We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. ...
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Many problems troubling America today are rooted in the poor performance
of our elite educational institutions, the moral and social collapse of
our ‘best’ families and the culture of narcissism and entitlement that
has transformed the American elite into a flabby minded, strategically
inept and morally confused parody of itself. Probably the best
depiction of our elite in popular culture is the petulantly narcissistic
Prince Charming in Shrek 2;
our educational institutions are like the Fairy Godmother, weaving
shoddy, cheap, feel-good illusions into a gossamer tissue of flattering
lies.
Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, there arises a desire to preempt
its appeal, to smother it with scenes of destruction. Hence the many
works of contemporary art that rely on shocks administered to our
failing faith in human nature—such as the crucifix pickled in urine by
Andres Serrano. Hence the scenes of cannibalism, dismemberment, and
meaningless pain with which contemporary cinema abounds, with directors
like Quentin Tarantino having little else in their emotional
repertories. Hence the invasion of pop music by rap, whose words and
rhythms speak of unremitting violence, and which rejects melody,
harmony, and every other device that might make a bridge to the old
world of song. And hence the music video, which has become an art form
in itself and is often devoted to concentrating into the time span of a
pop song some startling new account of moral chaos. Those phenomena record a habit of desecration in which life is not
celebrated by art but targeted by it. Artists can now make their
reputations by constructing an original frame in which to display the
human face and throw dung at it.
When I was an adolescent, we thought that "beauty" was old-fashioned, for the old fogies, and that rough and ugly was hip. Little did I know then about how beauty can be so elusive, temporary, and precious.
Once upon a time, a Prince asked a beautiful Princess... "Will you marry me?"
The Princess said "NO!"
And the Prince lived happily ever after, and rode motorcycles, and went fishing and hunting, and played golf, and dated women half his age, and smoked cigars, and drank beer and Scotch, and had loads of money in the bank, and left the toilet seat up.
“When you look closely at the climate change issue it is remarkable that
the only actual evidence ever cited for a relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming is climate models.”
The average contemporary human does not consider the sublime much. Life
is not seen as linear --with an end -- or even circular, with an eastern
repetition. In many people's mind they were never a baby and will never
be old. It's a botoxed cougar world, facing off against forty year old
men still dressing up like Star Wars characters.
I don't want to be sixty years old at a Coldplay concert with a
girlfriend on my shoulders, thanks. I don't think it will be fun to
eventually look at eternity and only have fifteen minutes of real adult
behavior in your CV. And I don't want to act as if children are just
short adults. I'm six-foot-two, there's plenty of short adults around
already. It's common for people to remark that they don't want to see
children out in public, and old people should find an ice floe before we
have to find one for you.
"Real adult behavior"? "Ice floe"? Ice floe in my glass of Scotch, thanks very much. Well, I happen to be into the sublime, wherever I can find it. Sipp links these charming short vids from one of the civilized youths of today.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
Yesterday it came out that at the City University of New York City College's (CCNY) graduation ceremony, the Palestinian flag will be hoisted among those flags of UN members, although it is not a UN member. This singular honor speaks volumes about the moral and political rot within CUNY.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who’s been at the center of the Kushner controversy, said that the flag issue seemed to point to a double-standard at the university.
“I would think if we were going to fly the flags of aspiring nations, then we should certainly those of aspiring nations that have been in the mix even longer, like Tibet, like Kurdistan,” Wiesenfeld said. “In other words, whatever the policy is, it should be based on a consistency, but not a fashion of the moment.”
One City College faculty member said it reflected a deeper problem in academia....
Flying the Palestinian flag is not a problem in itself. But flying it alongside the flags of UN member countries, at a public university, makes a particular statement. It says that CUNY’s City College is recognizing the state of Palestine, and its quest for UN member status, regardless of the outcome of the peace process. The college is free to argue that this has “nothing to do with foreign policy,” but the reality speaks for itself.
If CUNY really wants to speak up for repressed peoples -- many really ruthlessly oppressed -- it might raise the banner for these members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), which are not UN members. The UNPO is accredited by the UN as an NGO.
What distinguishes these peoples from the one honored by CUNY's City College is that: 1) they are not favored or in most cases even paid attention to by liberal elites -- or others (several years ago I asked the leader of a major refugees NGO why it paid no attention to the Hmong; he answered that the NGO had other prorities.); and 2) The Palestinians would not subscribe to the Covenant of the UNPO, which includes:
Convinced that the principles, methodology, and practice of Gandhian nonviolence and nonviolent civil-resistance are the most effective means of pursuing and enforcing both collective and individual rights, we, the undersigned Nations and Peoples, reaffirm our unreserved commitment to such principles, rejecting in the process terrorism, extremism, and violence in all its forms;
[T]he New York cultural elite, which may be caricatured in this case as an interlocking directorate of playwright, pundits, and professors, the presumption of impunity is absolute. Academia, in particular, has a "sacred mission," to be defined solely by the faculty and under no circumstances to be questioned. That the faculties themselves tend to be monolithic in their political and ideological orientation may help to explain their wild overreaction in the present instance and others like it. Delusions of infallibility combined with well-deserved insecurity and profound authoritarianism make for a potent brew.
Yesterday, CUNY's Vice President for Communications said:
“The City College flies all of the flags that are flown at the United Nations,” the Vice President for Communications Mary Lou Edmondson told me. “It has nothing to do with foreign policy.”
CUNY's Vice-President for Communications today digs deeper.
CUNY’s City College VP of communications Mary Lou Edmondson emails this response: “I regret that I misspoke about the flags flown at the United Nations."
So, CUNY's CCNY chooses to fly the flag of its "chosen" people, the Palestinians. Need I say more?
But he made that decision to go without telling Pakistan and that took
some real courage, as much courage as our Navy SEALs did in pulling off a
near flawless operation.
A handful of pills and a few minutes of canned shrinkology is not enough to tend to a soul in turmoil and in pain. Take my word for it. People are complicated. For most people with troubles, sooner or later they have to face themselves, their flaws, and their self-defeating or destructive tendencies with honesty, and it is best done in the patient company of a decent soul who knows a thing or two about it all, and knows how to dig just deep enough to try to get to the heart of things; to gently drive a wedge through the devilish defenses to address the real "issues."
Some of us, or many of us, the Old Guard, are still here if you want to try to talk from the heart. Life itself is difficult enough, and having to struggle with one's own self just makes it harder for all.
My kids are going to see these wonderful guys, and Maggie's favorites, in a week or two. Country-folk-rock with a sweet disposition. Who could resist them?
Why Pastors Should Get Their Heads Examined - Young
pastors dive into ministry with a plan to fix the church and save the
world -- only to discover that they too need fixing and saving.
...there is no greater example of the power of duplicitous negotiation
than Hitler’s brilliant manipulation of Chamberlain in their three
meetings. More than seventy years later it is still painful to read
Chamberlain’s naïve reports of his "influence" over Hitler, who in fact
considered the Prime Minister a "little worm."
Baby animals always steal the scene. We envy their traffic. It's time for a live-streamed eaglet reminder.
They are growing fast on their diet of fish, rabbit, squirrel, muskrat and crow sashimi. I notice that they are sleeping less. Note how they open their beaks to cool off on a warm day. More animal thermoregulation.
The chicks are such stumblebums, it's remarkable to me that none of them fall out of the crib - and that they all manage to squirt their poop off the sides of it. Clean nest. Too bad one of them hit the lens with a slight splash.
It is a full-time job for two to keep those babies fed and protected - and to keep yourself fed. It takes two.
We are faced here with a profusion of double standards. These days, honorary
degrees are unfortunately mainly exercises in appealing to the vanity of
celebrities. Denying one to a celebrity who already has more than a dozen may
wound his vanity—but it is surely just a scratch, no matter how much Mr. Kushner
wails. On the other hand, colleges and universities award honorary degrees when
they are not just looking for crowd-pleasers, to people whose lives and actions
are exemplary and who warrant emulation. In that sense, boards of trustees
would do well to follow Mr. Wiesenfeld’s lead. They should be asking more
questions about the people routinely sent up for their approval. They would
find that Mr. Kushner is far from the only one picked more as a totem of
political correctness than for his actual accomplishments.
Though America has been at war for the last decade, the size of our standing army is such that most of us don’t know anyone serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, let alone someone who died there. By contrast, Israel is a small country that has been at war for every day of its existence and most people there serve in the military or perform national service after high school. Most men then do time in the reserves. It seems as if everyone there either has lost a relative or knows someone who has. The price that has been paid for Israel’s survival against the odds is measured in the long rows of soldiers’ graves to which families journey to this day. Perhaps after the Civil War, from which our Memorial Day derives, or during subsequent mass conflicts, Americans felt about the day the way Israelis do now but that understanding has clearly been lost.
Too harsh, I think. But, for too many of us the connection between our freedoms and those who fought for them and gave the ultimate has been lost. Not for these Israeli young people, waving their flag for freedom.
Happy 63rd birthday, Israel, and happier ones to come, please dear G-d.
...in the present depression, the out of work and poor are as numerous, but both unhappier and yet far better off than prior generations. This is not the rant of some right-wing laudator temporis acti, or the death throes of an aging old white guy, but rather empirically based and shared by most of my friends in the ascendant Mexican-American middle and upper-middle classes, many of whom are becoming quite conservative.
The cars of our poorer brethren in our major discount stores are late model and often expensive. People get into them with full carts of food and clothing. Housing here is cheap and good. How to square this circle between official poverty and misery and the veneer of a well-off general public?
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I did an experiment the other day. I priced “wicker” furniture at Kmart and Wal-Mart and then drove up to an upscale North Fresno design outdoor living boutique. In short, the local version from China was about $300 for an ensemble, the high-end version was priced at $1700. To the naked eye, they were again almost identical and explain what I mean by the “veneer” of affluence. Ditto everything from jogging clothes to watches, and one can be outfitted in Selma for 10% of the cost of the brands of those popular in Palo Alto.
One wonders: if killing bin Laden was a courageous, gutsy decision by Barack Obama, where were the liberals when President Bush approved the killing of Zarqawi? Do you remember any of them praising that decision as courageous and "game changing?" No, neither do I.
Did you hear that ripping sound? Two liberal icons known by their silly stage names — Mahatma Gandhi and Malcolm X — have just been torn down from their sanctified perches thanks to a pair of massively researched but finally damning new biographies.
Both men, it turns out, were at pains to take on phony identities. Each hid his homosexuality, each was racist, each took pains to manufacture favorable coverage, each was driven by petty hatreds instead of shining ideals — each of these supposedly principled figures was an out-and-out phony.
To my fans and followers.
Toilet paper: 
Moore's Law