Budarick says,

“NOT SPAM

NOT SPAM

Bob, you are being too lenient with me.

But i am glad that you can see beyond the words i make.

That tells me that here is a man who has been around
who in any data-gathering work he may have to do,
is not going to get derailed by some imprecision
of language usage his target makes.

Now if i were the normal scumbag i would say,
“Oh i was just testing you Bob”.

Well i was NOT testing you.

No, i believe Hitler wanted to transcend “politics”
but he realized he had to fully understand it first.

He had to understand how it works.

I am a bit worried in that he probably did NOT understand it.

Because if you understand politcs you don’t enter that domain.

Joe is clapping now!

But Hitler was not your normal liberal hippy artist idealist.

He attempted the impossible.

For this reason he was deemed mad!

I believe it is fruitful to analyse his work from that perspective.

PGB. ”

MY REPLY:

Lenient?

ME?

Not bloody likely!

You are in the midst of a thought process. I want to see how you come out.

Don’t give me “I believe it is fruitful to analyse his work from that perspective.” I want to see what YOU come up with.

Lenient, hell! Where the hell are you going? And if you don’t know, say so! Hints won’t do it in Bob’s Seminar!

You have left yourself utterly open. You have not retreated behind Joe’s Tough Guy crap. Damn, you’re GOOD! You made ME think.

I don’t want to put you on the spot. But do you have more?

Hitler was so ALONE! One man can’t work everything out. I think he was wrong on some obvious things that I know. I think his devotion to dictatorship was part of his time. But I am part of MY time. I am alone, too.

Why in heaven’s name did he turn to Goering instead of Hess, the man who helped him every inch of the way?

Joe keeps telling me I am attempting the impossible.

Am I nuts?

No doubt about it, I AM nuts. But take a look at what normal has come to, and you may have a new appreciation of us nutcases. Revolution is never practical. Joe is right. Revolution never succeeds. It has been said before: treason never triumphs, because if it is victorious it is not treason. So the Virginian Washington was called rebel, but he ended up a patriot, while the rebel Robert E. Lee, another Virginian, was a traitor.

Joe talks in tautologies.

Damn it, Budarick, where do we go from here?

Elizabeth says,

“NO SPAM

I’ve noticed a profound difference between myself and most of the
people in my age bracket: because neither of my parents were
adults or even teenagers during World War II, I didn’t get
conditioned from birth with the same assumptions they
were — the ones about the sanctity of Israel, the
greatness of the U.N., and so forth.

While most of my elementary and high school classmates’
parents were “making the world safe for democracy,”
my parents were learning their multiplication tables
and how to use long division

Comment by Elizabeth”

MY REPLY:

Elizabeth keeps talking about how bad her parens were, but here she praises them. There is, for what my opinion is worth, no contradiction here. My father was a disaster. But he had an understanding of reality I stand by to this day.

There is nothing more understandable than for a human being to concentrate entirely on what was done TO THEM. Nothing is more understandable, nothing is more forgivable. If your interest is only what is understandable and forgiveable, analysis ends right there.

Elizabeth is not satisfied by that. I am not satisfied by that.

Gosh, isn’t it wonderful that someone can suffer endlessly from the failures of one’s parents and still understand some solid virtues that they had?

Well, if your final goal is to be “objective” the answer is “YES, you are a paragon of impartiality!”

And if your final goal in life is to praised as a paragon of impartiality, you have achieved Nirvana.

Can you really imagine that Bob or Elizabeth would consider this paragon of impartiality to MATTER?

Get serious!

I think this is the reason actors are leftists. They believe that reality is drama. Like the Greatest Generation they say, “You haven’t EXPERIENCED that!” Reality to them is something called Real Pain or Real Combat.

To Elizabeth and me, reality if simply what IS. Most of reality is NOT dramatic. To Elizabeth and me, however much we may state what hurt us, it is INSULTING to say that what hurt us is our REALITY. Our experiences of being hurt may be something others do not credit sufficiently. They may need to understand it.

But does that mean that we, like Hollywood actors, think that pain is the same thing as truth?

No way.

Joe says,

“Happens to be that I am a fanatic also when it comes to freedom of speech. I believe you are too because I expected you to kick me off your blog quite awhile ago. I have to give you top respect for permitting people to “speak” on your blog. The past 3 or 4 pieces have been very informative. ”

MY REPLY:

I read every comment over and over AFTER I approve it. But if somebody has

NO SPAM.

NO SPAM.

I don’t even bother to read it BEFORE approving it.

When you write

NO SPAM.

NO SPAM.

It means that you are a member of this seminar and you said something. Today a grad student is just an undergrad who has to make a B. I keep talking about what a real seminar WAS. If you WERE inthe seminar it was not up to the Old Prof to decide whether what you said made sense or not.

Joe, you are a smart old bastard and I am a smart old bastard. You have something to say and I have something to say.

I am the Old Prof. That means I LEAD. But I don’t TEACH.

In a truly intellectual situation, one LECTURES the undergrads. They are undergraduates.

But if I, as a professor, give someone a DEGREE, they are supposed to fall into a different category. The whole point of giving them a degree is supposed to he that I put them in a different category.

The word Doctor, as you damend well know, comes from Latin doceo, docere which means TEACH.

A doctor teaches the undergrads. But REAL seminars are in a category the modern “Doctor” cannot understand. The modern “Doctor” is a Wordist. He helps you to repeat the Final Truth and you help him repeat the Truth.

There is no difference inthis process between a teacher and a grad and a neophyte. You are all together in trying to learn to repeat the word of the True Faith.

So the concept of someone who is not trying to repeat the True Faith, but who is trying to explore truth, no matter where it leads, is totally alien.

Ayn Rand gave is the Truth, Karl Marx gave us the Truth. William Buckley and the Pope give us the Truth.

Bit what if you are l ooking for what is simply true?

To get back to your point, a good solid Wordist Doctor, a good sound Wordist teacher, would correct your deviation from the Truth. That is his job.

I don’t believe in any Truth.

Ole Bob USES you. Bob really couldn’t care less about what you consider Truth. To me, the idea that some BOOK needs to be studied endlessly is, to use a word you hate, just plain silly.

If you think that is very tolerant of me, please continue to do so. I don’t think I am being tolerant. I just want to stop being silly and make myself a part of a group that is using its frontal lobe. This is not idealistic.

I cannot anything more BORING than using my brain to learn to repeat something some clown who wrote a book said. I want to THINK. As a social animal, I need some others to stop drooling and repeating the Old Testament or Mein Kampf and SAY SOMETHING.

For social animal with a huge frontal lobe, listening to people repeat crap doesn’t just make me feel lonely, it makes me DESPERATE.

So in contrast to what is normally called Idealism, my motives may seem a bit selfish. An “Idealist” is someone who is fanatical about a BOOK.

Joe, I USE you. In the seminar you make me THINK. If you are practical, you will get a lot from this nut Whitaker because he’s very smart and has things to say you can benefit from. That’s YOUR problem.

What really scares me is BOREDOM.

All I ask is that you don’t BORE me. How does that fit on the ego scale?

I think I’m bragging, big time. Demanding that you don’t BORE me takes more ego on my part than lecturing does. If you say something I don’t like, I assume that Ole Bob can handle it. Tell me that doesn’t involve a strong ego!

Budarick climbed all over me. But with my iron ego, I figured that I, the Heroic Bob Whitaker, could handle any point he hit me with. If I couldn’t, then my Hero, Bob Whitaker, had better start learning HOW.

My seminar group is a bunch of iron wills. If the average professor had them in his class he would panic.

I am not your average professor.

I don’t want anybody here who would not cause the average professor to dirty his trousers.

Can you imagine how anybody could make a bigger brag than I just made?

Can you imagine anyone making a bigger brag about you, my collection of nutcase, than I just made?

You fit right in, Joe.

That last sentence should make you ashamed of yourself. That last sentence should make any member of this seminar think twice about being here.

But it won’t.

We are either absolutely superior or absolutely out of it.

You know where I put my chips.

If you want to understand my world view, one part of it is in my ongoing dialogue with Joe.

When you have been in this game as long as I have, you have long since run into a set of categories. I tell you about the people who call themselves “intellectuals” and boiled it dowon to “Nobody needs to call himself an “intellectual” unless he is insisting that his obvious absurdity is worth listenting to.”

When I say, “Call HIMSELF an intellectual,” said “intellectual” will say that he has never called hiumself an intellectual.

True. But the fact is that those of whom he approves always say that anyone who says he is talking crap declares that calling it crap is “anti-intellctual.”

The same is true of the Weakest Generation. They did call THEMSELVES the Greatest Generation. When a write called them the Greatest Genreation they just bought millions of copies of it. The children they had brain=washed bought it by the million. Robert Dole never said he was a war hero. But the staff member who didn’t say that over and over and over lost his job fest.

Joe, bless his heart, is definitelynot one of the drooling worshippers of The Greatest Generation.

Joe is one of another category, The Tough Old Guys.

I like Joe. He has the right instincts and he makes me think.

But it is critical to Joe that he never admit I taught him anything. So when he talked about the Big Book and I made a distinctionbetween that and Wordism, he ignored it and said my other comment was funny.

But the point is that I got what I can only get from Joe. He specifically said that the Big Book was a religion to a lot of people in the program nd I explained why the Big Book, properly used, is not Wordism.

The subtext here is that I got waht I wanted and Joe got what he wanted.

Joe didnot say, “Gee, Bob, you were right. I learned something here.”

“Gee Bob” is not in a tough old man’s lexicon.

Joe understands that he has something I need. That something is NOT some sort of agreement. I need his MIND, not his agreement. He makes me make points I ned to make.

Whenever I make a point, Joe dances away from it. When I make a point, the average libertarian/respectable conservative/leftist dances away from it. So what is the difference?

The difference is that when I hit back at a libertarian/respectable conservative/liberal/neo it’s THE SAME DAMNED DANCE. I have been dealing with their dances for fifty years, and I am SICK of them.

Joe will never admit he was wrong about anything. He will never admit I taught him anything. That is just as well, because Joe knows I have heart trouble and a shock like that could put an end to this blog.

The question is, do I want Joe to say he learned some4thing from me or I won an argument?

I make it cery clear that I make lots of mistakes. I am not ego-driven. But one thing I hope everybody here takes for granted is that the last thing Bob is worried about is winning an argument.

NEVER worry about winning an argument.

I want to make points. I want people to forvce me to make points.

Joe is a mean old bastard who forces me to make points.

He’s not about to change, and he knows that change is the last thing I want from him.

Us mean old bastards understand each other very well.