It somehow seems wrong when you pass judgment on people Charles.

...not that I don't agree with you. People are fucking stupid.

Charles, you've obviously never sampled ground Flying Dragon bones.

I look down on Charles. Itz coo.

OOOH! I had no idea dragon bones were so cheap. Do they have a website I can order from?

Word.

Charles, why so much contempt? Is it so obvious by examining dinosaur bones that they are the remains of long-ago land-based but oh-so-obviously not flying creatures? I'm quite sure neither you nor I could tell by looking. Or is it the use of bones for medicinal purposes. I'm quite sure neither you nor I have good evidence ourselves that this is an entirely worthless move.

I don't understand the degree of animosity. Calcium does help with cramps. Ask any woman who can't get relief from Tylenol. If people are too poor to get calcium elsewhere, why can't they use what they've got -- even if they are from flying lizards?

I don't know whether your comment following the quotation was meant seriously or facetiously.

There is sound medical proof that placebo drugs can be effective treatment; if their dragon bones are helping, they hey--it's not like the rest of the world has been rushing them real medicine (or education), and what were we going to do with those bones? Study 'em and then put 'em in a box? They weren't boiling the potency out of a cure for cancer; Western society studies dinosaurs because they're cool. (Yes, because it's a study in natural history and evolution and biology and all that, but there are more paleontologists than are strictly necessary because dinosaurs are cool.)

Given their placebo drugs versus our want for more cool dino bones? Let 'em have their drugs. *shrug*

Baboons?

Really?

You really just called the rural population of Zimbabwe baboons?

...right, about that. Yeah.

Oh man, did you really just compare African voters to baboons? Just wait until Sharpton reads that.

Yes, stupid Chinese peasants for knowing nothing of paleontology.

Stupid Chinese peasants for knowing nothing of modern medicine.

Moronic Zimbabwean baboons who... I can't go on. I'm flabbergasted.

How can you be so self-absorbed, yet possess so little self-awareness?

I'm tempted to try to understand you, put you in the context of your own culture. Do all advanced-degree holding Marxist writers display such blatant hypocrisy and misguided malice? Impoverished and under-educated Chinese and Zimbabwean "hicks" have a good excuse for their ignorance. You sir, do not.

If your attitude towards rural people is typical of your fellow city-dwellers, I have a theory as to why they don't see their political interests aligned with those of urban voters.

charles, these commenters have made valid points. please explain yourself. we need a quodlibet!

Hey, flaming banjo- his hate is a reaction to stupid actions taken by rural people before his hate existed- it's an effect of rural jackassery, no the cause. I agree with the poster who said we study dinosaur bones because they're cool. I say we also try to preserve endangered species because they're cool. Being cool is a fine justification for both of these efforts, which are heavily hampered by shortsighted village people who can always be counted on to work against the best interests of science knowledge art culture and the health and well-being of the entire human species with their villainous stupidity. Obviously there's exceptions. But the smart rural people are usually so frustrated by the jackoffs they live around that they move to the city! I have to go to rural Kansas soon for my brother's wedding, because his bride-to-be has most of her family there and she feels obligated to 'em. But does she live with them? No. She did the sane thing and moved the fuck out. Lives in the bay area. Kansas can suck my balls.
-

Africans are Baboons?

Definately the pot calling the kettle black.

when people without access to education & facts try to explain the unknown, they come up with some crazy stuff.

like, say, abraham, patriarch of monotheism. thanks, abe! heck of a job!

when i say contempt, i mean contempt. i have some love for the industrial agricultural workers that chengerai hove's novels celebrate, but none for the utter rural figure who spends his days thinking about magic spells and other such nonsense. i believe, as marx believed, that industrialization or urbanization is their only salvation from the idiocies of rural life.

Chuck, you're missing out on what really sucks about rural life: the utter lack of privacy.

I don't think there's a lot of calcium in FOSSILS, Sheila. We see here evidence that not all city dwellers are intellectually superior to rural people; some of them, despite their educational advantages, can't even read.

Charles, your arrogance is eclipsed only by your stupidity. Get a life.

Does this have somthing to do with Iowa and it's disproportionately influential role in electing the most powerful person in the world every four years?

The common characteristic of hickdom isn't idiocy, Charles. It's ignorance. You can certainly blame people for remaining willfully ignorant (I do frequently, anyway), but not until after they've had and turned away from at least some small offer of knowledge-- and an alarming number of these people never get even that. Particularly in China, the government, frankly, does as little as possible to provide for its rural citizens. And why would it do more? Once these people get halfway educated, the ruling party is out on its ass. A growing number of young Chinese are leaving their villages to go to the cities, but that isn't a viable option for the entire rural population.

I really don't mean to be all paternalistic and "woe, the poor peasants!" about it, but sitting smugly in the city and jerking off to Marx doesn't exactly help much either.

@21: Your handle denotes humility (a good thing), but also obedience and religion (great tools of ignorance). You're a humble servant at the altar, but you feel certain enough in your view of truth to call Charles stupid? Preach on.

I was feeling the same way this morn when I heard that story about the dragon bones. I thought more about chinese beliefs in things like rhino horns for aphrodisiacs, though. Your broad point also makes me think of those pics of flooding in Texas. That shit looks bad, poor god fearing folks must be doing some shit to make her mad, huh? You know they'll be voting republican again next year cuz no such thing as global climate change.

The calcium-rich bones...

I read it fine, fnarf.

And I am not a city dweller.

I agree with you, Charles. I'm against the supernatural, tribal explanations of the Universe that our species seems to cling to. We need to get over it of we want to survive in an advanced technological age. Although grinding up dinosaur bones is pretty much harmless, it's the same mindset that gives us the brutal, ignorant belief systems that are Christianity and Islam.

Christopher: Charles's abhorrence of superstition and buccolic idiocy isn't the problem. Painting ALL rural-dwellers (or all anything else, for that matter)as ___________, however, isn't "truth"-telling. It's bigotry.

Charles celebrates fictional accounts of argicultural workers. great.

#28

But Chucky is black. Therefore, he cannot be a bigot. They are mutually exclusive.

Here is a question Chuck, does the behavior of blacks screaming at movie screens demonstrate someting inherantly ignorant about them? What do you say Chuck? Does your "logic" go all the way? After all, the characters in the movie are fake and will not respond to the requests of the audience.

I await your response.

Wow, slog's very own gay racist. I've no idea why people call Charles anything except that and Charlie, where the hell did Chuck come from?
Dude you're stereotyping a race, Charles was going after the ignorant people which can be almost anyone. Note the difference. He did in slightly harsher language than I'd have expected but still, he's criticizing a trait not a race.
Where did you get the 'screaming at movie screens' reference from? Ever seen people watch damn near any sport on TV? We know they can't hear us, it's just a result of getting too involved in it.

Charles doesn't need to dignify your comment with a response. I'm surprised you haven't been called on your bullshit earlier.

he has. for claiming to be gay.

I don't question your stupidity BA, so please don't question my sexuality.

Though I see the point in Charles' Marxist analysis, I will have to disagree on his take on Zimbabwe. Charles completely disregards the role of the petit bourgeoisie, to which he and his educated family clearly belongs and the contempt that they ( the petit bourgeoisie) hold towards the rural peasantry, they clearly despise.

It is simplistic to say, We warned the baboons about Mugabe, eventhough we supported him too in the beginning and only realized he was an opportunist and a mad man when he turned on us.

There are clear reasons why Nationalist former revolutionaries meglomaniacs like Mugabe come to power and receive the support of the rural class. For they clearly see and know that the cosmopolitan and middle classes of Zimbabwe or any other developing country in Africa or Latin America, do not want them ( the rural class) to advance, but just want their votes and continue to hold them in comptempt for their lack of economic worth. Classism is strong in Africa and in Latin America, and it is the reason why opportunists like Mugabe or Stroesner in Paraguay before him were and are able to stay in power.

Marx’s whole rural idiocy theory is based on his belief that the peasantry had to go through industrialization and become a working class that can then lead a dictatorship of the proletariat. That was before industrialization, third world revolutions, non aligned countries movement, slavery through the emancipation of the markets, and empire. Marx couldn’t have known that capital wanted a huge uneducated rural class that would vote in their interests. Opportunists like Mugabe seized this. But the rural class of Zimbabwe clearly does not trust the town dwellers who fled just as easily as the white folks who fled New Orleans. The rural just like the poor of New Orleans had no options and an opportunist and former liberator like Mugabe could step in.

African Cosmopolitans and upper classes like Charles share some of the blame, but they will never acknowledge it. For they also didn’t stay and fight for the advancement of the rural class. For they despise them and only want their votes. Calling them baboons is clearly a sign of resentment, a resentment that they know and that is why they pay back by electing somebody who is against their own interest. Crazy but hell, the working class here elected Bush. It wasnt just the rural class. Please. Plenty of blue collar workers voted for W.

It is clear that the developing world cosmopolitans are angy and throwing hissy fits, for they were not given the benefit of the doubt.

Clearly they were right about Mugabe, but who is to say the person they supported would not be ignoring the rural class as well and thus paving the way for another opportunist.

it is generally considered a racist insult to refer to persons of african descent as a type of ape, monkey or baboon. i don't think that the point charles is making requires him to be intentionally racist -- he's being some other ist at this time -- but it might not be the best language to use if for no other reason than the example he's setting.

Thank you, SeMe, for providing some context.

seme, your reading is wrong. i can see why you would read me in that way, but it's still wrong. first of all, my class was not the business class, nor the military/political elite, but the professional class, the one that wanted to universalize education, improve health services, and increase economic opportunities for all. we never abandoned the ideals of the revolution in the way that the political elite did, and besides the political elites had no idea of how to run a government. all they knew was just votes--how to get them, how to keep them away from others. as for the business class, it never gave a shit who was in power as long as it was business as usual. those class lines must be made clear before your observations obtain a single penny of validity.

Seriously? Is this where we're at right now? "Hoo-ee! Stupid hillbillies!"?

What purpose does this clear division between country folk and city folk serve, exactly, except to further divide a unitable populace?

@39: It absolves the "professional class" of any and all responsibility for the present situation. After all, it's not as if their self-righteous bourgeois elitism alienated the rural working class.

The contents of Professor Mudede's mind make me profoundly and inexorably sad.

I dont know Charles. I know you are a strict Marxist at heart, but youre ignoring the class resentments.

We left. We both abandoned our individual nations. And it seems easy to say these things from the comfort of our exile.

Though I will say that maybe Zimbabwe's experience is different and the professional class was extremely progressive until the end, and always fighting the elitism that defines that class and creates resentments and deep divisions. I can not argue that point, but allow me to doubt it.

I will remind you that it was the rural class that won that revolution, though, Im sure it was led by the middle class, as was the case in Cuba, but as is always the case it is the rurals who put up the bodies.

Of course to be fair, it is also the rural class that fights against revolutions, see Savimbi and the RENAMO army in Angola or the contras in Nicaragua, clearly armed by our host country, and by the South Africans, but the soldiers were the rural class and the ones fighting them were the rural class.

Another thing that you fail to point out in your analysis is that Our rural classess are different and that they ARE REALLY Poor and hungry, which is not the case in America, for even the poorest of the Apalachians or the inner cities where I lived have some basic things and arent dying of hunger. True poverty only exists in our countries. My point here is that you can not make generalazations of the rural class because some rural classess eat and others dont. As Bob Marley once said, them belly full but were hungry and a hungry man is an angry man.

From out comfort we await for the rural class to win the revolution and then we return to set up businessess. Yes we share the blame.

Charles looks a lot like an idiot to me now. Thanks Charles for your honesty.

I can't get mad at Charles, since a resentment of rural people is the backbone of nearly every article involving politics on The Stranger, whether it involves "their" religious values or "their" cultural mores. Charles is just being up front about it. So why does it only strike Stranger readers as being elitist when he's the only one being honest about it?

I was drunk when I insulted him. To be honest though, I have no delusions about the Stranger's elitism. The Stranger isn't aware of how provincial Seattle actually is.