Some recent essays of sociopolitical interest:
To update Marx: History
happens, first as tragedy, then as farce; then as slapstick re-runs on cable
channels.
Even the principles did not realize
for some time that it was leading to a World War.
Yet it marked a powerful and
permanent turn, of the groaning millwheel of History; and on that day, Clio laid aside her pen, and wept.
 |
| Lacrimae rerum |
"The cabinet noir
introduced, in a curious way, the Open Diplomacy advocated by the enthusiasts of the
League of Nations."
The hyperconservatives’ public
rhetoric may in many cases be simply ad
usum minus habentium.
الدولة الاسلامية في العراق والشام
There is no more a logical contradiction between someone born
by surrogacy coming (upon mature reflection) to condemn the practice,
than in the analogous case of someone born by rape, or prostitution, or incest,
or bigamy, or A.I.D., or fructification by Zeus in the form of a swan,
objecting to (as a general practice)
rape, or prostitution, or incest, or bigamy, or A.I.D., or extra-Olympian
dalliances by randy deities sub specie
cygni.
Trigger warning: This philological note may contain some
very, very bad words. You must be
over 21 to read this. No, make
that 31. 91. In fact -- Don’t read it at all.
As a native who returned, Thomas
Frank combines, to advantage, the insights of the Visiting Martian (Toqueville,
Dickens, Chesterton …) with those of the indigene. And in richness of description, his book recalls that
never-equaled masterpiece, John Gunther’s Inside USA.
Incredible though
it may appear, the students at UC Santa Barbara face more deadly perils than
the lapses from correctitude in The Great Gatsby:
www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-barbara-deadly-shooting-20140524-story.html#navtype=outfit
A word on that
fixed phrase, “rape or incest”, inscribed in stone like “peanut-butter and
jelly” or “Laurel and Hardy”.
Sociologically, morally, the collocation makes perfect sense. But practically, there is a certain
redundancy …
The 1996 book It Takes a Village,
by Barbara Feinman (writing as “Hillary Clinton”), was meant -- commendably --
to point to the need (which in practice, in America, had never been denied,
until recently) for community involvement in child-rearing, beyond the autarky
of the nuclear family. Such was
the unquestioned state of affairs during my own childhood…
A mittel-europäischer rationalist recalls “those golden, and, all in
all very peaceful final decades of the colonial system”, and adverts ad the hermeneuts …
An Irishman, a person of unrecorded
nationality, and an individual from a nation we dare not name, walk into a bar
…
Striking a blow for freedom of adultery,
and the muzzling of the press.
If the geopolitical playing-field
were momentarily tilted slightly differently, you’d have Congressmen standing
on their chairs shouting for the inalienable rights of the freedom-loving Crimean
People to determine their self-determination themselves.
But now a wildcard pops up out of
the deck. The current
Justice Department, the one in office at this particular instant (and again,
possibly after a wild night of ibogaine abuse, that part is unclear), lets it
be known that it would prefer to stay in bed rather than defend the
government’s side of the case, on this issue. At which point a voice (of uncertain origin) bellows
from the wings, that in that case, the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction! Which means, the original litigant wins by default, just as though it were a
Little League game where the Wellfleet Woodchucks failed to appear.
There is another, subtler layer to
the story, namely that the ever-oily, ever-ingratiating Hollande -- who is by
no means accustomed to laying bald facts out plain -- was, in this case,
actually attempting, in his ham-handed way, to be politically-correct : only, within a certain sociopolitical
microclimate …
While France is absorbed in such
insipid distractions as the latest entry in the palmarès of “The Wit and Wisdom of François Hollande”, some genuine
events are unfolding in Françafrique,
following in the wake of much bloodshed, and heralding more bloodshed to come
This item will sell like hot
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!!!
It is depressing even to have to
think about North Korea, the geopolitical equivalent of anal warts.
France’s practice of repeatedly
doling out ransoms, while denying that it does so, has planted a tree with
poison roots. Here, perhaps, are some of its fruits.
Glurge alert! The French
President goes groveling before the fratricidal chaos of
Africa. If he needs a good whipping, why can't he go get it at Madame
Sévère’s
Bondage Basement, instead of dragging all France into his fantasies?
Mister Pecksniff and Ted Cruz
-- separated at birth?
Outsource the police state to
charity: The Swiss NGO Terre des Hommes lays a honey-trap…
“I don’t know which Mafia I dislike
the most. I’m leaning toward liking the Italian Mafia because they
are just immoral and still believe in mother and child. But the Art
Mafia is immoral and, from what I can tell, they’ve stopped procreating.”
Tom announces on national
television that he intends to kill John. Then Tom is charged with murder, because, though his intended
victim is still among the living, what Tom did was “just as bad”. And if
you imply otherwise, you are insulting the murder-victims community.
Wie eine Kultur sich selbst auffrißt
ripouxblique
.
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