Bill's Notes

Jay Gatsby is NOT a Christ figure. He is corrupt. He dies. He is not resurrected. QED. Not like Christ.

Does Gatsby suffer for the sins of others? No, it's pretty much his own sins. But doesn't he die for Tom Buchanan's affair? Yes, but it's not like Gatsby took on that suffering willingly.

No. Gatsby is not a Christ figure. Your teacher is crazy if he or she thinks that.

Gatsby represents longing. He longs for Daisy, for wealth, to reinvent himself, to be important, but in the end he ends up with false friends and staring at a light at the end of a dock owned by a guy who never worked a day in his life for his money, but ended up with the mansion, the girl and the American Dream by inheriting it.

Christ, on the other hand, represents the union of God and man in order to save men from their sins, and lead them to a resurrected life in Him. Christ represents fulfillment, not longing. Christ is the opposite of Gatsby.

There's your term paper theme. Enjoy.

PS: If your teacher disagrees and you haven't plagiarized this, then send him or her my way.

UPDATE ON SEPT. 22: Another hit for "Jay Gatsby as a Christ figure." Is there a class really assigned this nonsensical topic?

1. You will receive lots of contradictory advice. Part of growing up is to be able to sort out contradictory advice and decide which applies to your situation. Good luck. [Note: A friend of mine notes that if you are looking for a lot of advice, go into a bar when it opens and sit in the bar until it closes. Repeat for a week. Lots of advice to head your way.]

2. No matter how far someone older than you has screwed up their life, they still can be a cautionary example for you :) Seriously. Sort of. My point is you can learn from anyone.

3. If you are suffering suicidal ideation on a regular basis, you need to ease up on the bottle. They're not kidding about alcohol as a depressant. If you are so depressed that you are having suicidal thoughts on a regular basis and you drink a lot, you may need to put down the bottle — and even watch out for sugar and carbs. Just in case you're a mood-sensitive sort.

4. No matter what anyone tells you, almost everyone's life is better outside of college. You may think you'll never experience as much freedom as you have now and that you'll just be a wage slave ... bullshit. Life begins after college. Work humanizes people and makes them easier to deal with. I saw it in Peace Corps. Those who had worked for a living before Peace Corps were quick to cooperate with others and treat everyone decently. Those who formed cliques and acted exclusionary were to a person recent college grads ... and every one of them changed their attitude after a few months at post. So if people are telling you this is the best years of your life, and you're not happy, don't sweat it. Life gets better.

5. When in doubt, remember this: Our forefathers who build this country didn't build it believing the meaning of existence was to live a life of leisure. Cold, hard prairies, eking out existence, silent prayers and gratitude and all that. Our ancestors didn't believe you were on this planet to have a good time. They didn't believe life was fair. When in doubt, remember you aren't supposed to be that at home here, that you are a pilgrim on the way to another country. That is, when in doubt, walk swiftly toward the Lord and you will avoid heaps and heaps of trouble.

6. You need money and you will want money. If you go for money, by the time you are 35 you will wish you had followed your bliss. This is as it should be. If you follow your bliss, you will wish at 35 that you had money. This will make you bitter. Choose your major wisely. If I had to do it again, I'd choose a hard science or a professional degree such as engineering. If you have a technical degree you can always get a high-paying sales job. I don't know what you should do. I only know that in 15 years, you're either gonna be glad you have some money or you're gonna be pissed you don't.

7. Don't stress if you don't know stuff. The best advice you will hear is good judgment comes from experience, and most of that comes from bad judgment.

8. If you're ever in jail and you find that you get along famously with everyone, then perhaps you need to take some time during your incarceration to reflect. People in jail are criminals. If you're getting along with criminals, you may be one.

9. Read The Brothers Karamazov. Everything you need to know is in there. The entire world prose canon in eight books: Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Madame Bovary, Moby Dick, Karamazov, Heart of Darkness, Ulysses and Pale Fire. You get through them and you can fake your way through most literary conversations.

10. Poetry is about meter. Just in case you get confused. I know I did.

Industrial Blog was started in December 2002 because the voices told me to start a blog.

A friend set me up in 10 minutes on blogspot -- demanding suddenly a name for the blog. I didn't want "Bill's Blog" on grounds it was excessively generic. So I thought for a moment and the thought came to me, "A blog is a thing made," a paraphrase of William Carlos Williams. So I thought, a thing made, thus manufacturered, thus industrial. Industrial Blog. That's the name I chose. I have hated the name ever since.

In September 2003, Chris L., who learned of IB from a DenBeste-lanche, recruited my humble blog and placed it on his blogging startup, PowerBlogs. It's a good deal here at PowerBlogs. Even I have learned to manage the interface, which is outstanding and easy to use. If you're thinking of blogging, consider PowerBlogs. Great blogging interface, great tech support, great prices on bandwidth.

In the past year, I've developed an eclectic and small but regular readership. I have five regular commenters -- three of whom disagree with me from the left and one of whom disagrees with me from the right. It makes me feel like a centrist, but I think everyone knows better. Industrial Blog has also picked up some regular readers in colleges. Some folks at Colorado State and Rutgers have checked in lately ... and for a while I had a reader from Michigan State. Others are former co-workers, and others come and go.

And I have some Christian readers, for whom I'm very grateful, even though they must tolerate my occasional vulgarity.

In the past year I had a Donald Sensing-lanche, a Dean Esmay-lanche, and a couple more Den Beste-lanches. Still no Instalanche, but hey, what are you gonna do?

My blog position was also almost overrun by the lefties and kiddies at Pandagon. I called in the Emperor, and they showed up, only to find Chris bayoneting the wounded.

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Originally, Industrial Blog wasn't supposed to be about politics. It still isn't. I just get sidetracked there.

I wanted to write about rhetoric, dialogue, communication, language ... that sort of thing. I wanted to show how mass media manipulates us ... but not just mass media, but all media including literature that used formulaic thinking processes to determine conclusions. I wanted to talk more about how our decisions about what we believe shape our worldview, and that these decisions are often based as much on very personal experiences and psychological needs as on logic and evidence. But psycho-analyzing the whole world got to be a bit much for someone without enough philosophical or psychological training.

I'd still like to know more about the sources of our conclusions. Why do people look at the same evidence, and come to opposed conclusions? Why do people on both sides of the political fence make the same accusations against each other? Everyone claims to be moderate and fair-minded and motivated by either righteous emotion or rigorous logic, and yet we don't all agree. How is that possible?

The answer, of course, is that the Demiscreants are wrong about everything and the Republicans are right about everything. [Kidding, kidding ...]

Anyway, I'll keep trying to hack away at some of the rhetorical underbrush.

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Where was I? Oh yes, it's a year on Powerblogs for Industrial Blog. Thanks to Chris my host. And thanks to my regular commenters mlaff, SuperG, Harry, Chris and MarcV in the past year. [Four of them have links on the right side.] I always look forward to hearing what you have to say, even if I don't always respond. Thanks to the occasional commenters and semi-regular readers, too, such as Jen, Francis X, JMF and the blogger with the best nickname ever, ZombyBoy. And finally thanks to the largest but quietist group, the silent readers. All of you have helped make Industrial Blog, despite its modest size, an enterprise worth doing. Thanks again.

Or Day Late, Dollar Short.

Or my thoughts a week after everyone else has commented on them -- but with no additional insight!

Bleh.

Television is entertainment. It is not news. It is not journalism. It is designed to generate powerful emotional reactions that will keep you watching [usually self-righteous anger].

Words, sound and images are presented in ways that are enormously manipulative. Strong emotional reactions generate strong viewership, and that means strong ratings. At the same time, television has a trivializing tendency, reducing serious subjects to, again, entertainment.

CBS is at the forefront of the pretense that it is a serious news-gathering operation: It isn't, and it hasn't been for a long, long time. If you get your news from CBS, you're going to be manipulated.

So CBS doesn't have much credibility to lose, IMHO.

I know the bloggers are enjoying their first real ass-kicking of a network — and yes, network television deserves the boots tromping over its ass — so I'm not raining on anyone's parade. In fact, it's long, long overdue. Good for INDC, Instapundit, and the rest of the right-wing conspiracy.

It's not just a question of bias. There is more than liberal bias, there is media bias — the bias that gets woven deep within the medium through story selection and story construction. It's a topic for another day. But just say the rules of selecting and producing stories for the television marketplace makes requirements on producers to present facts in ways that aren't always justified.

Anyway, Dan Rather, credible? Well, OK, a little. The guy really said, "Kenneth, What's the frequency?" But no, Rather and CBS don't have a lot of credibility to trade. Their credibility is like a house of cards about to collapse. Or a rotting corpse poked with a stick, that disintegrates while snakes and maggots scurry for a new corpse in which to hide.

Not that I've got anything against television news. But my two months of insight into a television network foreign bureau many years ago left me a bit jaded. Truth was irrelevant. Organizational priorities mattered. No one cared. If on camera you can stand in front of Manila Bay and say you're in Subic Bay, what else are you willing to lie about while you're on camera?

So yeah, CBS didn't realize the world had changed and they could no longer bullshit the viewers thanks to the blogosphere. My hope is this will keep them on their toes a bit better.

But you know CBS isn't any worse than NBC, ABC, CNN or BBC.

In the Wall Street Journal, John Kerry argues in a compelling way that the GOP's economic policies are not working. He presents sound criticism and a good, moderate economic plan to replace it. Since the Democrats have credibility in this area [after all, Clinton's economics worked], Kerry has a strong argument to replace Bush.

About time!

Kerry's entire campaign strategy should be two messages, repeated over and over: Bush's economics don't work, and he's used up all his political capital on Iraq. Time for a replacement in economics and a relief pitcher in the War on Terror. That'll work.

Don't play dirty. Don't indulge in Bush-hatred. Don't criticize the president personally. Don't allow your message to get unfocused. Just talk about what you're going to do, point out the very real problems with Bush's record, and why it'll work.

I'm surprised at the depth of the resistance in Iraq, its effectiveness, and how long it has lasted. I'd say we need to stay the course, if I knew what the course was. What's the course again?

UPDATE: Donald Rumsfeld responds to Industrial Blog here. [Yes, I'm kidding ... but Rumsfeld did address the concerns I just raised. No time to be "faint hearted," as he says. Dean Esmay is always warning me about this.]

Things I've disagreed with the Bush Administration:

1. Both sets of tax cuts. The federal budget was finally tamed and Bush managed to screw that up. By the way, these were important years for keeping the budget under control because of the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers. If we spend their money now, during their peak earning years, then we're going to have real trouble in another decade, when those incomes are gone and they start drawing from the system.

2. Sarbanes-Oxley. The Accountant Full Employment Act of 2002 is the biggest business regulation since the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. SOx is too expensive and was a political fig leaf. May be preventing a full economic recovery.

3. Not leveling Afghanistan. Our response was strong, but nowhere near strong enough. We needed to do to make an example out of Afghanistan. Without going nuclear, we needed to do to Afghanistan what we did to Germany and Japan -- total war designed to bring about complete capitulation. Bush's half-measures at Tora Bora, that is, using local troops to go in first, was unconscionable and allowed Bin Laden to escape. Getting Bin Laden's head on a pike should've been first priority -- even if that meant taking a systematic approach to finding him. [Think about it.]

4. Waiting too long to go into Iraq. Bush's one year of delays allowed the anti-war movement to build strength, emboldened the Bush Administration's critics, and bogged down the War on Terror. The Iraq thing needed to be done quickly -- go in, take Saddam out, and get ready for the next war. My understanding of the War on Terror was we were going to take out several regimes, including Iran.

5. Excessive nation building in both Afghanistan and Iraq. We are bogged down in both places, both of which because we lacked the political will to fight a vigorous enough war.

6. Speaking of which, Bush hasn't talked enough about what we are going to do about Iran. This entire campaign has been missing the elephant in the room, which is Iran. The next president has to decide if the world can live with a nuclear-armed Iran. Bush seemed like he understood the situation.

7. War on "Terror". At least Bush has finally agreed that it's a War on Radical Islamic Terrorists. Thanks. About time. Wars on abstractions don't end. War on poverty, crime and terror. A war on drugs is also silly. It's a War on Drug Dealers or Drug Users, and since it's never been more than a rhetorical war, it's devalued the word "war" itself.

This election would've been ideal to nominate a Democratic hawk with strong credentials in national security and fiscal responsibility. Bush is vulnerable on jobs, the economy, communication skills, and his conduct of the War on Terror.

The winning themes needed to be:

* On national security, more clear objectives in the War on Radical Islamic Terrorists. Who are we going after and how? How will we know we've won? The Bush Administration has committed the nation to an open-ended, potentially decades long war -- and this is a strategic mistake. The Democrats have an opening to fight a more limited, but short term more violent, war.

* On fiscal responsibility, a return to balanced budgets or at least reduced deficits, and government living within its means, as it did in the 1990s.

Instead, they picked one of the most liberal members of the Senate who was a leader of the anti-war movement. Yes, John Kerry served in Vietnam [and you know I haven't bashed his service here] but he had a lot of baggage from the anti-war movement. They should've found someone else. But who?

I'm not sure I understand the CBS memo forgery affair completely, but I think it goes something like this: George W. Bush captured hostages in Lebanon, and then sold the hostages' families to fight against the Contras in Nicaragua for the benefit of United Fruit Company, and advertising dollars CBS gained from running an expose of Dubya's National Guard service based on fraudulent money was used to purchase defensive weapons and sell them at a 500 percent markup to Iran, profits from which, then, were multiplied tenfold pumping-and-dumping Halliburton stock, which the Vice President used to make payments to Dan Rather to stand by his original story.

From The Corner comes this link to The Stranger.

If John Kerry wants to win he's going to have to adopt George W. Bush's campaign tactics--that means fighting dirty, Senator. Filthy fucking dirty.

The entry talks about how the Democrats are losing because they aren't willing to fight as dirty as the Republicans.

I'd argue that the problem in this case is more regional than party-line-based: Southern politics is dirtier than northern politics.

"Lyndon Johnson used to tell about this dim-witted boy down in Texas who decided that he wanted to work on the railroad. He went down to the station in town, and the stationmaster said to him, suppose there is a train coming down from San Antonio and another train coming up from McAllen, and it was a single track, what would you do? The boy looked at the stationmaster and said, I would run and get my brother. And the stationmaster looks puzzled and said, you would run and get your brother? Why is that? The boy says, because my brother's never seen a train wreck."

James R. Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense.