Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Entertaining Mike Gravel Interview on Palin, etc.

I have not been following the career of Mike Gravel, but this interview makes me wish I had. Please take special note of the part at the end about the Democrats' responsibility for the war. From the evidence here, he seems like a genuine Freie Geist. Go thou and do likewise! (Tip o' the sombrero here to David Beito.)

Schopenhauer says somewhere that the next time you are stuck in a boring conversation you should try this trick: pretend that you are in a theater, listening to a dialogue between two fools. Suddenly the horror becomes a delight. From what I see here, Gravel is no fool, but this thought, of turning life into art by means of de-realization, will be a great comfort to me as we hurtle at super-sonic speed toward the brick wall of November. After the Schopenhaurean move, American democracy is no longer a nightmare I can't wake up from. It's pure entertainment, the greatest show on Earth.



I have nothing to add.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely hilarious! Each time the "interviewers" try to bait Gravel into an attack, he turns it around on them, so they keep trying to bait him again.

Reminds me of the scene in Godfather II when Frank Pentageli is brought to testify before congress...."I don't know no Michael Corleone!"

Lester Hunt said...

My favorite part was the way the "interviewers" were repeatedly staggered with amazement at his comments. They really didn't expect any of it.

Anonymous said...

Interesting about how the Palin pregnancy (and controversy around the trooper firing) brings up the "Is character relevant?" topic. Gravel seems to think that none of it matters. The only qualifications that seem to matter to him are her being John McCain's choice(?), standing up to republican corruption, and his claim that she has more executive experience than the other three since as Gravel put it himself the problems are no different at the city-council/mayor level of Wasilla than they are on the national level. I sure hope the last one was him misspeaking – more likely though it was just a product of his passionate refusal to admit anything negative or lacking in his fellow Alaskan.

With that being said, I enjoyed hearing about the Schopenhaurean trick. Reminds me of the comparison I heard the other day between American Politics and Wrestlemania.