I confess I'm not quite sure what Cobb is driving or driving at in The Vector but I have to admit I like reading the whole thing. Excerpt:
The difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives know the truck is always coming. They're looking for ways to escape - to get away clean. The liberals are trying to set up traffic lights and warning signs so that nobody gets hit. That's why liberals are so attracted to despair. They know the feeling, while trying to be nobody's enemy, of watching a fellow human splattered. Writings of despair could be shared by liberals and conservatives. Perhaps it is the proper nexus. It was despair that changed me.I turned Republican when I realized that catastrophe is inevitable, and the only salvation is becoming
larger than life, and pre-emptively thrashing your enemies. Capitalism is a great medium for this agenda. If you don't become larger than life, then you are stuck at the mezzanine of despair, of knowing that life is a giant highway and the trucks never stop running people down. The liberal never seeks to become the truck. Instead, they endlessly warn the weak and bury the dead. It's a state of mind I cannot abide. Despair cannot be my byline. I want to be sensitive, I cannot be jaded. Burying bodies, praying for the trucks to stop, coming up with new schemes and watching them all fail... I don't have the patience for that.Have I "turned Republican?" I don't think so. Still there are tendencies, such as voting for George Bush, that certainly mark in some old friends eyes a fall from grace.
I like to think that whatever strange mid-life (Hey, after a certain age it's all midlife.) crisis began on the morning of September 11, 2001, but I've lately come to realize it most likely began in an automobile driving down the Post Road in Westport, Connecticut in 1989. Of all that and other things, more, probably, later.
For now, the trucks have it.
Posted by Vanderleun at December 3, 2004 6:03 PM | TrackBack