Classics & Virtues

He did the meme.

Have you ever asked yourself “What if Caligula had nukes?”. Well bad news…

Robert McCormick: The important thing, Thomas, is that your work is appreciated by sane, truth-seeking people across the political spectrum. Anyone not in the grip of one or another form of ideological partisanship will learn from your reflections and value them. TCW: Thank you, brother George, I greatly appreciate you saying that

Just two fellow moderates* who have transcended the right-left paradigm, teaching us The Way

*They’re both right-wingers who may have a few liberal acquaintances

First-watches of July:

Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman, 1973)

Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)

A Separation (Farhadi, 2011)

Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)

*Ratings and Short Reviews in Alt-Text*

Are there hysterical libs who see Nazis where there are no Nazis? Of course. But there’s a whole cauldron of centrists who overemphasize the hysterics so they don’t have to reckon with the very real rise of authoritarian sentiments on the American right.

One of the reasons that I think the whole “look at these hysterical libs who see Nazi symbolism everywhere” genre of posting doesn’t hit like it use to is because the current administration has actual ties with Neo-Nazis. For example, this guy:

Above, another blue day, (upstairs) the room papered with green-capped pink-faced dogs, and the button drawer, only apparitions move to perfection, there! Pray the Lord to keep you from lying, there, O spectral stabat mater may I go out and play the violin outside to the town wearing its sinside inside and not a soul in sight. Church bells inspissated the air, dropping it in sharp fragments. He sat down in his place at table, excused by the falling weights of the bells, and motionless when they had done. There, old vicary, congratulate my refuge, the saneside outside sheltering the insane inside: to present the static sane side outside to another outside saneside, to be esteemed for that outsane side while all the while the insaneside attacks your outsane side as though we weren't both playing the same game, and gone down Summer Street (singing unchristian songs) the inane sinside, pocketing a cool million wearing the shoutside outside and the doubtside inside, the vileside inside and the violinside outside skipping dancing and foretelling things too come all ye faithful, of thine own give we back to thee. William Gaddis, The Recognitions

Halfway through The Recognitions. Read this passage a couple days ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it (Gaddis really was the American Joyce!):

Oof

Exactly! Religious conservatives have been preaching for years about America being Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality, so it’s ironic that an administrations so intent on inhospitality (the actual sin of Sodom&Gomorrah) rode to power on their vote

My most consistent thought in the first few months of the Trump II has been: “How much wrath are we storing up for ourselves?”

Abomination after abomination, day after day.

on the one hand we should want people to change their mind so we can stop what's happening now. On the other hand there need to be costs for the ghoulish behavior that got us here, as these people absolutely will do this again given half a chance

The GOP is now the party that falsely accuses migrants of sex crimes, while sheltering the biggest sex criminals on the planet.

Tell your friends.

From the weariness of forgotten peoples Vainly would I liberate mine eyelids, Or would keep my startled soul at distance From the silent fall of far-off planets. Many fates with mine are interwoven, Subtly mingled flow the threads of being, And my share in it is more than merely One life's narrow flame or thin-toned lyre.

Hofmannsthal on humanity’s interdependence, an interdependence that transcends space and time:

Guy who thinks Obama tried to execute a coup in 2016 and it was a good thing because he was trying to keep a pedophile from being President

Meanwhile, they had no scruples pinning shoddy trafficking charges on Kilmar, in an attempt to villainize him after not giving him due process

Pitching my article “Snake-Bitten: How Pedacon turned Qanon into a Right-Wing Ouroboros”

Kinda wild how Qanon (& Q-adjacent conspiracies) conditioned Trump’s base to more easily accept him potentially being a pedo, bc they either rejected or didn’t care that he was found liable for sexual abuse in the court of law (ofc media coverage plays a role in this too!)

Macdonald, “The Triumph of the Fact” The western world has paid a good deal of attention to data ever since some unrecorded genius had the original idea of finding out whether a live person weighs more, less, or the same as a dead per…

Dwight MacDonald’s essay on the problem with “just stating the facts”, especially in the context of journalism (quite relevant!):

dwightmacdonaldarchivio.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/m...

Best of all, however, is to understand the nature of Facts and to treat them accordingly, neither with Russian contempt nor American awe. "A commodity," Marx writes on the first page of Capital, "is a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties." So is and does a Fact. The word comes from the Latin factum (a thing done, a deed) and is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a particular truth known by actual observation or authentic testimony as opposed to what is merely inferred; a datum of experience as distinguished from the conclusions that may be based upon it." Facts are thus the raw material from which general conclusions, or theories, may be inferred. But the process also runs the other way. The meaning of a Fact, indeed its very existence in a psychological sense, depends on the context in which it appears-depends, that is, on "the conclusions that may be based upon it." A Fact by itself is useless, impotent, phantasmal, as weak and wavering as the shades of the dead that Ulysses met in the underworld. And as the shades became strong enough to speak only by drinking the blood from Ulysses' sacrifices, so a Fact can acquire reality only by drinking the blood of theory, by becoming related to other Facts through some kind of assumption, hypothe-sis, generalization. Indeed, a Fact not thus fortified is usually too weak even to be perceived; as a rule, one pays attention only to data that fit into some general idea of things one already has.[8] "The facts speak for themselves," we say, but this is just what they don't do. Rather, they are like Swift's Laputans who have to be roused to practical discourse by attendants touching their lips with inflated bladders. Here, the bladders are one's assumptions.

“A Fact by itself is… as weak and wavering as the shades of the dead that Ulysses met in the underworld. And as the shades became strong enough to speak only by drinking the blood from Ulysses' sacrifices, so a Fact can acquire reality only by drinking the blood of theory.”

-Dwight MacDonald

Maybe judgment will partially look like Trump becoming President so that the utter depravity of his soul is exposed while still alive and in power, humiliating him and those who have rallied around him as America’s savior?

I just find it interesting what these accounts choose to get serious about. The Donny/Epstein stuff wouldn’t have been my choice of a hill to die on…

Three Year Letterman & @3YearLetterman There's just no way these two things were written by the same person (posted over a picture the Trump letter to Epstein and a tweet from Trump talking about Barney Frank)

@jarvis best Alright. Look. Who knows. Follow But... writing a script of an imaginary commercial or something with a voice over and use of these words, many of which have more than one syllable... doesn't really sound like him.

Immediately upon opening Twitter, I see posts (the second photo is like a 4 tweet thread LOL) from two of the most popular “centrist shitposters” on my FYP trying to convince their followers the Trump letter is fake.

You would think that a time like this was made for shitposting?

No amount of homage paid to the past is a sure indication of living virtue. On the contrary, the more profusely it is bestowed, the more clearly it will be seen that it is designed as a cloak to cover moral cowardice or arrant apos-tacy. Nothing is easier, nothing more common, than to honor "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob'; to build and garnish the tombs of the old prophets; to celebrate the deeds of Jesus and his Apostles. Nothing is more difficult, nothing more rare, than to walk in their footsteps and imitate their example; to live, in our day, as they did in theirs, without reputation, hated, despised, persecuted, for righteousness' sake.

William Lloyd Garrison on empty appeals to tradition:

Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.

This story happened in 2019 (and these injustices are still happening at the hands of ICE), which makes Biden’s decision to increase ICE funding even more enraging.

ICE is not just interested in “enforcing the law”; they are lawless, wannabe cowboys that Dems should have no tolerance for.

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.”

Translate that to the fact that the conspiracy theorist doesn’t actually want a real answer because that means the pleasure of the obsession is over. Trump telling them to “stop with Epstein” is him taking their favorite toy away.

Conspiracy theorist are like Lacan’s delusional husband. The normal jealous subject pursues his wife to the door of the bedroom in which she has locked herself w/ someone else. The delusional jealous subject won’t pursue bc he exempts himself from any real references.

He could have just came up with another conspiracy about him needing to keep it secret to fight off the deep state or something and they would have ate it up. Saying “stop” was the worse thing he could have done.

It was always going to happen this way, wasn’t it? MAGA, a movement built on a foundation of conspiracies, unraveling because the head guy said “stop the conspiracies”.

The only way to satiate his conspiratorial base was to keep the conspiracy in play.