This prof Cantor has some interesting-looking essays on his site

A renowned Roger scholar who writes about pop culture, we’re lucky to have him.

Very niche, much wow

I AM pulled toward this one again though

No one will love me for who I am hahahah

This one is difficult to resist

What is more interesting is that Tocqueville anticipated Las Vegas as a cultural phenomenon. Many commentators have claimed that Las Vegas has become the central cultural symbol of contemporary America, and that if we want to see what the United States will look like in the future, we need only turn to Las Vegas today.

Cantor is all over the place, a renaissance man.

This is why I’ve learned to detach myself from the problems here. Tocqueville visited in 1831 and he could already see what was going to happen. The inevitability of the decline can be sensed from the beginning, in its founding Lockean documents.

This is too funny, when Tocqueville initially arrived in NYC he admired the “palaces of marble” that were built in the classical style only to discover later upon taking a closer look that they were made of brick and wood painted white. That facade peeled off a long time ago. And no one’s cared to repaint it since then either. Drab squalor, a shack country. I’m like a Jew in not feeling like this place is my home.

Ugh, I hate this place

Plaster people, they make me sick.

Tocqueville was a Norman. His parents were lucky to escape the guillotine.

Probably only someone from that Index would talk about him in a non-evasive way, and here we have Cantor.

Raise your hand if you’re a postmodernist

Tocqueville helps reveal that postmodernism is a democratic aesthetic, that its basic principle is the anti-aristocratic impulse to level distinctions

See, scholars tend to avoid bringing up how contemporary movements are outgrowths of the place in the political cycle we’re situated within. Yes, you’re a democrat, and that precedes all of your theorizing. Or think of Picasso again- democratization is present not only in theory. Please stop pretending you’re not part of the machine, that’s all you are, you have no identity, all you have is a name and a face, and there’s nothing individual behind them.

Who would pay money to watch these plaster bimbos? Not me

Prostitutes in all their varieties aren’t real people, aren’t real women, and they never will be.

Remember, Tocqueville was at a similar mental frequency as that Gobineau from the other day. The blood of the aristos was still fresh on the rabble’s hands, and some of the survivors were still wandering around. Now next to zero exist. The various ~revolutions~ equate to a type of genocide, one on the basis of caste rather than race. (Though some will argue castes are their own types of races.) “You’re not vulgar and stupid like me? Time to die.” Rabble knows rabble, their words and deeds all carry that distinct trailer park rhythm. They speak in their own special code, you probably wouldn’t notice because there are so many of them. The deafening silence as they go about their doings. All in agreement to “level distinctions” and not explicitly say that’s what they’re doing. Their end-goal is one colossal, featureless blob. That is “real socialism”. “And that sounds great to me.” No one there to tell them they’re low-class.

Tocqueville being keen

Imitation diamonds are now made which may be easily mistaken for real ones; as soon as the art of fabricating false diamonds becomes so perfect that they cannot be distinguished from real ones, it is probable that both will be abandoned and become mere pebbles again.

This explains so much

in many respects the United States was the first postcolonial country in the modern sense

It’s retained its attitude as the impudent slave, forever in revolt against its master.

I’m just a normal guy, okay? I don’t believe the things I say, not one bit. I’m just a cartoon character. You slaves. What a sad sight.

This is quite the twist here

Twain manages to portray England as what today might be called an underdeveloped country, economically backward compared to America, mired in superstition, and primitive in its customs. In short, Twain portrays England the way it used to portray its colonies

It looks down on other countries for not being impudent slave-countries like it is. It globalizes that leveling of distinctions. Is there any sense in challenging these people? That’s truly their permanent personality. Impudent slave that need to level distinctions.

Maybe you are a diamond and not a pebble- you’d just have to prove it.