In a recently published book, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly argue that the crisis of our current age stems from the indecision and resulting nihilism that come from our having lost the system of values provided by monotheism. In the Christian age our correct course of action in all matters was clearly set forth, but now, every decision becomes a crisis. Aggregate these crises and the result is a culture of nihilism. Dreyfus and Kelly argue that the way out of this state is by taking the stance of the Homeric age in which we marvel at the surfaces of things and revel in the mystery of our world. We need to get caught up in the Whoosh of the moment.

Now, Peter Ludlow and his former graduate advisor Charles Parsons challenge the Homeric solution offered up by Dreyfus and Kelly. While Ludlow and Parsons do not take issue with the Dreyfus/Kelly critique of our current situation, they reject the thesis that the way out is found in the Homeric age. Rather, the way out of our predicament is found in the tiger-blood fueled insights of Charlie Sheen. “Forget whooshing,” they argue, “it’s about winning.”

Beginning with a nod to the Dreyfus/Kelly diagnosis of our current crisis, Ludlow and Parsons draw on the music of recent Internet phenomenon Rebecca Black. Ms. Black clearly illustrates the contemporary crisis of the secular age when, in her song “Friday” she is confronted with a daunting choice.

Kickin’ in the front seat

Sittin’ in the back seat

Gotta make my mind up

Which seat can I take?**

Rebecca Black, in effect, is articulating a situation that is definitionally nihilistic on the Dreyfus/Kelly model: nihilism is “the idea that there is no reason to prefer any answer to any other.” Indeed, should I kick it in the front seat or the back seat? As Ms. Black saw, the fragmented system of values of our current age sadly provides no guidance.

This is the sort of crisis that is now endemic in the contemporary world, but Sheen, Ludlow and Parsons contend, would never be paralyzed by a decision like this. As evidence they turn to a recent interview with Sheen.

I probably took more than anybody could survive. I was banging seven-gram rocks. Because that’s how I roll. I have one speed. I have one gear: Go. (Sheen)

Indeed, one can scarcely imagine Sheen fretting over where to sit. See the seat, take the seat. Don’t think, do. Go.

Sheen even resists the choices themselves when they are grounded in bad faith dichotomies. When a Good Morning America reporter asks him if he is bi-polar he rejects the attempted entrapment engineered by the nihilist reporter: “I’m bi-*winning*”, he responds.

Critical to living sheeny is that one infuse one’s life with poetry and magic, and that confronted with obstacles one brings these powers to bear on those obstacles. Although capable of defeating enemies with brute force, Sheen shows us how to defeat them with a combination of this poetry, magic and a few well-chosen words.

I’m sorry, man, but I’ve got magic. I’ve got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time – and this includes naps – I’m an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground. (Sheen)

I have defeated this earthworm with my words. Imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists. (Sheen)

One might respond that Charlie Sheen just is a Homeric hero brought to life – that by endorsing the Charlie Sheen path, Ludlow and Parsons have ipso facto endorsed the positive thesis being put forward by Dreyfus and Kelly. Indeed it is worth comparing the Dreyfus/Kelly paean to the whoosh-worthy Nureyev with Sheen’s own self-assessment:

“Nureyev’s charisma was palpable; he stood taller, smelt better, walked prouder, and simply outshone all the others around him.” (Dreyfus and Kelly)

“I am on a drug – it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.” (Sheen)

“I’m different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man.” (Sheen)

“If you borrowed my brain for five seconds, you’d be like, ‘Dude! Can’t handle it, unplug this bastard!’ It fires in a way that’s maybe not from, uh… this terrestrial realm.” (Sheen)

Comparisons like this might lead one to argue that winning just is whooshing – that the Ludlow/Parsons just is the Dreyfus/Kelly proposal, but this move is anticipated. Sheen is no mere Greek hero, according Ludlow and Parsons. Greek heroes were (usually) deferential to their gods and previous heroes. Charlie Sheen shows us that winning means we must move beyond. We must destroy our idols by out-winning them.

“The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them look like droopy-eyed, armless children.” (Sheen)

Indeed, Sheen may just as well have added the names Achilles, Theseus, Odysseus and Hercules to the list.

Finally Ludlow and Parsons take up the issue with the way that quantitative ways of measuring time have made us temporally uncentered agents no longer living in the moment. Here again they return to the music of Rebecca Black to illustrate their point. Ms. Black observes that though we may want to enjoy Dionysian revelry, we are inextricably thwarted by quantitative measures of time. Again, they turn to her poignant if nihilistic lyrics.

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today



Tomorrow is Saturday

And Sunday comes after…wards
I don’t want this weekend to end

And then, as if to punctuate the end of revelry, the song immediately cuts to a rap break. The effect is heart breaking. But, as Ludlow and Parsons observe, there is still hope. We can become temporally centered and live in the moment again. They close with a final quote from Charlie Sheen as their antidote to our temporal predicament.

“Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them.”
(Charlie Sheen)

* Charles Parsons had nothing to do with this, but you knew that.
** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

In this telling interview, Herald founder Urizenus Sklar reveals his connections with the sordid Anonymous, and by doing so on Russia TV…well.  Connect.  The.  Dots.  Clearly Prokofy Neva was right:  This is all part of the Kremlin/4Chan plot to take over the world, one meme at a time.  As Alyona points out, there are already over 9000 memes.  That is more than enough to instigate the worldwide revolution that Uri proclaims at the end of the interview.  But dudes, what is up with his eyes?

Picture this. It was Sept. 17 and I was kicking back with a glass of Ransom Gin on ice
while celebrating the publication of my article on WikiLeaks in The Nation, when the mojo
wire crackled to life. I had incoming email via an anonymous remailer routed through
Belgium. “Hi, I’m Julian Assange” it began. I poured more gin and began to read.

Julian liked the article, it seems, but objected to two points, one of which concerns us
now (the other is a topic for another missive).

the "five human rights groups including Amnesty" is misleading and has fooled
many. One man a US national at the Asian office in the UK national office
of Amnesty, rounded up a few contacts at four other organizations, and then
sent us an email repeating the Pentagon line — already well aired –, which was
then also concurrently leaked to an known "opposing" reporter at the Wall St
Journal. Amnesty was forced to state it was not an official statement, just an email
contact…

After digesting the memo, the fact checker at The Nation and I looked into the matter. In
the first place, while talk of the letter from the human rights organizations was all over
the media and Internet, all roads led back to a story by Jeanne Whalen in the Wall Street
Journal. Furthermore, Amnesty International did deny being a signatory. More curious,
however, was that the signatory for the Open Society Institute (a Soros operation) had
just received her law degree from Harvard in 2007 and was listed as a program officer on
the Open Society Foundation website. Was she really speaking for OSI (OSF), as the
Wall Street Journal had claimed? I wrote to the reporter with these questions. Following
is her response in full.

Peter,

Hello. I heard from your colleague Kate yesterday, and can’t say more than I
told her, sorry — that we don’t share details of our reporting with other news
organizations.

Best, Jeanne

Jeanne Whalen
The Wall Street Journal
10 Fleet Place
Limeburner Lane
London EC4M 7QN, U.K.
office: +44 207 842 9217
mobile: +44 7747 117 486

I replied at some length in my friendly Midwestern way:

Jeane,

To reiterate. I do not work for The Nation. I teach philosophy at Northwestern
University. While I wrote an article that recently appeared in The Nation, that is
the only time I have written for The Nation and I am not now writing an article
for The Nation, or anyone else. I do, however, plan on teaching about these
events in the future and I would like to have the facts right. If Kate is the same
Kate that fact checked my article then she is a lovely person but she is not my
colleague. If she is investigating the matter I assume it is because The Nation
wants to prevent further errors in reporting.

I am not asking for details of your reporting. I am asking you to tell me what is
actually the case. It is my understanding that Amnesty International did *not*
sign the joint letter. Is that now also your understanding? It is my understanding
that the person associated with OSI that signed the letter, Erica Gaston, was
a minor player that was not authorized to speak for OSI. Is that also your
understanding? It is also my understanding that there were only four signatories
to the letter in question. Can you confirm that?

Finally, I am unclear on what "details of our reporting" means, but I don’t see
why that should prohibit you from sharing the letter in question. Maybe I’m just
working on the academic model of inquiry here, but what good would be served
by hoarding that document? Would somebody be put in danger by its release?

She has yet to respond.

Yesterday, finding myself at a dead end I turned to the only person you really can turn to
in a situation like this – that most baller of baller journalists, the infamous founder of the
Alphaville Herald – Urizenus Sklar. I caught up with him in google chat.

Ludlow: Uri babez are you there? I need your help!
Urizenus: Yeah I’m here. Luddie you should be here too. The Herald Yacht is just now
cruising through the Bosphorus. We are picking up Burcu Bakioglu in a few hours and
are then going to play Set with Moot and some of his 4chan friends.

Ludlow: That’s great Uri, but I have a problem here.
Urizenus: Do tell.

I filled Uri in on the stonewalling from the WSJ, and Uri paused to think for a bit.

Urizenus: Hmmm, you know Luddie, I hate to say it but there are two possibilities here.
Either Jeane was played, or she is part of the game.
Ludlow: Played? Wait… what game?

Urizenus: You see Ludz, the government is smart enough to already know exactly what
you said in your article – that killing Julian would be pointless. WikiLeaks is a robust
and dynamic network with thousands of “nodes”. It’s like fighting the hydra – you cut of
one of its heads and two more grow in its place. The only option is to change the subject.
So, instead of having people talk about the war and evidence of war crimes in the leaked
documents you get them to talk about something else – like how Julian put innocent
civilians at risk.
Ludlow: Ok…

Urizenus: But how to do that… It is not persuasive to get a government official to do it
so you Astroturf something using well-known and respected human rights organizations.
Ludlow: How do you do that?

Urizenus: Well, obviously you aren’t going to get the organizations to officially sign off
on something like that, but human rights organizations are full of thousands of people,
and many of them are conservative and others are, frankly, plants.
Ludlow: Plants?

Urizenus: Ludmeister, you have been in the Midwest for too long. Absolutely. Human
rights organizations are full of intelligence agents and people that would like to get
into positions of power in, for example the U.S. State Department. Do you think they
wouldn’t do a favor for Hillary or Barak?
Ludlow: Um…

Urizenus: Let’s back up a bit and start with the Wall Street Journal. Who owns it?
Ludlow: Rupert Murdoch

Urizenus: Yes, my old nemesis Rupie. We had some great sailboat races in the
day …*sigh*… but I digress. Do you know who the signatories of the letter were?
Ludlow: Well yes, I know two: Sarah Holewinski of the Campaign for Innocent Victims
in Conflict (CIVIC) and Erica Gaston of the Open Society Foundation.

Urizenus: And you already know that Gaston got her degree in 2007 and is not likely
authorized to speak on behalf of Soros’ foundation.
Ludlow: Yes…

Urizenus: But did you know that she had co-authored a paper with Holewinski and was a
protégée of Holewinski?  She also worked with CIVIC for a while.
Ludlow: Um, no…

Urizenus: Luddie you need to know these things. Reporting 101. Connect the dots!
Ludlow: Right, dots.

Urizenus: So I assume you didn’t know that Holewinski was a fellow of the Truman
National Security Project
Ludlow: What’s that?

Urizenus: It is an organization that pushes the Democrats’ view on intelligence and
military matters.
Ludlow: Is that bad?

Urizenus: It is what it is. But if you want a taste of what they are about you should read
the Christian Science Monitor op/ed that Holewinski wrote with Jim Morin, who is “a
2001 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he majored in military
history, focusing on counter-insurgency and low-intensity conflict”, is also a member
of the Truman National Security Project, and was an Infantry Platoon Leader and then
Company Commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is the quote from their op/ed that
got my attention.

Protecting the population isn’t political correctness; it’s a vital military objective
and a distinct advantage over an enemy that uses civilians as shields. The drop in
civilian casualties is a mark of success.

Ludlow: It’s all so confusing. These people look like human rights advocates on paper,
but then it seems that on closer inspection their political agendas are more complex.
And then what was the role of the WSJ reporter Jeanne Whalen? Was she in on the
astroturfing or did someone use her? I still don’t know. It’s such a mess we may never
get to the bottom of it.

Urizenus: Lud, what is the first thing I taught you when you came to work for the
Herald?

Ludlow: In the hall of mirrors that is the interwebs, we may never know the truth.

Urizenus: And what is the first question I asked you?

Ludlow: How big is your game?

Urizenus: Luddie, the game just got bigger.