FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2024
The tools do this every night: Who in the world is Chael Sonnen?
Below, we'll start to answer your question, possibly for the second time. First though, riddle us this:
Who the heck was José Ortega y Gasset? Also, what did he say in his most famous book, The Revolt of the Masses? It's a book whose intriguing title has lately been troubling our dreams.
Did we ever read The Revolt of the Masses? If so, it would likely have been in our sophomore year in college.
We prospective philosophy majors had all fled the department after taking Phil 3 from a certain 25-year-old professor. We ourselves spent a year in exile in European History & Lit.
As for Ortega y Gasset, we finally decided to look him up after watching Sonnen last night. The leading authority on his life tells us this:
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosophy has been characterized as a "philosophy of life" that "comprised a long-hidden beginning in a pragmatist metaphysics inspired by William James, and with a general method from a realist phenomenology imitating Edmund Husserl, which served both his proto-existentialism (prior to Martin Heidegger's) and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey and Benedetto Croce."
Good lord! Apparently, though, one author did say that, though only once, in a book.
Moving right along, what about that alleged revolt? Here's part of the way the authority thumbnails Ortega's most famous book:
The Revolt of the Masses
The Revolt of the Masses (Spanish: La rebelión de las masas) is a book by José Ortega y Gasset. It was first published as a series of articles in the newspaper El Sol in 1929, and as a book in 1930; the English translation, first published two years later, was authorized by Ortega.
[...]
In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution, en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man.
He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeois educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied young man, or Mr. Satisfied), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the command he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them.
You can make of such things what you will. The authority includes this excerpt from Chapter 8 of Ortega's once-famous text:
The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right," but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."
— Chapter 8, "Why the Masses Intervene in Everything and Why They Always Intervene Violently"
You can make of that what you will. Also, you can look up "syndicalism" yourself.
For the record, Ortega never had the chance to watch American "cable news." He never watched a single program on our flailing nation's "cable news" channels.
He never got to do that! Had he watched the Fox News Channel last night, he ould have seen the aforementioned Sonnen—the person you see thumbnailed below—presented asc some sort of political analyst.
Below, we'll tell you how it went. Here is Sonnen's thumbnail:
Chael Sonnen
Chael Sonnen (born April 3, 1977) is an American submission grappling promoter, mixed martial arts (MMA) analyst, and retired mixed martial artist. Beginning his MMA career in 1997, Sonnen competed for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), where he became a top contender in both the light heavyweight and middleweight divisions and challenged for both the UFC Light Heavyweight and UFC Middleweight Championships. Sonnen has also fought in World Extreme Cagefighting, Pancrase, and most recently for Bellator MMA. Sonnen is often considered one of the best mixed martial artists never to have won a major MMA world championship and one of the sport's greatest trash-talkers.
In 2014, Sonnen began working as a MMA analyst for ESPN and two years later, in July 2016, founded Submission Underground (SUG), his own submission grappling promotion.
We're omitting the passage about the incident in the Las Vegas hotel corridor back in 2021. As best we can tell, the attendant lawsuits continue.
In short, Sonnen is a "submission grappling promoter" and a former mixed martial artist. Last night, in his latest appearance on Fox, he was also cast as a political / social analyst.
To our eye and ear, he came across last night as an extremely speedy, somewhat borderline possible semi-nutcase.
Needless to say, he appeared on the Gutfeld! program. Last evening, this was the panel of analysts:
Gutfeld! panel: Thursday, July 25, 2024
Chael Sonnen: Submission grappling promoter.
Tyrus: Former professional wrestling champion. Performs as a comedian.
Kat Timpf: Performs as a comedian.
Jamie Lissow: Performs as a comedian.
Greg Gutfeld (host): 59 years old. Performs as a comedian.
So it went! Three comedians, joined by one former professional wrestler and one submission grappling promoter. This collection had been assembled to spend an hour, in primetime, conducting political and cultural analyses on our struggling nation's most-watched "cable news" channel.
"Revolt of the masses," someone once said. Not that there's anything wrong with it!
In fairness, we also thought of Ortega's book title when we watched the first hour of Fox & Friends this morning. In our view, MSNBC is bad enough, but something resembling that alleged revolt seems to take place on the Fox News Channel during quite a few hours each day.
Last night, Sonnen had been deposited in the chair occupied this past Monday night by a 23-yea-old model and actress who has recently begun to "dabble in political commentary." This is the way the clown car rolls on this particular "cable news" channel, as our nation seems to seek a way to follow behind "sacred Troy."
Last night, Sonnen struck us as someone who may have ingested seven or eight too many Red Bulls before the taping began. You can assess his first presentation simply by clicking here.
(For the record, he seems to think the vice president's first name is "Kuh-MALL"—two syllables only.)
In the modern lexicon, what happens on this nightly, primetime "news" show might be described as the revolt of the flyweights—but also, of course, as the recitation of the corporate tools.
The analysts all know what to say, and they all proceed to say it. Everyone recites the views of the corporate entity signing their checks.
They all know what they're paid to say, and they seem eager to say it. (We can't say that MSNBC totally differs from this.)
You can watch Sonnen by clicking that link. That said, we've been discussing the Monday night Gutfeld! show, and we'll return to that debacle as we finish our report.
More specifically, we'll look at the "conspiracy theories" which were possibly whispered that night as the assortment of jugglers and clowns recited the scripts of their paymaster. Indeed, a person could almost think that it started with Gutfeld himself.
He had started that evening's program by wondering if Hunter Biden will now start "dating" the first lady. (On Tuesday evening's show, his altered his presentation. His verb of choice was now "f*cking.")
He started with the "dating." After that, the rage-infested fellow explained how to pronounce the Vice President's name.
It isn't KAHMA-ala, he helpfully said. The pronunciation is "IDIOT."
This rage-infested corporate tool is 59 years old! We each went to high school right there in San Mateo—we ourselves at Aragon High, he at Tom Brady's Serra.
We can't imagine how a person so filled with rage can emerge from such a sunny land. But if some such "mass man" does so emerge, the Fox News Channel will find him!
Back to those possibly whispered conspiracy theories. Did the rage-filled host kick-start the fun? At 10:07 p.m., on Monday night, the termagant offered this:
GUTFELD (7/22/24): Now, there could be something else going on here. Is there more to Joe dropping out than we know? Does it have something to do with Butler, Pennsylvania?
I'm not suggesting the Dems tried to have Trump killed, of course...
But remember. Secret Service Director Cheatle was on Jill Biden's security detail. Jill reportedly pushed for Cheatle to get that top job.
They're a perfect pair—a DEI hire gets a shot, and a phony doctor can give you first aid.
But what if, when resources are allotted, favorites are played with experience and manpower? It's pretty clear that the White House didn't take threats to Trump seriously. Could this have been negligence by derangement—a shared antipathy for Trump?
So it went, as he struggled to avoid suggesting that the Dems tried to have Trump killed. He was merely asking—asking if President Biden's withdrawal from the campaign had something to do with what happened in Butler that day.
The termagant never doubled back to explain what he meant by that question. In fairness, he instantly said he wasn't suggesting that the Dems tried to have Trump killed—though that, of course, is a time-honored way to float the thought that maybe they possibly did.
So the termagant said, early on, after talking about Hunter "dating" Jill, and after helping us know how to pronounce the VP's name. The guy can keep it up all night, and he typically does.
That said, other members of Monday's panel may have seemed to be floating other theories of the conspiracy kind. It started in an innocuous way, possibly picked up steam:
Dr. Drew Pinsky, 65, grew up with every discernible advantage. He chooses to appear on Gutfeld! all the same.
By 10:13, he was flatly misstating the contents of the 25th amendment. He then built upon his misstatement, telling us what "you can imagine": about the reason why President Biden stepped aside.
For the record, "you can imagine" lots of things. On this occasion, Dr. Pinsky did.
"Where do they find people like this?" one of the analysts asked. We don't know, but by 10:17, this same Dr. Drew was lodging a complaint about the Biden administration.
"They're causing conspiracy theories to break out," the privileged potentate comically said.
As we noted yesterday. the 23-year-ol model who is now dabbling took her turn at 10:33 p.m. "I've been called a conspiracy theorist all day," she said.
From there, she proceeded to show several million viewers why such things had been said.
That said, it was the former professional wrestler who took the cake this night. At 10:35 p.m., the giant blob of protoplasm started by offering this:
TYRUS: Again, this is the DIE. The biggest questions that should be there is the coincidences that are just too ridiculous to ignore.
He proceeded to list the coincidences that are just too ridiculous to ignore. In doing so, he seemed to create a speculation about the complicity of "Dr. President Jill" in the recent assassination attempt directed at Donald J. Trump.
It was all amazingly clear to Tyrus. None of the other analysts spoke up—and then at 10:39 p.m., the former professional wrestler and current savant was suddenly back for more:
TYRUS: We still don't know who ordered Afghanistan. It's the same person (pretends to cough)—Dr. President Jill. It's like the same person!
No one else spoke up. On this show, the first lady ordered Afghanistan back in 2021. By the next evening's Gutfeld! program, the termagant/host was saying he hopes she isn't "f*cking" her son.
So goes the nightly revolt, as directed by the aging señorito satisfecho. As this nightly revolt unspools, Blue America's finer thought leaders politely avert their gaze.
We'll close by citing a few other books:
More than a decade ago, we began to quote a prophetic statement by the classicist Norman O. Brown. Brown was very hot in the 1960s, on the basis of two books which we actually did read, or at least attempted to read:
Major books by Norman O. Brown
Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (1959)
Love's Body (1966)
Brown is rarely mentioned today. Back then, he was very hot. Upon his death in 2002, the New York Times published this lengthy obituary, testifying to his earlier influence.
More than a decade ago, something Brown once said began to trouble our dreams. We thought it must have come from one of his books, but as this memoir attests, it actually came from a Phi Beta Kappa Address he delivered at Columbia in 1960.
We don't know how we knew about that obscure address. That said, as best we can tell, the murky statement in question went like this:
BROWN (5/31/60): I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...
And so there comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.
For the record, we have no clear idea what that actually means. That said, Brown seemed to suggest, even then, that our society was "ending in exhaustion."
He said our civilization needed to be renewed by the discovery of a new mystery, "by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all [hu]mankind."
Brown sought the aid of the poets. We've thought this week of Carl Sandburg, the poet and the biographer.
We've thought about the passage in Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years in which the president-elect journeys back to Coles County, Illinois to say goodbye to his step-mother—to Sally Bush Lincoln, the person who had been able to see, when Lincoln was young, that her stepson was very different.
In his famous biography of Lincoln, the poet described their last meeting:
SANDBURG: The next day Lincoln drove eight miles out to the old farm along the road over which he had hauled wood with an ox team. He came to the old log house he had cut logs for and helped smooth the chinks; from its little square windows he had seen late winter and early birds.
Sally Bush and he put their arms around each other and listened to each other’s heartbeats. They held hands and talked; they talked without holding hands. Each looked into eyes thrust back in deep sockets. She was all of a mother to him.
He was her boy more than any born to her. He gave her a photograph of her boy, a hungry picture of him standing and wanting, wanting. He stroked her face a last time, kissed good-by, and went away.
She knew his heart would go roaming back often, that even when he rode in an open carriage in New York or Washington with soldiers, flags or cheering thousands along the streets, he might just as like be thinking of her in the old log farmhouse out in Coles County, Illinois.
The sunshine of the prairie summer and fall months would come sifting down with healing and strength; between harvest and corn-plowing there would be rains beating and blizzards howling; and then there would be silence after snowstorms with white drifts piled against the fences, barns, and trees.
So spoke the poet biographer; so ended this brilliant chapter. In Sandburg's portrait, the sunshine of the prairie summer—and with it, the world of the "common man"—would be there in Lincoln's heart, even when he was being cheered by thousands in giant East Coast parades.
Ortega's "mass man" isn't the American average person. Over here in Blue America, we badly need a poet who can help us regain our connection to the world of people who didn't go to Harvard or Yale or Brown.
We need to renew our civilization! Or are we the only people who are able to watch cable TV each night?
Over at the Fox News Channel, they assembly a gang of flyweights and clowns to go on the air each night. Each night, the jugglers and clowns proceed say the things they're paid to say.
Our own thought leaders, in their greatness, choose to avert their gaze. We Blues continue to talk to ourselves, as we've been doing for years.
Sonnen? He's a submission grappling promoter but also, just perhaps, a bit of valuable tool. In the course of his daily life, he may be the world's nicest person.
That said, is the first lady f*cking her son? Did she order Afghanistan? Was she imaginably involved somehow in the assassination attempt?
Has the first lady been f*cking her son? Inquiring minds are encouraged to wonder. Timpf, who plays the thoughtful cast member, sits on her ascot and stares.
