{"id":4755,"date":"2010-07-29T20:49:31","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T00:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=4755"},"modified":"2011-08-09T11:33:12","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T15:33:12","slug":"symbols-matter-but-not-as-much-as-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/07\/29\/symbols-matter-but-not-as-much-as-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Symbols matter, but not as much as reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ace<\/a> puts his finger on one of the key differences between “the masses” and the “governing class”:<\/p>\n

\n

That’s why the “Political Class” — the Gee Aren’t I Terribly Enlightened? crowd — opposes this. They talk about that a lot — the symbolism<\/em> of the thing.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

I’m noting this because a few weeks ago I saw a guy at the riots in Toronto who complained that the police barricades were a symbol<\/em> representing a division between the protesters and the G-20 representatives.<\/p>\n

And I thought, “Gee, no, actually it’s not a symbol<\/em> of a division; it really is, in fact, a physical division.” Because, see, you’re rioting. (And not symbolically in riot, either.) You can tell it’s a real-world division because now you can’t get to the G-20 conference center and throw rock-metaphors through the window-symbols.<\/p>\n

I think there is a type of person — well-represented in the “Political Class” and in progressive politics — that has learned, from college<\/em>, that the Abstract is everything, that Real Smart People are always focused on the Abstract, on metaphors, on symbols.<\/p>\n

And they seem to disregard the concrete, the real<\/em>, almost as a dirty thing, something of concern to the plebians, who cannot of course grasp the subtleties of high representational thinking like they can. You know, with their “symbolic” barricades and all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ace puts his finger on one of the key differences between “the masses” and the “governing class”: That’s why the “Political Class” — the Gee Aren’t I Terribly Enlightened? crowd — opposes this. They talk about that a lot — the symbolism of the thing. [. . .] I’m noting this because a few weeks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,84,53,13],"tags":[578,322,720,742,76,207],"class_list":["post-4755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-government","category-politics","category-usa","tag-g20","tag-nannystate","tag-protest","tag-rioting","tag-socialism","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1eH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4755"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10603,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4755\/revisions\/10603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}