Published on 21 Mar 2016
Propaganda was nothing new at the beginning of World War 1. But the rapid development in mass media and the total war effort by the nations led the way to our modern understanding of mass propaganda, especially in Germany and Britain. Iconic images like that of Uncle Sam or Lord Kitchener are still known today and are part of the collective memory.
March 22, 2016
Propaganda During World War 1 – Opening Pandora’s Box I THE GREAT WAR Special
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Il Donalduce and the empty Republican suits
L. Neil Smith on the Republican race:
Consider the Republicans whom we’ve watched and listened to over the past six months (it hasn’t seemed like a moment less than six years). They are, as demagogues of various stripes and flavors loudly declaim, almost uniformly White and male, reflecting nothing more than the politics associated with the demographics in America at the moment. (There aren’t very many black libertarians, either, nor black members of the John Birch Society or the Foundation for Economic Education.) That’s certainly not the fault of anyone at all except the missing candidates, with perhaps an assist from the public education system that teaches neither rational economics nor ideologically untainted history.
That being the case, all the Republicans seem to have rented the same crappy blue suit and boring tie. They are a tone-deaf, faceless gaggle without a shred of personality among them. I probably couldn’t pick Mitt Romney or John Kasich out of a Vice-Squad lineup. The only recognizable quality Marco Rubio possesses is that he’s short. Ted Cruz looks like Dorothy’s Scarecrow pal, impaled above the cornfield on his stick. I’m a political junkie, but policywise, I can’t tell these stiffs apart. It’s difficult to express how disappointed I was with Rand Paul’s campaign. I kind of liked Ben Carson, but he turned out to be an idiot. I liked Carly Fiorina, and I’m sorry she dropped out.
All in all, Republicans are a posse of indistinguishable store dummies, soldier-clones shoulder to shoulder for the collectivist state.
[…]
Donald Trump stands as the exception to all of this. Neither a libertarian nor a conservative, I don’t think ideas mean very much to the Donald. He is, first-and-foremost, a salesman, a wheeler-dealer, a mercantilist who makes the vile Romneys and the evil Bushes (I wonder what ever happened to the Cabots and Lodges) look like amateurish pikers. There is nothing he wouldn’t build — a giant red brick Statue of Liberty with tassles on her golden pasties — if somebody gave him enough money. I do believe he’d dress up in a Bozo the Clown suit and walk a slack wire to get whatever he wants. Make of that whatever you will; it’s certainly no worse than those running against him for President.
Whatever happens next, America is in for another wild and woolly roller-coaster ride. It’s hardly for the first time. For those with long enough memories, it has survived vastly worse. Remember that the first President known to use the IRS as a political weapon wasn’t Barack Hussein Obama, but Lyndon Baines Johnson. In any given election year, none of us ever gets what we really want. That’s in the basic nature of democracy; we all get what the worst of those among us deserves.
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QotD: Barbecue, properly considered
I was on the road in Texas last week, addressing Linux user groups in Dallas and Austin. I always enjoy visiting Texas. It’s a big, wide-open place full of generous people who cultivate a proper appreciation of some of my favorite things in life — firearms, blues guitar, and pepper sauces.
And, of course, one of the biggest things Texas has going for it is barbecue. And not the pallid imitation served up by us pasty-faced Yankees here where I live (near Philadelphia, PA) but the real thing. Barbecue, dammit. Red meat with enough fat on it to panic a health-foodist right out of his pantywaist, slow-cooked in a marinade sweeter than a mother’s kiss and eaten with sauces hot enough to peel paint. Garnish with a few extra jalapenos and coleslaw and wash it down with cheap soda, lemonade, or beer. Food of the gods.
I swear your testosterone level goes up just smelling this stuff. After a few mouthfuls of Rudy’s carnivoral bliss you’ll be hankerin’ to cultivate a drawl, wear a Stetson and drive a pickup truck with a gun rack. (I draw the line at country music, though. A man’s got to have some standards.)
Eric S. Raymond, “The Non-Portability of Barbecue”, Armed and Dangerous, 2002-07-18.
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