I find Tywin Lannister to be very interesting. What fascinates me most is the way that he considers both of his sons to be failures in spite of their obvious competence; largely for the simple reason that they dare to have humor and libido and generally enjoy life. To have humor and libido is to go against the superior image of "Great Men" from "Great Houses" and every justification for the horrible things done to solidify their heightened position.
I feel that as a White American man I have some close awareness of where Tywin is coming from. Social privilege does have its drawbacks and the most noticible one to me is the pressure upon the privileged to be 'Olympic' if you will. There's the pressure to define oneself as a heroic avenger of evil that in this country expresses itself most vividly through gun culture or any given strain of Illuminati NWO bullshit. There's the prudishness that we Americans most closely associate with conservative Christians but also takes very familiar form among Brahmans or other non-Western privileged groups. To be one of the chosen is by rights to be above being a body and take pleasure in nothing save the victory of the righteous. Finally there is the pressure to intimately possess moral truth which encourages dogmatism and the denial of modern scientific and post-modern social complexities. There is also here a tendency to glorify intuition & will, at least when it comes from within 'The People', from which the famed anti-intellectualism of the US in general and the populist American right especially is largely spawned from.
It's a chain of thought that's been vaguely forming in my mind for the past few days now, and the discovery of this little ditty from "Conservative Fact Check" has just now brought it to the surface for me.
"The left has its "scientists" and "economists" and "statisticians," while we have common sense. And common sense will win every time."
Make whatever the hell out of that you can as best as you're able dear reader.
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