Episode 2498 - Saturday, April 20, 1985

Everyone give a warm welcome to shiny brand new co-host Nathaniel Bozarth! You can follow him on Twitter @bo_nathaniel, so why not do that? I mean, he's got a mustache...In other news, I started editing this hour-plus long episode an hour before it was supposed to post, and that was BEFORE I remembered I still have to go in and bleep out all the times where we said the name of the place Chris works at. Because for some reason he doesn't think people there would appreciate our program and his involvement with it. I know right? I think he's being totally uptight about the whole thing and he doesn't really have anything to worry about. I mean, if they can't appreciate this wholesome extra-curricular hobby of his, maybe they're not REALLY his friends? Bunch of assholes if that's the case, that's what I say. Anyway, my point being here that I don't really have time for an extended write up today. Sorry!Today's stripThe Duckfeed podcast networkForeign's Policy's The E.R.A fried boiled egg recipe that may or may not be at all similar to Christine's

10 Juli 20171h 7min

The anti-Semite has no illusions about what he is. He considers himself an average man, modestly average, basically mediocre. There is no example of an anti-Semite's claiming individual superiority over the Jews. But you must not think that he is ashamed of his mediocrity; he takes pleasure in it; I will even assert that he has chosen it. This man fears every kind of solitariness, that of the genius as much as that of the murderer; he is the man of the crowd. However small his stature, he takes every precaution to make it smaller, lest he stand out from the herd and find himself face to face with himself. He has made himself an anti-Semite because that is something one cannot be alone...Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944Today's strip

9 Juli 201714min

He has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others. What he flees even more than Reason is his intimate awareness of himself. But some will object: What if he is like that only with regard to the Jews? What if he otherwise conducts himself with good sense? I reply that that is impossible... A man who finds it entirely natural to denounce other men cannot have our conception of humanity; he does not see even those whom he aids in the same light as we do. His generosity, his kindness are not like our kindness, our generosity. You cannot confine passion to one sphere.Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944Today's strip

8 Juli 20175min

If then, as we have been able to observe, the anti-Semite is impervious to reason and to experience, it is not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious.Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944Today's strip

7 Juli 201721min

The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has pleased himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti-Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc." Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944Today's strip

6 Juli 201718min

How can one choose to reason falsely? It is because of a longing for impenetrability. The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that his reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may supervene to cast doubt on it. He never sees clearly where he is going; he is "open"; he may even appear to be hesitant. But there are some people who are attracted to the durability of a stone. They wish to be massive and impenetrable; they wish not to change. Where, indeed, would change take them? We have here a basic fear of oneself and of truth. What frightens them is not the content of truth, of which they have no conception, but the form itself of truth, that thing of indefinite approximation. It is as if their own existence were in continual suspension. But they wish to exist all at once and right away. They do not want any acquired opinions; they want them to be innate. Since they are afraid of reasoning, they wish to lead the kind of life wherein reasoning and research play only a subordinate role, wherein one seeks only what he has already found, wherein one becomes only what he already was. This is nothing but passion. Only a strong emotional bias can give a lightning-like certainty; it alone can hold reason in leash; it alone can remain impervious to experience and last a whole lifetime.Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944Today's strip

5 Juli 201720min

I noted earlier that anti-Semitism is a passion. Everybody understands the emotions of hate or anger are involved. But ordinarily hate and anger have a provocation: I hate someone who has made me suffer, someone who contemns or insults me. We have just seen that anti-Semitic passion could not have such a character. It precedes the facts that are supposed to call it forth; it seeks them out to nourish itself upon them; it must even interpret them in a special way so that they may become truly offensive. Indeed, if you so much as mention a Jew to an anti-Semite, he will show all the signs of a lively irritation. If we recall that we must always consent to anger before it can manifest itself and that, as is indicated so accurately by the French idiom, we "put ourselves" into anger, we shall have to agree that the anti-Semite has chosen to live on the plane of passion. It is not unusual for people to elect to live a life of passion rather than one of reason. But ordinarily they love the objects of passion: women, glory, power, money. Since the anti-Semite has chosen hate, we are forced to conclude that it is the state of passion that he loves. Ordinarily this type of emotion is not very pleasant: a man who passionately desires a woman is impassioned because of the woman and in spite of his passion. We are wary of reasoning based on passion and of what is called monoideism. But that is just what the anti-Semite chooses right off.Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944Today's strip

4 Juli 201721min

Look, I have a lot of editing to do today, so all I'm going to say about today's episode is that Jon cleared his nose directly into his microphone a ridiculous number of times while we were recording. I tried to mute most of them, but I don't have unlimited time here.If the frequent nose-clearings bother you, send your complaints to: jon@beingjimdavis.com.Today's strip

3 Juli 201735min