Paranoid Style
Can I make an admission to you?
Wouldja do me that solid?
We're all friends here, right?
Hey, baby -- relaaax, it's groovy.
Maybe you saw this.
That's true.
But what gift would this writer ask of his readers?
As Gimli answered Galadriel, "'There is nothing, Lady Galadriel,' said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. 'Nothing, unless it might be -- unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine."
If it is permitted to ask, and you grant me, your attention in following this tortuous thread of discourse, I'll totally get to the point -- right now, in fact.
The Wine of Sincerity sits on the top shelf in this house, as all tipplers at the tavern door attest.
Though I'm told there's no dust, no mirror, no polishing, still I gird myself daily with a Bottle of Windex and holster a fat roll of double-ply Bounty, to keep the windows clear and mirrors sparkling.
Or -- try to.
What I'm saying, though, or trying to admit, is that though now I sit by a well at the inexhaustible source, there was a time when -- well, my best writing was birthed in scorn.
You know what word they usually employ to describe the tone I'd use?
Withering.
And, if I'm really being honest, I have to say... something about that emotion -- when my sense of righteousness is cut to the quick -- fans the flames and rallies the resources, even now.
I do think age, and Qigong practice, has helped to establish me less unstably in wisdom; but I've found that even pure spring-water has debris in it.
Flavor, they call it.
What's the point?
That's the admission -- didn't you just read it?
Some of my best writing came from a bruised ego.
Missed that?
See how I couched the admission in eloquence and rarefied the action in question to the point of mystification?
You're welcome.
By the way, I can teach you to do that -- very reasonable prices, -- or else you can just remunerate me with no further request for service, resting in the enjoyment of having received full satisfaction in the ingestion of the foregoing.
"I'm sorry, Charlie Murphy -- I was having too much fun."
Point being -- I wrote the following at a balding 28. I alluded to that here. This came shortly after that.
I didn't like, or respect, the teacher. I didn't like, or respect, the subject-matter -- not as it was presented, which even then I saw was 100 po-cent paw-puh-GAN-duh.
To be fair, the tone of the class, and the teacher, was quite condescending, bordering on the mocking.
So, I wrote this before I finally had enough and dropped the class. That, of course, was true to form, and a recurring theme in my formative years.
Anyway, here I'm just having a bit of fun reliving the moment, a bit of armchair yarn-spinning from an old man.
06 April 2022
By "paranoid style" in the realm of American politics, if I am to understand that distinction as made in last week's reading to be accurate and meaningful, is meant that mode of perception which, rather than cleaving closely to the polished, factory-made opinions of the majority, both separates itself from convention on principle and ascribes to broader political processes (and their movers) an intent and a method that are more than they seem.
Apparently this is something which is not new, having a history of length and repute both in this country and in farther and broader lands. As for whether there is "a place for the paranoid in the political sphere," that seems to me to be begging the question.
If there is no place for the so-called paranoid, then the so-called political sphere is no sphere at all, for that would imply, speaking of opinions, infinite, equal radii from a common center. Nor would it even be a political cube, but perhaps merely a flat political box -- four rigid sides with neither depth nor perspective, and only a superficial appearance of being a building block of any kind.
"Paranoid," coming as it does from the Greek para ("beyond") and nous ("mind," or even "visual perception"), suggests a perception that goes beyond appearances, name, and all other strictures to a unitary reality that is bound by and beholden to no side. To be paranoid is to step outside of convention, whatever it may be, to whatever extent that is possible, and so see deeply into things as they are.
To have an opinion, especially in the political sphere, is to accept, a priori, a set of beliefs, "facts," or "truths," as conventionally real; so doing, however, by nature creates a division and separation that does not exist outside of perception. These beliefs enclose formless, unqualified reality as in a cage; and so long may this fractional, partial reality be enclosed that it eventually appears to be the whole in itself, never mind that there is an infinity that has not been enclosed.
So, in the context of JFK's assassination, an assassination of an extremely important man which, by all accounts, has even now many unanswered questions, the "paranoid" keeps the investigation fresh, changing the stale perspective, offering fresh evidence so that
truth rather than simple consensus-convention may be held up as a banner under which to rally.
