[Alex Linder]

Originally Posted by keifer

This supports my statement that x-ianity is a constant in this narrative. I did not say he was christian following person, but rather I meant to imply that christianity is a character role as a constant gauge for which to judge in this song. Rather he the narrator is for or against x-ianity, he is still influenced and referenced in this song. "God rest his soul".

That's merely a rhetorical convention; it doesn't mean anything religious by it. If the guy were influenced by religion, by christianity, he would have followed the commandments at least to the extent of not ending up in jail for life.

The point is to analyze the work. Your analysis is: religion is mentioned. Uh...ok. So what? There actually is a point that could be made there, but you didn't make it. Which is that religion, like parental advice, was a social influence that had no effect on the singer.

Deconstructing is about taring down previously held beliefs, standards, and power sources so as to redistribute them. Redefining standards in art has meant that we all get to be artist and that each voice is as important as the other, even if a person is using rat shit as a medium. PFFF!

With deconstructionism we all get to be artist except the people who are really good at art. For them they owe something to the rst of by just going away. The result is that Andy Whorewall is considered an equal or better(because of social relevance) to Rembrandt. PFFFF!x1000. The ultimate result has been the death of art, the death of society. I understand what you mean by genuine analysis. I understand that great art exists rather I do or not, rather I am hear to say so and rather I am here to participate in it as

Yeah, that's great. You've been taught what deconstruction is, although you evidently can't figure out how to apply it in the real world, as I'll show.

I pointedly said I'm against deconstruction and what I do is analysis. How did my analysis begin? With a celebration of the greatness of the song. That is the exact opposite of deconstruction, which seeks to do away with the greatness of the artist and pretent the art, or 'text' as they like to call it, is a product of social forces rather than individual brialliance. Which is complete bullshit. That song is great because of Haggard, and no other reason. By celebrating this great artist, I am doing the opposite of deconstruction. What I offer is critical analysis of what he is doing in his song. That is not to explain its greatness away, or to belittle the achievement, but to better appreciate and understand and celebrate it. Which should be clear, since I started in that vein, by mentioning the song's greatness in the first line.

I have stood up in front of a room full of jews while defending my own displays of critical thinking, my genuine analysis of art in physical form for all to spit on, and throwing the words "Degenerative Art" back into the audience. It is no different of an experience than when yourself is being interviewed by seventy five people at once. People who hate you.

Good for you. You should defend what's right, no matter who's against you. I'm just asking you to observe that I would only be 'deconstructing' Haggard if I said his song wasn't really great, it was a product of social forces in the mid-20th-century, and other songs would have been higher on the charts if the powers that be hadn't wanted to promoted the retrograde bourgeois notion of taking individual responsibility rather than social guilt. (Since most people, as we see here, cannot see beneath the surface, they will take this song as Haggard blaming himself, which he does, but only legally, socially and superficially, as the song is really, in my reading, about the ineluctability of outcomes given the character of the creature involved.)

When you accuse me of being "passive aggressive", do you mean to say I present myself like a victim so as to draw people in only to entrap them.

I mean you're trying to jew around the edge of calling me a jew.

Basically I'm just irritated you don't truly understand what deconstruction is. Deconstruction is when you try to reveal the power relations that determine art works. It's a sort of neo-marxist idea. Marx thought all culture was a superstructure on the basic underlying economic relations in society. Deconstruction is a way revealing the supposed hidden power relations as determining artistic manifestations as everything else. I think it is a particularly unprofitable way to analyze things, and I hew to the older view of close reading in which you combine close textual analysis with knowledge of the author's life and times. I'm a traditionalist in that regard. And I also believe in subordinating all that to the impression the work makes, particularly if it's music. I get that from Oscar Wilde.

What I don't like is any indication I don't respect genuine greatness, because I do. My point was to celebrate that song. Good analysis never detracts from something, it enhances understanding and enjoyment, at least for intelligent folk. Everybody can enjoy that song, just like a Shakespeare play. But these can be enjoyed on different levels, and that's where analysis comes in. We can all feel the emotion -- or maybe the working class guy actually feels the emotions MORE than the bourgeois-backgrounded like me, or the rich like (someone else). Because he knows better than me what it's like to be a criminal and thrown in jail and not trust or listen to anybody. Whereas the smarter man goes for the subtler questions I raised in my analysis.

But even if I were trying to destroy something, a man or an idea, I would never call it 'deconstruction.' Although sometimes it might be fairly classed that way, in sense. I would still just see it as analysis, critical analysis. But kind of like the deconstructionists, I would go after motives, and that does involve some power-relations analysis. So that would be fairly similar, although coming from a different place. So if I were analyzing a conservative, or, say, Jim Goad, I would say, this is why he writes about (A) instead of (B), or this is why he writes about (A) in this way rather than in this other way. And together he and those willing to make the same vital concessions are used by a moneyman (Taki, say) to put out a faux-white-right publication, and thereby control the opposition to the judeo-communist left.

If I do that kind of thing, then yes, I'm sort of doing what the deconstructionists do. But really, I think it's best to consider deconstruction just the literary-analytical equivalent of political cant, and sneer at it. We do criticism and analysis, to the best of our ability. There's no new critical form to come up with. It's a matter of how well we can work within that form. Legitimate new forms are far between; humanity has been around for millions of years, this aint their first rodeo. New forms are for new technologies, not for written stuff. The literary canons are established beyond serious questioning, for the most part.

Your original statement that kicked off this thread, "Guess what I am thinking?" You set the situation for the audience failure only to tell them how stupid they are for not guessing what you are thinking.

I'm challenging them. Yeah, the 'pukes' was deliberately insulting, but not really, just sort of poking at people. Because I like analysis. I think it's important to our cause. I think I can do it better than most. But I like to see if people can come up with stuff I can't. Often they can. And often I can use their new ideas to come up with new good stuff I could not have otherwise.

If people are too shy to hop in when I'm being obnoxious, they are missing the spirit of the forum. No one has to agree with me here. I really don't like too much agreement. The forum should be a lot of fighting - but stylized fighting. Not stupid gossipping and lying and false allegations. It can even be polite.

And then it all came down to what you were thinking is some long drawn out conversation no one else participated in. It was a joke, right? I guess we had to be there to get the humor.

It wasn't funny. It was perhaps too repetitive. It's just a read on that song. I'm looking for a different or better one. That's all.

The problem is, and I get knocked down to earth when I try this, and this will be found insulting, but we simply can't beat the jews with people who are not able to analyze at a very high level. Analytical ability can be displayed in 1,000 forms, and song analysis is one good place to try it, since songs are nice and bite-sized, yet can offer the complexity we need to truly test our ability.

Someone give me a true deconstruction of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried." Explain it away as the product not of individual genuis, but of social forces, including those promoting the song and choosing its story, meaning and message.