to, I’d suggest you read him again. Start with “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life” in Untimely Meditations.
And that’s a short geek out, I could be a hell of a lot more long winded.
Let’s hope together that Yoshida’s ouvre comes back to us
So today’s challenge is to write a limerick around the words ‘oeuvre’ and ‘Louvre’. Score bonus points by using the words ‘genocidal’ and ‘inter-tidal’.
Go ahead, man, looks like we’re the only ones still monitoring this thread. Let your geek flag fly!
As for my disclaimer above, I was just trying to avoid the usual objections that come up whenever The Mustachioed One gets brought up, since I just wanted to know what Gavin meant by his “reducto-expansive stupidity” and didn’t want to waste time rehashing arguments that Walter Kaufmann already buried.
There once was a geek called Yoshida [pronounced like Ida-ho]
Whose intentions were all genocidal
The gist of his oeuvre
Was to spit on the Louvre
For its art not approved by the right-al.
Best I can do at the end of the week.
It’s pretty easy to get a non-teleological reading of Marx. You can also get a teleological one if you want. Marx’s relationship to the Hegel is very contested. I know that we live in a time when Marx, the cypher for movements that didn’t fit his criteria for Socialism anyway, is irrelavant. But, I would suggest,that people try reading him, rather than other “Marxists.” If you want to read “Marxists”, most (all?) of the Western Marxist tradition is explicitly non-teleoligical. Checkout this summary of Gramsci for example
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/merupert/gramsci%20outline.htm
I can understand why people think the way they do about “marxism”, but there are alternative schools and interpretations. Sorry if this is rambling (I’m in a hurry).
Where is Retardo????????
my reading of this article screeched to a halt when i came to the line about nietzche. i agree and have to say i consider him an artist 1st… and if that brings to mind, say, andy warhol, then you should reexamine what it is to be an artist. i recommend reading nietzche.
My Ironometer is definitely spiking, but in case anybody actually cares, everything seems to still be there, just not linked from the — um, snazzy? — new frontpage . . .
http://adamyoshida.com/2004/11/four-more-years-aka-take-that-you-sons.html
“Hurtling fruit wagon” is going into my regular insult rotation.
Well, I’ve run my hosting from Geocities for years – and hosted via Blogger. But, blogger is discontinuing support for said arrangement (I’d have to migrate over to a .blogspot address) – and so I put up the present page as a temporary stopgap.
Some friends of mine are supposed to be doing a Movable Type installation over the site, but haven’t gotten to it. I finally went and wrote a pre-election piece today and founds this article.
Don’t worry, I haven’t gone.
The ultimate Shorter of any Adam Yoshida essay — and by extension, of any such essay by a neocon or a neocon enabler, or by what used to be called a fascist, back when believing in the principles of fascism accorded the use of that term — might go like this: “Now look what those barbarians are making us do!�
I have a copyright on “Shorter Yoshida” zings – or at least I did until the coward disabled comments on his blog.
Is that the piece of shit who threatened to curb stomp us?
I will say now what I said in 2004:
Bring it on, bitch!
The only comfort HE gets is from his momma.
No cleverness or clever words can equal the power of a contextually correct shreiking quotation. We have seen this happen in exposing the stupidity of the ADL (Jesus Christ Superstar is a passion play that will arouse anti-Jewish sentiment!) and are confidant it can work with yoshikun.