Now in Book Form!

Whether you’re just stumbling on this blog for the first time or you used to be a regular reader (who has hopefully followed me over to the Nagan Of Copenhagen Substack), if you’re looking for more on how badly the Danish media have distorted Danes’ perceptions of the United States, and why it matters, you…

Apologia pro realitate

I quote it all the time, here and elsewhere, but here once more are the closing lines of G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics: The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a…

Springtime for the west?

A couple of recent opinion columns by Berlingske Tidende’s opinion editor Pierre Collignon offer some hopeful signs that at least parts of Denmark’s thinking class may have begun to realize the depth of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into. . . and may have begun speculating on ways to actually climb out of it. Collignon…

Literary Troubles

News of the collected works of Roald Dahl having been edited for sensitivity came to my attention at some point over the weekend. It was impossible to miss on the anglophonic internet. As culture war stories go, it’s a good one, but it seemed less significant to me than the one that was bobbing around…

Dangerous

In its Sunday opinion section, Berlingske ran a “debate interview” with Alex Vanopslagh, the chairman of Denmark’s libertarian Liberal Alliance party. The first three sentences set the table: On the bookshelf in Alex Vanopslagh’s office in Christiansborg stands a copy of a dangerous book. A book whose author can get both (communist green party) Enhedslisten’s…

The Year in Preview: 2023

I thought 2020 was gonna be a pretty good year. I was dead wrong about that. So I was pretty sure 2021 would be an improvement. Wrong again, on so many levels, but after back-to-back years like that I was sure things could only improve in 2022. Nope. So I’ll tell you what I think…

Q-Anon Global

AUDIO NOTE: I was just wrapping this up and getting ready to record the audio when Eldest’s screams of anguish from the shower alerted me to the fact that we have no hot water… in our faucets or our radiators. Our boiler is not cooperating with my requests that it play nice. So I reckon…

Shah-la, la-la-la-la, live for today… then please die

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

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

According to an item on DR’s website: In 2021, an average of five women or girls per hour globally were killed by a partner or family member in their own home, according to a new report from the UN, according to Ritzau. Five females per hour times 24 hours times 365 days gives a total…

Turnabout is Necessary Play

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,…