Quotulatiousness

February 28, 2021

Japan Destroys Allied Armada in Biggest Naval Battle in Decades – WW2 – 131 – February 27, 1942

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Pacific, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 27 Feb 2021

The Japanese are advancing in the Dutch East Indies and Burma, brushing aside defenders, but their biggest victory this week is at sea, when they not only brush aside the ABDA Fleet, but literally wipe it out of existence. Meanwhile Italian and German submarines are patrolling the Caribbean, sinking any Allied merchant shipping they find. It is yet another week of Axis successes.

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Should the Republicans embrace “class warfare”?

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Scott Alexander proffers some advice to the US Republican Party in its post-Trump doldrums, even though he admits that “I hate you and you hate me. But maybe I would hate you less if you didn’t suck. Also, the more confused you are, the more you flail around sabotaging everything.”

So here’s my recommendation: use the word “class”. Pivot from mindless populist rage to a thoughtful campaign to fight classism.

Yeah, yeah, “class” sounds Marxist, class warfare and all that, you’re supposed to be against that kind of thing, right? Wrong. Economic class warfare is Marxist, but here in the US class isn’t a purely economic concept. Class is also about culture. You’re already doing class warfare, you’re just doing it blindly and confusedly. Instead, do it openly, while using the words “class” and “classism”.

Trump didn’t win on a platform of capitalism and liberty and whatever. He won on a platform of being anti-establishment. But which establishment? Not rich people. Trump is rich, lots of his Cabinet picks were rich, practically the first thing he did was cut taxes on the rich. Some people thought that contradicted his anti-establishment message, but those people were wrong. Powerful people? Getting warmer, but Mike Pence is a powerful person and Trump wasn’t against Mike Pence. Smart people? Now you’re burning hot.

Trump stood against the upper class. He might define them as: people who live in nice apartments in Manhattan or SF or DC and laugh under their breath if anybody comes from Akron or Tampa. Who eat Thai food and Ethiopian food and anything fusion, think they would gain 200 lbs if they ever stepped in a McDonalds, and won’t even speak the name Chick-Fil-A. Who usually go to Ivy League colleges, though Amherst or Berkeley is acceptable if absolutely necessary. Who conspicuously love Broadway (especially Hamilton), LGBT, education, “expertise”, mass transit, and foreign anything. They conspicuously hate NASCAR, wrestling, football, “fast food”, SUVs, FOX, guns, the South, evangelicals, and reality TV. Who would never get married before age 25 and have cutesy pins about how cats are better than children. Who get jobs in journalism, academia, government, consulting, or anything else with no time-card where you never have to use your hands. Who all have exactly the same political and aesthetic opinions on everything, and think the noblest and most important task imaginable is to gatekeep information in ways that force everyone else to share those opinions too.

(full disclosure: I fit like 2/3 of these descriptors)

Aren’t I just describing well-off people? No. Teachers, social workers, grad students, and starving artists may be poor, but can still be upper-class. Pilots, plumbers, and lumber barons are well-off, but not upper-class. Donald Trump is a billionaire, but still recognizably not upper class. The upper class is a cultural phenomenon.

Aren’t I just describing Democrats? No. The Democrats are a coalition of the upper class, various poor minorities, union labor, and lots of other groups. It’s an easy mistake to make, because you Republicans absolutely loathe the upper class, and whenever you’re talking about Democrats you focus on this group and how much you hate them. But you make the mistake of saying you hate Democrats, and then it looks like boring old partisanship. Or saying you hate the elites, and then it looks like boring old populism. Or saying you hate rootless cosmopolitans, and then it looks like boring old anti-Semitism. Or saying you hate the government, and then it looks like boring old libertarianism.

Instead, just use the words “class” and “classism”. Say “Hey, we Republicans want to be the party of the working class. We are concerned about the rising power of the upper class, and we are dedicated to stamping out classism.”

This is what happens when nobody uses the word “class”!

Cultural appropriation foods around the world

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Food, France, History, India, Italy, Japan, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

J.J. McCullough
Published 14 Dec 2019

Baguettes in Vietnam! Curry in Japan! Tea in India! Let’s look at the practice of eating food from other countries, which is more widespread than you might think, thanks to imperialism and immigration.

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QotD: The essential role of writers like Twain and Mencken

Filed under: Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Mencken lived in horror of the American people, “who put the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding beside Friedrich Barbarossa and Charlemagne, and hold the Supreme Court to be directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, and belong ardently to every Rotary Club, Ku Klux Klan, and anti-Saloon League, and choke with emotion when the band plays ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.'” Much of that horror was imaginary, and still is. But we must have horror, especially in politics. How else to justify present and familiar horror except but by reference to a greater horror? In this year’s election, each candidate’s partisans already have been reduced to making the argument that while their own candidate might be awful, the other candidate is literally akin to Adolf Hitler. Yesterday, I heard both from Clinton supporters and Trump supporters that the other one would usher in Third Reich U.S.A. “Don’t tell yourself that it can’t happen here,” one wrote.

A nation needs its Twains and Menckens. (We could have got by without Molly Ivins.) The excrement and sentimentality piles up high and thick in a democratic society, and it’s sometimes easier to burn it away rather than try to shovel it. But they are only counterpoints: They cannot be the leading voice, or the dominant spirit of the age. That is because this is a republic, and in a republic, a politics based on one half of the population hating the other half is a politics that loses even if it wins. The same holds true for one that relies on half of us seeing the other half as useless, wicked, moronic, deluded, or “prehensile morons.” (I know, I know, and you can save your keystrokes: I myself am not running for office.) If you happen to be Mark Twain, that sort of thing is good for a laugh, and maybe for more than a laugh. But it isn’t enough. “We must not be enemies,” President Lincoln declared, and he saw the republic through a good deal worse than weak GDP growth and the sack of a Libyan consulate.

Kevin D. Williamson, “Bitter Laughter: Humor and the politics of hate”, National Review, 2016-08-11.

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