We are all more than the sum of experiences and life history, but there are things about which one should not have any regrets. Much of my life has been about non-conformity, whether social, economic, political, etc.
I have become not a reactionary but perhaps a benign product of a darned permissive, counter-culture period that also formed my politics.
I probably will remain a DFH, perhaps because progressive gets a difficult reception, even in DK. I have never thought of myself as a liberal, even as I understand the abstract and concrete differences of its meaning … classical liberalism, neoliberalism, liberal education, not libertine, not libertarian.
It is a problem that I can discuss the nuances of ideology including how the FSM allows one to acknowledge the ideological premises of institutional religion even as we might have some measure of faith, and even if it is only a hypothetical set of expectations.
Mine is an idealism that came from political commitments, which probably seem more like religion than activism at times. I did think of myself as a role model at times, until it really did become a matter of generational change and more importantly, age.
Status, social or otherwise, seems to matter less and less as one gets older, when knowledge and experience doesn’t have the same kind of cache. There was a moment when it just didn’t matter as much, especially to others, even as one tried to retain a sense of decorum, equanimity, and mutual respect.
And you reach the point where there’s nothing left for which to prepare, even as there are things left undone. You want to make things important to do because they are things in themselves.
And as for value … what does that mean in the long run especially if the order of one’s life is as complex as one’s personality.
I am not leaving anything to anyone because there apparently is no one to whom they should be left, and I am tyrannized by material objects hoarded and held with no hope of their personal use. Darned eastern religions.
I am happy with how I constructed my self even as it was culturally difficult to make relationships meld with that social construction.
And cultural difference has been a constant issue, because gender, race, and class have been constant and consistent issues of conflict probably due to the nature of post-war history.
Waylon Jennings
Old age and treachery always overcomes youth and skill
So DFH has a Denotative definition if one looks at the Urban Dictionary, but like all appeals to dictionary authority, there is always a Connotative meaning that renders all dictionaries to be only slightly more orderly or less cumbersome versions of encyclopedias. We now accept “words of the year like “post-truth”, as though it were identical to something called “truth after the fact” or “anti-historical truth” or “not a lie” or the official version because darn that true/false dichotomy of truth/falsehood.
post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
David Shuster interviews IraqSummer/MoveOn participants protesting outside the Capitol as the Senate prepares for their all-nighter. Note their clear-spoken, calm and intelligent defense of both the importance of this protest in particular and exercising your civic right to protest in general.
And Tweety's response?
Well, that's certainly a wholesome-looking crowd for an anti-war bunch...
UPDATE: Digby tipped us to this and says:
Apparently he was expecting to see some long haired college kids burning bras and taking over the ROTC building, which isn't a huge surprise. It's just the Washington establishment's irrational fear of hippies rearing its anachronistic head again...read on
Are you now or have you ever been ...
Often used with irony by liberal
bloggers to describe any person whose political views fall to the left of the American political/media establishment, and therefore are considered too shrill to be taken seriously by members of said establishment.
Strangely, DFH does not appear to have a right-wing equivalent.
"Polls now show that 65% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. Welcome to the DFH nation."
Isn’t RWNJ is the equivalent of DFH, OTOH there’s Jill Stein …
Come below the fold for community links and buzz harshing ...
Do you haz DFH?