The struggle for power between the Spanish Republican parties is an unhappy, far-off thing which I have no wish to revive at this date. I only mention it in order to say: believe nothing, or next to nothing, of what you read about internal affairs on the Government side. It is all, from whatever source, party propaganda — that is to say, lies. The broad truth about the war is simple enough. The Spanish bourgeoisie saw their chance of crushing the labour movement, and took it, aided by the Nazis and by the forces of reaction all over the world. It is doubtful whether more than that will ever be established.
I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues — namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain. But the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government presented to the world was not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were. But as for the Fascists and their backers, how could they come even as near to the truth as that? How could they possibly mention their real aims? Their version of the war was pure fantasy, and in the circumstances it could not have been otherwise.
The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (vide the Catholic Herald or the Daily Mail — but these were child’s play compared with the Continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point — the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. There may have been a handful of airmen and other technicians, a few hundred at the most, but an army there was not. Some thousands of foreigners who fought in Spain, not to mention millions of Spaniards, were witnesses of this. Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their’ legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level.
This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. After all, the chances are that those lies, or at any rate similar lies, will pass into history. How will the history of the Spanish war be written? If Franco remains in power his nominees will write the history books, and (to stick to my chosen point) that Russian army which never existed will become historical fact, and schoolchildren will learn about it generations hence. But suppose Fascism is finally defeated and some kind of democratic government restored in Spain in the fairly near future; even then, how is the history of the war to be written? What kind of records will Franco have left behind him? Suppose even that the records kept on the Government side are recoverable — even so, how is a true history of the war to be written? For, as I have pointed out already, the Government, also dealt extensively in lies. From the anti-Fascist angle one could write a broadly truthful history of the war, but it would be a partisan history, unreliable on every minor point. Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth.
George Orwell, “Looking back on the Spanish War”, New Road, 1943 (republished in England, Your England and Other Essays, 1953).
April 6, 2019
QotD: Truth and propaganda in the Spanish Civil War
April 5, 2019
QotD: Debunking the “MSG is harmful” myth
The story of MSG is a true tragedy. The negativity associated with this delicious amino acid is due to a spurious study from 1968 that linked MSG with the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.” This study connected that gut-bomb feeling you sometimes get after eating Chinese food to MSG, despite the fact that the typically cheap Chinese food prepared in American restaurants is fatty and served in large portions, and (like any restaurant), the food can be spoiled. My mom theorizes that lots of MSG was used to cover up the fact that, say, shrimp was a day past its prime, and that the sick feeling was due to the food but got blamed on the MSG. There’s never been a scientifically rigorous study that’s linked MSG with any negative effects. MSG should be used frequently and added to anything that needs the flavor drawn out, especially soups. But it enhances virtually anything it touches: Once, eating pizza at home, a friend scanned my spice rack and saw a jar with white powder whose label, in my grandfather’s messy scrawl, read what looked like “MS6.” He sprinkled it on his pizza and came to find me, telling me that whatever MS6 was, it was the most amazing thing he’d ever tasted. Yes, MSG makes even pizza better.
Caitlin PenzeyMoog, “Salt grinders are bullshit, and other lessons from growing up in the spice trade”, The A.V. Club, 2017-04-06.
April 4, 2019
QotD: Anti-masculinity
One of the many harms inflicted on us by the hive minded lunatics running our society is the binary world view. Everything is either all good or all bad. As such, everyone must either fully embrace something or completely reject something. Indifference, ambivalence and moderation are not permissible in a world run by zealous fanatics. The only things that matter, that can matter, are those things that require a moral position. Everything else falls outside the set of things that exist, at least to the hive minded.
The most obvious example is homosexuality. Like all normal men, I am mildly intolerant of homosexuals. I get that they cannot help themselves and I get that it is “natural” in the same way schizophrenia is natural. I’m fine with them doing what they must, just as long as they do it in private. Of course, that makes me a monster. In the hive, you must either fully embrace homosexuality and what comes with it, or you are a homophobe and not fit for decent company. There’s no room for indifference or mild intolerance.
Hive mindedness is much more of a female attribute, than a masculine one. That’s not to imply that all women are howling at the moon zealots. It’s just that the fairer sex is much more inclined to deal in absolutes. The reason is that men have ways to arbitrate disputes that do not require a transcendent set of rules. One chimp squares off with the other chimp and the winner is the one who was right about where to find the best bananas. Women don’t have that so they look for a set of rules to figure out winners and losers.
It’s why it was no accident, that as soon as the girls got the vote, and the boys were off fighting the Kaiser, the girls banned alcohol and prostitution. To quote Judge Roy Bean, “Drinking and gambling and whoring were declared unlawful. All those things which come natural to men became crimes.” Morality, at least in the modern age, is the set of rules the girls use to control the boys, which is why the prim-faced moralizers of today are running around trying to stamp out anything that smacks of masculinity.
“The Z Man”, “Pouf-berries”, The Z Blog, 2017-04-08.
April 3, 2019
QotD: Veganism has its drawbacks
Evangelical vegans will tell you that following a purely ‘plant-based’ diet is not only morally commendable, it’s also much better for your health. But if my experience is anything to go by, the opposite is true.
I felt absolutely fine for the first few days. I didn’t miss meat at all, certainly not in terms of taste or flavour. The only thing I really felt an absence of was eggs. Since I embarked on my mammoth weight-loss project, eggs have become a dietary staple for me: nothing fills me up as well or gives me quite as much long-lasting energy as an egg.
I also found I had to eat larger portions to feel full — and I felt hungry again after a shorter period of time. But even that didn’t bother me, since what I was eating was so wholesome.
No, the real issue became apparent after the third or fourth day. Not to put too fine a point on it: wind.
My stomach was, quite literally, in ferment. All those legumes and pulses and generalised vegetable matter appeared to have turned into a giant internal compost heap. It wasn’t too bad in the mornings; but by early afternoon I was like a cow who had overdosed on clover.
At first, I palmed the outcome off on our three dogs. But after a while the problem became so severe that even they could not be expected to account for the frequency and potency of aromas emerging from my lower digestive tract.
One of the key arguments of vegans against livestock farming is the harm animals cause to the planet through the amount of methane they produce; if my experience was anything to go by, a vegan human is capable of producing just as much, if not more. I was a one-woman global warming hazard.
My children, of course, thought it was hilarious. But from my point of view, it was not only unpleasant and occasionally embarrassing, it was also incredibly uncomfortable. I felt bloated, soggy and sluggish, and began to dread meal times.
Following the advice of the nutritionist, I took to soaking nuts, oats and seeds overnight. But it made no difference. If anything, the problem began to get worse. The more healthy vegan food I put into my body, the worse my stomach problems became.
As for the much-vaunted ‘vegan glow’, no sign. Instead, my skin felt dry and dehydrated, and there was a distinctly greyish tinge to my complexion. But still, I persisted.
Sarah Vine, “Going vegan sent me off my trolley! Exhausted, irritable and don’t even start of the tummy troubles – SARAH VINE’s bid to join the health revolution left her VERY green around the gills”, Daily Mail, 2019-02-22.
April 2, 2019
QotD: The legacy of the soixante-huitards
It is one of the theses of this lucid book that the generation of May 1968 — or at any rate its leaders — has arranged things pretty well for itself, though disastrously for everyone else. If it has not been outright hypocritical, it has at least been superbly opportunist. First it bought property and accumulated other assets while inflation raged, paying back its debts at a fraction of their original value with depreciated money; then, having got its hands on the assets, it arranged for an economic policy of low inflation except in the value of its own assets. Moreover, it also arranged the best possible conditions for its retirement, in many cases unfunded by investment and paid for by those unfortunate enough to have come after them. They will have to work much longer, and if ever they reach the age of retirement, which might recede before them like a mirage in the desert, it will be under conditions much less generous than those enjoyed by current retirees.
It matters little whether this was all part of a preconceived plan or things just fell out this way, for that is how things now are. The result is that what was always a class society is in the process of becoming a caste society, in which only children of the already well-off have a hope of owning their own house.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Beneath Paris”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-01-07.
April 1, 2019
QotD: George H.W. Bush
Way back in the olden thymes, conservatives during the Reagan years had a real fear that the Rockefeller Republicans would not only undermine the conservative agenda, but find a way to corrupt the Reagan administration. It was an unwarranted fear. Those Progressive Republicans were a dying force in politics. Reagan was a man of his age so his conservatism does not always make sense to the modern ear, but he stuck to his guns for the most part. He was a politician, so he compromised when he had to.
Then George H. W. Bush was ready to take the reigns of the movement and the party, despite being a Rockefeller Republican. Bush was a Progressive by any measure, but he supposedly got religion in the 1980’s, and to be fair, a lot of people went through that transformation. There were even old Jewish guys, who used to support communists, that were suddenly changing teams to join the new emerging majority. Bush spent a lot of time convincing the voters he was just like Reagan and they had nothing to fear.
The ’88 election was a landslide for Bush and a lot of sensible people thought that he would be the finishing touches to the new conservative majority. He would smooth out the rough patches and put a shine on other aspects to it. His famous pledge to never raise taxes was the cornerstone of his pitch. Wiser heads, the paleocons, saw what was coming, but most did not. That’s why when Bush broke his promise, a year into his presidency, his voters were crushed. Bush was a liar.
History is written by the victors and that means the Left, so we’re always told that Bush lost in ’92 because Clinton was sent by the void where God once existed, to bring joy and bliss to the blessed and smite the wicked. The truth is, Bush lost because the core of his voters rightly saw him as a liar and a fink. Many people I know, including myself, voted third party as a protest. Yeah, it meant a degenerate would win the election, but at least we knew what we were getting. Liars like Bush always find new ways to screw you.
[…]
This brings us back to Bush. He spent the remainder of his presidency trying to rebuild his standing with conservatives. He even scored what was pitched as a stunning victory in the First Gulf War. But, you only get one shot to piss away your integrity and Bush did not miss that opportunity. He entered the general election as a weak incumbent and Clinton used his broken pledge in commercials to remind everyone that Bush was an untrustworthy liar. Imagine that. Clinton beat Bush on the integrity issue.
“The Z Man”, “Donald Herbert Walker Trump”, The Z Blog, 2017-04-07.
March 31, 2019
QotD: Gandhi’s not-so-non-violent followers
… it is not widely realized (nor will this film tell you) how much violence was associated with Gandhi’s so-called “nonviolent” movement from the very beginning. India’s Nobel Prize-winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore, had sensed a strong current of nihilism in Gandhi almost from his first days, and as early as 1920 wrote of Gandhi’s “fierce joy of annihilation,” which Tagore feared would lead India into hideous orgies of devastation — which ultimately proved to be the case. Robert Payne has said that there was unquestionably an “unhealthy atmosphere” among many of Gandhi’s fanatic followers, and that Gandhi’s habit of going to the edge of violence and then suddenly retreating was fraught with danger. “In matters of conscience I am uncompromising,” proclaimed Gandhi proudly. “Nobody can make me yield.” The judgment of Tagore was categorical. Much as he might revere Gandhi as a holy man, he quite detested him as a politician and considered that his campaigns were almost always so close to violence that it was utterly disingenuous to call them nonviolent.
For every satyagraha true believer, moreover, sworn not to harm the adversary or even to lift a finger in his own defense, there were sometimes thousands of incensed freebooters and skirmishers bound by no such vow. Gandhi, to be fair, was aware of this, and nominally deplored it — but with nothing like the consistency shown in the movie. The film leads the audience to believe that Gandhi’s first “fast unto death,” for example, was in protest against an act of barbarous violence, the slaughter by an Indian crowd of a detachment of police constables. But in actual fact Gandhi reserved this “ultimate weapon” of his to interdict a 1931 British proposal to grant Untouchables a “separate electorate” in the Indian national legislature — in effect a kind of affirmative-action program for Untouchables. For reasons I have not been able to decrypt, Gandhi was dead set against the project, but I confess it is another scene I would like to have seen in the movie: Gandhi almost starving himself to death to block affirmative action for Untouchables.
From what I have been able to decipher, Gandhi’s main preoccupation in this particular struggle was not even the British. Benefiting from the immense publicity, he wanted to induce Hindus, overnight, ecstatically, and without any of these British legalisms, to “open their hearts” to Untouchables. For a whole week Hindu India was caught up in a joyous delirium. No more would the Untouchables be scavengers and sweepers! No more would they be banned from Hindu temples! No more would they pollute at 64 feet! It lasted just a week. Then the temple doors swung shut again, and all was as before. Meanwhile, on the passionate subject of swaraj, Gandhi was crying, “I would not flinch from sacrificing a million lives for India’s liberty!” The million Indian lives were indeed sacrificed, and in full. They fell, however, not to the bullets of British soldiers but to the knives and clubs of their fellow Indians in savage butcheries when the British finally withdrew.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
March 30, 2019
QotD: Organic spices are a racket
There’s a whole other piece to be written about organic spices, but the short version is that demanding organic spices is never going to be good for the farmers growing them. The U.S. standards for organic products amounts to ridiculously expensive and oftentimes unnecessary practices for small farmers who just don’t have the resources to do it. There are plenty of ways to arrive at ethical treatment of animals and land that are not part of our complicated organic laws. And that’s not to mention the people who demand organic products but will also freak out at the sight of a bug or won’t buy something that’s even a little bit misshapen or with a tiny brown spot on it. You can have pesticides or you can have pests.
Caitlin PenzeyMoog, “Salt grinders are bullshit, and other lessons from growing up in the spice trade”, The A.V. Club, 2017-04-06.
March 29, 2019
QotD: The subtle power of cultural norms
I am a cross-cultural being. As such, I am weirdly aware of the various … gradations … of what is culture, what is biological and what is probably reinforced in biology by culture over the centuries.
Say you’re a woman in a country that puts women to death for being lippy. Most indications would be that lippy women would get weeded out of the culture. Except things are more complicated than that, when it comes to human tendencies and inclinations. I.e. “It’s not that simple.” You could be a stubborn woman but know when to confine it to where it’s safe: say bullying your close relatives, particularly the female ones. Or long-term-preference lippiness: zipping it until you’re the mother-in-law and have a couple or more daughters-in-law to be lippy to in safety. The fact is if it were a single trait and immediately lethal, then there wouldn’t be women who talk back to judges and get killed for it, even now, after 14 centuries of selecting for meek. BUT the fact is also that if you go to one of those countries, you see women putting up with things they never would in America. Even “Strong” and “spirited” women. Because culture is like that. Culture sets parameters to what is even thinkable for each individual. And then you express yourself within those patterns. Sure you can go outside the parameters. I did. But even I only went slightly outside the patterns. I think. Well, however much I went outside was enough to make most people really uncomfortable around me. And unless you’re planning to pack and leave, this is not a long-term survival strategy.
Sarah Hoyt, “Cross-Culture”, According to Hoyt, 2017-03-23.
March 28, 2019
QotD: Sharia law
In order of importance, [Sharia] has four sources. First, there is the Koran, which is the record of what was revealed to Mohammed by God, speaking through the Archangel Gabriel, Its injunctions are absolutely binding on the faithful. Second, there is the sunna, or the practice of Mohammed, as understood from the hadith, or traditional stories of his sayings and doings. These are less holy than the Koran, being only what was observed of a particularly honoured man, and not the direct Word of God given at third hand. Also, there are nearly two million of them, and they often contradict one another. But they count, once any consistent doctrine can be divined from them on a particular issue, as reliable guides. Third, there is the ijima or consensus of opinion among the ulema, or learned Moslems. Fourth, there is qiyas, or a process of analogical reasoning by which, in the absence of any rule or precedent, a case is to be decided in a manner consistent with the existing body of law. In addition to these, we can be fairly certain that much law has been inherited from pre-Islamic Arabian custom, and from the near eastern societies that subsequently became Moslem.
The main development of Islamic law came to an end in the eighth century with the Foundation of what remain the four traditional schools of legal interpretation. The task of all succeeding jurists was seen increasingly to consist as no more than the application and development of principles already laid down. Then, some time during the tenth century, there came what is known as “The Closure of the Gate of Interpretation ”. Since then, the exercise of itjihad — or independent judgment — has not, in theory, been permitted at all.
Islamic law differs from our own not only in its derivation, but also in its content. With us, despite what remains from the old regimes, and despite a great mass of socialist legislation during the present century, law is a means largely of protecting life and property. Among the Islamic lawyers, this has been an end only incidental to the main one, of ensuring conformity to the will of God. “The sacred law of Islam…” according to the great western scholar of the subject, Joseph Schacht, “is an all-embracing body of religious duties, the totality of Allah’s commands that regulate the life of every Muslim in all its aspects”. Not surprisingly, any country where the government takes Islam seriously is invariably, in western terms, an exceptionally gloomy and repressive place.
Let us look at Saudi Arabia. Within the bounds set by Islamic law, the country is an absolute monarchy. It lacks even the pretence of representative institutions and freedom of the press. All public officers are appointed by the King, and are responsible in the final instance to him alone. No religion other than Islam is tolerated in public — not even the sale of crosses being allowed — and anyone who is not a Moslem is made a victim of official discrimination. All publications are subject to a searching, and what often strikes westerners as a frivolous, censorship. On the 13th of March, 1989, The Times was allowed on sale only after the censors had snipped out the relevant part of a photograph in which a lady was showing more of herself than was thought decent. Women, indeed, are treated as inferior beings, and this treatment goes far beyond the close regulation of their dress by the police. They can be divorced at will. The range of employments open to them is restricted by law, and they can take none that involves contact with any man not related to them. They cannot drive cars. They cannot travel unaccompanied by a male relative. Adultery and certain other sexual acts carry the death penalty. The drinking of alcohol, while not absolutely prohibited, is discouraged. Tobacco is only grudgingly allowed. Gambling is forbidden. Music and dance are frowned on.
March 27, 2019
QotD: Gossip, rumour, and innuendo
Rumor was rife in the village as in the science fiction community. It should be. Both are the province of women. Not that men didn’t gossip/egg women on in the village, as they do in the science fiction community, but the men stupid enough to be seen doing it openly had a special name attached to them “Tricoteiros.” It was not a complementary name. And most men really didn’t get involved. They merely went along with what their wives decided and decreed. People who imagine women powerless in true patriarchal societies are out of their minds. Once the “court of public opinion” which is largely female, makes a decision, men risk falling victim to it, should they not conform to its dictates.
And this is why I loathe and despise rumor, and will stand up for a victim of it, no matter how little I like him or her: or indeed how little I know him or her. I will stand up for the victim, because rumor is a ridiculous way of ascertaining if someone should be “a part of society” (remember the charming moppets who said someone should be “cast out of society” for saying bad things) or if someone should have a job or if someone should be allowed to live somewhere in peace.
Because the one thing rumor is not concerned with is truth or true guilt, or even gradations of guilt. Yes, perhaps everything rumor says is true. Heaven knows it’s been known to happen, which is when people say “no smoke without fire” but they ignore all the times their stories and whispers were ALL wrong.
For instance, before I got married to Dan everyone knew (based on TRUST me little more than a resemblance in coloring) he was a baker from a neighboring village, whom I’d met in Italy. What was true to this tissue? Well, I was getting married and the year before, I was in Germany. (I’m still confused as to how Italy got attached to it.) Which was okay because I had no reputation to speak of. The life I lived in gossip was far more interesting than my real life. Having grown up as the “little sister” of my brother’s group of friends, they (and I) never paid any attention to the fact I was now past puberty. This meant if they saw me trudging towards the train and they happened to be driving, they’d pick me up and take me where I was supposed to go (mostly college or home) and if they were at a coffee shop and I walked by, they’d call me to sit and grab a coffee and a pastry (which they paid for, as older siblings will. Since my brother is around ten years older than I, most of them had jobs while I was in high school.) BUT the gossips knew I was having affairs will all of them (what a busy critter I must have been, what with carrying a heavier-than-full-load of courses and tutoring on the side, all this while having boyfriends/fiances. So when I got married, of course the best I could do was the baker from the nearby, poorer village. (Rolls eyes.) Which fortunately Dan couldn’t care less about, since when I told him the rumors he went off in whoops of laughter at the idea that his geeky, introverted fiance could ever be the village hussy.
Sarah Hoyt, “Painted All In Tongues”, According to Hoyt, 2017-03-20.
March 26, 2019
QotD: Salt
My grandfather used to say this all the time, and it’s true. Salt brings out the flavor of the food, full stop. There are a great variety of salts, but the reality is they’re all the same mineral. Coloration in salt comes from the minerals near the salt as it forms. There’s nothing inherently better about colored salts, but the marketers selling you that stuff will try to convince you otherwise. I’ve seen pink salt promoted as an “alternative” salt that doesn’t cause blood pressure issues. That’s a lie. My advice is to buy kosher salt or the chunkier white salt if you like the crunchiness. If you really like the mild flavoring of gray salt, that’s fine, just know that it’s sold at a higher cost for what comes down to the same thing as my box of salt I can get for a couple bucks. And one more thing: All salt is sea salt.
Salt grinders are bullshit
I’m not done with salt yet: Don’t put your salt in a grinder. All you’re doing is making your salt smaller than it was before. Unlike pepper, which is actually processed in the grinder, salt does not need to be ground and is not fresher after coming out of a grinder. It’s just smaller. Use a shaker.
Caitlin PenzeyMoog, “Salt grinders are bullshit, and other lessons from growing up in the spice trade”, The A.V. Club, 2017-04-06.
March 25, 2019
QotD: Village life
I hate rumor. Perhaps I hate it more because I grew up in a village.
The people who imagine villages are idyllic and every person in it loves the other like a brother or sister, have no knowledge of people — or reality. Sure, in many villages in isolated places, most of the people there are related to some degree. This was not true where I grew up, because the village was already in the process of exploding into a large-city suburb. It wasn’t visible to me as a child, because it was so slow, and newcomers still took years to integrate, but it it had been going on for so long that the appellation of “aunt” given to any grown woman by any child was just courtesy, not truth. Still, had we been all related, people who imagine that makes for harmonious living must have been only children and the children of only children.
No, never mind, I’m being silly. Those people are actually enormous racists and oikophobes. Hating their own home, they imbue places far away, particularly those inhabited by people who tan more than they do, with the qualities of heaven. They also in the process make those people-who-tan (or as I always think when I’m the object of this type of thought, and yes, I am, it’s what enables them to think themselves my intellectual superiors a-priori “Little brown peoples”) less than human. They (we) are not people with our own agency, and all the virtues and vices of mankind, but sort of little pets, perfect, well behaved and needing both the protection of our masters, the pale enlightened, and their pat on the head for how good we are. (Most of the left’s ideas on “defeating colonialism” envision themselves as benevolent colonial masters. In fact, the colonialism of Marxist ideas in Africa is what has made it hell on Earth, far worse than any colonial overseers could do. By turning their best and brightest into Marxist apostles at our “finest universities” they get to send these ideas back to Africa. There was some idea they would flourish there among people unsullied by greed and the wish to succeed individually (yes, it’s that racism again. It is inherent in the left’s contrived “celebration” of black people, Kwanza, which is really a celebration of socialist principles. And no, is in no way African. It was invented in the US. For one there isn’t such a thing as an “African” holiday. The continent is as or more varied than Europe (because transport was near impossible for most of its existence, tribes and villages were very isolated indeed.)) It didn’t. Instead it has made Africa worse than ever before. And this was done by turning its favorite sons, its brightest sparks into poison pills. Colonialist Marxism is appalling and responsible for the deaths of millions. As is Marxism everywhere.)
Sarah Hoyt, “Painted All In Tongues”, According to Hoyt, 2017-03-20.
March 24, 2019
QotD: France and the Nazi Final Solution
Less happy is the story of France. The Germans realized that the Vichy French were attached to assimilated French Jews, so they started by demanding only those foreign Jews who had come to France as refugees. There were a hundred thousand of these, and Marshal Petain of France said that they had “always been a problem” and he was glad to have “an opportunity to get rid of them” (in his defense, he was under the impression that Jews sent to Germany would be “resettled in the East”). After this had been going on for a while, Eichmann figured that the French were on his side, and asked for permission to take the native French Jews as well. The French, having sent tens of thousands of stateless Jews to the concentration camps, were suddenly outraged that the Nazis would dare lift a finger against French Jews, and shut down the entire deportation program. I am sure the French count this as a moral victory nowadays, though it’s a very selective sort of morality.
Scott Alexander, “Book review: Eichmann in Jerusalem”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-01-30.
March 23, 2019
QotD: Pity the poor politicians
The first reason to pity them, however, is that someone, or rather some group of people, has to do politics, just as people have to do other unpleasant jobs, such as cleaning lavatories. If it were not for the politicians whom we actually have, there would only be others, not necessarily better. Politicians are like the poor: You have them with you always — except in Switzerland, that happy land where people do not even know who their president is, he being so profoundly unimportant.
But the second and more compelling reason to pity the poor politicians is that theirs is a dreadful life judged by normal standards. If it has its compensations, such as power, money, and bodyguards, they are bought at a dreadful cost. The other day I caught a glimpse of what that life must be like.
A television crew came to make a documentary about me. It will last about 45 minutes, will be watched (thank goodness) by only a small audience, and took two and a half days’ filming to make. The television crew was very nice, which is not my universal experience of television people, to put it mildly; but even so, two and a half days being followed by a camera is more than enough to last me the rest of my life.
I found the strain of it considerable, even though, really, nothing was at stake. It did not matter in the slightest, not even to me, if I made a fool of myself by what I said. There would be no consequences for my career, such as it is (it is almost over); there would be no humiliating exposures of my fatuity in the press, no nasty political cartoons as a consequence, and no insulting messages over the antisocial media. The television team was clearly not out to trip me up or perform a hatchet job on me. It was friendly and I could trust it not to distort what I said by crafty editing. But all the same, the attempt to act naturally while in the constant presence of a camera and a microphone with a furry cover was tiring. The order to be natural is a contradiction in terms. You might as well order someone to be happy.
Of course, one grows accustomed to anything in time. Just as a bad smell disappears from one’s awareness if one remains for long enough in its presence, so eventually one forgets about the presence of a camera and a microphone. No doubt politicians who live half their waking time within the field of these instruments learn to ignore their physical intrusiveness; but, of course, much more is at stake for them than it ever was for me. They are under constant surveillance; and just as the pedant reading a book pounces upon an error, even if it be only typographical, and marks it with his pen, so journalists and political enemies pounce upon a gaffe uttered by a politician and try to ruin him with it. And the more subjects come under the purview of political correctness, the easier it becomes to make a gaffe that will offend some considerable part of the eggshell population. In fact, much of that population actually wants to be offended; being offended is the new cogito that guarantees the sum. I am offended, therefore I am.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Pity the Poor Politicians”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-04-01.
