Caesar warned us about Bush

[indigobusiness]

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

[outinforce]

1. Sid Caesar said THAT?!

What did Imogene Coca have to say???

Did she just have the salad??

[Alerter_]

6. bwa ha ha

thanks :)

[indigobusiness]

7. Here...this is for you...use it...

http://www.buttpaste.com

[outinforce]

15. Errr.... How?

How does one use buttpaste?

I went to the website, but all I saw were shipping instructions, and questions that had nothing to do with how to use buttpaste.

On hot days, when I do some work outdoors, my underwear (cotton briefs, if you must know) stick to my butt.

Is that what buttpaste is used for?

A little help here, please.

[indigobusiness]

27. Bush brushes his teeth with it...

but it was made for baby butts... Good for chapped asses in general...and chapped hands...and whatever chapped things you might suffer from. I'm considering using it on my bald spot, when it shows itself.

[Bandit]

2. Caesar was stabbed in the back by his close friends also

Sometimes history has a way of repeating itself. Fingers Crossed.:+

[TexasSissy]

3. Excellent quote.

[sui generis]

4. many parallels to the rise of republicanism

in ancient Rome. Are there any history buffs here that can give us a synopsis? Bush is probably more closely related to Sulla, except that Sulla actually served in his army.

[Taylor Mason Powell]

5. Unfortunately, an urban legend.

This is an excellent quote, but according to Snopes, Caesar never said it. http://www.snopes.com/quotes/caesar.htm

[indigobusiness]

8. Were they there?

Did I misquote him?

I'll go find the source...

[Eric J in MN]

61. Snopes is great . Thanks. (nt)

nt

[indigobusiness]

9. We may have been had...but that's ok

[Taylor Mason Powell]

10. Snopes is an excellent resource...

They're pretty good at debunking lots of stuff floating around on the web... No, they weren't "there" in Caesar's Rome, of course, but it should be an easy enough matter to see if Shakespeare really wrote that... isn't there an online text-search of all of Shakespeare somewhere, like there is with the Bible?

EDIT: Yes there is! Here we go: http://www.rhymezone.com/shakespeare/

I did several searches, couldn't find the quote.

[indigobusiness]

11. yes..I know...they turned me on to this, (among other things)

http://www.buttpaste.com

[Taylor Mason Powell]

12. Wow, twice in one thread.

Do you have stock in boudreaux's butt paste or something? :-)

[indigobusiness]

25. 3 times...(see below)

I'm hoping for a free bucket.

[theboss]

40. It's not Caesar...It's not Shakespeare

Some guy named Lenny or something wrote it on his Mac a few years ago.

[maggrwaggr]

13. oh, darn, it was JUST Shakespeare

I'm so disappointed

[jpgray]

14. It's not Shakespeare either, as anyone familiar with him can tell you (nt)

[outinforce]

16. I Tried To Tell All Of You.....

I tried telling everyone.

It was SID (and not Julius) Casear who said this.

I am old enough to remember watching "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, and Carl Reiner.

I tried to tell everyone.

But di you listen?

Noooooooo.

I am outinforce.

[jpgray]

17. You obviously come from the school of 'that horse is not dead'

Now shush before we break out the big white DU cane. :)

[outinforce]

22. I Am outinforce

a proud graduate of the DEFHS (Deceased Equine Flogging High School) -- nagna cum laude.

[jpgray]

26. 'Nag'na cum laude? I must admit, the man is a professional

All my gneiss geologist puns seem so empty now.

[outinforce]

31. I Bow, Sir,

to your obvious superior ability.

YOu must have received your degree Magma Cum Laude

[indigobusiness]

59. ouch n/t

[Taylor Mason Powell]

18. Sounds like someone needs more butt paste!

(nt)

[markses]

19. True, that ain't Shakespeare or Caesar

It's not in iambic pentameter, which means it didn't occur in any of the plays. Besides, if it was a real Shakespeare quotation, the person quoting it would have listed Play/Act/Scene, so we could see it. It certainly doesn't appear in Julius Caesar, in any case.

[jpgray]

21. Well, it also wouldn't sound like poorly articulated, didactic tripe (nt)

[markses]

29. agreed

caesar was at least well trained in classical rhetoric, and would hardly have composed something so juvenile, which would not rise to the level of a grammar school imitatio exercise in first century bce rome. caesar was a brilliant prose stylist. the prose in the quotation is, well, what a poor historical understanding of rome + 20th century sentimental bullshit will get you. agreed. tripe.

[indigobusiness]

39. I bow to you both... It is clunky...but the message is powerful

...or would you ridicule it, as well?

[markses]

41. Oh, I'm with the

ancient rhetoricians on this one: there is no distinction between an "underlying" message (content) and the eloquence of a statement (form). They are of a piece, and inextricable. So, as far as I'm concerned, there cannot be a "clunky" form and a "powerful" message. That's an oxymoron to me.

[indigobusiness]

42. So, you worship at the altar

of semantics?

[markses]

46. No

semantics is quite different. Semantics is concerned with what and how a statement means. So, it buys the distinction of form and content, and privileges content (meaning). Rhetoric is concerned with what a statement does, what kind of forces it garners, and what kinds of effects it is capable of producing. Here, the distinction between form and content is much less important. Since most people have been trained to fetishize meaning, they assume that because rhetoric is not so concerned with content, it thus is concerned merely with form (i.e., "that just rhetoric" as opposed to a "meaningful" expression). This is, of course, incorrect, and is only a prejudice of those fixated on the meaning of a statement rather than the action of a statement.

[indigobusiness]

47. Right again, but isn't rhetoric more an aesthetic discipline

than a scientific one?

[markses]

48. That's precisely the move rhetoric does not allow

Rhetoric does not make a form/content distinction that would allow you to place aesthetics (form/pleasure) on the one hand and science (content/truth) on the other. Rhetoric does not allow an aesthetic/science distinction (which is nothing other than the form/content distinction at another level!).

[indigobusiness]

49. Just trying to learn, here...

but I thought for a minute, that you were about to tell me that art could have no practical meaning.

[markses]

50. Whether it has

"meaning" is different from whether it is practical. It works. It does shit. That's the point of rhetoric. What does a statement do - not "what does it mean?"

[indigobusiness]

51. I think I am beginning to understand...

but going back to the original argument, the content is lost in the couch of bad rhetoric?

edited to add 'bad'.

[markses]

52. Well

From a practical or pragmatic perspective, there is no content apart from the form, so I can't really answer the question. There is no content on the one hand, and rhetoric on the other.

[indigobusiness]

53. Regarding the 'clunkiness' of the quote?

Now, I am lost.

[markses]

54. I think you're just playing now

But I'll play along briefly:

Your initial assumption: The clunkiness of the quotation (formally) is saved by its content (its powerful meaning).

From my perspective, there is no distinction. There is not a good meaning hiding underneath bad phrasing, because the "meaning" doesn't exist apart from its "phrasing." There are not two levels (form/content, or clunky phrasing/powerful meaning), but one. Just one level. And if its bad, its bad. You can't save the clunky phrasing by referring to the good meaning.

[indigobusiness]

55. No, I am seriously trying to see the distinction of an idea presented

articulately, and otherwise.

I believe that, in the abstract, they are the same.

[markses]

56. Well, yeah

That would make you a Platonist who, like most other people, has been infected with the idea virus. My point is more in the sophistic tradition. A statement doesn't exist in the abstract; it only exists in practice.

[indigobusiness]

58. And THAT, with all due respect, would make you a judgementalist...

a materialist, and, very nearly, a bigot.

I would say, an idea ONLY exists in the abstract. Works are mere representations.

sp edit

[markses]

60. Huh?

How would it make me any of those things? You are arguing a Platonist position. How does identifying that position make me a bigot, or judgmental? (OK, I'll admit to materialist, which doesn't seem on par with the other insults, in any case).

As for ideas and representations, that is the Platonist position (one always wonders where this abstract place is). I was only aligning our own positions here with perennial positions in the philosophical tradition. Jeez, louise! Now, without even considering that, we were talking about statements, and statements always occur in concrete practice.

I'm not sure why your post is so nasty (a bigot?!?). I certainly wasn't trying to be nasty. But I guess we see how it works. A statement only occurs in context, and its effects are important. The effect on you of my previous post was apparently pretty bad, though I'm not sure why.

[indigobusiness]

62. No insult intended, just a statement.

And I wasn't intentionally being nasty, just making a point about your rhetoric, ie:

"That would make you a Platonist who, like most other people, has been infected with the idea virus."

You have been very instructive in your classical stance and I have enjoyed the dialog, it is interesting how ones view is governed by ones school. You said "...one always wonders where this abstract place is"...doesn't one always wonder where ANY place is?

Perhaps I'm an absolutist?

It is certain that I am an abstract painter.

[markses]

63. Abstract painting

seems to me to be the most obvious instant of the supposedly abstract being functional only in practice.

As for being a Platonist, well, you take up Plato's position, almost to the letter, so I was only calling it like I saw it.

[indigobusiness]

64. Abstract painting is only representational of the abstract.

Not "supposedly abstract", abstract by definition, through the convention of language "infected with the idea virus".

You said I was "infected with the idea virus". Those ideas, infected or not by your perceived virus, exist only in the abstract.

The abstract is not functional in practice, the practical is functional of the abstract.

[markses]

65. That's where I would disagree

Abstract painting is not "representational" at all. It is generative.

I think we are not working on the same definition of "abstract," but I certainly don't think the "abstract" exists prior to or outside its deployment.

[indigobusiness]

66. "Generative" is more ambiguous than "abstract"

Can't discuss anything without agreeing on language.

One can only assume the meaning of "generative" here...perhaps it is so, but I am not clear on what you suggest. Clarity is hardly served by pedantic argument.

A blueprint is an practical abstraction of a construction, born of idea...which exists only in the abstract. All works are facsimiles of abstract ideation, before after and during deployment.

[markses]

68. The blueprint is

of course, the paradigmatic Platonic example, but the "idea" that the blueprint supposedly represents is irreducible to the blueprint and different in kind. The blueprint doesn't represent the ideation, nor is it a fascimile or copy of an ideation, but is, rather, a transformation from one mode of the idea/form into another mode of the idea/form. The abstract idea, for all that, exists and subsists in bodies, is moved, generated, and affected by bodies, and does not attain any transcendental plane of pure thought. The abstract idea is an instance of deployment itself; the deployment of the abstract idea in a bluprint or other "form," is a transformation (in kind). The idea is never solidified enough to be represented by a form - it is virtual rather than possible; it's actualization brings it into being differently.

[indigobusiness]

69. Yes

Absolutely

[indigobusiness]

45. You're point became more clear to me

as I recalled Rumsfeld trying to pass off "torture" as "abuse".

[Jose Diablo]

20. Did I fall asleep and wake in another universe?

I always thought Caesar was spelled Ceasar. But I looked it up and it is Caesar. I am the first to admit my spelling sucks. Sometimes I notice things that just don't seem to be the way I always remembered. Maybe there is such a thing as a parallel universe.

I must be losing my marbles.

[Taylor Mason Powell]

23. Hail Seizure!! [nt]

nt

[indigobusiness]

24. Yes...

you did, and, you are...



here...rub this on it...

http://www.buttpaste.com

==============
http://sludgereport.blogspot.com/

[Jose Diablo]

28. Thanks Indigo

I'll try some of that buttpast.

As for sludgereport, whoa, get me outta here. I want to go home.

[indigobusiness]

30. What do you mean re: The Sludge Report?

Shouild I be insulted?

[Jose Diablo]

32. If you wish n/t

[indigobusiness]

33. Can you be a little more specific? I can take it...

if I have to.

[Jose Diablo]

34. Nothing about the report itself

It is what the report is reporting that bothers me, and makes me want to go home.

Do you think if I go back to sleep, I can return to my own universe?

[indigobusiness]

36. ok...whew...I was about to drink the kool-aid...

To return to your universe, brush with Boudreaux's before turning in...and after meals.

I, for one, will miss you.

[Jose Diablo]

35. One little thing though, is it loads slow

it must cost a fortune in bandwidth charges. Are the pictures bitmap or JPEG?

[indigobusiness]

37. It started as an effort to learn html...and just grew into an obese pig...

A grotesque memory hog. I thought everybody but me had broadband, so I didn't figure it would be a too big of a problem.

It is hosted free at Blogspot.

[Jose Diablo]

38. Ah, well the price is right.

And yeah, I am on a dial-up so it takes me a while to download a meg or more.

Had Broadband, then a ADSL. I found I get by with the cheapo 56K dial-up almost as well. Still, I kinda miss downloading 40 meg updates from microsoft.

Doh: edit for spelling

[indigobusiness]

43. Well, you still outdo me

with my 28k modem.

Thanks for your input.

[donhakman]

44. George Cesar Bush "movie"

[Cleita]

57. Yeah, and it cost him his life.

Dumbya should take notice.

[theboss]

67. Is this quote still getting posts?

It's a fake. It was written, like, three years ago.