It's still heartbreaking. He's become the stereotypical, old blatherer that the Python brilliantly lampooned— just another stale, privileged Euro-lefty bristling with jealous anti-American contempt. He’s tired, his ideas are heartbreakingly hackneyed and his conspiracism smacks of intellectual laziness (as it always will). What is his problem, anyway? Why does he resent the United States so much? To say it was his divorce or the intellectual climate of his educational experience I don’t think explains it all. Cleese used have an American impersonation in his repertoire that literally seethed with contempt. Watching him play that character (with really big, white teeth) you could see the loathing fuming from him in even his fake American pronunciations. As an aside, as the Western Roman Empire slowly (or not too slowly) disintegrated, did its few remaining elites resent the ascent of Constantinople? Is there an analogy? A lot of European intellectuals simply hate American power. It must hurt to know the world has slipped away from you and another society, your cultural progeny, has inherited the mantle and better accomplishments of your civilization. I think Stein got it right in ‘America Alone’.

"Pi is a jumble of nonsense that starts nowhere and goes nowhere."
Wow.

And Sean Penn into Ezra Pound.

Why the confusion? The white male must lose his identity to redeem himself morally. All cultures are equal, except Western culture which is uniquely evil because of its exploitation of the Earth’s resources and oppression of the romanticized, Rousseauian ‘noble savage’. The individualism and egoism inherent in the philosophy of the so called ‘enlightened’ West, must be abrogated by the selfless pursuit of the collect good. Of course, the truly ‘enlightened’ spiritual and societal elite of our new social contract will be exempt from this prescription. It’s much too important that they be allowed privileges that facilitate their ‘guidance’ of us, the unenlightened. Makes perfect sense! A great read is Stephen Hick’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. I think he does a pretty good job of deconstructing this crap.

Yes, there was no nuanced, Post Modern, moral relativism with the Tolkien. There was no consideration as to why Orcs hated the race of man, nor what men could do to help the Orcs feel less oppressed. There was good and evil and the necessity of the triumph of the former over the latter.

Aragorn and Gandalf. I turn a blind eye.

Had the Fascists won, or the Communists, this would be the interpretation of America the quislings would be teaching our children to indoctrinate them into the American National Socialist Party or the Soviet Socialist Party of America. Chomsky is fraud, too. I always thought it strange Will Hunting made no mention of Professor Noam’s support for the Khmer Rouge while they were murdering thousands of people. Unforgivable. How is either Chomsky or Zinn still part of our intellectual landscape? Chomsky, I’m sure, will be remembered for his work in linguistics, much like Heidegger is remembered, though rarely mentioned, despite and because of his Nazism. Zinn, however, is just a crackpot. My favorite Chomsky-ism is ‘Libertarian Socialism’. That I’m guessing is the political ideology of freezer-burned, jumbo shrimp. My second favorite is his prescription for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: ‘Bi-National Socialism’. Hilarious!

Nor, did he give a bunch of tax cuts to the rich.

Awesome! Finally somebody mentions the obvious tardive dyskinesia. It was the first thing I noticed when I saw this woman speak. Mao chic, indeed. What a perfect example of Post Modern moral and cultural relativism. This woman knows Mao's crimes against humanity as well as anyone, but her utopianism and desire to see society reorganized in a manner more conducive to her collectivist world view overrides any real moral common sense.

Excellent. But, in this climate, if you believe in free speech, freedom of expression, free trade and small government, you're labeled as a fascist. How did black become white and white become black?