The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats, 1919Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
October 8, 2020
QotD: Yeats really captured the spirit of 2020 a hundred years ago
October 7, 2020
QotD: The gullible generation
For Americans, it meant looking for protection by a political regime so grossly and criminally corrupt that future historians will shake their heads, wondering how an entire people could be such suckers. “The Greatest Generation”, that miserable collectivist mouthpiece Tom Brokaw has called them. Looking back over what my father told me of his life, how his family suffered in the government-caused Great Depression, how he and his comrades risked unspeakable danger in the war, and how he became a prisoner in Germany — all to aggrandize the virtual godhood of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — I call them “The Gullible Generation”.
On the other hand, people loved the Roosevelt Administration so much that they passed a Constitutional amendment to make sure that no sonofabitch could ever be elected to more than two Presidential terms again.
World War II gave government complete, dictatorial control of American society, control of industry, control of communications, control of the economy, control that Roosevelt had desperately lusted after before the war, but failed to achieve. If anyone objected, or insisted on his rights under the Constitution, all the other side had to say was, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
The government enjoyed that level of control. Once the war was won, and people looked forward to a period of peace, the government plunged us into the Korean War, Vietnam, and an increasing number of undeclared and stupid conflicts in order to retain its power. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” never worked quite as well as it had to shut dissenters up, but it’s clear that this scam will go on and on and on until something drastic is done to stop it.
L. Neil Smith, “The Deep State”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2019-04-14.
October 6, 2020
QotD: Herbert Hoover and the Belgian relief program
Hoover invites Emile Francqui, a Belgian mining engineer he knows, to Britain. Together, they plan a Committee For The Relief of Belgium, intended not just to help transport the thousand tons of grain at issue, but to develop a long-term solution to the impending Belgian famine. Nothing like this has ever been tried before. Belgium has seven million people and almost no food. No government is offering to help, and they don’t have enough money to feed seven million people even for one day, let alone indefinitely. Hoover springs into action …
… by crushing all competing attempts to provide food for Belgium. He attacks the Rockefeller Foundation, which is trying to help, with a blitz of press coverage accusing it of various forms of insensitivity and interference, until it finally backs off. Then he gets to work on the government:
The letter bore several Hoover watermarks, beginning with its heavy load of facts and figures organized in point form. It noted that myriad relief committees were springing up both inside and outside of Belgium, and urged consolidation. “It is impossible to handle the situation except with the strongest centralization and effective monopoly, and therefore the two organizations [Hoover outside Belgium and Francqui inside it] will refuse to recognize any element except themselves alone.” The letter also contained Hoover’s usual autocratic and slightly paranoid demands for “absolute command” of his part of the enterprise.
Control attained, Hoover springs into action actually feeding Belgium. He launches one of the largest public relations campaigns the world has ever seen, sending letters to newspapers around the world asking for donations. He “urged reporters to investigate the famine conditions in Belgium and play up the ‘detailed personal horror stuff’. He personally arranged for a motion picture crew to capture footage of food lines in Brussels, and he hired famous authors, including Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw, to plead for public support of the rescue effort.” He constantly telegrams his exasperated wife and children, now safely back in Palo Alto, demanding they raise more and more money from the West Coast elite.
He browbeats shipping conglomerates until they agree to ship his food for free, then browbeats railroads until they agree to carry it. By telegraph and letter he coordinates banks, railroads, docks, ships, and relief workers on both sides of the Atlantic. But that’s just the prelude. His real problem is the governments. Britain doesn’t want food shipped to Belgium, because right now the starving Belgians are Germany’s problem, and they don’t want to solve an enemy’s problem for them. But Germany also doesn’t want food shipped to Belgium, because the Belgians are resisting the occupation, and they figure starvation will make them more compliant. Shuttling back and forth across the North Sea, Hoover tries to get them to switch theories: Germany needs to think starving Belgians are their problem which it would be helpful to solve, and Britain needs to think starvation would make Belgians more compliant with the German occupation. In the end, both countries allow the shipments.
He goes on a fact-finding mission to Belgium, and managed to somehow offend everyone in the country that he is, at that very moment, saving from mass starvation […] By 1915, Hoover is, indeed, feeding millions of Belgians, indefinitely, using only private funding. He is also almost broke. Millions of Brits and Americans have given him contributions, from tycoons donating fortunes to ordinary people donating their wages, but it’s not enough. His expenses pass $5 million a month, which would be about $100 million today; all these bills are starting to catch up to him. In an act of supreme sacrifice, Hoover pledges his entire personal fortune as collateral for the Committee’s loans, then takes out more money. The grain shipments continue to flow, but his credit is at its end.
He continues beating on the doors of every government official he can find – British, German, American – demanding help. They all say their budgets are already occupied with the war effort. He begs them, lectures them, tells them that millions of people are doing to die. He goes all the way to the top, finagling an opportunity to meet with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Lloyd George later calls Hoover’s presentation “the clearest he had [ever] heard on any subject”, but he can offer only moral support.
What finally works is going to Germany and meeting with their top military brass. The brass are unimpressed; they still think that Belgium starving is as likely to help them as hinder. But the contact spooks top British officials, who agree to meet with Hoover again. Hoover feeds them carefully crafted lies, saying that the German brass have told him that British aid to Belgium would be a disaster to the Central Powers and so they, the Germans, are going to fund everything Hoover wants and more. “Oh no they don’t!” say the British, who promise to give Hoover even more funding than his imaginary German partners. The Committee for the Relief Of Belgium is finally back in the black. And what a black it is:
The scope and powers of the Committee For Relief of Belgium were mindboggling. Its shipping fleet flew its own flag. Its members carried special documents that served as CRB passports. Hoover himself was granted a form of diplomatic immunity by all belligerents, with the British permitting him to cross the Channel at will and the Germans providing him a document saying “this man is not to be stopped anywhere under any circumstances”. Hoover had privileged access to generals, diplomats, and ministers. He enjoyed personal contacts with the heads of warring governments. He negotiated treaties with the belligerents, advised them on policy, and delivered private messages among them. Great Britain, France, and Belgium would soon be turning over to him $150 million a year, enough to run a small country, and taking nothing for it beyond his receipt. As one British official observed, Hoover was running “a piratical state organized for benevolence.”
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.
October 5, 2020
QotD: Language changes to accord with critical studies theory
Leading progressive maternity and doula organizations now deploy and encourage a whole array of “gender-neutral language” with respect to sex, birth, labor, and parenting. And so we now have the terms “chest-feeding,” “persons who menstruate,” “persons who produce sperm,” and “birthing person” for breastfeeding, women, men, and mothers, respectively. And instead of a butthole, we have a “back-hole”; instead of a vagina, we have a “front hole.” “Ovaries” and “uterus” are now rendered as “internal organs,” which may strike you as somewhat vague. These may sound completely absurd now, but given the choke hold critical gender theory has on almost all elite organizations, you can be sure you’ll hear them soon enough. They’ll likely be mandatory if you want to prove you’re not a transphobe. It was an objection to one of these terms — “people who menstruate” — that got J.K. Rowling tarred again as a bigot.
Those of us who oppose this abuse of the English language, who try to abide by Orwell’s dictum to use the simplest, clearest Anglo-Saxon words to describe reality, are now instantly suspect. Given the fear of losing your job for resisting this madness, most people will submit to this linguistic distortion. As you can see everywhere, the stigma of being called a bigot sweeps away all objects before it. But the further this goes — and there is no limiting principle in critical theory at all — the less able we are to describe reality. Which is, of course, the point. Narratives, only narratives, exist. And power, only power, matters.
Andrew Sullivan, “China Is a Genocidal Menace”, New York, 2020-07-03.
October 4, 2020
QotD: What everyone always suspected about Washington, D.C.
Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, “matched up the ‘constellation of disinhibition, boldness and meanness’ that marks psychopathy with a previously existing map of the states’ predominant personality traits, he found that dense, coastal areas scored highest by far – with Washington dominant among them. ‘The District of Columbia is measured to be far more psychopathic than any individual state in the country,’ Murphy writes in the paper.”
That explains an awful lot, now doesn’t it?
Justin Raimondo, “Washington, D.C. – The Epicenter of Crazy”, AntiWar.com, 2018-06-25.
October 3, 2020
QotD: Literal first world problems
Again, I don’t say that these and other modern concerns are invalid. Some are and some aren’t. But it’s good to pause from time to time to be thankful that we’re wealthy enough to have escaped most of the daily, much more horrible concerns that pressed immediately upon our ancestors. It’s appropriate to be grateful that we’re rich enough to worry about, say, what might happen in a few decades to the sea level in a distant country rather than about whether or not our children will die of starvation during the night.
Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2018-05-27.
October 2, 2020
QotD: Price “gouging” in emergencies
In spite of the fact that per capita, there were more emergency responders sent to Puerto Rico and more funds sent to Puerto Rico than Texas, their problem persisted while the Texans very quickly received aid. The answer to the question why is: because of price fixing.
The free market, in seeing the price jump recognized the shortage of supply and responded quickly supplying Texans with an abundance of water cases because of the excessive profit margins – the increased supply eventually caused market competition and the price quickly dwindled to a more reasonable price.
Meanwhile, the market ignored Puerto Rico because the market was asked to ignore them by their own leaders through price fixing. Texans received water, quickly, and at reasonable prices, while Puerto Ricans didn’t.
If water is selling for $99/case, by the end of the day someone will have airlifted water into the region at $50/case, and the next morning water will be selling for $30/case. This will go on for a day or so, and the water crisis is quickly resolved. This was never permitted to happen in Puerto Rico.
Brandon Kirby, “Why Women Generally Aren’t Libertarian”, Being Libertarian, 2018-06-27.
October 1, 2020
QotD: Even so-called “Keynesians” fail to follow Keynes
When wages are flatlining, when the economy needs that bolus of extra demand then, OK, go borrow and spend. Or, in the MMT world, print money and spend. But once you’ve delivered that bolus and the economy has recovered then you must be able to stop that spending – whether delivered by borrowing or printing. That is, a permanent increase in spending is not Keynesian demand management, only a temporary one is.
Tim Worstall, “The Guardian‘s Absurd View Of NHS Funding”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-06-15.
September 30, 2020
QotD: Victimhood culture
Victimhood culture departs from dignity culture in several important ways. Moral worth is in large part defined by the color of one’s skin, or at least one’s membership in a fixed identity group: i.e., women, people of color, LGBTIQ, Muslims, or indigenous peoples. Such groups are sacred, and a lack of deference to them is seen as a sign of deviance. The reverse is true for those who belong to groups that are considered historical oppressors: whites, males, straight people, Zionists. Anyone belonging to an “oppressor” group is stained by their privilege, or “whiteness,” and is cast onto the moral scrapheap.
Claire Lehmann, “The Evils of Cultural Appropriation”, Tablet, 2018-06-11.
September 29, 2020
QotD: Robin DiAngelo’s theory of “White Fragility”
Second, DiAngelo argues that any white person who does not admit to their own racism is blinded by their “white fragility.” In DiAngelo’s words, because white people are, “Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race.” This fragility purportedly explains why, “people who identify as white are so difficult in conversations regarding race.”
It’s not difficult to see why the theory of white fragility might catch on. Race is a sensitive subject that many people of all races are uncomfortable discussing. Furthermore, white people publicly accused of racism risk social ostracization and professional ruin. The idea that some white people may be defensive when accused of racism is not surprising. But though some white people may exhibit a degree of what DiAngelo calls fragility, her grandiose theory as applied to all or even most white people has two fatal flaws.
First, DiAngelo’s theory of white fragility is unfalsifiable. It is impossible for someone to prove that they are not fragile, just as it is impossible for someone to prove they are not possessed by a demon. One could play mad libs with racial groups and nouns — “Asian Insecurity,” “Black Hostility,” etc. — and there would be no way for members of those groups to prove they are not insecure or hostile.
More insidiously, DiAngelo frames her theory of white fragility such that any conceivable reaction a white person has when discussing race is purportedly evidence of fragility, and any denial of her theory is interpreted as proof of its validity. For example, DiAngelo writes that,
The mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses. These include emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as white fragility. Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement.
In other words, if DiAngelo accuses you of racism or fragility and you disagree with her in any way — through argument, silence, or withdrawal — your reaction is considered proof of your fragility. DiAngelo leaves white readers with only two options. Either acknowledge your fragility, which proves DiAngelo’s theory, or deny your fragility, which according to DiAngelo, also proves her theory. This is a logical fallacy known as a Kafkatrap. If our legal system worked this way, no person accused of a crime would ever be acquitted because their denial would prove their guilt.
David Edward Burke, “The Intellectual Fraud of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility“, The Logical Liberal, 2020-06-13.
September 28, 2020
QotD: The proper role of men, according to the SCUM Manifesto
Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto, 1967.
September 27, 2020
QotD: The persuasive power of the newspapers
Or, as we might put it, the reason the left doesn’t sweep the board with the votes of the proletariat is because large numbers of the proletariat think the left either don’t represent them, or are aware that the left are nuts.
Tim Worstall, “This Will Be An Interesting Test – Geordie Greig To Daily Mail Editor”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-06-08.
September 26, 2020
QotD: A visit to Pyongyang Department Store Number 1
What few consumer products he finds are of the very worst quality, with packaging that provides as little information as possible and that destroys all confidence in its contents. Even the material shortage of these products has its uses to the state, however, as they remind the comrade that it is only by the good grace of their leaders that they eat, and when one spends all afternoon queuing for an item that turns out to be unavailable, there is little time or energy left for revolution. Besides, isn’t the desire for consumer goods artificially created by capitalists to enslave the proletariat?
Nowhere is the dishonesty of this last belief (as well as the sheer insanity of modern North Korea) better illustrated than in Daniels’ description of his visit to the creatively-named Pyongyang Department Store Number 1. He wanders into the store without a minder and is dumbstruck by his eventual realization: the entire store is a fake. Although it is a frenzy of activity and is filled with beautifully packaged and artfully arranged consumer goods, no one is actually buying anything. Daniels watches individual “shoppers” go up and down the escalators or exit and re-enter the store in a continuous loop of simulated shopping. At the line for a cash register, cashiers and customers stare aimlessly past each other, unmoving. Under Daniels’ gaze some of them realize they are found out and cast about nervously, wondering what to do next. “I did not know whether to laugh or explode with anger or weep,” he says. “But I knew I was seeing one of the most extraordinary sights of the twentieth century.”
Arnold Beichman, “The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World”, National Review, 1991-10-21.
September 25, 2020
QotD: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!” [“Let them eat cake!”]
In the original French, the Queen allegedly said, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!, which doesn’t quite translate to “let them eat cake.” Brioche is sweet, eggy bread that tastes only vaguely like cake. The translated English word “cake” made Marie Antoinette seem even haughtier than in French. But it’s beside the point, since Marie Antoinette never uttered “let them eat cake” in any language. There is no historical evidence that she ever uttered that phrase. The story is pure invention. It’s a historical legend that rivals the myth of Nero “fiddling” while Rome burned. And yet this outlandish fabrication has shaped our image of Marie Antoinette for more than two centuries.
Compared to other historical falsehoods, this legend is easy to trace to its source. It was the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In book six of his Confessions, written in 1767, Rousseau wrote of a “great princess” who had, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied with those words cited above, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche! Was Rousseau referring to Marie Antoinette? This is impossible. When he wrote that passage, Marie Antoinette was still a girl living at the Habsburg court in Vienna (under her original name, Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna). Rousseau’s story was entirely made up, probably borrowed from another source. And while his book wasn’t published till 1782, this was still seven years before the French Revolution began. In fact, the first time someone (spuriously) put the words “let them eat cake” in Marie Antoinette’s mouth was a half-century later, in a book published by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Les Guêpes.
Matthew Fraser, “Marie Antoinette: Figure of Myth, Magnet for Lies”, Quillette, 2020-06-24.
September 24, 2020
QotD: Gurkha versus Japanese, mano a mano
