Can western civilization get its mojo back?
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Category: Big Picture
The Year in Preview: 2023
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Q-Anon Global
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Shah-la, la-la-la-la, live for today… then please die
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Yesterday I wrote (here) about the importance of the survival of our species: We have one job as adults: produce the next generation. Given the amount of time it takes for a human child to achieve maturity (about 16-18 years for females and 60-70 years for males), “producing” the next generation goes well beyond the…
The Swordsman Outmatched
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Don’t just stand there: gesture! One of the most iconic moments in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark comes during a chase sequence through the crowded and colorful streets and alleys of Cairo. Indiana Jones suddenly finds himself surrounde d by a crowd from which emerges a menacing master swordsman. The swordsman brandishes his sword and swishes…
Equity’s a bitch and then you die
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Turnabout is Necessary Play
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AUDIO NOTE: No audio today, just ran out of time. Maybe I’ll add an audio version of this post later in the week, after I’ve upgraded the default WordPress audio player to something better—i.e., pretty much anything. Notice what didn’t happen in America this week? Two things. Democracy didn’t die and a second civil war…
The Salonists and the Joes
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The fault lines and tectonics responsible for the rattling of western civilization can be seen or described as a right-left conflict, a globalist-localist conflict, or a collectivist-individualist conflict. Each of those perspectives has its merits and its uses, and at one point or other I’ve used each of them, but none of them seems to…
Have a Nice Day
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Yesterday’s post about smiley icons got me scratching at my memories of the 70s—the first decade from which I have any. I remember a lot of smileys—all of them on t-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers, and most of them accompanied by text saying “Have a nice day.” I was just an akward, acne-bespattered 14-year-old with…
When silver linings are fool’s gold
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Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the election on Wednesday. It will be held on the first of November. The first party leader debate was televised the evening of Frederiksen’s announcement: there were fourteen party leaders on stage. Not all of them were ready for prime-time. I was unable to watch the full debate, which ran…
Things to avoid this winter
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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…
Quick question
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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…
Virtue signaled is not its own reward
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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…
We’re living in a Kurt Vonnegut novel
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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,…
The Hate Campaign
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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…
About that trust deficit…
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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…
Semi-Fascist
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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…
“Just look at the data”
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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…
A Generation of Bartlebys
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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…
General Mayhem
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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…