What’s Sauce for the Goose, is Sauce for the Chimpanzee

[Note:  The following observation is merely illative, and should be skipped by the general reader.]

Awhile back I posted an Aristotelian exercise,  whose effectiveness  if any, depended upon the reader’s holding, or at least being able to entertain  for the sake of the argument, two views:

(1)  that a certain Singerian illation, of the familiar form “if A then B” (for the instantiation, vide infra), has some claim to being valid -- at all events, that it suffers from no internal vice of logical form, and might be entertained (or not) by a reasonable person, such as that Princeton philosopher;

(2) that many reasonable people (sociologically, probably most) would not, however, embrace the apodosis.

From this, something would follow -- at least for the logician;  though for extra-logical reasons, it must remain sine nomine. 

Yet this morning we find (like an ominous portent, at the bottom of our driveway) “B”  emblazoned and celebrated, in full color, taking up the whole of the front cover of the large-format New York Times Magazine.   From thence stares out at us, uniformly hirsute, but suitably suited and necktied, such a one as addressed the learnèd gentlemen in the Bericht für eine Akademie, purportedly from the witness-stand.   A sotie?  No;  an actual case, currently sub judice.   Whereby said simian brings an action at law  against parties named (or rather, it has been brought in his/its behalf, the plaintiff himitself  having not the wit to do it -- wherein lies the greatest potential for legal mischief).   And so cowed is The Times by the potential imprecations of the hyperzoöphiles, that it immediately reassures its readership, that no beasts of field or forest were harmed “or even used” in trumping-up that photograph.   They did not even dare photo-shop in an authentic hominoideal face, but dressed up a human (consent-forms duly signed, no doubt) in a costume.

Such antics are barely worth comment, as a society sues itself into insensibility.  And satire is beggared -- the very next development on the ground  will render any raillery O.B.E. 

~

Well;  I hope that has been sufficiently obscure (caviary to the Boeotians), for I am fond of my own skin.   For (comparatively translucent) comments on a work far more obscure, cf. our newly-updated essay on Finnegan’s Wake.

 ~

[Update 21 April 2015]  As noted above, satire and dystopian fantasy have a way of being overtaken as reality continues to devolve.   And now, we have sunk to this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/04/21/chimps-given-human-rights-by-u-s-court-for-the-first-time/

Moving Milestones

Time was, the landmarks that gave structure to the year, were such as Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

Now, it’s Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

Down the Drain

Even as ISIL pushes the bounds of savagery in their attack against all that is not Takfiri-Salafi, certain forces in the West seem bent upon demonstrating that, indeed, our cultural corruption has reached such a point that we are past saving.   Nor are these forces merely marginal;  they currently rule France.

Here are just the latest provocations from the socialos. 

(Note:  I use the French slang term here  in preference to the official word socialiste, since the Hollande crew have little to do with traditional socialism, and nothing at all to do with the international working class.   To apply the term to their antics, would be to sully it.)

(1)  On nous prend pour des cruches.

Smack in the middle of the Place Vendôme, the socialo mayor of Paris had a monstrosity installed (using taxpayer funds).   She then had the effrontery to pretend that it depicts a “tree”;  whereas in fact (as the artist itself stated to Le Monde), it is nothing less than a giant “butt plug”:

Most of us had previously been unaware of the existence of this paraphiliac sex-toy, but now the socialos are rubbing our faces in it.

In France, the sculpture was titled “Sapin de Noël”, thus  as an added benefit  degrading the holiday that celebrates the birth of our Lord.  Those who pretend that the thing is just a stylized tree, take us for idiots.   Here is another work by the same soi-disant ‘artist’, titled “Train”:

I don’t think that is actually a real train.

(Note:  Back in days more innocent than our own, when it still was licit  to speak aloud, a very few  warned that celebrating pedicatio might lead, in time,  to countenancing theriophilia.   For that, they were roundly denounced.  But the monstrosity above is Exhibit A.)

Fortunately, a French citizen with some gumption did not take all this lying down, and (literally) pulled the plug on the giant inflatable affront to the republic:

The Plug, in a state of detumescence

 

This invert truly has a fecal obsession;  and a spineless public, cowed into submission in the face of repeated paraphiliac assaults, allows itself to be almost literally shat upon.  Here is another of the perpetrator’s public installations, tolerated by the taxpayers:

(2)  The second mistress of the abject Hollande (de son vrai titre, “Madame le Président”), having pushed out the first mistress, was later herself dumped for yet another presidential plaything;  out of spite, she published a sordid tell-all (or invent-all) potboiler.   The bienpensant press gallantly refers to her as the “former first lady”;  that she is not, nor really even an ‘lady’ tout court.  Here is one of her latest antics:

Valerie Trierweiler

at Jean-Luc and Christophe's wedding anniversary party

at the Banana Cafe in Paris

The ‘newlyweds’, as you might guess, are ipsigeneric.

More here, including an account of her latest physical assault against yet another female rival:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/francois-hollande/11170894/Valerie-Trierweiler-a-grenade-with-the-pin-pulled-out.html

(3)  The attack on the family  proceeds apace:

Pour garder vos allocations familiales, un conseil : divorcez !

Pour l'historien Benoît Pellistrandi, la gauche abuse de l'argument de l'autorité pour justifier l'écrasement fiscal des familles.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/economie/2014/10/17/31007-20141017ARTFIG00397-pour-garder-vos-allocations-familiales-un-conseil-divorcez.php

Some reader comments:

les féministes de la gauche caviar et laïcarde continuent de dézinguer la famille !!

-----------

Touraine détruit les couples, Hollande n'est pas marié donc il s'en fout.

More on Le suicide français:

http://blog.lefigaro.fr/rioufol/2014/10/bloc-notes-ltat-pyromane-avive.html

For further glimpses of the truly desperate state of morality in France:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/an-image-from-paris-uncensored.html

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/france-finally-honors-world-historical.html

Aux armes, chrétiens!

[Update 19 October 2014]  Plans to transfer the butt-plug to the Vatican  and to reinflate it in St Peter’s Square, as a sign of pastoral welcoming to the vibrant diversity of Christendom, have been canceled at the objections of those bishops who have not yet taken leave of their senses.

[Update 6 Sept 2015]  First, a giant, publically subsidized butt-plug; and now, a dehiscent machin named “Dirty Corner”;  in the article below it is referred to as “le Vagin de la Reine” : which we might translate, having recourse to an earlier English, as “the Queen’s Quim” (or perhaps the quean’s, given the context.)   And some socialo invert thought it cute to plop it down  smack in the middle of the gardens of Versailles:

The drain down to hell (paid for by your tax francs)

http://www.lefigaro.fr/arts-expositions/2015/09/06/03015-20150906ARTFIG00088-le-vagin-de-la-reine-une-nouvelle-fois-vandalise-a-versailles.php

The Hellmouth of Hollande

The strategy of these publically-funded paraphiliacs, is to keep pushing the envelope (by now already well-bent), to see how much the public will stand for;   this is the technique of the ‘Frog in the Crock-Pot’.   And once again, some hardy soul among the citizenry has meet that egregious defacement of the public square, with a defacement of the defilement itself.

[Nebenbei]  The multikulti Kurturministerin (like Taubira  a twofer, and by her heritage foreign to the grand siècle whose monuments she defiles) indignently defended the Muschi-Machwerk (dass ich es so nenne).   As a PS-approved PC person, is she happy with its title, “Dirty Corner” (deutsch:  "dreckige Ecke") or that rust-riven depiction, of the late queen's  ce-que-je pense  (in Gigi's schoolgirl phrase) ?  Trump's "her wherever" was gallant by comparison!

Limbo Stick

The year was 1962;  America still had a year or so to go, in friendly frivolous teen and pre-teen revels, before the disaster at Dealey Plaza  drew the curtain across such carefree ways  for aye.    All the teenies and tweenies were wriggling and writhing to the beat:

Jack be limbo, Jack be quick

Jack go unda limbo stick

All around the limbo clock

Hey, let's do the limbo rock

Limbo lower now

Limbo lower now

How low can you go?

-- Chubby Checker, “Limbo Rock”

~

And now, in our own times (the moon, a ghastly leprous white, intermittently visible through slashes in the thunderclouds), we again are confronted with that question, though now in a different key.

How low can you go?

How low can you go??

How low can you go???

Answer:  Very low indeed; facilis descensus Averno.

Prominently featured in this morning’s French press:

Éloïse Bouton comparaît mercredi devant la justice pour «exhibition sexuelle». En décembre 2013, elle avait fait intrusion seins nus dans l'église de la Madeleine et simulé un avortement avant de souiller les lieux d'urine.

Elle termine son «happening» à la sauce Femen en urinant devant une assemblée interdite. Sur sa poitrine est inscrit un message en référence au «manifeste des 343 salopes», en faveur de l'avortement. «Noël est annulé! Du Vatican à Paris. Le relais international de Femen contre les campagnes anti-avortement menées par le lobby catholique continue, la sainte mère Éloïse vient d'avorter de l'embryon de Jésus sur l'autel de la Madeleine», communique alors le mouvement Femen sur les réseaux sociaux.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2014/10/15/01016-20141015ARTFIG00015-une-ex-femen-devant-la-justice-apres-un-faux-avortement-dans-l-eglise-de-la-madeleine.php

The mealy-mouthed charges here are merely for “exhibitionism”;  but you can be certain that, had the perpetrators been from the milieu of the Manif pour tous, and the target of this vicious display been Judaism or Islam, they would already be in prison, denounced from all sides.

I tried looking up this story in Google News, but all it returned were French accounts:  the anglophone media are so far apparently mum (or else  for some reason  Google refuses to index the English media that do reference the story, content to return zero  rather than let them have their say.)

The group had earlier perpetrated an outrage against Notre-Dame de Paris.  In that case, the French legal system let them go scot-free.   Not that the courts can’t be tough when it suits their politics:

Le tribunal, dans une insulte au bon sens, a condamné à une amende les gardiens de la cathédrale jugés coupables d'un comportement trop brutal envers les activistes du groupe Femen.

(Weiteres zum Thema hier.)

An Image from Paris Uncensored

The following image appeared in my inbox this morning, as part of the daily news feed from Le Figaro:

Couché, chiot !

[Couché, chiot ! :  French for,  Assume the position ...]

It is the latest semi-official Xantippean provocation, from the land of les Femen.   To promote what is supposedly a kumbaya-feelgood-bisounours celebration, she thrusts forward an image of algolagnic paraphilia.

But what is really interesting is that the Figaro article itself, self-censors, cropping the image to obscure the riding-crop, and losing the "assume-[the-position]" bit:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2014/09/20/20005-20140920ARTFIG00023-l-affiche-trash-de-j-aime-ma-boite-fait-fuir-ses-sponsors.php

Indeed, I tried searching the Net for the full image, in Google Image, and could not find it.  I found the censored image;  if you click on it, among the ‘Related Images’ are a number of items that include the uncensored one;  but if you click on that, it doesn’t work, although all the others in the group click through okay.

The fact of the matter is, the paraphiliac/diabolist lobby in France, has been relentlessly degrading what is publically permissible;  ample documentation here:

  http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/france-finally-honors-world-historical.html

So they figured, hey, a headless dominatrix, clad all in rubber-fetish Satanic scarlet, cravache à la main, put forward as the official symbol of a national festival of social reconciliation -- sure, these Gallic lapdogs will lap it up.  

Only -- this time, the provocation earned a rasperry;  les bonzes la boudent.  And so the image was withdrawn -- yet more, was censored in the press, and somehow actually wiped from the Internet.

For more on decapitation-porn,  cliquez ici:

    Le théâtre de la cruauté

*

Pour contrecarrer ces immondices,

il nous faut  la Sainte Eglise

Murphy Calls In a Specialist

 [Kindle] [Nook]

*

Note for anglophones:

Boîte literally means ‘box’;  improbably enough, the words are actually cognate, both going back to Latin buxus (the wood of a certain evergreen).  A yet loftier cognate is the Greek word that gave us pyx -- an holy object of hatred to the satanists.  Its use in the slogan «J'aime ma boîte» puzzled me, since it is many years since I have lived in France, and I have not kept up with popular culture.   It surely is making no allusion to the pyx (which in any case is in French ciboire).   But in English, there is a slang meaning to the word box, one quite common in my youth, though of late  neglected.  (One of the very first jokes I heard, as a young child -- ca. 1956 -- was:  “What’s black, one-eyed, wears a mezuzah, and comes in a white box?”  I dutifully memorized the joke -- children treat them very solemnly, you know, while learning the ropes -- while understanding it not at all.   By the time I did understand it, it was no longer remotely salonfähig.   The answer I dare not supply here  other than by initials:  S…. D… J…. .)  And this alternate, louche sense, being purely geometrico-anatomical, translates into any language.  One really wonders whether there might not be some sous-entendu allusion to the autogynophillic fétiche of that celebrated artiste nipponne who … well, read about it yourself.

*

Travaillant au noir,

le détective  se trouve aux prises

avec le Saint-Esprit

C’est quoi, le péché irrémissible???

*

[Update]  Just found a different image, from an earlier article in the same newspaper:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2014/09/13/20005-20140913ARTFIG00027-les-femmes-patrons-sont-elles-toutes-sadomaso.php

This one is uncropped, yet curiously distorted, bloated and somehow even sicker:

What is going on in that country?

(Hand it to Le Figaro, though:  no other media outlet has dared touch this story, so far as I can tell.)

Aux armes, chrétiens! 

Une politique travestie

~

Pour le palmarès complet  de nos causeries hexagonales, ceci:

   http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/France

[Mise à jour, 21 sept 2014] Mais --

trêve de grogneries  genre  Caton l'Ancien,

et saluons l’arrivée de l’équinoxe

sur des ailes dorées !

~

[ Mise à  jour  23 sept 14]   Emplois disponibles !

Pour celles qui aimeraient bien brandir la cravache, et l’appliquer avec rigueur et justesse  à la chair  coupable et fondante,

il y a maintenant, chez Daech, des boulots-rêve pour vous!

Even before the emergence of Islamic State, small numbers of women — mostly Europeans — began arriving in parts of Syria as wives of foreign fighters, which "encouraged the original image of Syria being a five-star jihad".

One online poster, Umm Ubaydah, claims to have traveled alone to Syria to take care of her husband and fellow Islamic State fighters. Three days after American reporter Steven Sotloff was executed, one person asked on her Tumblr page, where she occasionally writes in Swedish, what she thought of his execution. "I wish I did it," she answered simply.

The recruitment of women defies the conservative Muslim belief that a woman needs permission from her male guardian to travel or marry. Recruiters insist that the obligation to live in the caliphate trumps the requirement for permission.

Women formed the Khansa Militia, an armed morality squad whose job one anti-Islamic State activist summed up as "detaining and whipping."

During one raid, the militia detained several high school students and teachers for such transgressions as wearing niqabs that were too transparent, having visible eyebrows or wearing a hair clip under the hijab. Each one was whipped 30 times.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-isis-female-recruits-20140920-story.html#navtype=outfit

O, mais c’est à en devenir m-m-m-m-mmmmmoite …..

Parallel Lives (protracted)

What was originally merely an occasion-note, has ballooned to Plutarchean proportions, and is accordingly reposted under a different name.

We begin with the relevant portions of our original post from June the sixth.

~   ~   ~

A factoid for D-Day

I’m currently reading William Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic (published in 1969).  The title might be confusing;  unlike for his better-known book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer did not retain the political term in the original language;  he means La Troisième République.  Anyhow, regarding the aftermath of the first World War (whose groaning later echo  we commemorate today), he writes as follows  about the much-derided reparations, often pointed to as a burden on Germany that fueled the resentments that eventually led to WWII (p. 150):

Actually, Germany never had to pay a single mark out of her own resources.  Her borrowings from America bankers, which were never repaid, amounted to more than her total reparation payments.  Naïve American investors footed the German reparations bill.

The matter is even more curious in light of a companion fact mentioned on the next page:

Though the United States refused to take a cent of reparations from Germany, its government and Congress insisted that its Allies, especially Britain and France, pay their war debts in full and with interest.

Meanwhile, we are once again not being very gentle with our former French ally:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/05/bank-robbery.html

[Update, 7 juin, D-Day’s “Boxing Day”, or “D+1-Day”.  AKA le lendemain du Débarquement.] 

During that post-War period of wrangling over debts and reparations, France and Germany each repeatedly stomped, stabbed, and shot themselves in the foot:  bitterly remarking, “Take that!”

Intent on not letting a cent of reparations to go to France, after the Ruhr occupation the German “government deliberately organized the destruction of the currency, the mark falling to … 25 billions [to the dollar], becoming worthless” (id, p. 148).  (The folk term for this is:  Cutting off your nose to spite your face. )  France, facing much larger infrastructure reconstruction costs than did Germany (a point often forgotten, since France was ultimately the nominal victor:   but the war had been fought largely on its own soil), was left in the lurch by the French rich, who vigorously evaded such direct taxes as there were, and squirreled their capital abroad (p. 154).   The State was allowed to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy for years.  The tacit strategy of the wealthy was:  fiat opulentia, et ruat respublica :  for if the Republic did fall (as, in 1940, it did) “were there not other forms of government possible which promised more security for entrenched wealth?  The thoghts of some of the biggest entrepreneurs began to turn to the Fascist ‘experiment’ in Italy, and to the growing success of the Nazi Party in Germany” (p. 157).  Meanwhile, “instead of raising taxes, the government raised loans, a habit it had acquired during the war.”   As for those (mostly the thrifty French petite bourgeoisie) who were foolish enough to buy those government guarantees, “In the end, the state, in effect, repudiated most of it  by allowed the franc to fall to] one-fifth of its prewar value” -- an 80% haircut for those who had retrieved their savings from beneath the mattress, and entrusted them to the stabilization of the State.

~

At this point, a light-bulb begins dimly to flicker, in the mind of the suspicious reader.  “Wai-ait a minute!  Is this whole thing intended as some kind of allegory of the Bush Administration, and subsequent obstruction/destructivism of the Tea-Party types?”  Well, it didn’t start out that way;  but as you read along, the parallels become stark.

And the point here, indeed, is not to rake over the chronicles of another place, another time, but to remind ourselves that “He who forgets History is condemned to …” …. to … darn it  it was on the tip of my tongue … something-something …  Forgotten.  Anyhow (to quote our gnomic ancestors again), “If the shoe fits, wear it.”  

(Note, and not:  “If the shoe fits, buy it on credit and stash it in your fashion-closet and then go out and buy a dozen more pairs.”

-- Though actually, that was exactly the scene in Paris, in July of 1926:
“Along the boulevards, large crowds of women were storming the department stores  and the smart shops  in a frenzy to convert their falling francs into something more durable” [p. 162].)

[For our essays touching on this Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose aspect of things, click here.]

~

And so to the parallels:

The bankers and businessmen, and even the more thriving peasants and shopkeepers, came to believe, with a certainty that brooked no compromise, that the political “Left” -- which, aside from the small Communist Party, was in reality little more than reformist and middle-of-the-way, -- was incapable of governing the country.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 166

(Cf. the meme of the centrist Obama as “socialist”.)

The employers’ associations, having lost their fight to prevent Parliament from enacting the modest social-security legislation, continued their well-financed campaign  in rthe press and on billboards  to render it ineffective  and to get it repealed.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 167

(Compare the continued assaults on “Obamacare” -- a program that Congress itself passed not long ago.)

There are even parallels in the sideshow characters.   On the magnate François Coty:

Flattered by the politically discontented,  who used his money to assault the Republic, Coty began to conceive himself as a savior of the nation who one day  not too far off  might be called upon to take over the helm of state and save it from democracy.  Ridiculous as the thought was, for Coty was a political nincompoop, he seems to have taken it with growing seriousness.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 158

Remind you of someone whose name rhymes with “rump”?   (A further parallel:  Both Coty and Trump made their fortunes in the degraded armpits of the Lucullan-Bacchanalian economy, the former in fancy perfumes, the latter in casino gambling.)

~

So, then as now, the picture isn’t pretty.   But the wan hope is, that if the Plutocratic Party ever manages to get rid of that Nigerian-born socialist and control both houses of Congress,  they will immediately cease their antics and their Wrecker strategy, and begin to govern responsibly.  Something like that did happen in France in 1926, with the election of the sensible conservative Raymond Poincaré.

[Note:  Readers of this blog will feel their ears prick up at the surname.  Any relation to Henri, eponym of the Poincaré Conjecture, and one of the immortal heroes of both physics and mathematics?  Indeed;  they were cousins.  And since I’m not especially fond of Cousin Raymond, I’ll post a photo of Cousin Henri instead.]

To restore national solvency, the new French President  “rushed through Pariliament, practically without debate, a number of laws calling for new taxes, and increase of old ones, which the bankers and businessmen and the political Right  would never have accepted from a less ‘conservative’ government.” (p. 164)

Such is the fond faint hope of the Left and Center, that by knuckling under and electing a ‘conservative’, some necessary reforms might be enacted (as happened under Nixon and under Reagan) which the same party would oppose hysterically they came from the Democrats (compare the very different treatment of those twins, Romneycare and Obamacare).

The whole financial crisis had been a charade (again, compare the Republican push to go over the “fiscal cliff”):

In six months, Poincaré had stabilized the franc. … There was -- there had been all along -- plenty of French money to restore the finances of the state.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 165

~

Back when I was a grad student at Berkeley, the fashion in the Generative Semantics circle  was to construct politically-slanted example-sentences to illustrate some basic semantic/pragmatic point.  Perhaps the best-known was:

John called Mary a Republican, and then she insulted him

(with contrastive accent  indicated by italics).   Here the sentence as stressed and worded  necessarily implies a presupposition that (for John, for Mary, and probably for the speaker of the sentence as well), for John to call Mary “a Republican” constituted an insult (to which she replied in kind).   Contrast

John called Mary a Republican, and then she [went and] insulted him

where the presupposition is reversed.  (This sort of thing was considered quite amusing in the student lounges of the time.)

Anyhow, what dredged from memory that moss-worn anecdote, was seeing Shirer write of President Poincaré,

Though conservative, he was a man of utter integrity.

The expression sounds quaintly prejudiced, coming from the pen of a historian.  But Shirer knows his materials;  and perhaps things stood then as now, on the Right.  For the likes of Boehner, Trump, Perry, Rove, Delay, et alia, are not “men of utter integrity”.    The hope of the Center, that the next Republican President might be a Poincaré -- or a Nixon, with all his faults -- may be a pipe-dream.  Instead of a Nixon, we might get an Agnew;  instead of a McCain, a Palin.

And not only have the ranks of potential Republican leaders  degenerated after years of stewing in the vile juices of ressentiment,  so too the electorate has taken an ugly turn.  Again, a parallel from late-1920s France:

A certain proletarianization of a good many solid citizens of the middle class took place at this time.  Like the workers, they found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, but  contrary to the workers  they turned politically  not to the Left  but to the extreme Right  in hopes of salvation.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 165

This is the old problem of “false consciousness”, which in America (both in this century and the last) has gone under the catch-phrase of “What’s the matter with Kansas?”

~

Yet another parallel, between something in France of the 1920s, that makes no sense, and something that makes no sense in our own day:  yet together, they may illuminate each other, with their spectral swamp-spawned light.

The weakness of the presidency,  and the mediocrity of the politicians who held it  in the last years of the Third Republic,  contributed to the instability of French governments.  We have seen Clemenceau confessing that, in the elections of the National Assembly  for President of the Republic, he always voted for the most stupid candidate.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 170

But -- Why would anyone do that?  Because “The members of Parliament preferred  … weak and mediocre men for President” -- men they could control.  (George Dubya, without an idea in his head, was a reliable mannequin for Cheney and Rumsfeld -- and whoever-all lay behind those. -- Hugenburg had thought that the comic-opera Hitler would fill that bill;  but Hitler got out of hand.)

So, seriously, ideology aside -- Let us all agree for the sake of argument, that we all subscribe to the doctrines of Calvin Coolidge, Alexander Hamilton, Kaiser Wilhelm, Attila the Hun -- whoever you please.   Why should the party carrying on that illustrious tradition, be reduced to the present pack of morons?  

It’s effing embarrassing, for one thing.  And though I have satirized it, I don’t really understand it.  How did the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Luger, manage to drive out all men of substance from its ranks?

~

The scene in 1937, in the waning days of the premiership of Léon Blum:

As the first Socialist -- and Jewish-- Prime Minister in the history of France, he was determined to keep his word, as he said, “to exercise power only within the framework of capitalism.”  His scruples do him credit.  But in a harsh world of conflict, in which it was evident that the economic and financial elite were out to destroy his government --at whatever cost to the country -- his lack of boldness, of toughness, proved his undoing.

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 323

Remind you of anyone we know?

Note:  It is no part of the purpose of this post, to criticise or second guess, from the plush comfort of hindsight or the sidelines, either Barack Obama  or Léon Blum.  Both are admirable statesmen.   Merely, their predicaments are similar.

Further:   For anyone who imagines that the perverse obstructionism which our President has been dealing with, is anomalous,  check out Shirer’s account of the premiership of Blum.

Foot-Note:  Well aware (alas) of our shallowness and deficiencies  in matters of historical commentary, we can at least play to our long suit -- linguistics -- in offering this:  The surname Blum  is pronounced “Bloom” in French.

Headline Writer Strikes Again

We have more than once had occasion to notice the tawdry packaging of perfectly respectable essays and news articles, perpetrated by headline-writers, caption-writers, and illustrators:  an egregious example from the New York Times  is discussed in detail here:

La Nostalgie de la boue

This morning’s New York Times Magazine has an engrossing, informative, well-written, entirely unobjectionable article about evolving zoology and climate change, by Moises Velasquez-Manoff.  It was given a silly title, which I won’t quote (the Website gives it a completely different silly title, which I likewise won’t quote);  but of more interest is the headline that announces it on the cover of the (print) magazine.   The cover headline gives no clue that the real subject is scientific, the treatment dispassionate and at a professional level;  it reads, in its entirety,

Is Interspecies Mating O.K.?

as though this were a matter of current debate among ethicists.

Now, if that had been the title of a term-paper by a high-school biology student writing twenty or thirty years ago, there would have been no agenda behind it, for none, at that time, was imaginable outside of the locked wards of sanatoria -- it would simply have been a matter of sloppy style.   But the ‘off-news’ sections of the Sunday NYTimes (the magazine, the weekly review, and the Style section above all) make something of a specialty of peddling paraphilia.  And that seemingly innocent question, proposed in what then purports to be a scientific context, does reflect this agenda. 

Note:  Dr. Velasquez-Manoff  (not sure he actually has a doctorate;  but anyhow, honoris causâ)  almost certainly had nothing to do with any of the lamentable headlines;  nor with the illustrations, which are completely uninformative, gratuitous, and creepy -- much in the spirit of the transgeneric face-melding that defaced that earlier Times Magazine article alluded to above, and likewise with garishly discordant colors. 

For a more tasteful depiction of a chimaera, we offer this:

And now, Boeôtos timens, we must lapse into the Delphic ductus.

Time was, before our collective descensus Averno began in earnest, le premier pas (le seule qui coûte) was chid as conducive to subsequent steps on a slippery declivity; that caveat was dismissed as alarmist.  Since then, all that was predicted  has indeed come to pass.  At this point, there is not much left out-of-bounds, but microendogamy and zoölagnia (as it were, hyperexogamy).   Progress has been made in licensing the former , in the name of certain folkways indigenous elsewhere;  the Times cabal  is now testing the edges of the latter.   In blithely blurring interspecific demarcation, they are treading upon the Island of Dr Moreau territory, currently being populated manu chîrurgi, to great public acclaim.

[Update, alas, 22 August 2014]  Ah, turns there is one more taboo, that did not even occur to my sheltered imagination;  but of which we are reminded again today:  libidinous anthropophagy.  It happened recently in Germany, and you can read about it here:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2014/08/22/01003-20140822ARTFIG00278-un-policier-juge-pour-cannibalisme-en-allemagne.php

Once again, an ipsigeneric amorous encounter between consenting adults, so we presumably are not allowed to criticize;  and in time, a “…C” will be duly added to the alphabetical palmarès des paraphilies.

-- But why (you rightly ask) do I link to a French account of something that happened in Germany?  -- Well, I did try to find one (being curious as to the German original of «la viande exotique»), but found none:  turns out they are (as of press time) self-censoring over there.   Search “Detlev Günzel” in Google News, and see the returns you get:  None from Germany (as yet).   No doubt the perp’s identity is being protected out of some tender concern for paraphiliacs.  

 

~

For readers interesting in exploring the biology of evolving species in (much) greater depth, a fine guide is  Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr, Speciation  (2004).  You can sample their insights here:

The Ontology of Biology

For readers who, having been suitably sained, dare venture there, where a cautious man would not:

http://www.theonion.com/video/onion-talks-hypothetically-it-would-be-okay-to-hav,36687/

As of press date, that one’s satire.  Perhaps not so, this time next year.

Christians should not be neutral in such cases;  crusades have been launched for less.

~

For a celebrated instance, from Classical Antiquity, of interspecific conjunction (and which did bring forth issue),

lavishly illustrated for the connoisseur,

try this:

Leda and the Swan

Trigger Warning:

Contains images of cygnic significance --

Must be 18 or older to view