https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/woody-allen-coup-de-chance-review
ReplyDeleteHey glad to see Woody Allen is still working! Love his work, hated seeing him get 'canceled'.. Apparently this one is about getting away w murder...
Dr. Berman:
ReplyDeleteAww, I so wish I could attend. Meeting you would be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments! I would have you sign all my books.
I’m so glad art and literature is still appreciated to this day. I’m sure you’ve heard of that horrid Barbie movie. Sounds like they had to leave a Proust Barbie joke on the cutting room floor because test audiences didn’t get the joke:
https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/lucy-boynton-says-proust-barbie-020437208.html
Hey, if you ever come to Sacramento or San Francisco area, we could talk about literature and art for hours and hours!
Emily-
ReplyDeleteJus' get me a gig, and I'll be on the next plane. :-)
95+% of Americans have never heard of Proust, and wdn't be able to understand him if they ever attempted to read his work. Buffoons are barely literate.
Kailey-
This film is his 50th. He's now 88. A great American, imo. And I don't believe he is guilty of molesting his daughter.
mb
Good idea, Doctor, of perhaps having the next Wafer summit in Houston and not here in New York. Whether grabbing bite to eat a a deli before or after the summit, or riding mass transit to or from it, you may not make it out alive. And if you do, you likely may be attacked, especially if you ride the subway.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/brooklyn-deli-robbed-at-gunpoint-2-suspects-sought
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/man-randomly-slashed-in-face-in-manhattan-subway-station
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/suspect-shoves-man-onto-subway-tracks-who-helped-him-off
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/mta-employee-attacked-after-waking-man-on-train-in-queens
I think I wrote abt this in my Japan bk. A very powerful art form:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/arts/dance/ushio-amagatsu-dead.html
WTF is wrong w/Americans?:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/visitors-caught-video-destroying-ancient-rock-formations-nevada-rcna147804
And more: here are a couple of sadistic douchebags:
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/nyregion/atlantic-city-mayor-marty-small-daughter-abuse.html
Read my new bk, "A Nation of Shitheads."
mb
An attempt to reduce buffoonage (probably too late):
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/16/health/cell-phones-jonathan-haidt-wellness/index.html
It was either Marx or one of the many marxists that stated that mathematics is heavily contaminated by the bourgeois ideology. Mathematicians and self-appointed anti-reds use this to prove how much of an idiot Marx was. Personally, I've always felt that this meant that a skilled mathematician can make numbers lie. Here's a shit of an article to prove my point. The author uses statistics to prove that palestinians are lying about their deads.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
One of many reasons I do not care much about statistics, especially if it goes against logic and common sense, and especially if it reeks of ideological commitment.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/married-teacher-caught-putting-her-clothes-on-after-naked-teen-runs-from-car-police/ar-BB1lIVPJ
ReplyDeleteOnward and downward! USian “teacher” porking student in car.
Look at that face—that’s the face of a dying empire.
french-
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Disraeli is famously credited with the phrase: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
mb
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/16/how-did-kamala-harris-go-from-being-a-rising-star-to-a-damp-squib
ReplyDeleteI think "squid" wd be a more accurate description.
KAMALA SCHMAMALA
SCHMAMALA KAMALA
KAMALA SCHMAMALA
KAMALA!
aka a rancid bag of douche fluid.
Meanwhile, American universities continue their historical tradition of cowardice:
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/usc-valedictorian-speech-palestine
And it looks like the Supreme Court will help Trump destroy democracy, and side w/the Jan. 6 rioters. What cd be better evidence of America's collapse?
Buffoons Rule! Go, Boebert!
French-
ReplyDeleteHoly moly! You must be in my head. I was just discussing this earlier after I finished watching a takedown of Coleman Hughes(I just vomited in my mouth) by Norman Finklestein. He mentions the obsession some people have with math and statistics to "prove" whatever they want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqrNB-Mbjc8
Simone Weil used to say that Algebra is one of the great evils (my 8th grade self would surely agree)
https://fleurmach.com/2016/06/16/simone-weil-algebra/
https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=philosophy_fac
ps: This is kinda nice:
ReplyDeletehttps://x.com/gadsaad/status/1780289615385038938?s=46
Your works have a sort of Nietzschean theme to them. America is a nihilistic environment, but I agree that out of its ashes, something better is possible.
ReplyDeleteI occasionally go back to Nietzsche since I find his work incredibly soul soothing.
"Christianity had its chance. It failed. It must be rejected."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1HLGq6acXo
Pen-
ReplyDeleteFor more on Nietzsche, in comparison to Robt Pirsig, check out "The Crisis of Our Time."
mb
Mauricio-
ReplyDeleteI actually found the article in a comment on YouTube under one of Finklestein's debates, so maybe we were watching the same things. The article struck a chord with me because I had an issue with one of my professors in university about the same issue. I majored in economics, and econometrics (the use of statistics models in economics) seemed to me a way to prove a predetermined position most of the time, at least how it wass used by some professors I knew. I raised the issue at one doctoral course I attended and it led to a showdown with the professor in charge (one of the most stupid people I've ever met) at which he said that if I refused to do econometrics he would intervene to thwarting my doctoral work, long story short, he did nothing and I didn't do any econometrics. Economics is very ideological and statistics are used left and right to prove nonsense.
Some critical positions against econometrics
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_econometrics
And a couple of good articles on the misuse of statistics
https://www.datapine.com/blog/misleading-statistics-and-data/#:~:text=While%20numbers%20don't%20lie,%2C%20education%2C%20or%20mass%20media.
https://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/evistats.html
Imagine if Freudian patients got to write their side of the story as well. That's what happens in this brilliant essay by a former child patient of Kleinian psychoanalyst Edna O'Shaughnessy.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate Klein and Freud's writings but this was terrible treatment of a child by a follower
https://aeon.co/essays/my-dismal-years-in-psychoanalysis-with-melanie-kleins-disciple
Conn-
ReplyDeleteI guess Melanie was a lot like Leonard Hofstadter's mother (in TBBT).
mb
Dr. Berman - It seems the real question to be answered is just WHY the Supreme Court is so gosh-darned intent upon bringing about the destruction of Democracy and shoving it so glaringly in the face of those who would yet support it, even granted its various and many weaknesses and failings? It wouldn't have anything to do with all those radical Catholics on the Bench intent upon handing over America to the tender mercies of the Roman Imperium, now, would it? I encourage anybody who thinks this opinion is somehow rooted in bigotry or loony conspiratorial nonsense to take a glance at Upton Sinclair's classic muck-raking tome "The Profits of Religion", readily available on archive.org, wherein we are reminded that, back in the days when these organizations could be a little more honest about what their true intents were, the Catholics never for a moment hid their thorough hatred of Democracy due to its empowerment of the poor and the helpless (whom they, of course, would prefer to remain so) and have been fully committed to the project of Catholicizing this country since first learning how to manipulate and take full advantage of its profoundly corrupt ways and got their first Justice seated on the Supreme Court under the wonderfully pliant Taft who, in return for the votes they were able to get him, was happy to praise their decidedly medieval institutions and such villainous scoundrels as Father Junipero Serra, fanatical enslaver of the Native population of California.
ReplyDeleteArthur-
ReplyDeleteI was tempted to delete this, since you provide no evidence (links, references) for what wd seem to be a conspiracy theory. Without such evidence, this just boils down to opinion; and on this blog, we are not terribly impressed by pure opinion. In any case, another possible reason for the Court's behavior is that, like Trumpola, they actually believe they are saving democracy, even while they are (blindly) destroying it. Anyway: in future, we'd appreciate documentation for yr ideas. Thank you.
mb
"What if our world is not Enlightened at all, but a product of the Enlightenment’s failure?"
ReplyDeletehttps://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/did-the-enlightenment-fail/
I just read this interesting review: what Whatmore has in common with Nietzsche, and why the French Revolution might not have been very ‘enlightened’ after all. Interesting connections on the 'enlightenment' of empire and capitalism.
The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis
https://www.amazon.com/End-Enlightenment-Empire-Commerce-Crisis/dp/0241523427?dplnkId=082b4e13-dc1f-4cb0-ab17-b0327a8e04ad
Greetings Wafers everywhere from Cascadia. This morning, I came across this interesting paper on societal decline. If you can plow through the long paragraphs (why can’t academics write shorter paragraphs?) and 20 pages, it’s worth a read:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2024.1194597/full
The authors list the steps in a Death Spiral of a society:
- Initial denial of a problem
- Repeated and continuous flawed decision-making
- Increasing secrecy and denial
- Continuing crises that generate “survival mode” and tunnel vision
- Inability to break out of the decision-making cycle
Escaping the Death Spiral is possible, according to the authors, but this requires compassion, leadership, disobedience, and collective action. Fat chance those will come about in a continental-sized nation of buffoons, but perhaps with secession the actions needed might have better odds of happening in some smaller polities where more and different social cohesion, rejection of imperial aspirations, as well as institutional competence based on different values in response to challenges like climate change, might evolve.
This kind of “conspiracy theory” that Arthur engages in is quite maddening. Terrence McKenna is onto something when he refers to conspiracy theories as “epistemological cartoons"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.organism.earth/library/document/conclusions-about-life
I see it as partly the rejection of scientific reasoning, which in itself is not entirely maddening, but the tipping point is to so readily accept, instead, that events occur merely because of the purpose they serve (is this a kind of “teleological thinking.”?). Consider two recent examples that I read about. First, the planned reboot of the TV series The X-Files which was, perhaps, the quintessential “conspiracy theory show,” because even the show’s creator, Chris Carter, has his doubts about the reboot of the series when today “Everything’s a conspiracy… No one knows what the truth is. It’s completely subjective and relative now.”
https://uproxx.com/tv/x-files-reboot-season-1-ryan-coogler-gillian-anderson-release-info/
Or let’s consider American novelist Tim O’Brien’s first novel in 20 years: “American Fantastica” (2023):
”In O’Brien’s America, citizens simply woke up one morning and decided to lie. All the people, all the time. They know what the truth is. They just choose not to tell it. While this may explain a certain opportunistic grifter class, it skirts the psychological struggle facing ordinary Americans, who deny science and embrace conspiracy theories as a way to avoid painful, personal disappointments."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/books/review/tim-obrien-america-fantastica.html
Jack-
ReplyDeleteThis is gd. The US has all 5 items, in spades . Altho I wish they had used words like 'buffoons' and horses' asses. And of course, referred to Gisele Bundchen.
Katz-
So many people need beating, really.
mb
A new meaning of CSI: Columbia Scumbag Institute:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/18/nyregion/columbia-university-protests
“Because Flanders and Catalonia are relatively rich, the push for independence has been couched in economic terms,” Desmet said.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the study indicates that economic forces tend to be secondary when it comes to understanding secessionism."
https://www.smu.edu/news/research/identity-not-income-drives-desire-to-secede
Dick-
ReplyDeleteTrue dat. This also explains a lot of US politics.
mb
More on Columbia: nailing a cowardly douchebag:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/18/columbia-university-congress-antisemitism-republicans-gaza
mb
Another kid with a manifesto. Mark Ames would probably have something to say about this.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2024/04/18/us/maryland-student-school-shooting-threat/index.html
Every time a kid goes off like this, nowadays I can't help but think of the eerie call from Adam Lanza that he had with Joh Zerzan on his podcast before his own rampage. Lanza is speaking the truth I think. We are driving ourselves insane. Too bad he had to do what he did however. (however I don't think the therapist at the end is completely accurate).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVlG3qMLFwg&t=53s
french-
ReplyDeleteWe have a half-pg-limit rule on this blog. Pls edit down and re-send. Thank you.
mb
A nation in collapse:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs9ZpZJPgSA
Wafers: I want to rec Alex Garland’s new film Civil War. It's brilliant, serious cinema with stand out performances by Wagner Moura and Cailie Spaeny. Rob Hardy’s cinematography is unbeatable, and the final act, utterly thrilling and seriously intense. 10/10
ReplyDeleteIt is so much more nuanced than I expected and shows how both sides act terribly... A view of things to come?
Just another ho hum day in the Big Apple. A man walking home gets beaten with a baseball bat and robbed; a man in a dispute with someone he knows gets set on fire; a man randomly attacks a woman with the latest weapon of choice, a hockey stick; the usual sucker punches on subways; and an act of callousness, a dogknapping.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/man-beaten-with-bat-robbed-while-walking-home-in-queens
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/cops-search-for-attacker-who-set-man-on-fire-in-the-bronx
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/man-with-hockey-stick-attacks-woman-on-east-village-street
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/2-subway-riders-sucker-punched-in-brooklyn-queens-attacks
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/dognapper-sought-pet-dog-stolen-from-brooklyn-womans-yard
As an aside, has anyone here noticed the newest annoying addition to the disingenuous,“How are you doing?/Have a nice day” bullshit we have to endure every single time we purchase something here in the U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! ? You literally can’t do a single transaction without some survey asking you how things (service,quality,etc.) were. What pure bullshit goes on here in this business civilization known as the United States!
Scumbag at Columbia:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/19/far-right-columbia-university-student-arrests
There are now six year old American girls promoting and using cosmetic products on social media. With their parents and grandparents help. This is feminist progress? Remember when six year old girls used to sell lemonade on the side walk.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/BISTJ2J4HyI?si=l0SMVTS45bXTbgmj
Mo-
ReplyDeleteMore degradation! Collapse of civilization means descending into a pit of shit. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
mb
ps: More evidence of collapse: peaceful demos not allowed:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/opinion/columbia-protests-israel-gaza-crackdown.html
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/nyregion/columbia-campus-protest-gaza-war.html
Pres of Columbia is a scumbag. But then there's this as well (California scumbags):
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/us/usc-graduation-commencement-guests.html
One hasta wonder if America contains more scumbags than douchebags. We need to set up a scientific study.
mb
Like in Columbia, the whole western world is cracking down on any and all forms of protest or critique against israel for alleged Antisemitism; everythin is Antisemitism, I'm afraid that one day they'll claim breathing in the same room with a jew is Antisemitic, it is becoming rediculous. Israel truly is untouchable, and it is my belief that such an oppression will only lead to actual Antisemitism as an extreme reaction.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.arabnews.com/node/278392
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/west-regards-israel-as-unquestionable-political-entity
https://apnews.com/article/france-israel-palestinians-war-protests-banned-5626bafec480b32226dcb97d0c92a553
https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-shut-down-pro-palestinian-conference/a-68810306
And the retards are on the rise globally, this morning in the bus stop I overheard a man saying that there are no paletinians because "during the time of Cyrus the great it was called Israel and Judea".
Anyone noticed the surge in the # of Amerikkkan journalists being thrown in Russian prisons over espionage allegations? The most recent example is dual US/Russian national Alsu Kurmasheva
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/23/media/alsu-kurmasheva-russian-court-detention-intl/index.html
Then there's the WSJ reporter who'd been arrested 4 allegedly giving Amerikkka secrets about the Russian military, or something. Don't know all the details of that
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/u-s-envoy-to-russia-visits-jailed-wsj-reporter-evan-gershkovich/ar-AA1nfSgH
Makes me wonder whether these r genuine errors, or Amerikkka's spies-posing-as-journalists plan being thwarted
french-
ReplyDeleteAll this may be the latest move of the Global North to keep the Global South down. Nations of the latter are siding with the Pals, I believe. It *is* ridiculous, as u pt out. Eventually, if you burp in the presence of a Jew, you'll get arrested for antisemitism.
mb
Check it out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.noemamag.com/the-world-is-assuming-a-pre-war-posture/
As the media and the world awaits full-scale war between Iran and Israel and even frets about nuclear escalation, a huge reality of modern warfare is being overlooked: We are already fighting World War III. I'm so tired...
ReplyDeleteIsrael Attack on Iran Is What World War III Looks Like
https://theintercept.com/2024/04/20/iran-israel-world-war-iii/
Just passed by the House:
ReplyDelete"The $95bn in total funding includes roughly $61bn for Ukraine (with much of the funding going towards replenishing American munitions), and $26bn for Israel."
What cd be worse?
mb
The newest venue to get stabbed: a party boat! Where? Only in “The city that never sleeps”. Perhaps it should be called, “The city that’s never peaceful”.
ReplyDeletehttps://apnews.com/article/new-york-stabbing-boat-brooklyn-da47aecd4610f26a7cb447ae88de31ee
The sucker punches aren’t slowing down in the Big Apple.
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/nyu-administrator-27-punched-near-washington-square-park
The latest creative illegal underground economy hustle: A squatter subletting to other squatters. LOL!
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/alleged-squatter-charged-for-occupying-queens-home
But some folks violently take exception to the underground economy in Manhattan.
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/man-in-custody-after-attacking-boys-selling-candy-in-subway
Yep. NYC. The greatest city here in the "exceptional" U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
In the wake of the US is sending $26bn to Israel let me share a couple of disturbing Israelis acts of this week. Mass graves have been found in previously occupied Gazan hospitals. And, Israeli drones play crying baby noised to lure in Palestenians to kill them.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/4/21/nearly-200-bodies-found-in-mass-grave-at-hospital-in-gazas-khan-younis
https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-broadcasts-baby-sounds-lure-palestinians-gaza
https://m.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/israeli-drones-plays-baby-cries-to-lure-palestinians-and-kill-them/402340105898320/
There is a genre of YT videos where people walk around a city with a camera filming the view and uploading it for people to watch. This guy decided to film every homeless camp in LA, and it is something! Also read some of the comments under the video.
Flores and Dr. B.,
ReplyDeleteI read this review of _Civil War_: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/18/dxyk-a18.html
Key quote: "There is no attempt to address in any fashion the political, social and historical circumstances that have produced the civil war that is the subject of the movie... there is no 'why,' not even a hint as to the motives of the participants, let alone the more fundamental 'why,' examining the social forces which generate the motives in the minds of men and women."
If you have time, let us know if you think this review is unfair.
-- Torreblanca
Someone mentioned Michael Moore's healthcare film in the last post, which I've recently watched again. Funny how the authorities will go out on a limb 4 Amerikkkans who are jailed overseas, but this shit happens every day, & u get crickets
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6gGrSOFlHMo
I wonder why more Amerikkkans don't take 2 the streets demanding REAL, not imagined freedom. U can't b free in a country that refuses 2 care 4 u, and, in turn,
only cares about corporate earnings
Dub-
ReplyDeleteAmericans are spineless; that's one reason. Compare the French, the 'gilets jaunes', who take to the streets to oppose the b.s. of their gov't. Or even French students during May-June '68, wh/had teeth for a while, sending De Gaulle to the countryside for his safety. The American version was pretty much theater.
mb
Dub-
ReplyDeleteI don't know why more Americans don't take to the streets doing the Wa-Tulsi. Truth is, Americans have no idea what life is about, could/should be about. Most of us are frustrated now because they are increasingly unable to dive into the usual consumerist American Babbittry that has always been promised to them. We lack the ability to see that this is wrong headed and this very lifestyle is the headache we suffer from.
Also, more collapse via hot lead. I guess someone really hated the potato salad. A shooting at a block party. We truly are number one.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/21/memphis-tennessee-block-party-shooting/73404295007/
mau-
ReplyDeleteThe Tennessee shooting isn't really news anymore. Another day, another massacre. As for the Wa-Tulsi: Where are these voices that cd save us?: Tulsi, Bundchen, and of course, Boebert. Strangely silent. America cries out for their collective wisdom.
But let me direct your attn to an essay on England in the April 1st New Yorker. The title is "Time's Up," wh/is true enuf, but a more appropriate title wd be a riff on the Beatles: "Nowhere Land." For me, it is a description as to where America is headed, perhaps b4 2030. The author scores it pretty well: England is going nowhere. It has no purpose, nor any coherent meaning. Rishi Sunak is a douchebag, and will certainly be voted out of office b4 the end of the yr. Rishi's private wealth, tog. w/his wife's, is half a billion pounds. Meanwhile, 40% of the children in Newcastle are living below the poverty line. Other politicos: Liz Truss is England's Kamala Schmamala--an utter buffoon. The rest of the Tories aren't much better, and Labour is (like the Tories) just beating off.
I only got halfway thru the article, because like England itself, it's boring. But it is, I believe, a very likely look at America's future. We too have no serious purpose; we too are beating off. And this doomsday scenario can only increase as we move, catastrophically, toward 2030.
"He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where he's going to..."
mb
America's most recent contribution to genocide:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/21/israel-iran-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/
(So much for Schmiden's finger-wagging at Netanyahu. Bibi knows it's just theater.)
In my previous comment I forgot to include the link to the LA homless camps tours, here it is
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vc6CHRrtH8
and a couple of videos of Kensington Philadelphia, it looks like a scene from 'Escape from LA' the 1996 movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AeGKSDVdE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=925wmb-4Yr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iSkKkzabnM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCfzaiY6rpw
Oakland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRWmKh13b50
A collection of California cities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzLC48jZPrc
If someone showed me the videos without mentioning the location I would've thought it is in some favela in Rio or on the outskirts of Manilla.
Couple this with a rise of apathy and you get people who either don't care about people in need, or actually enjoy hurting them, like this dickhead:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/plONAECQl1Y
french-
ReplyDeleteWow we keep reading each other's minds. I was just about to send off a similar post when I saw yours. I have lived in many of those places and...yikes. My home of the Inland Empire, Ca truly is a scene from The Running Man at this point. At around 30 min you literally see a guy about to jump off a building. (this youtuber is a little condescending however in opinnion. He seems to think this is all because "no one wants to work anymore, etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc3AQk7lgTA
I remember this mall being packed at Christmas when I was a little kid. The had a petting Zoo with a manger scene. Camels, sheep, donkey, etc. Now, it's this. I'm getting worried.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTBHca-iKAQ
Want to see what a bunch of buffoons sound and look like when they celebrate their collective departure from reality as they feed more green to the military-industrial? Yahoo News included a video clip of the chanting and flag-waving in its reporting on the U.S. House of Representatives uni-party passage of a funding package ostensibly for imperial projects Ukraine, Israel, and in the Pacific. The aircraft carrier in the bathtub won’t be turning around:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/news/representatives-celebrate-wave-flags-congress-183409141
Jack-
ReplyDeleteBad Is Gd. We are degraded, and going down the toilet. At the end of days, we are doing exactly what will do us in.
mb
Here's a picture of Columbia Univ protests "escalating". By escalating I think they mean the 2 dudes in front center who were dozing in the grass but are now standing up talking to each other. Clearly a sign of a terrorist plot. Too bad the media doesn't have any pictures of the violent anti-semitism on campus they keep referring to -- but alas there is (almost?)none -- if there were you could be sure they would have pictures.
ReplyDeleteThe only violence was someone smashing and entering to vandalize Palestinian religious artifacts at Rudgers Muslim Life center, taking prayer stones, a charity box, and a flag, and smashing up the place a bit. Can you imagine if a Jewish center were vandalized and a menorah and other religious symbols were desecrated? Yeah, front page headlines and accusations of terrorism and jihad.
This country, it is really sad, but it just cannot learn from it's mistakes. Vietnam. Afghanastan. And the press has gotten so irrelevant and disgusting it feels like Russia or an Orwellian novel. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Even for a cynic this is almost beyond belief.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/22/us/rutgers-university-arrest-jacob-beacher/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-yale-protests-passover-04-22-24/index.html
Pam-
ReplyDeletePredictably, Schmiden condemned the protesters. All you have to do is look cross-eyed at a Jew, and yr an antisemite. I'm hoping the campus protests swell into something large, and nationwide. Some Columbia faculty have walked out, in protest to the university president (a real piece of dreck) calling in the police to remove the protesters. This country is so full of crap.
mb
ps: I'm really proud of the campus youth who are staging these protests at Yale and elsewhere. The problem is, as in the case of youth protest against the Vietnam war many yrs ago, that they represent less than 1% of young Americans. Possibly less than 0.5%. Where is the attention of most American youth today?:
ReplyDelete1. Their smartfones
2. Taylor Swift's new album
mb
mauricio-
ReplyDeleteAs for the "work hard and you'll get there" attitude, here's a good article that says the opposite. One can also read Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Piketty to see the economics of it.
https://thehustle.co/self-made-myth-luck-versus-hard-work
I also believe that people' general apathy and lack of concern for eachother is part of the problem. Many Americans think that homlessness is caused by the homless, and they should be punished in someway for it, as if man has a complete control over the circumstances of his life. When I was a kid, whenever I went out with my mother and we found beggars, she would give me some change and tell me to give it to them and say something nice. How many still do that?
Anyways, NYU is following in the footsteps of Columbia
https://www.timesofisrael.com/dozens-arrested-at-nyu-as-anti-israel-encampments-sweep-across-us-campuses/
On better news, I've found the man that can serve as a model for some Wafers, a spanish man skipping work for six years to study Spinoza. I've got the complete works of Spinoza on my shelf and I only skimmed through them, I may as well do as he did.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/spanish-engineer-who-skipped-work-for-6-years-was-studying-spinoza/
This past Sunday's New York Times had a long op-ed piece by Nicolas Kristof with the title "What Happened to the The Joe Biden I knew?" :
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/opinion/biden-gaza-war.html
It's the usual kind of fluff piece we get form the Times where there seem to want it both ways. Here's a couple of choice quotes fro the article:
"The president is clearly uncomfortable with the civilian toll of this war---and yet he continues to underwrite it.
"Biden is a good man with a compassionate heart, which makes his complicity in this atrocity all the more tragic."
It doesn't seem to occur to Kristof that Biden's complicity in this atrocity negates his claim about Biden being a good man, or that maybe he didn't really know who Biden really is. Of course he fails to mention that Biden could stop all of this by cutting off aid to Israel. But he does manage to push idea that the "big winner in the Hamas and it's aftermath is----the Kremlin."
Hi Wafers, here are some "hits" performed at the most recent Grammy's.
ReplyDeleteMiley Cyrus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSC4TcLJfAg
I can buy myself flowers
Write my name in the sand
Talk to myself for hours
Say things you don't understand
I can take myself dancing
And I can hold my own hand
Yeah, I can love me better than you can
SZA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKIqsgZ4o70
I just killed my ex (my ex)
Not the best idea (idea)
Killed his girlfriend next, how'd I get here?
I just killed my ex (my ex)
I still love him, though (I do)
Rather be in Hell than alone
Dua Lipa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO6PocKRfKM&pp=ygUgZHVhIGxpcGEgZ3JhbW15IHBlcmZvcm1hbmNlIDIwMjQ%3D
I think this says a lot about the soul of America...
As Don Trump once said while taking out a full page ad: “Bring back the death penalty.”
ReplyDeleteSo heeding his advice, USAin road ragers now are partaking in their very own executions while driving.
https://www.ksla.com/2024/04/23/1-male-dead-shooting-i-20-hwy-80-greenwood/
Of course, deep in the heart of Texas it’s normal to shoot somebody in a vehicular rage.
https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/man-shot-in-neck-during-road-rage-incident-near-lackland-air-force-base-san-antonio-texas-police-investigation-hospital-ambulance-evidence
But back at home and away from the roads, check out some of that parental love here.
https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/parents-charged-after-allegedly-beating-their-5-week-old-twin-girls-to-death-report-says-houston-police-investigation-evidence-court-documents-jail-bond-fractures-bruises#
https://lawandcrime.com/crime/hes-just-gonna-have-to-pay-for-his-existence-mom-videos-herself-suffocating-infant-until-he-was-blue-told-friend-it-gave-her-an-adrenaline-rush-cops-say/
What a fine society this "Land of Exceptionalism" certainly is. U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
There are some gd Jews around:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/demonstrators-hold-emergency-seder-near-schumers-home-to-protest-us-support-for-israel/
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteCd Schmiden *be* more stupid?:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/24/world/biden-cannibalism-papua-new-guinea-intl-hnk/index.html
Dr. Berman- Yes, Biden's stupidity is monumental. Funny thing is, if Trump said this you would never hear the end of it.
ReplyDeleteThis has been a week of depressing thoughts. Homelessness, addiction, and violence. That's the air Americans breathe. Sometimes, however, there are things that even give me some hope. I have noticed for a while more people are developing a fondness for localism and enjoying more personal "small things" ( a la E.F. Schumacher). Wendell Berry seems to be making a comeback for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUzs7GHCBy8
Although this is old, I have been watching movements like this Urban Farming scene in Detroit. Could this be an example of Dual process?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_7rzoFzV08
mau-
ReplyDeleteRe: Dual Process: projects like these are great; I wonder if they can really catch on, however. The air Americans breathe is competition, not cooperation. E.g., there is a history of successful alternatives getting co-opted by corporations. It's in WAF, if I remember correctly, that I talk abt how all the sustainability talk of the 1970s got blown away overnight when Reagan was elected. No accident: hustling has very deep roots.
mb
Aaron Good is a young historian/political scientist active today. I find his book American Exception the most thorough analysis of the long history of the criminality of the American empire and the deep state.
Deletehttps://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510769144/american-exception/
For some mysterious reason Fox News recently posted two long form interviews with him:
https://youtu.be/ckeCp1ojZSo?si=EA7mrbvlqc8hd2cK
https://youtu.be/hxMGnnsORac?si=pn79U9eWMSjPssLY
As a early 70's Canadian I have watched with bewilderment the decline and decay of America since the assassination of JFK. These two interviews helped me understand how the events are connected.
For example his explanation of why Israel and America are so intertwined goes far beyond the Lobby and delves into the dark criminal underpinnings of their relationship. To my mind his analysis of the relationship is the most plausible explanation of why America was and is following such foolish and disastrous domestic and foreign policies.
I think our blog documents the essential vapidness and shallowness of America. Aaron Good documents the malevolent criminality, cruelty and, as becomes more apparent every day, the ultimate stupidity and horror of the American Empire.
Anjin-
ReplyDeleteThanks. Watch length.
mb
ps: I think it fair to say that the US is a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by clueless morons. Personally, I look forward to the post-mortem history of the US, to be written by a collaborative team of Chinese and Palestinians. Suggested title: "They Ignored Belman."
ReplyDeleteHere are two videos I thought worth posting. The first features a pretty good discussion of what's going on a Columbia, Yale, NYU and other places:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6det1mBDeyE&t=12s
If the authorities thought arresting students would quell campus protests, they were quite mistaken. Even students at MIT are protesting.
The second video is about mass graves that been found in Gaza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnoUGEE9w8&t=4s
I've heard nothing about this in the MSM. I "wonder" why.
ccg and other Wafers-
ReplyDeleteHere's a fabulous talk by Naomi Klein.
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel
I want to add 3 comments:
1. The Israelis/Zionists are not real Jews. Real Jews stand for justice and freedom, not the slaughter of innocents. 1st century A.D.: A Roman centurion asked Hillel to summarize the message of the Torah in the time that he (the centurion) cd balance himself on one foot. Hillel said: "That which is hateful to you, don't do it to others." Are the Israelis doing what Hillel said?
2. Together w/Naomi's speech: now is the time to read this, if you haven't already: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Ilan Pappe.
3. The admins at Columbia, Yale, NYU, etc. are complete scumbags, the dregs of humanity.
mb
ps: Many wd date the beginning of the unraveling of the US to the assassination of JFK. But a milestone along the process of our collapse is surely this event, burnt into the memory of many of us:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent-state-photo-lifelong-burden-being-national-symbol/
As more and more campuses erupt with protest against American support of Israeli genocide, will there--god forbid--be a repeat of this event? But even if not, now as then, America is making all the wrong decisions, and continues to dig its own grave.
I didn't have any major role back in 1970, but I was, on a few occasions, one of the demonstrators against our disastrous involvement in Vietnam. Today, as an old man (80 this August), I can only cheer on the protesters against our involvement in the Israeli butchery.
mb
“I want to wake up in a city that’s full of rage. And find it’s king of all crime. Violence galore…..It’s up to you, New York, New York.”
ReplyDeleteYep. Road rage on sidewalks. Drive by stabbings on mopeds. A store robbery with a slashing. Another dognapping with a slashing. Only here in “the greatest city in the world”.
https://nypost.com/2024/04/24/us-news/driver-plows-car-onto-nyc-sidewalk-in-wild-road-rage-incident-video/
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/2-teens-stabbed-in-queens-suspects-flee-on-mopeds
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/employee-slashed-by-robber-at-99-cent-store-in-brooklyn
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/suspect-slashed-man-on-chelsea-street-ran-off-with-yorkie
p.s. Doctor, You mention above Kent State. Check out our leading high school dropout gun right’s activist ( and my choice for Trump’s chief of staff) who spoke there recently. He thinks every student should carry guns on campus. Yeah. With young doofuses like him doing college speaking engagements, this country’s rosy future certainly is assured. LOL!
https://www.rawstory.com/kyle-rittenhouse-2667867679/
ps2:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/mpac_national/status/1783299472912793692
Joe-
ReplyDeleteKill, kill, kill!
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-23/lonely-in-america-killed-by-a-stranger-on-the-subway
Almost every non Westerner that I've ever met or read about distinguishes between Zionism and Judaism. The first being a political ideology that, in the most part, is an extension of the age of colonialism, and the second, a religion. In Western Europe and North America however there is a confusion between the two (idk if it is intentional or not). And this confusion frames every talk that is critical of Israel and Zionism as racist, antisemitic etc. This way, any and all discussions about Israel and Zionism is killed before it starts, that includes any attempt at building a bridge between the two sides, or any attempt at clearing the confusion (the idea that Judaism and Zionism are two sepearate thing is antisemitic to them). And it helps to paint middle easterners and the rest of the Anti-Zionist world as antisemitic and racist bigots.
ReplyDeleteThe game is rigged.
Here's a good article about an Egyptian sociologist's view on Israel (it's a Pdf file, so beware if you do not want it to be automatically downloaded):
https://www.memopublishers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/20150519_Abdelwahab-Elmessiri-Memorial-Lecture-Ronnie-Kasrils-2.pdf
A WP op ed that went unnoticed:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/02/anti-zionism-antisemitism-israel-jews-came-first/
Why anti-Zionism is antisemitic
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/anti-zionism
ReplyDeleteHello Wafers. I was reading about one of my favorite curmudgeons, Eugene O'Neill who was very critical of America and this essay got me thinking about the lack of self transparency, the Cartesian dualism, and lack of spirituality due to trading in what is good and important for empty hustling.
https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/eugene-oneill-the-darkness-of-america/
This in turn reminded me of an essay I read a while back that references Dr. Berman. This site, btw has many Wafer friendly texts, some which have been mentioned here before. Howard Zinn, Tolstoy's work, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ellul, and the works of Ivan Illich. Just thought many Wafers would enjoy.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dave-hanson-shamanism-anarchy-and-the-end-of-the-world
french-
ReplyDeleteJust that in its early phase, a lot of Zionism was a reaction to extreme antisemitism: pogroms in Russia, and so forth. In the context of getting massacred, Jews found immigration, both to the US and Palestine, an attractive solution. My own family, on both sides, chose America, but were unthinking Zionists. I.e., they didn't think in colonial terms. However, even early Zionist lit contained the idea of ethnic transfer of the Pals. A notable exception, who was completely ignored, was Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsberg). His writings still ring true.
mb
french-
ReplyDeletePost only once every 24 hrs, thank you.
mb
MB,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for posting the speech by Naomi Klein.
I just came across a video of her delivering that speech and found it quite moving:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U75KcMUjMyI
ccg-
ReplyDeleteThe overriding reality is that the 1st world wants to preserve its hegemony over the 3rd world, and the latter wants this arrangement to come to an end. Which it will; this is History's destiny (aka karma). The US and Israel are fighting a losing battle. Both, in the fullness of time, will be known as agents of genocide. My desire to vomit on the head of the pres of Columbia University is very strong.
mb
ps: Also check this out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-04-25/student-protests-campus-columbia-usc-ut-austin-israel-palestinians
What is amazing is that the powers that be never learn anything. The history of repressing protests is that the heavy-handed approach is stupid, because it nearly always backfires: i.e., it fuels more protest. But no: shitheads like Minouche Shafik press on with the old self-destructive formulas. That this is self-defeating literally never enters their thick heads.
mb
Of course there are mass graves. After 6 months of bombing hospitals, apartment buildings, and refugee centers, where do you think all the bodies were going? This is the scene in the play where the press acts as if there is something a little odd going on in Gaza, but they are just finding out. In any case, the claims are being made by Gaza Civil Defense Ministry, so it can't be believed (Fake photos?). Investigations are needed! But Israel won't approve them, so, the Biden Genocide, being paid for by my taxes, goes on.
ReplyDeleteWhen all are starved or shot, then "the truth" will come out, but the media will continue saying there were Hamas in the hospitals, so Israel was justified. Many patients with hospital bracelets on were shot, and some buried alive. Anyone who has spent any time following this cannot possibly be surprised, this is unabashedly Israeli modus operandi all along. Biden actually said that the college protesters "just don't understand what is going on." The problem is that they do. The protests on campus are some small solace; they are at least bearing witness to this atrocity, as Gaza has no voice.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/middleeast/gaza-400-bodies-mass-grave-hospital-intl/index.html
I just happened to stumble on this series of videos of interviews with Trump supporters. I found them all very entertaining and definitely disturbing. These people have almost no connection with reality. Many of them illustrate the Dunning Kruger effect for sure. But if you really want to know what half the country is like, these interviews are a great window into the crazy stuff that percolates in their heads. The interviewer looks almost like a teenager, but he does a pretty admirable job overall:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF5VWY4OT9Mt4ZSiir4tJANMVFj2eH3b5
Do any Wafers by any chance follow the gab-fests put on the various CPAC outfits both in the US and Europe. Gab-fests featuring talking pooh-bags wherein the deeply psychotic nature of applied right-wing politics is fully on display.
ReplyDeleteThese two references provide an insight into their collective zeitgeist.
The first one is an avid supporter of the Trumpen-fuhrer - he is not a teenager!
http://tomklingenstein.com/the-war
http://lucasmiles.org/woke-jesus
Wafers-
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/25/world/stability-spiral-china-blinken-intl-hnk/index.html
Is there any chance that Schminken would *not* choose a downward spiral, over stability? That he wd choose cooperation over competition? He is, after all, an American (=clueless shmuck/buffoon).
As for Trumpi: Is there any chance that the Supreme Court will not muddy the immunity issue, so as to postpone the trial until after the election in Nov.--after wh/, the whole thing will become moot?
Nationwide campus protest demonstrations: Is there any chance university admins will not call in the police to arrest the protesters? (And: How long b4 they call in the National Guard?)
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2024/04/26/pro-palestinian-protests-college-campus-usc-emory-columbia-watt-ebof-vpx.cnn
Finally: Is there any chance the US, degraded and debased, will not have collapsed by 2030?
mb
ps: Megan, Normal: remember: the worse, the better. Both the Trumpites, and the Wokes, are doing their best to ring down the curtain on the American experiment. Unwittingly, both sides have the same (inadvertent) goal. It may be achieved quietly, or by a tornado-like ecpyrosis; but whatever the scenario, by 2030 it will be a fait accompli. There is simply no way around it: we are doing all the wrong things, and are moving relentlessly toward the Abyss. Historically speaking, dying empires don't suddenly reverse course at the 11th hour. Neither Schmiden, nor Trumpi, nor the American people, are going to have a sudden epiphany, and wake up. (England has basically turned into a shit pile; why won't we? How different are Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss from Schmiden and Trumpola?)
ReplyDeleteHow long, my friends, have I been saying O & D?
ps2: Let me add that I find this strangely symbolic of where the US is at:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/opinion/teen-sex-choking.html
Wow these protests are getting ugly. I have a feeling this is going escalate into something bigger and revelatory. About 1:07 into this clip a kid hocks spit at the police. However if these cops were real Americans they would gun everyone down. Then point the gun at themselves and say, "gobble, gobble" before ending it all.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUDhvHa5GOc
And also this. Our descent is moving rapidly. Part of me rejoices. I am sick of the landscape being blighted by strip malls and horrible yuppie apartment complexes anyway.
https://www.businessinsider.com/stores-closing-in-2024-list
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteMB, Wafers-
In light of where the US finds itself at this late date, I would like to include a bit of levity to our situation. I'm trying to come up w/a couple of gd David *Pecker* jokes in honor of the farcical Hush Money trial:
Judge Merchan: "Prosecutors, the time has come to bring out yr Pecker."
I hear David Pecker is an upstanding guy!
A Pecker and a Dictator walk into a courtroom...
Please feel free to add to this list.
You know what's a good way to help out Trump on the campaign trail? Make him sit in a courtroom for 6 weeks acting and looking like a political martyr who is being persecuted by the Democrats. Someone should tell the Dems that this is a role that Trump plays wells. In any case, Trumpi is the Harry Houdini of politics. Whatever is thrown at him, he will escape from.
MB-
Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the Texas-style Wafer summit in Houston. I will be w/you all in spirit.
Jeff
ReplyDeleteToday’s hot stock tip: Raytheon. Here’s why. You also just gotta love the name: a “patriot” missile. LOL! Hats off to our ongoing permanent war economy!
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-funding-war-russia-patriot-missiles-026fc8f9ee064ffb49bbee2422e2908b
Meanwhile the “love” shows no sign of abating here in the Big Apple. A 71 year old woman gets her walker stolen. Also, a jogger in Central Park ( sound familiar?) gets pistol whipped, mugged and robbed.
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/walker-snatching-attacker-knocks-woman-to-ground-in-midtown
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/trio-pistol-whips-mugs-man-near-the-lake-in-central-park
And here’s something to ponder. Maybe Schmiden knows something. Perhaps it’s a fait accompli and he’s making room for the return of The Don!
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/politics/planning-for-potential-presidential-transition-underway-as-biden-administration-kicks-it-off
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
Jeff-
ReplyDeleteAs for Houston, it looks like the Wafer Summit plan is going to crash and burn. So far, I've had one taker, whereas the minimum is 5 for it to happen. That being said, despite the danger that NY now poses to any resident, I'm thinking that we might do the Wafer Summit there in Oct. or next spring. Stay tuned.
mb
My state governor Kristi noem wants to be trumps vp. So she just released a book. In the book she brags about killing her dog with a gun because he was misbehaving. What a sicko. What kind of person brags about killing a dog. I’m guessing she wrote this so the MAGA crowd can see her as though and not afraid to make hard decisions. I know on a farm you have to put animals down sometimes but it’s not something you brag about in a book.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/trump-kristi-noem-shot-dog-and-goat-book
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteI'm taking a poll. I'm obsessed w/the idea of flying to NY, eating some rotten fish, drinking a pint of soap suds, going up to Columbia University, and projectile vomiting on the president. I'm talking abt a river of barf. How many of u think this makes me a bad person?
mb
MB,
ReplyDeleteI think that is a great idea! But save some vomit for one Shai Davidai, a professor at Columbia who obnoxious behavior is discussed in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-cdfToV-jY&t=717s
There just isn't vomit to go around considered all that need it.
By the way, two of the guys doing these videos, Keaton Weise and Russel Dobular, are anti-Zionist Jews.
Molly-
ReplyDeleteSorry, cdn't run it, as it was over the half-pg limit. Pls edit down and re-send. Thank you.
mb
Check it out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/philip-shribman-liberal-arts-wwii/677836/
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel
ReplyDelete"The Case Ahainst Travel"
Quite a Wafer essay! Sharp critique of the tourist lifestyle, brought it up to my gf and she just didn't get it. And she's a Peruvian living in Miami.. A v good essay IMHO!
An American telling someone to leave Ireland (the American is getting deported himself)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1cavovj/american_tells_person_to_leave_ireland/
It can't get more absurd than this. There are tons of videos and articles of Americans being horrible tourists, but it's the first time I see an American posing as a customs agent in a foreign country.
Here's also an old statistic where some Americans think they can beat elephants and bears in a fist fight.
https://www.newsweek.com/surprising-americans-beat-wild-animals-fight-experts-1691793
Americans never seize to amaze me.
Cam- Yes. This. I've read that article before and similar ones on medium and I thought I was the only one that felt that way. I am not "against" travel or new experiences but it takes on a certain tone with professional class types as one more virtue signal or status symbol. It seems to be one more way of trying to fill that inner void.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't know if this is evidence of decline but I couldn't resist this. I think this is somewhat symbolic. Enjoy.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-blasting-turkey-calls-neighbors-170957502.html
mau, french-
ReplyDeleteBe sure to read my forthcoming bk, "The Degradation of the Buffoons."
mb
The other day I read a comment somewhere indicating that Shafik was actually a Britsh baroness and that she was given this title for Alexandria, which last I checked was in a non-British nation (Egypt). That pretty much tells me everything I really need to know about Shafik AND the British.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minouche_Shafik
Also: Thank you Professor Berman-- your blog and the wonderful commentators here are like the proverbial candle in the window on a cold, dark and stormy night.
Here's an anti-buffoon movement:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/27/opinions/yale-student-palestinian-protests-berlin/index.html
Unlike (most of) the Israelis, these are real Jews w/real Jewish values.
And at Berkeley:
https://www.ktvu.com/news/uc-berkeley-protesters-vow-to-keep-camping-out-until-they-get-their-way
(Remember Mario Savio!)
Strange-
ReplyDeleteThank you. I hope you will join me for the Shafik Vomit Project (SVP).
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of amazing how every 5 or 6 yrs another biography of Alfred Dreyfus, or bk on the Dreyfus Affair, appears in English (let alone publications in France). The latest is by Maurice Samuels, excellently reviewed in the April 18 issue of the NYRB. What I find fascinating is the enormous energy, depth, and continuity of antisemitism. Thomas Sowell once said the cause of it is that Jews tend to be very successful, and added that if Jews failed, antisemitism wd disappear. I suppose that's part of it, but as I read the NYRB review, I cdn't avoid the feeling that there is something primal about hatred of Jews. Ultimately, it seems inexplicable.
Although my sympathies in the war on Gaza are completely with the Palestinians, I do understand the fear that Jewish students at Columbia and elsewhere feel, because Jew-hatred is simply no idle threat, as history has repeatedly made clear. Of course, most of the pro-Pal demonstrators are simply pro-Pal, not antisemitic; and nationwide, there are many (fine) Jews among them. But it looks like there is some spillover into antisemitism (history and social movements tend to be messy)--2%? 5%?--and that is a dangerous tendency. One can only hope it can be resisted, or confined.
On the other side, we have a recent clip from Bill Maher, decrying the fact that the demos are interrupting traffic(!). Pretty disgusting, imo. At least where the subject of Israel is concerned, Maher represents the worst type of American Jew. This is not much better than labeling every critique of Israel as antisemitic, wh/I find equally disgusting. Short of vomiting on Minouche Shafik, what can one do?
Anyway, I just want to weigh in on the side of the Jewish students who are justifiably fearful. Police shd be on campus not to break up pro-Pal demos (another disgusting act), but to protect the Jews.
What a fucking mess.
mb
ps: Dreyfus was ultimately (1906) exonerated, reinstated into the army (he fought in WWI), and made a chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. But to my knowledge--I cd be wrong--the French gov't never publicly apologized to him or his family, and never explictly admitted any wrongdoing. He died in 1935. During WWII, the Vichy gov't deported 75,000 Jews to the east, to be murdered by the Nazis. Madeleine Levy, Dreyfus' granddaughter, was among them. She died of typhus, in Auschwitz, in 1944.
ReplyDeleteps2: The shame of the universities:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/us/northeastern-arizona-state-university-protests-arrests.html
ps3: The Degradation of the Buffoons:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/27/opinion/us-arms-disclosure-ukraine-israel.html
This is protest German style, where students are really getting their asses kicked by German police. Brave kids. So much for the new and improved German image and "never again."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newarab.com/news/berlin-targets-gaza-protest-camp-bans-police-brutality#:~:text=Since%20Monday%2C%20April%208th%2C%20pro,involvement%20in%20the%20Gaza%20genocide.
Don't forget the Italians: "April 25th in Italy is the day of Italian resistance and the liberation of our country from Nazi-fascism in 1945, but in addition to the celebration of freedom, we must also support the oppressed people of Gaza and the Palestinian resistance."
https://iranpress.com/pro-palestinian-rallies-held-in-rome
Molly-
ReplyDeleteI love Italy.
mb
For a nasty, buffoonish, racist, big-name Trump pastor, check out this awful excuse for a human being:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja3zKXhEq3s&t=87s
To her credit, Ketanji Brown Jackson sounded by far the most sensible and mature of the nine, at least last week during the discussion of the immunity question. These people make such a joke of Christianity. If I believed that the Anti-Christ was a real thing (Scholars almost universally agree that 666 was simply a reference to Nero), then Trump would fit the bill pretty well. Sensible young people are dropping out of church in droves because they associate it with Trump. Even though I'm not a Christian, I still think this is sad to see. Overall, I think we are better off with a kind of intelligent, mainline church that at least makes people think, whether for or against. Back in the days of Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebur, etc. Those guys at least talked about things like "Ultimate concern," the meaning of life, etc. Now we have these fatuous megachurch clowns, so I totally see why kids are just tossing it all aside. At least the older more dignified generation, made even atheists look a bit deeper at their atheism. Now we have shallow belief and shallow unbelief.
https://www.businessinsider.com/christians-trump-pushed-some-young-christians-away-from-churches-2020-11
This nation gets better by the second. This woman says America should burn. But her resolve is a typical self absorbed American response. Some of her complaints are valid but her response is a little half baked methinks.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.foxnews.com/media/maryland-city-equity-official-says-wants-us-burn-ground-ideology-rise-ashes
Ahhh...the memories of American high school. It's Spring and violence is in the air. Maybe this isn't evidence of further collapse but business as usual for American high schools.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kentucky-girl-14-brutally-attacked-182631449.html
And on a more humorous note. This could be symbolic. Right liquid, wrong article of clothing. This should be shoes, not jeans.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/pee-stain-denim-designer-jeans-124349432.html
Megan, mau-
ReplyDelete1. Bad Is Gd
2. No amt of slapping/No amt of urine
3. My latest poem:
Our hearts are tin-plated;
We are buffoons--and degraded!
mb
As this joke of a country slides into oblivion, it’s giving us a great many laughs in the process. Check out these (typical out-of-shape USAin) amateur fighters trying to duke it out in one of the daily road rages here. LOL!
ReplyDeletehttps://ktla.com/news/local-news/apparent-road-rage-brawl-on-busy-los-angeles-freeway-caught-on-video/
The world also is laughing at the U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! with all its mass shootings. Perhaps other countries are keeping score. With their latest one, for this year Florida is in first place. It’s a three way tie for second place among California, Texas and Illinois.
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/crime/2024/04/28/cabana-live-sanford-florida-mass-shooting-bar/73491239007/
And other countries are laughing at taxpayers’ money being spent on annual idiotic White House correspondents dinners. Yes. What a comedy show this pathetic country really is.
https://people.com/funniest-roasts-2024-white-house-correspondents-dinner-colin-jost-joe-biden-8640014
Repent, the End is Near Department
ReplyDeleteEast Carolina University in Greenville, NC reports that its English department is “about to gain some curriculum from music’s most celebrated, yet tortured poet.”
What do ECU’s English students have to look forward to in the fall semester? “Taylor’s Version” (English 1500), an examination of Taylor Swift’s work and the fandom of her “Swifties.”
The professor who will teach the class got the idea after taking a Swift-based course. Apparently, “many other colleges and universities have introduced classes around Swift.”
Some might contend that Swift hasn’t been “tortured” enough.
https://wr.al/1RncP.
Jas-
ReplyDeletePls update yr post-it as follows:
THE DEGRADATION OF THE BUFFOONS
mb
I just finished a 10 ep documentary on vietnam war, one of the best I've ever watched. They interviewed a number of the anti-war protesters and activists as well as a number of soldiers that turned anti-war activists. The veterans, although considered the war sensless, were still proud of their service (how can a person be proud of doing something he considers meaningless? idk). The others, the anti-war activists who were not soldiers, showed regret to some of what they did, like calling soldiers baby killers, or considering them idiots etc. And it got me thinking about today, in 30 years when the current war becomes a subject of a documentary, how many student demonstrator will say that they regret saying what they said, or doing what they did? How many of them will claim that they failed to see the humanity of the Israeli soldier committing war crimes and being proud of them? I bet there will be a number of them.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war
The fix is in dept.:
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've ever seen anything like what happened in the Supreme Court's presidential immunity hearing. It seems to me that the respect for the law and its credibility was entirely trashed by the highest court in the land. I single out Justice Alito's absurd reasoning that presidents *need* immunity from prosecution in order to encourage them to accept electoral defeat and preserve American democracy. Say what, Sammy? Considering that this entire case is about a president who sought to illegally remain in office-and whose supporters staged a violent insurrection to help him do just that-this was a stunning argument to make. These right-wing justices are making it very clear that the fix is in, and that power and privilege trump (pun intended) the rule of law, it seems to me. And even if they don't let Trump skate, at the very least they'll delay the trial so that the voters will not learn about January 6th until after the November elections. Suffice it to say, it would be a tragedy, and I do not use that word lightly, if the trial of Donald J. Trumpola for undermining American democracy is postponed until after the election. Don't we have an absolute right to know whether or not Trump is criminally liable for what he did in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election? Oy vey.
Jeff
french-
ReplyDeleteWhat the world finally saw, by 1970, was a technological superpower trying to pound Vietnamese peasants (3 million dead) into oblivion. But spirit and dedication won out over that hi-tech genocide, and the US, thank god, was defeated. As history repeats itself, I'm hoping the Palestinians will prevail over the IDF, and the materiel sent to it by the US. Vietnam was a great stain on us, a shameful episode in our history (as was our destruction of Iraq), and hopefully our promotion of Israeli genocide will be another shameful episode in the eyes of the world. We are not merely a rogue state; we are a literal horror show. And the presidents of our 'distinguished' universities have blood on their hands.
Jeff-
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/trump-presidential-inmunity-supreme-court/678193/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/supreme-court-poised-unshackle-second-trump-term/678190/
To sum up: America is a joke.
mb
ps: Most reports now have it that the likelihood of a Nov. victory for Trumpi has gone from possible to probable. This will be our end game, as by 2030, the curtain will ring down on the American expt.
ReplyDeleteps2: Signs of a country in its death throes:
ReplyDelete‘Do not bow’: ex-Black Panther praises pro-Palestinian student protesters from prison | New York | The Guardian
Prison officers traumatized by rate of executions in US death penalty states | Capital punishment | The Guardian
Spaywall News | Us Student Protests Gaza Israel
Self-destruction at full tilt!
ps3: More stupidity! More degradation! More buffoonage!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-27/usc-valedictorian-commencement-turmoil
Jean-Paul Sartre and the Problem of Being “Progressive Except for Palestine”
ReplyDeleteThe French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was famous for his anti-colonial positions, but waffled when it came to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Why did he struggle to be consistent, and what does that tell us about “progressive except for Palestine” intellectuals today?
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/06/jean-paul-sartre-and-the-problem-of-being-progressive-except-for-palestine
^^Sartre’s historically frustrating “progressive except for Palestine” (PEP) position is unfortunately rather pervasive in the States among alleged progressives. It’s also as indefensible as it ever was.
Noe-
ReplyDeleteSartre felt that the Holocaust gave Israel a free pass.
mb
Sean-
ReplyDeleteWe are a discussion forum, not a bulletin board. You need to provide at least a paragraph of commentary, when you submit a link. Thank you.
mb
Derek-
ReplyDeleteCdn't run it, as you were over the half-pg limit. Pls edit down and re-send. Thank you.
mb
I love this country. It's a turkey extravaganza. It's spring and everyone is out and about for some fresh air and sun. There was a brawl at Busch Gardens. Nothing says family gatherings in America like a public beat down.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/news/chaos-erupts-busch-gardens-violent-144518408.html
The entire amusement park then put signs in front of all rides reading "You must be this stupid to enter the ride"
"England is going nowhere. It has no purpose, nor any coherent meaning...it is...a very likely look at America's future. We too have no serious purpose...And this doomsday scenario can only increase as we move, catastrophically, toward 2030.”
ReplyDeleteI'm reading your book "Are We There Yet?" so this comment you made earlier in the thread is intriguing. There are societies much older than the US or even the UK. Mexico goes back to 1500 BC, and China and India are even older. Where are they going? What’s their purpose and meaning?
By asking such questions you imply that you have an intended direction, purpose, and meaning that you would like to see human societies move towards. Could you maybe talk about that?
ReplyDeleteI like the saying ‘round here: “when myth meets fact, myth wins”. Illan Pappe writes in “Ten Myths About Israel” that: “we all deserve a better ending to the story of the Holocaust…Nothing like that could happen if we continue to fall into the trap of treating mythologies as truths." So I tracked down this Edward Said quote on X to a Charlie Rose interview: “There’s no secret about it, everybody knows that the destruction of Palestinian society resulted in the establishment of Israel. It’s as simple as that.” IMO, Said offers something like courtroom testimony, presenting the facts of the case, not the witness’s feelings about, or interpretations of those facts. Meanwhile, Rose either interrupts or invokes “myths” and interpretations re: 1948, etc. (Pappe: “Semantics not practice.”) If u r unable to ignore Rose’s magpie theatrics, here’s a brief ditty or apothegm I composed to get u thru it, titled “Attack”:
Charlie Rose
Sat on
A tack
Charlie rose
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JiSkqdcd9o?si=iY29v4tQgamG7Em9 (Said quote at 10:36 in)
https://www.amazon.com/Myths-About-Israel-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1786630192
Derek-
ReplyDeleteMany yrs ago, Rose had Noam Chomsky on for an hr-long interview. Instead of letting him speak, he kept interrupting him and talking over him. Noam got in no more than 8 mins of talk during the whole 60 mins. Rose was so threatened by what Noam had to say, that he was unable to let him speak freely. A true American (spineless douchebag/total buffoon), in short.
Glou-
Yrs ago I wrote a Preface to the Mandarin translation of "Why America Failed," in wh/I said that China was basically the US in Mandarin, and therefore on the wrong path. That it was just copying our values in terms of $ and power--the next hegemon. A spiritual failure, in other words (to my amazement, the Chinese gov't allowed it to be printed; go figure). I can't comment on India; don't know enuf, except to say that the British inflicted permanent damage on it. But Mexico, for me, falls into the category described by the historian Marc Bloch, who said the test of a society is whether it delivers the goods, i.e., makes its citizens happy. This has not been true of Mexico for a long time now, but during the sexenia of AMLO, he strove to do just that, and imo accomplished a lot in that direction (telling the US to fuck off and leave Mexico alone certainly helped). On June 2, Claudia Sheinbaum will probably be elected president, and as she is his protege, we can only hope that she will continue w/his agenda.
So in general, I agree w/Bloch; but if you'd like to see a detailed elaboration of this, check out the 2nd story in my short story collection, "The Heart of the Matter," and also my most recent bk, "The Crisis of Our Time."
mb
sociopaths R us:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/29/2237931/-Kristi-Noem-s-story-of-murdering-her-dog-keeps-getting-worse
what sick human beings ... she and her ilk ...
and, in plain sight, the wackos on the SC continue laying the groundwork for fascism in the US:
https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1784607868164984992
alito = complete and utter moron; is there a bigger buffoon?
DTE
Dio-
ReplyDeleteRemember: Bad Is Gd. I can't help myself: I love a gd buffoon. B of A: Buffoons of America. They are ringing down the curtain on the final act. The end is nigh.
"Our knives are serrated;
We are buffoons--and degraded!"
mb
Tick Tock:
ReplyDeleteThe shadow of Trumpi stalks the nation relentlessly, as we move toward Nov. 5. Day after day, we move steadily toward our doom. Schmiden can't win, as too many voters realize that he is a senile doofus. I predicted The End in 2000; was anyone listening? Ha! On the historical agenda: our descent into violence, madness, self-destruction, and of course, denial. The Iron Law of Karma haunts a nation riddled with runaway narcissism, unbridled selfishness, and deep, deep cruelty. Game/Set/Match.
mb
A courageous commentator, an important essay:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/opinion/student-protests-columbia-israel.html
How awful is the admin at Columbia!
A Fort Worth teen did himself in, & the dad is now desperate to spread the word on mental health "awareness". All the "awareness" in the world won't change diddly squat. Amerikkka isn't a place where kids grow up sane, is it?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/fort-worth-father-spreads-mental-health-awareness-after-teen-sons-suicide/ar-AA1nSUBs
Sven-
ReplyDeleteLife will be a lot easier 4u if you keep in mind that you are living among dolts. This shd be yr new post-it:
I'M LIVING AMONG DOLTS
You'll feel better, you'll see.
mb
ps: https://johnmenadue.com/the-empire-is-in-free-fall/
ReplyDelete"Our mistakes have been collated;
We are buffoons--and degraded!"
Landulf-
ReplyDeleteI guess yr not familiar w/this blog. If you want to get posted, you need to limit yr posts to half a pg, max. Thank you.
Wafers-
Check this out:
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-04-29/column-calling-the-police-on-campus-protests-show-that-college-presidents-havent-learned-a-thing-since-the-1960s
Why haven't college presidents learned a thing since the sixties? (a question not addressed in this article). Because they are buffoons! (The American 'solution' to any problem, lg or small, at home or abroad, is force.)
mb
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteI apologize for the length of the comment in question, but as it’s a complicated matter, it’s not easy to summarize in a paragraph or two. Here goes though!
Like many these days, i’m forced to wonder if we’re not living in the “end times” for the human species or at least civilization as we know it. Few things seem to be a better indicator of that than the extreme cruelty I see among so many these days. A nihilistic “cruelty for cruelty’s sake”, if you will. Case in point…this Neo-Nazi “Satanist” organization. It’s not exclusively made up of Americans, but many of members are American and of those, most are young people in their teens and twenties. That probably won’t come as a big surprise here since many Wafers appear to believe Americans have a greater “sadism problem” than most modern peoples do. I’ll let the following articles say everything I could say about the group, but I feel obligated to include a “trigger warning” for all of them since they’re easily am among the most disturbing things I’ve ever encountered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
https://chokingonsignal.medium.com/com-extortion-groups-and-the-order-of-nine-angles-9fe1f8419526
https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/publications/dangerous-organizations-and-bad-actors-order-nine
Landulf-
ReplyDeleteI'm frankly puzzled by the origins of sadism. There are a # of psychological explanations of the phenomenon, and they may even be correct. But I still find something inexplicable abt it. As far as civilization goes, check out my bk "Wandering God." War only shows up in the archaeological record in the Late Paleolithic. It's not an inherent property of being human.
mb
Well, the ones shouting kill the Jews in the Northeastern University that got 100 students arrested were pro Israel cunts. Basically, they do the crime, stick it to their opponent and start weeping over it.
ReplyDeleteAt this point I have come to believe that every accusation of a crime by Zionists (or US officials) is a concealed confession of doing said crime.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-israel-agitator-shouts-kill-the-jews-gets-everyone-else-arrested
“Asked why India would risk attempting an assassination on U.S. soil, a Western security official said: ‘Because they knew they could get away with it.’”
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/india-assassination-raw-sikhs-modi/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzE0MzYzMjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzE1NzQ1NTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MTQzNjMyMDAsImp0aSI6IjQ0N2IyYjhhLTVmOTMtNGQ2NC1hNzhiLTcxMGJiZTkwZDc5MSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS93b3JsZC8yMDI0LzA0LzI5L2luZGlhLWFzc2Fzc2luYXRpb24tcmF3LXNpa2hzLW1vZGkvIn0.fJzPlOkOZM-5-rjARgD0mdnQ85ZjHz_F0tDbtKxADMM&itid=gfta
Usually it's the war hawk crowd saying that America looks weak, but increasingly it looks like America is getting pushed around by right-wing leaders the war hawks like, and they're completely silent about it or even supportive! At the very least America could deploy some targeted sanctions against Indian intelligence, but it seems like they're just hoping Modi chills on the assassination business. What a paper tiger....
Liah-
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that Indians regard Americans as douche bags, but I don't know how to say 'douchebag' in Hindi.
french-
It wd seem that every time Israel denies some (heinous) action, it proves to be true.
mb
Dr. Berman said- (The American 'solution' to any problem, lg or small, at home or abroad, is force.
ReplyDeleteYes. Even something as simple and mundane as daily conversation carries with it an air of force, competition, and a need to control. If you really listen to people in conversation it's more like a boxing match than an exchange. Exchange=mutuality, which I suppose is practically illegal in USA.
A Wafer worthy film, Starship Troopers covers America's world outlook perfectly. I often joke this is a documentary on American foreign policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxgrr0wL8M
Most recent interview with Trump. I don't know about you, but this gives me chills. E.g. talks about putting millions of people into "camps":
ReplyDeletehttps://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/
mau-
ReplyDeleteThe crucial pt is that Americans have literally 0 self-transparency. They are completely unaware that they are degraded and debased, are morons, and that their lives are guided by self-destructive values. This is today's America, and as we descend toward 2030, it will only get worse.
Dev-
If he restricts himself to Wokes and the staff/Op-Ed crowd at the NYT, I'll be in full support. I do want to add, however, that while the Schmiden regime amounts to war crimes, genocide, and incredible stupidity, the forthcoming Trumpi regime will consist of unequivocal, and straightforward, fascism.
mb
While we normally relate decadent America to decadent Rome, in that, like the Romans we have the same crass love of money, spectacle, brutality, and so forth, I think that one can find many parallels with the Athens of the Peloponnesian War. On this subject, Victor Davis Hanson's book "A War Like No Other" is really gripping. (If I put the link it will put me over the half page limit) Hanson is also a wonderful speaker:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsGEf6wjzcE (The fact that such a brilliant man supports Trump, and even wrote an entire book on the subject, is beyond bewildering to me. He seems rather good-natured, and "High IQ moron" doesn't quite work. He has a penetrating mind and his grasp of history is second to none. So, I just enjoy his books and accept his "Trumpiness" as one of the more fucked-up and impenetrable mysteries of this mysterious universe.)
At any rate, the "Sicilian Expedition" was the Athenian Vietnam. The "Revolt of Myteline" and the decision to massacre the entire population, then, a day later, "no, bad idea, let's spare them," "rhymes" somewhat with our "policy" in Afghanistan. If nothing else, the spectacular fall of Athens is an object lesson in how fast and how hard even the highest civilizations can crash and burn. (And was not Alcibiades the Bill Clinton of the ancient world?!)
American moron in action:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/travel/bison-injures-man-yellowstone-arrest/index.html
I'm wondering if we're the stupidest people on earth.
MB,
ReplyDeleteI checked out that link u posted in the postscript 2 my comment…gr8 read! This snippet sums up Amerikkka's situation perfectly:
“It is becoming increasingly apparent that the United States is violating a well-known military maxim by continuing to reinforce failure.”
While Amerikkka is continuing its self-destruction, China is getting on w/ shit. Shanghai is opening a new railway station
https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20240411/4b6106c5fbc041ac838b39a25563180a.html
There's no reason Amerikkka can't be doing more of these kinds of projects. But instead it's going the way of Rome, the USSR, etc. thinking it can maintain domestic affairs AND an empire. Clearly it can't do both
mb re: unequivocal fascism
ReplyDelete"What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen."
https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/
holy hell this guy is gonna tear this country down....
Riley-
ReplyDeleteI think that's what we're looking at.
Megan-
The same can be said of the Third Reich, wh/overturned a great civilization overnite. To both u and Riley I say, These things happen.
mb
Hola MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeletePaul Auster has died:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/may/01/paul-auster-dies-aged-77-death-american-author-new-york-trilogy
The last Auster book I read was "Bloodbath Nation." Anyone interested in the haunting ramifications of America's gun violence epidemic should read it.
Riley-
How Trump channels Hitler:
https://enewspaper.nydailynews.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=367a0031-6ea2-4aa6-954b-21b9ed4a872b
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSxJRIiCNs8
Jeff
Hello Wafers. Tucker Carlson, say what you will about him, continues to irk the comfortable classes by having guests on that would never be allowed on mainstream media. Alexander Dugin has recently been interviewed and he critiques techno-douchebaggery of the west. Fukiyama is mentioned in the conversation as well.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIULmTprQ6o
Also, things are getting ugly in my state of residence. These protests are worrisome. I have a feeling this is going to be a hot summer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2XBFE3Lp8
mau-
ReplyDeleteThanks for links. Keep in mind that America is steeped in degradation, and it gets worse by the day. Personally, I can't think of a single reason why Shafik shdn't be waterboarded 185 times. Meanwhile, our collapse is 100% assured now, perhaps even b4 2030. This is the momentum of History, and it can't be stopped, tho scumbags like Shafik and Schmiden are trying very hard.
mb
Sorry, but there is nothing great about interviewing the fascist Dugin. This is what he wrote in 1997 translated as Fascism – Borderless and Red.
ReplyDeletehttp://samlib.ru/c/cushero/dugine_nazbol.shtml
He is a psychopath calling for mass murder, and I find it frankly disturbing that anyone would paint him as an alternative source worth listening to. Just because he is against America does not make him someone worth listening to. He is an admirer of Julius Evola and Carl Schmitt. They also criticized "technodouchebaggery" - is that your only criterion of what's a worthy social critique ? On and he praised Stalinism!
Dev-
ReplyDeleteThanks for your aviso. I never heard of him, altho I know abt Evola and Schmitt. But here's a larger issue: after WW2, Bertolt Brecht said of fascism, "The bitch is still in heat." The puzzling fact is that it persists, has mass appeal. Why wd that be? Millions in America adore Trump, and he will probably be re-elected.
Trying to explain the attraction of fascism, Wilhelm Reich once observed that socialism was boring, while fascism was sexy. Is that it? (A more boring person than Schmiden, I can't imagine.)
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteLet's hear it for the good guys:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/columbia-university-student-protesters-arrested-faculty-reacts
This is what the protesters are protesting, and what the genocidal US and genocidal Israel are causing:
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/may/01/rafah-graveyards-children-european-hospital-injured-dying
Meanwhile, here's how a decent country manages things:
https://www.spaywall.com/news/https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/may/01/fewer-wildfires-great-biodiversity-what-is-the-secret-to-the-success-of-mexicos-forests
mb
Hi Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteto respond to your question regarding the continuing appeal of fascism, I have a working hypothesis based on recent discoveries in neuroscience. According to latest research, power is literally addictive on the level of brain hormones and circuitry:
https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/neurochemistry-power-implications-political-change/
"Power, especially absolute and unchecked power, is intoxicating. Its effects occur at the cellular and neurochemical level. They are manifested behaviourally in a variety of ways, ranging from heightened cognitive functions to lack of inhibition, poor judgment, extreme narcissism, perverted behaviour, and gruesome cruelty." To put it short, power rewards dopamine, which in turn turns off empathy. So maybe Reich was right in that fascism is "sexy" because it is intoxicating.
This might be the difference between fascism and socialism, as socialism seeks to distribute power, while fascism venerates power. "The will to power" anyone? It is interesting that mindfulness meditation seeks to switch off the dopaminergic system, resulting in increased empathy and sends dopamine into our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control.
https://www.mindful.org/the-science-of-wanting-how-we-unhook-from-dopamine/
Dev-
ReplyDeleteI suspect you are a krasivaya devushka. Am I right? (just a small bit of flirting here)
The will to power probably is inherent. Check out "Wandering God": turns out, hunter-gatherer societies have (or had) what are called "leveling mechanisms," to keep ego in check. The section on Alfred Adler in "Healing" might also be relevant on this pt.
To quote Oscar Wilde: "We can't have socialism, because we can't be spending all our time in meetings."--!
Re: meditation: Zen monasteries are classic hotbeds of people vying for who will be at the top. 'Holiness' is too often just another power game.
However, we aren't completely fucked. My own belief is that the will to power can be tamed if the person can focus on 'inner power', wh/is to say, a deep satisfaction w/their life, and their work. Virtue is its own reward, is the idea here. Of course, very few individuals pursue this path. For example, Mark Rothko. This becomes clear in the biography of him by Annie Cohen-Solal, wh/is a terrific bk. Too bad we live in a society that only rewards external power.
mb
Here's an old exchange between Dick Cheney and Li Zhaoxing, the former foreign minister of China, on the US-China relations. Tbh, I believe the Chinese gentelman wiped the floor with Cheney. Cheney's rhetoric, and that of the whole US, haven't changed at all since the era of McCarthyism. Especially see how he accuses China of action that the US is guilty of, stating that if China wants to be considered good it must be molded on the image of the US and demanding that the US has a saying in China's internal affairs (asserting the US hegemony), and accusing China of hegemonic expansion.
ReplyDelete(Cheney was reading from a paper, and I doubt he understood what he was reading)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl7OmvY-j6I
I see alot of videos on the internet of the so called "China watchers" claiming all sorts of things about China. Under their commpents you'll always find some hillbillies conserned about the incompetence of the CPC and the expansion of China in Africa. What gives a nobody from Tulsa the moral authority to judge the actions of whole nations is some unconscious colonial superiority complex that sees in the non westerner an infant that even a backwoods hillbilly can lecture. But that's not the point, the point is that some American is conserned about the "incompetence of the CPC" while his own country is in shambles. Americans are unable to see themselves.
https://iai.tv/articles/wisdom-is-overrated-steve-fuller-auid-2826?_auid=2020
ReplyDelete"Wisdom Is Overrated"
A nice essay that reminds me of when MB differentiates between ontological knowing and intellectual knowing.. It is writing that most Americans would never consider or bother to read, a Waferish essay, dare I say...
O'Connell-
ReplyDeleteOr as Wittgenstein once put it, "Wisdom is gray."
french-
Rachel DeWoskin wrote a bk called "Foreign Babes in Beijing" abt her 5-yr stay in China, in the 1990s, as an actress on a soap opera. During that time, she wd frequently go online and read the American newspapers, in particular, their reporting abt China. What she discovered was that American 'news' abt China, and the reporting abt the country, had literally 0 in common w/what she observed was actually happening in China. Cheney is a gd example of how Americans tend to view other countries via slogans, or caricatures; a practice that had horrific consequences for Vietnam, for example. We ourselves are kind of a joke.
mb
This looks like fun:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/02/health/dave-tarnowski-disappointing-affirmations-wellness/index.html
Fascism being seen as sexy brought these lines to mind:
ReplyDelete"Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you."-Sylvia Plath, 'Daddy'
Plath wasn't being literal there, but there is a pervasive sense in American culture that authoritarianism is for manly man and democracy/socialism are for weaklings:
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
Devushka,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to one of Dugin's essays. I am an admirer of Carl Schmitt and Julius Evola, while Dugin is a mixed bag, though I agree wholeheartedly with his critique of liberalism. Out of curiosity, are you familiar with the works of Demitry Galkovsky? I have it on good authority he is much more influential in Russia than Dugin, though no one has heard of him in the West.
Christian
Apologies for not giving a of a disclaimer to my last post. I suppose for the sake of brevity and in a state of haste, I didn’t add the much needed disclaimers. I certainly don’t think critique of America or the modern techno industrial epoch is the only locus of critique. And I certainly don’t agree with all of Tucker Carlson or Dugin’s ideas but, well, sometimes I do. I only share his concerns with the transhumanist future many seem to think is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteYes, Dugin has been in many questionable activities/ideas and he does attract unsavory characters(ex: alt-right) and people with many bad faith arguments. And in the essay you posted like many similar to it, they seem to yearn for more traditional folkways etc., but then it goes reeeeaaally off the rails. Sobernost makes an ugly werewolf transformation into Liebestraume. I should have added in parenthesis that I didn’t agree with everything he is about and that is my mistake.
Animist scholar talks about this going off the rails phenomenon a bit here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtqAKkWuJSY&t=1s
Yet another train derailment, y'all, this time in Portland. The railway company had the audacity 2 say that the "cause of the derailment is under investigation". We here know the root "cause of the derailment".
ReplyDeletehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-train-derailment-shuts-down-a-historic-bridge-that-carries-cars-and-trains-in-portland-oregon/ar-AA1nROBC
Funny how broke ass Amerikkka can somehow pull billions out of its wazoo to prop up a unipolar world that's long gone, yet it's many trillions in debt. Must b magic!
Da-
ReplyDeleteWell, you don't expect the railway co. to come out and say, "This happened because we are a collection of incompetent buffoons."
Christian-
A link wd be nice.
mb
A bozo says things like this. A doofus.
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/02/politics/biden-japan-xenophobic-us-ally/index.html
A bozo says things like this. A doofus.
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/02/politics/biden-japan-xenophobic-us-ally/index.html
Nails in the American coffin:
ReplyDeleteTurkey stops all trade with Israel over ‘humanitarian tragedy’ in Gaza | Turkey | The Guardian
Russian troops enter airbase in Niger where US soldiers are stationed | Niger | The Guardian
Spaywall News | University Protests Arrests Ucla Dartmouth
The pro-Palestinian US campus protests in maps, videos and photos | US campus protests | The Guardian
Spaywall News | Israel Gaza Lies Western Backers
O&D, amigos!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/us/video/journalism-students-columbia-university-protests-digvid Watch the entire link as this student/press has an an eerily relevant story to tell.
ReplyDeleteHere the police are forcing the press off the Columbia campus, before they conduct their violent arrests. What are they planning on doing that they don't want recorded? We all know. There are now laws coming up in some states making it a CRIME to video-record police. Where are the actual warnings from the press? Most of them are stooges of the military state. Welcome to fascism, wafers. Eve after Vietnam and Afghanistan, we must still pretend that student protesters are the enemy, even though it's been proven wrong again and again. Terminal amnesia. Now that we are out of Afghanistan, the military-industrial machine needs a new target, like Palestinians. Sort of like shooting ducks in a barrel - what could be more fun than that?
Pam-
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling they are going to move on to Chad, and Niger. Soon Americans will be running around, waving anti-Chad and anti-Niger flags. How long b4 Zelensky repairs to his villa in Tuscany? B4 the death toll of the Palestinians exceeds 40,000? As for fascism: this will be the final phase of the American empire. Moderate under Schmiden, vigorous under Trumpi. But anyone who thinks it's not all over for the US is a total dumbbell.
mb
ps: University Scumbags:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/college-activism-hypocrisy/678262/
Glo-
ReplyDeleteSorry, cdn't run it. You provided no evidence whatsoever. You even got the # of Russians dead in WW2 incorrect. Please understand that this blog is not impressed by expressions of opinion. Anyone can have an opinion. We *are*, however, impressed by links and reliable references.
mb
"If you are not at the table in the international system, you're gonna be on the menu", another bullying comment by a US official. And they got his response from the Chinese foreigh minister.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.instagram.com/reel/C4NUE_VuK1h/
The UK police says that's it's ok for Ukraine demonstrators to use swastikas, but it is antisemetic for pro-Palestine demonstrators to do so. Mind you that in both of the cases, the demonstrators are using them to compare the regime's crimes to Nazi crimes. But, it is the middle east, they cannot be humanized.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6a_S8Oo8v9/
Israeli drone footage shows Israel using schools as military bases, bulldozering the graves and using a Palestinian as a human shield. They also killed an old Palestinian woman, who suffered from Alzheimer's, probably by burning her alive. In another comment I said that a Zionist's accusation is actually a confession, Israel has accused Hamas of all the acts mentioned here, and here they are doing them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGH8mokDd3U
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-palestine-remains-palestinian-grandmother-found-after-israeli-raid
Finally, on wisdom, I follow the ancient philosopher on the matter. also 'What Is Ancient Philosophy?' and 'Philosophy as a Way of Life' by Pierre Hadot
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9370605-all-hellenistic-schools-seem-to-define-wisdom-in-approximately-the
french-
ReplyDeleteBlinken, Schminken. Americans are so stupid. ps: watch length.
mb
Hi Dr Berman,
ReplyDeleteDon't know if I'm krasivaya but definitely fancied myself as smart. After several years of graduate study, I'm not sure what I read all those books for. Thankfully your books provided such a breath of fresh air - intellect + intuition (or something holistic).
As for Galkovsky, I have heard of him and tried reading some of his stuff but I found it a waste of time as he cloaks his pseudo-historical ruminations in esoteric language. E.g. claiming that Britain controlled Russia/the Soviet Union in the XXc to rule the world. Or that the Jews were "created" by the British as a fall guy in the financial industry. It all sounds crazy. Here is a summary of some of his so-called "thought" (in Russian): https://texasec.livejournal.com/265453.html
There are writers that actually make sense. Vladimir Sorokin predicted a lot of what's going on in Russia right now in his absurdist and satirical novels. One of them: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/his-majesty-on-vladimir-sorokins-day-of-the-oprichnik/
Dev-
ReplyDeleteYou might enjoy my bk "The Soul of Russia."
mb
This has been a hectic, sad week. Storms, police nonsense, train derailments. But there is something to laugh at.
ReplyDeleteYes, Trump is vile, but the democrats don't seem to be offering anything. They hate the unwashed masses as well. But not supporting them has lead to some hilarious meltdowns. James Carville is not happy at all of the lack of votes it seems. Two different takes here on Carville's fantastic tantrum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9jjtJYeqIE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=811Qa61nSHA
mau-
ReplyDeleteThere is an answer: Boebert/Bundchen, an unbeatable combo.
mb
Create-
ReplyDeleteWe are a discussion forum, not a bulletin board. You need to post at least a paragraph of commentary w/yr links. Also, try to focus on the collapse of the American empire. For example, discuss the role of Bundchen, Boebert, and Tulsi in this ongoing event, along w/Kamala Schmamala, Greene Schmeene, and Blinken Schminken.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteCheck out Seth Meyers here:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/may/03/seth-meyers-college-campus-protests
Note the difference in Columbia vs. Brown responses to the protests.
mb
ps: check out the L.A. Times on how UCLA and USC are handling the protests--numerous articles on the subject. What scumbags most of our universities are, what hypocrites.
ReplyDeleteI'm ready a book on Russo-phobia called The Russians are Coming, Again (the first cold war as tragedy, the second as farce), bu Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Maricano which came out in 2018:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Russians-Are-Coming-Again-Tragedy/dp/1583676945
I don't recall this being mentioned before on this blog. I mention it because of its relevance to the bullshit war in Ukraine. There's a considerable amount of the backstory in this book which the authors could foresee was leading up something like what is going on now. It's a small book, but there's much else in there that clearly has much to do with American attitudes towards Russia, and vice versa. Like the fact that the US invaded Russia in 1918. There's also a good discussion of what we were up to in the Korean War, which was another fiasco driven by Russo-phobia. I know a guy (I've mentioned him before) who is against what is happening in Gaza, but totally supports what we're doing in Ukraine, and it's clear to me that Russo-phobia and Trump Derangement Syndrome, which go hand in hand, is behind his cheering on this war. I used to think he was peacenik!
I just ordered your book The Soul of Russia.
ccg-
ReplyDeleteYou might also enjoy the 1966 film "The Russians Are Coming," w/Alan Arkin.
mb
On the subject of wisdom, I believe the problem is with the modern attitude. I believe in the definition of wisdom of ancient philosophy, which is basically knowing how to live a full and true life (the last philosopher within this tradition is probably Spinoza). In this regard philosophy is a practice and not an pure intellectual endeavour. Pierre Hadot explored this theme extensively throughout his carrer (I'll link to a series of videos that explain his core concepts).
ReplyDeleteToday, wisdom became a commercial good and an ideological tool, especially within the framework of 'modern stoicism'. In old philosophical treatise, ethics was always the las part, coming after the logic, the physics and the metaphysics, and studying the whole philosophy was the fundamental exercise to liberate the student. "Modern stoics", unlike their ancient counterparts, do not care about the underpinning logic, metaphysics, cosmology, etc. All they care about is practical exercises (within the framework of workshops). This way the philosophy, rather than liberating) became another machine within the factory of modern ideology that generates indoctrinated people.
There is also the fact that philosophy became a job and a field of study disconnected with the world. What we have now are not philosophers but philosophy technicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5XUkitMXYI&list=PLtNQ1CdXBBl_N_Gh1w3JIzK_5FxTrnt6b
(disregard the first video in the playlist)