What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
The other evening Danish televison aired a news program entitled “the time of the crises.” I don’t remember what channel it was on, who was hosting, who was participating, or even any specifics about what was discussed for the few minutes I gave it attention. It was a panel discussion about all the various crises…
In reading this DR article about Giorgia Meloni, the woman who may well be Italy’s next premiere, I was struck by how freely they referred to her and her party and their allies as neo-fasicsts (nyfascister). I don’t know what to think when I encounter such adjectives in the western press, because when the president…
The phrase “virtue signalling” entered the lexicon several decades ago as a critical description of moral valor being asserted without being demonstrated. The phrase is used often enough these days that everyone knows what it means. The earliest example I can recall of such posturing was probably the “nuclear free zones” declared by liberal municipalities…
I’ve been struggling to understand the verious stupidities and absurdities of the world for a while now, but two two stories about immigration—one American, one Danish—have finally opened my eyes: we’re living in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. For the kids in the back row: I’m not saying Kurt Vonnegut is god, or even a god,…
Not long ago I wrote that the Democratic Party was driven by the twin-engines of hatred and utopianism. The reaction to Queen Elizabeth’s death suggests, however, that at least one loud chunk of the Democratic base is a single-engine affair, and it’s not utopianism that’s driving them. When I say the activist American left, I…
There’s big piece in Berlingske today on the changed tone of Danish politics. Something has gone seriously wrong in Danish politics. Now concerned experts are sending a warning to ChristiansborgTobias Reinwald & Thomas Søgaard Røhde, Berlingske.dk, Sept 4 Only a fraction of this blog’s readers are Danish, so I’m not going to get all deep…
Let’s start with a some textual analysis. Here’s the text: What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the—I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism. Those words were spoken by Joe Biden at a fundraiser in…
Back on August 9th I wrote about the raid on Mar-A-Lago. The words “banana republic” don’t appear in the post, but I did make a cute banana republic flag for the featured image: When you have armed federal investigators swarm the private home of an ex-president who happens to be one of your loudest and…
Language Note: Colorful language ahead. If you don’t care for that kind of thing, move along. Joe Biden is shopping for votes again: this time he’s offering a $10,000 bribe. President Biden is expected to announce a plan Wednesday to cancel thousands of dollars in federal student loan debt for borrowers who make less than…
Every now and then, in contemplative moments, I question myself. I press myself to test whether I might after all be wrong about this or that, or everything. I do this consciously and deliberately. I imagine a zealous prosecutor with the opposite point of view from my own; he or she grills me (or my…
I’m actually basing my headline on the Grauniad’s: “Police identify Salman Rushdie attack suspect as 24-year-old from New Jersey.” (I guess today’s New Jersey twenty-somethings might not all be Springsteen fans, but I like to imagine America hasn’t changed since I left it. Or even a little before I left it.) (New York state police…
Personal Note: I’m still on vacation, but this is the part where we tear the house apart in preparation for renovations—where we box up entire rooms to clear them for the Invasion of the Contractors that begins next week. My basement office is already in total disarray and will remain so until I get it…
There was a Johns Hopkins study that came out a while ago that concluded “that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” The study noted that this finding is against expectation (my emphasis): Despite the very low quality of evidence (see Table 1), early epidemiological studies predicted that…
Courtesy of Ed Driscoll over at Instapundit: That’s the Washington Post saying that the current energy crisis was supposed to kickstart a green revolution, “but the world wasn’t ready.” There’ll be snowmen in Hell before I pay my way through the Washington Post paywall, but since they’re the extreme left’s most loyal propagandists it’s unlikely…
Politico sends one of its intrepid explorers to the very edge of civilization, where he meets two even more intrepid explorers who have in fact pressed beyond the edge and into the darkness beyond—whence they have returned (alive!) to tell their tales of wonderment from the world of the political right. One wonderment in particular…
Reflecting on his 1912 defeat as a third party presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt lamented that “the average American in his party affiliations is largely influenced by a feeling quite as unreasoning as that which makes the average fan depressed or exultant over the victory of a professional baseball team.” That’s from TR: The Last Romantic,…
A British poet and inventor named John Harington wrote a couplet in the 16th century that has survived to the modern era: Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?Why, if it prosper none dare call it treason. It’s a truth that’s been expressed in a lot of different ways through the centuries; Harington’s version is…
I’m just gonna riff here, if that’s okay, because the Danish and American media aren’t occupying my mind right now: I’ve got my wartime goggles on and don’t believe anything I read anyway, so there’s no point trying to make sense of it. And because this is a riff that represents nothing more than my…
Henry Higgins, call your office. Over the past few years there’s been a slow but steady drumbeat on an amorphous issue, or set of issues, that seem finally to have congealed into something covered under the rubric of “the feminization of politics” (or of culture). A single writer has finally, in a single column, pulled…
