Anybody think that President Biden is just pretending to be a doddering old fool to lure Trump into being overconfident in their debate? With a few uppers in him, Biden might perform like Jack Kennedy in 1960.
He’s more like 80 year old German Chancellor Paul Von Hindenburg in the 1930’s….the Brown shirts and Hitler running rings around him. Oblivious to the radical take over.
I think that's a pretty good analogy. No analogy gets any better than pretty good, because no two situations are alike. But Biden sincerely and cluelessly wants to do the right thing, and has a closed circle whispering in his ear about just exactly what the right thing is.
Oh, give it a break. Biden is hardly oblivious to such threats these days; that’s one reason why he’s the constant target of vicious political attacks, and not some comfy grandpa figure no one but a Republican special prosecutor ever mentions. Every time he makes the stiff movements of an old man trying to look gracious when all he wants to do is sit down, somebody clips the scene to run over and over on a host of rightwing web sites, not to mention Fox News. The scene shown here is nothing compared to the one Fox showed a lot of him during the D Day celebrations apparently frozen, this time crouching forward toward his wife, as if meaning to sit…if only there’d been a chair to sit in. In fact, as the full tape showed, there was a chair there, but Biden had stopped mid-sit in polite deference when he saw his Secretary of Defense (off camera) rise to give a speech. When the Secretary began to speak, Mr. Biden finally sat down.
In the meantime, of course, his chief opponent Mr. Trump spends hours at rallies making gaffe after gaffe, pretending to dance or sway to music that’s not playing (an old guy trick most of us know to disguise the fact that, after 70, one’s balance occasionally goes south as one’s feet go north) prattling on endlessly about matters no one can or even tries to follow (shark attacks, electric cars, needing to flush and flush toilets and all those foreigners stealing our money; something should be done). And yet his opponents keep busy covering a trial involving him and a porn star.
You miss the point entirely, and also missed everything else I've said on this matter, tangling with what are probably devoted fans of Donald Trump trying to play "gotcha" with every Biden video.
I wasn't talking about his physical balance at public gatherings, I was agreeing that in general, broadly, in his conduct as president, Biden has for more than three years picked policy positions and made public statements that were perfectly coherent, but evidenced that he sincerely and cluelessly wants to do the right thing. E.g., his oft-quoted statement, which he remains proud of, that "trans gender is the civil rights movement of our time." His balance and his memory can be perfect, but that's still a clueless crowd-pleasing piece of nonsense.
I can easily imagine walking away from the crowd a few yards to enjoy the scenery, contemplate the historic sacred ground, find a few moments of quiet contemplation. Why is everyone so sure he didn't know where he was?
I think you're probably right. There has to be some explanation for this (and his other wanderings and strange behaviors as well) that don't involve advanced dementia. There's just no evidence of that, is there? And didn't his doctor say he's just fine? Dr. Jill, too. Who are you going to believe, them or your lyin' eyes?
None of them were looking at birds, they were looking at parachutists. There was no precise "right direction." Have you even been in a public park looking in a different direction from someone standing nearby?
Absolutely, but I can't recall wandering away from a public ceremony attended by high government officials because I saw a cute chipmunk scampering by.
"Watching cool military maneuvers"? It was a ceremony to honor the D-Day heroes, and whether or not they had to stand at military attention themselves, it was all " formal" enough for Rishi Sunak to be reamed by the British media for leaving the proceedings early. And whatever distracted Biden, he was oblivious enough to what was happening that he had to be taken by the arm and led back to the group by Giorgia Meloni, none of whose other members needed to be herded like cats for the group picture. Look, I will not deny my disdain for Biden, but I don't see how you can say he appeared alert and attentive to his environment, no matter how the video was edited.
He turned to talk to some people who had addressed him first. These people were edited out of the clip so it looks like he just wandered off aimlessly.
It clearly was not a meeting. It was a bunch of high ranking talking heads stands at a ceremony. And, as others have pointed out, they were focused on a parachutist who was part of the observance, when another parachutist landed and Biden turned his way.
I've said it once and I'll say it again (actually Kim Iverson said it first): Biden the Sleepwalker will be replaced at the Dem's Convention in August.
I read/heard recently that they can't do a replacement at the convention because of the Ohio ballot thing. They'll do a roll call of delegates (via zoom or whatever) in July and get all the delegates pledged to him thus making an open convention impossible. Just to make sure he gets on the Ohio ballot.
Nah, he has genuine dementia. Explains the weird quality of the anger he exhibits at times too. Though in the clip here I think he is just going over to check out what some people outside the frame are doing. Too bad, I don't support the Democrats in any way but don't have any personal hate towards Biden.
Its me again, willing to be unpopular. It is almost a matter of principle for me.
(1) Yes, it appears to me Biden often does not know where to go, and that he wanders. (2) I do not think this is an instance of that.
In the lower right corner of the video, after Biden starts off, you see that there is a second parachutist. Biden is at the end of the line of those observing the first parachutist. He goes over and tries to talk to the second guy. Meloni then comes over, grabs his elbow and turns him around. All the others come over and the group stands and pose for a picture.
PS: But the general look on Biden's face has changed even since he became president. These days, he almost always has that squint, and that puzzled look like he does not know where to go, or perhaps where he is. He always waits for someone to direct him, generally for someone to take his arm. There is also a very weird recent video in which four people, including Biden, stand behind a speaker The speaker turns and shakes hands with each of the four in turn. When he finishes, Biden stretches out his hand for a handshake holding it there. Then when he does not get one, he seems to remember, and tries to deflect by wiping his face or hair in some way. - Biden's moments of clarity do come and go. And Trump saying "They give him a shot in the a** when he debates" is hilarious and could well be true.
Linda, I'm no where near Biden's age but as I have aged my eyes have somehow receded a bit into my face (there's a name for that, but I forget what it is) and in pictures taken of me I look stoned or half-asleep. My solution: put on sunglasses for any pics whenever possible.
Sorry, this doesn't work. Had he all his buttons he would know that this is an issue and make an effort to stay with the pack and chat up his fellow "leaders" (what a detestable word). He doesn't know what he's doing and he doesn't care how he looks.
Well, I think its fine to go talk to the lone parachutist for a bit. But perhaps I should not have bothered to say it. Biden has been lost on many other occasions. I will concede he may have known a group picture was in the offing, and should not have wandered off. But further, maybe his hearing is bad, he is standing and the end of the line, and he was supposed to know that but did not.
I was skeptical of this video too particularly after I got burned by the editing of the d-day memorial video and the "narrative" of "there's not even a chair there!" When there was.
I think Buck Sexton said that the "Biden has dementia" stuff is just like the "Trump's a criminal" stuff in that neither is going to determine the election.
I watched a longer, unedited version of the video. It wasn't cropped to show Biden in a bad light. Macron and Ursula van Der Leyen noticed his strange behavior but didn't know what to do or how to handle the situation. It took Georgia Maloni, who was on the other end of the line, to walk past all those other "leaders" and gently guide him back to the group.
Shortly after Joe Biden was installed as president, there was a video of some sort of event being held in the East Room of the White House. The room was jam-packed with Democrats. Obama and Michelle were there. Obama gave a speech and told a joke poking a little fun at Biden. After the speech people crowded around Obama for a chance to talk to him or shake hands, but everyone totally ignored Joe Biden. The video showed him wandering around aimlessly, not knowing what to do or where to go. He was the supposed the Leader of the Free World and people in the room totally ignored him. To me, it showed how little regard for the man they placed in the White House.
Biden did the samething similar when he visited King Charles at Windsor Castle awhile back. Biden and the king slowly reviewed a line of troops standing at attention when Biden suddenly stopped, walked away from the king and tried to strike up a conversation with one of the soldiers. I think the king had to go over and take him by the arm to finish the review.
But I think the most bizarre incident was during his campaign. Jill Biden was speaking to a group of voters, when she extended her right arm in front of Joe. He took her hand and started nibbling on her fingers! Nothing wrong with that in the privacy of ones own home, but not in public in front of strangers when you're running for the presidency.
Joe Biden has been a disaster for this country, and I don't know if we will ever be able to recover from it. The tragic thing is that he has been nothing more than a figurehead, a puppet or a tool of the Democrats, and possibly even by his own wife and family.
I don't know who's running the show in the White House but it sure isn't Joe Biden - most likely its Obama.
And, I'm pretty sure the Democrats are going to replace him with someone else at the convention so we should all brace ourselves and be ready for that possibility.
Good for you. I prefer people to give their honest take, it keeps us all more alert and strengthens the others who had a dissenting view but were afraid to say so.
Even a certain "Compro" made a good point in another thread last night, a valid contribution to the topic.
But there exist photos taken from a different angle which show Biden talking to some people who are paying attention to him-- yet these do not appear in the video, either because of the angle it was taken, or because they were edited out.
I've come to the point where if something cannot be vetted by high standards similar to those used by courts or reputable scientific institutes it should be set aside under suspicion of fakery. And this problem is only going to get worse, much worse.
In the clip I saw, Italy's Prime Minister Georgia Merloni actually rushes out to steer Joe Biden back to the gaggle of G-7 leaders. Georgia Merloni looked like a dutiful daughter helping out her senile father at a picnic,
She's a lot better than his better half. Dr. Jill, who is either out of the frame or not there, ignores these what's the word? episodes. Either she thinks she's the President, or she doesn't want to be seen as his minder, or both.
True. Jill Biden should explain to Joe that he shouldn't run for re-election. Why doesn't she? She likes the power. On January 20, 2025 she would become irrelevant.
Alas, she's stupider than he is. You know Joe Epstein's epithet for the title of her doctoral thesis--“Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs”? "Unpromising".
I read her dissertation. It reads like something written by an industrious but not particularly bright high school student. Next to it, Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis was a scholarly masterwork.
I suspect a major fraction of theses these days especially in social science or the humanities, are well fermented BS. Pretty much everything worth discoursing about has already been done to death.
What an awful family. They're abusing him, he's retiring as a fool. He could have retired from VP. Also Hunter's on crack, and buying a handgun. Neither man has seen the 5 year old daughter/grand-daughter. He has an affair and smokes crack with his sister in law of dead brother. They seem evil awful family.
Families do have black sheep. I have a distant cousin (twice removed) who stole his dying grandfather's morphine solution and substituted water in it. (And there are other tales concerning that clan I could regale folks with-- that one strikes me as the most atrocious).
Meloni fancies herself the female Frodo...or should that be Lady Galadriel? Either way, she's just another globalist foot soldier.
I lost all respect for her when Trudeau lectured her on some "anti" LGBT bill wending its way through the subterranean world of Italian politics. Even though she was clearly fuming, Meloni just sat there and said nothing, instead of unleashing her inner Italian on that Canadian fool.
Trudeau just can't help himself. It's Prime Minister Blackface's nature to pontificate and lecture others. Can you imagine Meloni giving Trudeau a sermon about the mass graves found at Canada's Indian schools? I can't (and the mass graves were mostly fake news).
Several months ago at an international summit, Trudeau attempted to schmooze with Xi, who promptly rebuked Trudeau for releasing to the Canadian press the contents of an earlier meeting. I say rebuked because I suspect the official Mandarin translation was sanitized for Western ears. Xi turned and walked away, leaving a flustered Trudeau standing alone, staring down at his shoes.
Only the Celestials can deliver an insult like that. Trudeau had no idea what hit him.
Meloni lacks the subtlety of Confucius or Lao Tzu but certainly had the opportunity to go full Machiavelli on Trudeau. Or better yet, Borgia. Missed opportunity.
One can't be in permanent outrage mode (someone please tell the Woke Left!) At a guess she likely regarded the situation as a tempest in a teapot and nothing to cause a diplomatic incident over.
Yes. Lately any act of human kindness such as this tempts me to weep. People do a lot of very crappy things but at the same time human decency abounds.
If it were not for the West’s bungling, Putin would have been out of power a long time ago. He has been able to make the case that the problems Russia faces stem from how the West has acted towards Russia. That is perhaps twenty five percent true, but seventy five percent has been corruption, fatalism, the hole left in the Russian soul by communism, pick something, all things inherent to Russia itself. But Putin can point to things like Ukraine and bolster his position by being able to blame an external enemy. I seriously doubt that everyone in Russia believes that, but it seems to be enough to have enough of an edge to hold onto power.
The obsession of the West with Russia is just baffling, too. I guess it really boils down to the Empire brooking no rivals. The problem is that the rivals of the Empire also have nukes. I would be skeptical that Russia would actually be able to fully deploy its nuclear arsenal in a war, given how bad a shape their military really is in, but I would guess enough nukes still work that a devastating handful could make it through. It is funny that the Empire just doesn’t get the idea that working with Russia might have gotten them a lot farther than just trying to roll over them. I miss the 90s when we didn’t have to worry any longer about the Cold War turning hot. Now, it seems like Western leaders want to go pick a fight just to prove themselves or something. I don’t get it. It makes no sense. Why not maybe try something like putting all those resources into technological advancement, space exploration and colonization, pretty much anything than trying to make war that can never bring any benefit to mankind?
What? Fix random power outages in some of the coldest civilized places on earth? Make sure that SocSec checks are delivered on time, or at all? Put down the Chechens (I don't endorse how)? Who in that country would support such a person?
You sound suspiciously like a Trump supporter now. No, Putin deserves credit for picking up the pieces after the Yeltsin train wreck, but his time has come and gone. Russia needs leadership now that can engage the West, while protecting Russian interests, instead of the either/or it has been for two decades now.
Why would I support Trump over whether or not Vladimir Putin managed to do some good in Russia? I am a Russophile in the larger cultural sense. But the nation has been badly governed for most of its existence. And yes, subject to some historical horrors the like of which we Americans have never come close to (No, our Civil war can't hold a candle beside the Time of Troubles). But that said, I do think Russia has gone off the rails in its quest to restore it imperial glories, and yes this does concern us. Our two oceans might as well be mud puddles insofar as they are any sort of protection from the storms of the Old World.
Ah, that was actually a joke. The simpletons on the woke left can’t seem to understand that the world is more complex than their cartoony ideas of who is on what side. I’ve known quite a few Russians over the years, and don’t care much for the simplistic attitudes displayed in the west towards Russia, having a deep appreciate of the history and culture as well. Russia as a whole is far less alien than China is, and it would make far more sense for us to engage Russia on terms that benefit everyone, but I suppose that doesn’t make for as many defense contracts…
"... it would make far more sense for us to engage Russia on terms that benefit everyone,"
My thoughts exactly.
I've always thought that Hillary used the Russians as a distraction from the real threat - China. The Democrats and the Billionaire class love the Chinese because they are a wonderful source of abundant, cheap and docile labor.
I don’t think that is necessarily the primary reason they love China. I think they tend to love the traditions of the Chinese, with the rulership with divine mandates, the imperial bureaucracy, ideological purity, the large peasant classes ruled by an imperial elite, you get the idea. Russia is none of those things, so if the elite were going to embrace one or the other, on ideological grounds, it would be China. Russia is the “red state,” while China is the “blue state.”
It's not only the cheap labor. It's also that China's extensive natural materials processing and manufacturing industries take a load off the West in terms of polution generation. So they can virtue signal endlessly regarding their own countries while keeping shut about who is the new kid on the block polluting.
There's been a remarkable amount of continued improvements in Russian material life regardless of whether the west wants to engage with Russia or not. The problem is that Russia of 2024 is compared to the USA of 2023, not the Russia of 2010, and the Russia of 1999. It's the same problem that West Virginia has (I've lived both places so I feel comfortable iwth the comparisons) in that it's not usually judged according to where it has come recently, but vs places which weren't in such a deep hole to begin with.
For example, the existence of new big box stores in provincial cities isn't an interesting story for Americans who have had them for half a century and are somewhat suspicious of them at this point, but its a big deal in Russia.
If you're a journalist in West Virginia, the story is the poor people up in the hollar, not the newest suburban subdivision. If you're a journalsit in Russia the story is going to be the poorest district you can find (which still has less crime than a lot of the USA) not the latest middle class apartment tower near the new Metro stop in Moscow.
No matter who succedes him the second anything bad happens in post-Putin Russia a huge number of Russians are going to say "Putin would have handled this way better". That both Russian nature and the nature of human beings in general.
I'm not sure how the numbers were fudged but I saw somewhere -- the Financial Times? -- that the Russian GDP is now the fourth highest in the world, surpassing Japan. Didn't Dear Leader Obama once say that Russian is a "gas station masquerading as a country?" Would you like ethanol with your fill-up, sir?
I think you're right, but I've heard the same arguments used during the Cold War. The USSR has to be evaluated by its economic condition compared to its past history, starting with an industrial plant knocked flat by a civil war, not compared to American stats about an economy that thrived on its civil war, since the main industrial areas weren't invaded, and then kept on growing after that.
I think one thing that is overlooked is that many of our legislators are people who seem stuck in the 1980’s and are in their 80’s. When I listen to them talk about Russia - it really sounds like they never accepted that the Cold War ended.
It’s kind of like how some look for a racist or misogyny under every rock. I get being cautious or suspicious, but some really do sound paranoid when talking about Russia, Russia, Russia.
When Mitt Romney was talking about Russia in 2012, he sounded a bit delusional to me then, so the desire to blame everything on Russia these days just rings hollow to me. (Especially after the Russia/Trump stuff we were given for years that turned out to be false)
It’s like some want to cosplay a twisted version of Rocky/Bullwinkle or something.
It’s not out of a love of Putin that I’m writing my observations, but a love of reality.
I just don’t think the paranoia over Russia matches what Russia actually does or wants. They aren’t particularly innocent by any stretch, but geez - it really looks, at times, like we are more of the problem than they are. I’m just not sure what the truth of the situation is at times because it seems like a lot of people want to run a ‘Russia is evil doom loop.’ But is it actually warranted? Russia is a threat, but how much of this is of our own making and/or in our politicians heads? I don’t have a good answer.
It seems like some people are running on autopilot. It’s like they are running outdated programming from another era. And they are running it because it’s all they know and all they want to see.
I don't think our elites have an obsession with Russia. I think they have an obsession with war. And the Russians with their white skin make a target the intersectional Marxists can get behind.
But how could the West NOT have "forgotten God?" Isn't it inevitable that a society, like any other living thing, goes through a life cycle; and that the West, simply, is at the end of its life cycle?
To everything there is a season; and we stand on the cusp of winter.
I've been reading a lot about World War I recently (and then last night watched Mel Gibson's fantastic WWII epic "Hacksaw Ridge" with my youngest son) - how could the industrial wars of the 20th century not shaken or even destroyed man's faith in God, and as a consequence society's faith in God? How could one have endured the Somme or Okinawa and come out of that experience thinking "God is good, God is here?" The only possible reaction for a generation must have been, "There is no God, for if there were this wouldn't be happening."
Such wars, such experiences - at a time of technological advance where science and technology can explain many things once attributed to God - must destroy religious faith, mustn't they?
There may be no atheists in foxholes but there are atheists in comfy boudoirs. I don't think it was the wars that harmed religious feeling, but rather the post war prosperity and the conquest of nature which has left us feeling like we are the gods. The problem of evil challenges us but luxury and small pleasures simply numb us.
I think both are true. Read Paul Fussell's staggering book "The Great War and Modern Memory," and/or Modris Ekstein's history "The Rites of Spring," which is about how WW1 affected the Western mind and spirit. Kgasmart is onto something, no doubt. But so are you: the therapeutic spirit and, as William Cavanaugh has it in his great book of the same title, "The Enchantments of Mammon," replaced the hunger for holiness. Rieff talks about Religious Man giving way to Psychological Man in the late 19th and early 20th century. Nietzsche saw it. The rest of us took a long time to catch up.
This is going to get people mad, but I don't think Fussell's book has aged well. For one thing he spends an awful lot of time on marginal figures (I mean, Siegfried Sassoon?), slights masterworks (Evelyn Waugh in NIght and Day reviewed In Parenthesis brilliantly upon its publication, and gets it just fine); to make Owen's poetry simply about his supposed same-sex attraction is reductive; and his grand finale is...Pynchon. Now, the last was the great white hope of the English Department when the book was published (I was an undergraduate at the time), and he certainly hasn't held up well (Hugh Kenner said Pynchon's books were what he conceived the world as, i.e., comic books). And he ignores other very substantial work, Wyndham Lewis, and, yes Hemingway.
It's been awhile since I've read it, and you may be right, but to be fair Fussell was writing more about the cultural memory of the war than the war itself. I recall that the book had its limitations, but I'd still say it's worth reading. Again, though, it's been at least 10 years since I read it so a re-read might change my view.
Oh, it's certainly worth reading, and rereading. But he needed someone to push him away from English Dept. ephemera like Sassoon. The chapter on Graves is exemplary.
I agree. The anti-spiritual impact of WW1 on American servicemen was minimal. In fact, many American units were still arriving in Europe as the war was ending and so they saw minimal combat. The impact that war had on Europeans was significant, but the transmission to America was delayed until the 1960s and even then did not fully unfurl until the 1990s.
I agree that WWI was not the shock to the US that it was ti the European combatants. But we did have the Roaring 20s still. Every time Rod writes about the Weimar "decadence" I want to point out that we had a similar louche Bacchanalia right here a century ago, and on a fairly massive scale, connected to a surge in organized crime.
The 60s were the fruit of the post-war prosperity exacerbated by the civil rights struggle and of course Vietnam. The 90s? I recall it as our last halcyon era, and while it covered up some dry rot (mainly in foreign policy and economics) it was particularly decadent compared what came before or after.
In his Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork wrote that there was evidence of such decadence in the America of the 90s - the 1890s, that is. The word 'flapper' in the modern use dates from that time (which Bork did not mention). Of course, the very rich were materially decadent even prior to then.
In the 1920's for most people saw the decadence limited to their stock market hopes and an occasional alcoholic drink. The media of the day made the decadence appear more massive than it was by focusing on the more interesting outliers. But yes, American society even then was so large it could see a small subculture finance significant organized crime.
Charles Darwin and the victory of science created modern atheism. World Wars I and II expanded the concept of atheism. Why did God allow the wars to happen?
Science is not a body of proven facts, it is a method that gets us reliably close to an approximate truth if it is applied properly. It applies to a limited material universe, and does not tell us if there is a larger metaphysical universe, or if there is, what that is all about.
Exactly: the only metaphysical posture that would be appropriate for science is pure agnosticism, not atheist materialism. It's the fallacy of converting a method into a metaphysics. Science started by bracketing off a single sphere as its proper field of investigation, but then people forgot about the brackets and jumped to the notion that the limited material sphere is all there is.
Interestingly, some historians of science claim that Darwin was not the biggest cause of modern atheism, at least in Britain. At that time Euclidean geometry was taught with almost religious certitude (even Aquinas did so), so the appearance of non-Euclidean geometries by Lobachevsky, Bolyai, and Reimann was a real shock to many.
Now that is a curious statement. I know that Reimann's geometry is the one most applicable to the curved surface of the earth as a whole. Is there another way that you mean this?
Reimannian geometry is the one applicable to space being curved, i.e. to the curvature of the three dimensions in a fourth, and thus with the expanding universe.
Euclidean geometry views the universe as having three dimensions that extend to infinity through time and space. Reimannian geometry is a better fit with a universe that is finite but unbounded spatially, and has a beginning temporally. In the section about Genesis in "Confessions", St. Augustine makes a number of comments that seem to pointing to this sort of idea, although of course the maths and physics were not there yet.
Already in the late Enlightenment there were atheists who claimed that Newton's work obviated the need for any God. "Where is there room for God is your system?" Napoleon asked Pierre-Simon Laplace. "Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis" Laplace replied.
"In fact Laplace never said that. Here, I believe, is what truly happened. Newton, believing that the secular perturbations which he had sketched out in his theory would in the long run end up destroying the Solar System, says somewhere that God was obliged to intervene from time to time to remedy the evil and somehow keep the system working properly. This, however, was a pure supposition suggested to Newton by an incomplete view of the conditions of the stability of our little world. Science was not yet advanced enough at that time to bring these conditions into full view. But Laplace, who had discovered them by a deep analysis, would have replied to the First Consul that Newton had wrongly invoked the intervention of God to adjust from time to time the machine of the world (la machine du monde) and that he, Laplace, had no need of such an assumption. It was not God, therefore, that Laplace treated as a hypothesis, but his intervention in a certain place...
"I have it on the authority of [the astronomer François] Arago that Laplace, warned shortly before his [1827] death that that anecdote was about to be published in a biographical collection, had requested him [Arago] to demand its deletion by the publisher. It was necessary to either explain or delete it, and the second way was the easiest. But, unfortunately, it was neither deleted nor explained." - astronomer Hervé Faye, 1884
"I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God does not exist. It's just that he doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science." - Stephen Hawking, 1999
Freya India had a superb substack piece this week on how the present crises in mental health are the result of the loss of faith (i will pitch in that ubiquitous internet use is another factor). Her theory matches my intuition on the topic. The belief that the universe is being overseen by an all-knowing and morally good force is a huge stabilizing factor; remove that and you've got and random and crazy world where your actions ultimately mean nothing and your only option is to search for "happiness" which is ephemeral, hard to find and hard to keep.
This is a point that Chambers makes in 'Witness' if I remember correctly. Not that these things "must" destroy faith, but that we should not be surprised by a wholesale questioning of it, given that there were, in fact, new things under the sun that had never been confronted before.
Not sure. It's a common trope in any writeups of persecuted Christians that the persecution strengthens rather than weakens their faith in God. Don't know whether that dynamic would apply here. I think the Holocaust certainly affected the faith of Jewish people.
And there are things once attributed to God that can be explained by science, and others that cannot.
Re: Americans like Biden just cannot get it out of their system that Russia Is The Enemy™.
Russia is not "the enemy" but it is a rival, and worse it's going off the rails and its reckless aggression threatens to destroy the post WWII order which has kept the nukes sleeping like purring cats in their silos. Whatever else you may want you do not want those things waking up and spitting and hissing.
Re: could it be that there are more intelligent beings in the cosmos than the Bible says?
I forget where, but St. Paul says something about how all the spirits are under Jesus' authority now, which could be interpreted to refer to a wider range than just angels and demons. It could refer to nature spirits as well, for example: faeries, djinn, kami, yakshas. . . .
Huldufolk (Hidden Folk). They are real. They are like us - doing both good and bad. My current theories: They are fourth dimensional beings. Beings like this - not just found in Iceland, though more common there - are responsible for the UAPs. Such things have been seen in the past, for instance, in medieval times, but described as "other-than-UAPs".
Was the fourth dimensional portal even open in biblical times? Oh, I know "Ezekiel saw the wheel". But assuming his was a vision of a wheel, is there any evidence of these beings prior to medieval times? I know records are sparse before then, but isn't it possible they just were not coming through extant portals?
Well, if they're from a higher dimension, they wouldn't need "portals" per se, would they? Interacting with our dimension would simply be a perennial possibility for them, like a sphere crossing the plane of any given circle.
But in the scientific telling, wormholes can be portals. It does not deny , in Flatland, that the great Circle had a special place at which he could enter Flatland. I mean, otherwise, he would have to be a pretty ghostly Circle not to pierce the paper when he decided to pass through it.
Hm, yeah, I suppose. Also, there's the possibility that entities like the huldufolk are not exactly in a "higher" dimension but more like in an adjacent and mostly parallel but sometimes intersecting dimension.
If we were smart we would be trying to develop some rapproachment with them. The world has begun an irreversible realignment, our hegemony threatened by China, Brics, Muslims destabilizing Europe. Times are changing and we can't afford any unnecessary enmities.
Agree, but there are too many doofuses in the State Department and in Congress who think that the Cold War never ended, and they are being played like a fiddle by the globalists among them.
Russia is not even a rival really. They are the in the grips of a demographic catastrophe, have a small and not dynamic economy, and a not so great military.
A country in bad times may well go off the rails and wreak havoc. The obvious example, if I can be excuse for using it, was Germany in the 1930s with its catastrophically bad economy. For time immemorial rulers have "wagged the dog" to focus public ire outward on external "enemies".
Only the having nuclear weapons makes them a rival because theoretically they could end the world. As a real threat with this army to Europe, not so much. They are a threat in peoples minds only. Russia greatest threat is being able to sustain their country and land with the crashing population. Since 2016 Russia's has had over 3.5 million deaths more than they have had births and the numbers out so for from this year are not looking any better. In 1989 Russia itself had over 2 million births. In 2023 they had just over 1.2 million and the numbers are trending down for 2024. The future belongs to those who are there and it is increasingly absent of Russians.
Don't you think that Russia, China and America should have talks lowering the amount of nukes for each to perhaps 100? One hundred nukes seems to be enough deterrent to me.
Russia's demographic situation is about the same as a lot of Europe's at this point. It isn't the 1990s any more. That said, Russia yes, is a vastly overhyped threat and mostly is only a rival in that it competes with the USA and our partners in extraction.
Yes it is a lot like Europe's at this point. Europe's population is larger and they have the backing of the US. That is why Russia is no real threat to Europe. Plus we have seen just how potent their military really was. They never could have overran Europe to begin with, even without the US.
After Yeltsin took control of the Russian SFSR, and broke up the Soviet Union in collaboration with kleptocratic executives in several other SSRs, he was hailed as a hero of democracy and America's greatest ally. Republican senators were intent on getting nuclear weapons out of Ukraine and other areas, back into the safe hands of the Russian Federation which we could trust to hold them responsibly. Etc. Etc. Etc. There is a generation of journalists who seem to have no idea of the distinction between the Russian Federation and the USSR, and apply classic Cold War dichotomies, but the competition with Putin is not ideological -- its pretty mundane great power rivalry. Putin seems to understand that better than the EU leadership, or Biden, or Trump.
Or, if there are aliens, they would have rightly concluded from monitoring our broadcasts that there is no intelligent life on this planet, and to not even bother with Earth.
I was speaking tongue in cheek, but there are several hypotheses to address the Fermi paradox of, "where is everyone?" the most disturbing of which is the Dark Forest. Most likely, we are alone, given the incredible number of factors in a planetary system that would have to be just right for supposedly intelligent life such as ourselves to arise.
Alone in our neighborhood? Probably. In the whole universe? Very unlikely. The Universe is so immense that even extraordinarily unlikely things become occasional certainties. However the sheer distance, especially between galaxies, would make contact all but impossible, absent things which exist only in scifi.
"According to figures published by the Education Directorate and cited by the Exxpress news site, 35 percent of [Vienna] primary school students are Muslims, while 21 percent are Catholic, 13 percent are Orthodox, and 2 percent are either Protestant or belong to another denomination."
Anne Applebaum's book on the Gulag is brilliant. But her problem is that she literally marinated in the little bubble of Washington DC. She doesn't understand the rest of the country where she lives. The 40 % illegitimacy rate in America doesn't concern her. Or the 50 % divorce rate. Or the 1.6 children per woman. Or stagnant wages. Or high housing prices in metro areas. Or the drug problem. She's secure on Foxhall Road and her biggest adventure is going to dinner parties where she gets to chat with other people like herself.
She wrote the intro to the most recent reissue of 'The Gulag Archipelago,' which I just bought. Haven't read it yet, and frankly don't know what to expect from her.
She can think and write well within the boundaries of her tribe and its needs and narratives, but she can go no further. Everything else is outer darkness to be either feared or ignored. She would have made a great courtier, paid lavishly to write official Royal histories.
It's also the influence of her husband, who is the current Foreign Minister in Warsaw, and has been an ally of Donald Tusk politically since before the Law and Justice stint in power. He's basically a Polish neoconservative, and profoundly anti-Russian. I believe Appelbaum lives in Warsaw these days, although it wouldn't surprise me if she moves around a lot.
Props for the REM reference as well; I turn 57 next month and REM was a favorite band throughout the 80s for me, from high school well into college and beyond. And I'd argue that "Life's Rich Pageant" is their best album.
I find that outside my age cohort, though, most people don't remember REM. They were as influential, I think, as any band of the '80s; one of the most important bands of the era. But they feel forgotten, except by those of us who were there.
Oh, how I loved R.E.M! I do think Lifes Rich Pageant is one of their very best. Automatic felt like such an adult album, struggling with mortality as they had never done before. for me, Find the River hits so hard:
There's no one left to take the lead
But I tell you and you can see
We're closer now than light years to go
Pick up here and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
Fall into the ocean
And then there is Man on the Moon and that wonderful video:
I was a big fan through the first four albums (I was in college when 'Murmur' dropped), but started losing interest after that, with a brief rekindling with 'Automatic for the People.' Except for the odd song here and there I didn't care for the subsequent stuff much at all.
I lost the thread after "Automatic" though I did like "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" off Monster. Couldn't even tell you the name of the album that followed "Monster," though.
Taught myself how to play guitar in part by listening to "Murmur" and "Reckoning." Used to play "Pop Song 89" and "Don't Go Back to Rockville" in a band a while back. For me it was all about the jangle.
Oh, and "Near Wild Heaven" is about the most perfect pop song I've ever heard.
As a fellow Gen Xer, I loved REM too. For me they're part of the soundtrack of high school, and all the memories of growing up and leaving home.
One of the delights of reading Rod's newsletter for me is its peripatetic and personal nature. He wanders from current events to politics to culture issues, and manages to throw in some personal emotional anecdotes from his life. It makes me feel like I know him, even though we've never met! It's relatable and just lovely.
I agree with Laura. Well written. And I've barely heard of REM. I'm a bit older than many posters. But I'm glad our host brings up topics like REM because REM was important to a lot of people.
I was 20. I played that vinyl to absolute death. Growing up in the shadows of classic rock, REM felt like they were actually ours, along with The Replacements, Husker Du, and The Smiths.
Funny, but I didn't like 'Murmur' as much as I do until I had heard 'Reckoning.' THAT'S the one I played to death -- a friend lent me his cassette and I kept it for at least a month until I bought the LP. It was at that point that I went back to Murmur and realized just how good it was.
I didn't like the three bands you mention as much, because I was more of a post-punk guy: early U2, Chameleons, The Sound, etc. I love Joy Division now but at the time I didn't like them -- too much of a downer. Around that same time I bought a Cocteau Twins EP on a whim, and have been a giant fan ever since.
My Du and ‘Mats love had a lot to do my growing up in MN and living in Mpls. at that time. They, along with Prince, made us proud. Seems kind of silly now. And, well…Morrissey…. I'm still devoted to him. Cocteau Twins are special. Robyn Hitchcock, early U2, Talking Heads, Psychedelic Furs, Violent Femmes. man I could go on and on. I love anytime Rod brings up music around here.
I am late Gen-X (born in 1978) so REM was part of my middle and high school years. I saw them a couple times on their "Monster" tour. Luckily I had an older brother and sister who liked them, so I got to know their older stuff too. "Driver 8" remains one of my favorite songs.
As far as the age of the candidates is concerned, making hay of the opponent’s decline is a cottage industry on both sides. If there is a better metaphor for the Baby Boomers’ refusal to accept their own mortality, I can’t think of it.
Trump, of course, is the leader of a religious cult. Naturally his followers will accept no-one but their messiah. Biden is really rather more difficult to explain. He’s more like a Chinese emperor, surrounded by his mandarins, I suppose. But here, we really see the superiority of the British system over the American. If Biden were a prime minister, I suspect his MPs would have come to him long ago and eased him up into the House of Lords. Here in the US, we have no such option and our primary system is yet again revealed as the disaster that it is.
Senility 2024 is apparently the ticket that can’t lose.
So we choose between the mandarins on the one hand and whoever is most adept at stroking Trump’s ego. I strongly expect a second Trump term to be a complete validation of Karl Marx’s dictum about history repeating itself. Certainly Trump himself seems to have zero interest in actually governing. In this, the Republican Party could have no better representative of its existence solely as a vehicle for posturing and grievance. But that does have the unfortunate result of uncertainty over what actual policies (if any) Trump would pursue. Trump doesn’t do policy. He does loyalty. He demands the complete lack of a spine in his toadies. That opens the door to any number of charlatans and flatterers. The mandarins at least are a known quantity.
In Britain in the 70s, Harold Wilson knew he was losing his mental edge and came from a family where many had early dementia. So Wilson wisely gave way to James Callaghan and accepted a seat in the House of Lords. Of course, the House of Lords is likely to be mothballed in the next couple of years and made into a museum.
I suppose it’s a measure of my despair over American politics that I’ve immersed myself far more in the current British election and Canadian politics. Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer both seem like refreshingly decent sorts, at least by way of comparison with their American counterparts. And what I wouldn’t give to have Pierre Polievre in charge of the GOP or Justin Trudeau in charge of the Democrats!
The American system of politics really does seem to have turned into a kakocracy.
The House of Lords has served one useful purpose, as a “promotion” that comes in handy when it’s time for someone to move on out. There’s even an opportunity for a rehabilitation of sorts occasionally, as the Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton shows.
Both American political parties will move on to fresh faces in 2028. The Democrats have Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Wes Moore. The Republicans have JD Vance, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley. The presidential race of 2024 being the election of the geriatrics is an anomaly.
The crazy thing is that if either party had pulled forward one of those fresh(er) faces to this year, they’d probably have won in a landslide. But no. We are being subjected to the political equivalent of that Family Guy episode where Herbert fought his WWII nemesis Lt Schlechtnacht. Which candidate corresponds with the pedophile and which with the Nazi is left as an exercise for the reader.
Our politics are utterly broken and need a variety of structural changes. Both choices for president are awful and there's no "none of the above" option.
"For example, could it be that there are more intelligent beings in the cosmos than the Bible says?"
I raise meat rabbits. (Yes, like the infamous rabbit lady from Roger and Me. ) They lead happy little lives chewing on my pasture grass and frolicking among the clover in their tractors (basically mobile cages with a wire that allows them to reach the grass). On graduation day, they're swiftly dispatched never knowing what hit them.
Rabbits have no idea what a pasture is. They don't understand that they are in a tractor. They also have no idea what's in store for them at 16 weeks of age. In the grand scheme of things, humans aren't that much smarter than rabbits. They only thing that distinguishes us from them is that we are in a possession of a hubris so profound that we won't even entertain the idea that we are bumping and frolicking about on the pasture of some higher intelligence.
*Flatland* seems instructive here: how would a circle react to the presence of a sphere? Well, if that circle is like an average human, then probably at least at first with denial and shock and anger.
Absolutely. But that idea of hubris is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's certainly a sentiment that's always infected humanity, but following, say IDK, the late 1800s it's reached truly profound levels. You can trace that thread through everything from Communism to the myth of progress to transexuality. But where I think it's most pernicious is when it runs through spirituality and ontology. We have our particle colliders, detailed maps of the subatomic strata, gravity wave detectors, and so forth all of which have made us immensely proud of ourselves. But no one seems open to the very real possibility that all of that could be nothing more than a child's idea of how the universe works. We are limited beings with limited senses, limited consciousness, and limited life spans. We have truly no idea what could actually be out there, what reality is, or even why it is. To say we live on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way is just as absurd an idea that we are butterflies dreaming we are men.
Well, I'm sort of a Blakean in my temperament and approach, though; and I'm also a Christian and believe that we are created in the image of God, and that the Logos did indeed walk among us as a man. So, I wouldn't go as far as you with the ontological skepticism. I think there's a lot that can be known and that has in fact been known, via the revelation of God and our mystic-poetic apprehension of it, along with our own creative response.
I think I have to align myself with the Buddha on this one. I think we can know a lot, but what we can tease out is distinctly human. We can figure out what constitutes the "good life", what leads to human flourishing, what makes us like God, even. The Buddha offered as much - "I teach suffering, its causes, and its cessation". But he claimed to know plenty more which he would not discuss such as the nature of reality, where a Buddha goes after death, etc. The traditional take on that is that those things had nothing to do with the end of suffering so they were best ignored. That may be true. But I think more practically, there's just no way for an ordinary human to grock all that. I think only God can truly know himself and all that He created.
I'm just okay with taking it a step past that with the Hermetic analogy of "As below, so above", and with the premise that the Logos is fundamentally human—or that the essence of the Logos is also our own human spiritual essence, meaning that we are in fact capable of understanding each other, just was He was capable of becoming one of us.
Also, is it just me, or are you sounding oddly pessimistic today? I was under the impression that you were more ambitious about what it's possible for humans to know.
Oh, I was joking—remember, that was Rust's line? Haha. I'd say that at the very least, time's an ascending spiral, with harmonic intervals and octaves as it rises.
The Washington Post operates within a tighter and tighter bubble that extends from Northwest Washington, Cleveland Park, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Adams-Morgan and skips over to Capitol Hill. Arlington and Alexandria are side shows. The Post mindset never leaves that bubble. Exurban Maryland, the Eastern Shore, the Shenandoah and rural Virginia are where the mean Trumpers live and they don't count.
The pre-woke Post had plenty of unhinged lefties like Richard Cohen and Dorothy Gilliam but they also had the erudite, well-read moderate liberal Jonathan Yardley writing for the Post and he was almost always worth reading. Evans and Novak were always a must read. Today the Post exclusively prints people like the ultra-woke Petula Dvorak. I dropped the Post fifteen years ago because the Post made it clear that they despised people like me. The only thing I miss about the Post is that the paper was useful in starting fires in my woodstove.
Should rich patrons subsidize uneconomical institutions? It is up to the rich patron. If the rich patron doesn't think he's getting his money's worth, then he would be stupid to throw money away unproductively. Apparently, that is the conclusion of Jeff Bezos.
Yes. I think a part of the Post's problem is, as Rod says, the Times simply does that kind of journalism much better than the Post does. The Times is very woke, too, but it also has more comprehensive news coverage than any other newspaper in the US -- and much more than the Post ever had. In the past the Post was worth reading due to the inside baseball perspective it once had on Washington politics, but that really got watered down, and, in recent years, the Times has surpassed it, even in terms of coverage of that topic, which is the home turf of the Post. It just isn't a great newspaper, and really there's probably only room for one national woke newspaper for the overeducated ... and that's the NYT. TL;DR is that the NYT ate the Post for lunch.
I drift into hating the Times because of their bias but they do plenty of really great coverage.
Read a long piece today from 2014 about the aging chemical weapons we found in Iraq and our military's refusal to treat our soldiers adequately who were harmed disposing of same. Linked from a David French piece explaining why he still thinks going into Iraq was a good decision.
Great analysis in the first segment. Accelerating toward the iceberg indeed. It's biblical-scale mass insanity on the part of our corrupt leadership class and its doddering figurehead president.
The Regime's obsession with Russia is ideologically driven. Moscow is seen as the capital of the global forces opposing the New Moral Order. Ironic as hell that it is left to the likes of Vladimir Putin to be the default champion of the ancient truths of Judeo-Christian civilization.
As for the conservatives and Republicans happily along for the ride, you can't fix stupid. These are people too shallow and dumb to understand the difference between the Evil Empire of the totalitarian communist Soviet Union and the broken non-communist nation of Russia that rose from the former's ashes. Post-Soviet Russia never needed to be our enemy...until we set out to make her so.
The only question now is whether this madness will end in mere disaster...or historic catastrophe.
Yes, with the collapse of World Communism, the left felt empowered to force modern liberalism down the throats of the whole world. The Russians wouldn't abide. But I don't get why "conservatives" like McConnell and Graham are all in with the modern left against Russia. I can only guess that it is a reflexive, puerile hatred from the Cold War combined with campaign funds that the defense industry showers on the Republican Party.
Dylan is on the record saying he was prodded into writing that song. I'm rewatching the Scorsese's PBS thing and he says in the interviews, over and over, that, e.g., Hard Rain, isn't about nuclear rain, it's about a hard rain gonna fall.
"IBM, Raytheon, Boeing (erm), Lockheed Martin, Apple, GM. It's a big part of the answer."
I have to disagree. The large majority of U.S. defense expenditures are aimed at the Middle East and North Korea. China comes in a distant third, and Russia long after that. Even when considering strategic missiles and bombers, it should be noted that the U.S. has target lists for EVERY other nuclear power, and any consideration of the cost of opposing any particular power with strategic assets should be seen as a fraction of the cost (i.e., Russia gets about one-seventh of the strategic bill, and not even that when we consider that one or two Trident subs are slated to be held in reserve for World War Four).
How do I know? Among other reasons, a French contractor told me that French SLBMs are targeted on the U.S., and the U.S. knows about it, and we can be sure reciprocity holds.
Slight correction -- it's not "the left" who's doing the forcing here. It's the neocon/neolib elites. They are pushing cultural leftism because it greases the skids for The Machine.
I'm not saying our rulers are not into a little libertinism themselves (look at the Clintons), but do you think that Andrew Sullivan, Britney Griner, and Martha Nussbaum know they're being used? Me neither.
How so? For ages it's been a tool of demagogues and would-be tyrants to panic people by claiming some sort of threat to their families (wives and children). Hence some of the uglier slanders cooked up against the Jews in the Middle Ages. And in our own history claims of black men raping white women. And nowadays good old Qanon and its vile slanders. Seems to me "unattached" individuals are less likely to be moved by such tactics. (I do have some doubt that there are very many people who are truly unattached-- as opposed to merely single and/or childless. I'm one of the latter, but so far the demagogues have not figured out ways to freak me by claiming threats to my friends. They rather would have to appeal to my own self-interest but they seem singly uninterested in doing so)
Yup, I think you're onto something. Ignorance and craven greed: a deadly combination.
What worries me is Karma. The rottenness and corruption of these people have inflicted so much pain on so many...here...in Ukraine...everywhere...that the moral tectonic plates of the universe have been tensioned beyond their tolerance. We're overdue for an earthquake.
Agree that the war is neither just nor necessary. Neither was our government's support for the overthrow of the elected president of Ukraine in 2014 or the aggressive westward expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was a reckless, mindless, arrogant policy on the part of the West that set the stage for this insanity. The Ukrainians are being sacrificed on the altar of the Regime's sicko ideology.
You should force yourself to waste a couple of hours in listening to the Republican radio talk show host, Hugh Hewitt, who in his view of Russia is the most impressive visionary of 1955.
Yes, the fine for not taking immigrants is outrageous! I don't know if Hungary will pay, but if they do, here is some math: 216 million divided among 10 million Hungarians is $21.60. The one million euros a day divided by 10 million is 11 cents a day per Hungarian in US currency.
Rod, what did you mean about closer ties with China helping this situation? I am not politically brilliant enough to see how that would work.
OK, so, US Dems/EU say "Orban do as we told you", and Orban says "I won't, and if you try to make me I will get even closer to China." Is that it? Or...Obran says "Fine, I'll pay your fine. I'll use all the money China bribed me with to let a bunch of Chinese come in and build cars." Or...what's up?
Certainly it would help to have easy Chinese money to pay the fine. But if Hungary becomes a concern of China, protecting Hungary from ridiculousness from the EU becomes a Chinese interest as well.
Gorsh, that's good. So China might threaten not to give chips to the EU if they don't get to make cars in Hungary because either times have grown hard there or Orban limits such car-making conditioned upon EU policies. You're a genius. (And I assume Rod thought of this but thought we were all as smart as you and him.)
I'm not a genius - just interested in history and international relations... IR was actually my major in college. Kind of ironic at a school where most of the students were from mid-Minnesota and never intended to leave mid-Minnesota. *L* I wasn't nearly as much a traditional conservative then, but I really was surprised stopping by IR groups online back in the day ('02, '03) how leftist they were and how different opinions were not tolerated at all. And... it's not like I did nothing with what I learned in college either. I didn't go into an IR profession, but I suppose I didn't do badly with it either.
Both my first cousin's daughter and my other first cousin's granddaughter, each age 23, majored in International Relations. My thought was that it interests me so much and would have been fascinating, but I worry a bit about what they will do for a career. You say you didn't do badly with it? So it was a good choice?
Biden’s physical and mental decline is distressing and, frankly, scary. Not only is he experiencing steep cognitive decline, but it’s now so noticeable and routine that it’s more or less expected, as if it were perfectly normal behavior. What is also worrisome is the moral vacuity of the individuals who interact with him daily. No one steps forward, for the good of the country, to publicly state that he is no longer fit to serve. Also, what is he doing? Yesterday, he signed a ten-year defense/reconstruction agreement with Ukraine, with the goal of that country’s eventual membership in NATO. Are we stumbling ever forward to another strategic fiasco?
I now believe it is close-to-certain, though not absolutely certain, that Dems will have to change their candidate, and I look for that at the Democratic National Convention. Biden performing well in the June debate (after a probable medical injection) might change that. But otherwise: We might even have President Harris for a few months after the sad announcement about Biden's health is made, but she won't be their candidate. (Quite possible, it will be Newsom, I guess). Just a theory...but looking more and more likely....
How would President Harris take being shouldered aside in favor of some white dude? Or, even if she's not President, being pushed aside at the convention in favor of such? If I were her I'd make a godawful fuss and play the "this is racist, this is gynophobiac" card. What's she got to lose in either of those situations?
I'd agree if President Harris actually were to happen, but for the reasons you state, I don't think there will be a President Harris i.e. a 25th Amendment removal scenario. Easier not to have her as a summer stopgap.
Biden is useful puppet, but that toy is winding down; the winding key has been lost. I think it more likely that Biden/Harris are replaced by NotBiden / PossiblyNotHarris at the Chicago convention. It's possible that the Dem leadership is counting on a Biden failure in the debate in order to smooth the path for replacing him, but it's hard to handicap these reindeer games.
The rules do not allow that sort of replacing. If Biden has the delegates he will be nominated. Ditto Trump on the GOP side. Like or not (absent death) we're stuck with these guys for this election.
There is quite a bit the "powers that be" can do if they really want something. They can make it so that Kamala does not want to be president, and will not speak of the real reason why she does not want it. I'd say they know they must do this. Kamala will not continuously cooperate with puppet masters, as Joe Biden has. But she will cooperate with blackmailers to at least remain silent and step aside. Plus, even though through some miracle of daily PRAVDA, about 30 percent of the public says they approve of Joe Biden, and only 57 percent say they disapprove, she could never keep even those kind of numbers, - a disaster for Democrats. She may even meet with some accident, ala JFK, RFK, countless Clinton allies and who knows who else. But I truly believe we will never see a president Harris. Just my opinion.
The crinkle of some old worn out 90s tinfoil can be heard.
JFK was murdered by Oswald, his brother by a Palestinian terrorist. Conspiracy theories can be fun- I came up with some in my own fiction writing- but the reality is just plain boring.
I’m 70 & I’m not gaga yet but I’m not as sharp as I was. Names often escape me. It’s frustrating. But I don’t have to run anything but my own household.
I'm 64 and guilty, too. Two weeks ago I drove my Odyssey up to my barn where my truck was. I left my Odyssey on while I drove off with my truck for two hours. The Odyssey was still on when I got back.
My cousin with whom I live is almost 88. She's quite spry and very much "with it". And she would sooner vote for an alligator than for Trump, but she considers Biden as really too old for the job.
"You I thought I knew you, you I cannot judge. You, I thought you knew me, this one laughing quietly underneath my breath." Yeah, Nightswimming, I feel that grief. It wasn't "our" song, but it's a killer.
Rod, you may be right as the rain with respect to Hungary's immigration policy, but your stance on Russia could not be more wrong. Russia has for 300+ years consistently demanded control of what it refers to as its "Near Abroad", the Warsaw Pact most recently serving that function. Russia sees it as a necessary buffer to the West inasmuch as there are no physical boundaries between Russia and the rest of Europe to do the same. The rush of the Balkan states, Poland, and other Warsaw Pact nations to join NATO demonstrates their understanding of history.
Right, but they now ARE part of NATO, and I don't think Russia is going to cross that line. Ukraine is NOT part of NATO, and shouldn't be. It's way too close to Russia, not only geographically (yes, so are the Baltics, but they're tiny; Ukraine is huge) and spiritually/psychologically. The Kievan Rus, you know. NATO can survive very well without Ukraine. Russia can't.
So many Russian issues. The Ukraine War is more an example of this than many would like to see. One major example is the disastrous Russian initiative at the start of the current war. From Russia's participation with the allied powers against Napoleon followed by Napoleon's ultimately failure in 1812, to the 1916 Kerensky Offensive, which was a Russian failure followed by a Central Powers invasion of Russia that ultimately stalled inside Russia, to the 1939 Molotov-von Ribbentrop understanding that allowed Russia to take half of Poland only to see Hitler the next year break the agreement, invade Russia, and come to grief at Stalingrad, in each of these examples, Russian initiatives were followed by Russian losses but ultimately Russian victories due to its greater manpower and territorial reserves. For these reasons Putin has said several times that he wants to restore the boundaries of the Soviet Union to include the Warsaw Pact/Near Abroad. Success in Ukraine for him is just the start. Undermining NATO by encouraging popular dissatisfaction in the US and Western Europe is already underway. Putin is as much ego driven as any other Russian autocrat. The best, though cynical, bet for the West is to bleed Russia dry until it ultimately overruns Ukraine, giving NATO another generation of security.
"Kievan Rus" spent much of its late medieval and early modern period history as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was not an integral part of the Russia which came to be centered on the Muscovite tsardom.
Anybody think that President Biden is just pretending to be a doddering old fool to lure Trump into being overconfident in their debate? With a few uppers in him, Biden might perform like Jack Kennedy in 1960.
He’s more like 80 year old German Chancellor Paul Von Hindenburg in the 1930’s….the Brown shirts and Hitler running rings around him. Oblivious to the radical take over.
I think that's a pretty good analogy. No analogy gets any better than pretty good, because no two situations are alike. But Biden sincerely and cluelessly wants to do the right thing, and has a closed circle whispering in his ear about just exactly what the right thing is.
Oh, give it a break. Biden is hardly oblivious to such threats these days; that’s one reason why he’s the constant target of vicious political attacks, and not some comfy grandpa figure no one but a Republican special prosecutor ever mentions. Every time he makes the stiff movements of an old man trying to look gracious when all he wants to do is sit down, somebody clips the scene to run over and over on a host of rightwing web sites, not to mention Fox News. The scene shown here is nothing compared to the one Fox showed a lot of him during the D Day celebrations apparently frozen, this time crouching forward toward his wife, as if meaning to sit…if only there’d been a chair to sit in. In fact, as the full tape showed, there was a chair there, but Biden had stopped mid-sit in polite deference when he saw his Secretary of Defense (off camera) rise to give a speech. When the Secretary began to speak, Mr. Biden finally sat down.
In the meantime, of course, his chief opponent Mr. Trump spends hours at rallies making gaffe after gaffe, pretending to dance or sway to music that’s not playing (an old guy trick most of us know to disguise the fact that, after 70, one’s balance occasionally goes south as one’s feet go north) prattling on endlessly about matters no one can or even tries to follow (shark attacks, electric cars, needing to flush and flush toilets and all those foreigners stealing our money; something should be done). And yet his opponents keep busy covering a trial involving him and a porn star.
You miss the point entirely, and also missed everything else I've said on this matter, tangling with what are probably devoted fans of Donald Trump trying to play "gotcha" with every Biden video.
I wasn't talking about his physical balance at public gatherings, I was agreeing that in general, broadly, in his conduct as president, Biden has for more than three years picked policy positions and made public statements that were perfectly coherent, but evidenced that he sincerely and cluelessly wants to do the right thing. E.g., his oft-quoted statement, which he remains proud of, that "trans gender is the civil rights movement of our time." His balance and his memory can be perfect, but that's still a clueless crowd-pleasing piece of nonsense.
Gee, Anne, one might get the impression that you're a partisan.
Wouldn't be the first "great" statesman that zipped along at breakneck speed, trying to control the enveloping chaos.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/07/518986612/author-says-hitler-was-blitzed-on-cocaine-and-opiates-during-the-war
Yeah... These things were being discovered and perfected, and even normal German soldiers had wide access to Pervitin.
I can easily imagine walking away from the crowd a few yards to enjoy the scenery, contemplate the historic sacred ground, find a few moments of quiet contemplation. Why is everyone so sure he didn't know where he was?
Yeah, that's it. He needed some quiet contemplation. Thanks for the laugh.
Perhaps Biden realized he was about to have a flatulence incident and he selflessly walked off to do business.
I think you're probably right. There has to be some explanation for this (and his other wanderings and strange behaviors as well) that don't involve advanced dementia. There's just no evidence of that, is there? And didn't his doctor say he's just fine? Dr. Jill, too. Who are you going to believe, them or your lyin' eyes?
Absolutely. It is quite obvious that Biden is facing in the right direction, and all the others had turned in a daze to look at the pretty birds.
None of them were looking at birds, they were looking at parachutists. There was no precise "right direction." Have you even been in a public park looking in a different direction from someone standing nearby?
Absolutely, but I can't recall wandering away from a public ceremony attended by high government officials because I saw a cute chipmunk scampering by.
Is there a chipmunk in the video? Were the government officials engaged in a formal ceremony, or watching some cool military maneuvers?
"Watching cool military maneuvers"? It was a ceremony to honor the D-Day heroes, and whether or not they had to stand at military attention themselves, it was all " formal" enough for Rishi Sunak to be reamed by the British media for leaving the proceedings early. And whatever distracted Biden, he was oblivious enough to what was happening that he had to be taken by the arm and led back to the group by Giorgia Meloni, none of whose other members needed to be herded like cats for the group picture. Look, I will not deny my disdain for Biden, but I don't see how you can say he appeared alert and attentive to his environment, no matter how the video was edited.
He turned to talk to some people who had addressed him first. These people were edited out of the clip so it looks like he just wandered off aimlessly.
Quite possible.
Because he wasn’t on a walk. It was a meeting.
It clearly was not a meeting. It was a bunch of high ranking talking heads stands at a ceremony. And, as others have pointed out, they were focused on a parachutist who was part of the observance, when another parachutist landed and Biden turned his way.
I've said it once and I'll say it again (actually Kim Iverson said it first): Biden the Sleepwalker will be replaced at the Dem's Convention in August.
I read/heard recently that they can't do a replacement at the convention because of the Ohio ballot thing. They'll do a roll call of delegates (via zoom or whatever) in July and get all the delegates pledged to him thus making an open convention impossible. Just to make sure he gets on the Ohio ballot.
This is a distinct possibility and a replay of what they did to Trump last time in the debates.
The requires a level of artifice and forward planning that people just don't have.
Also, it would be strategically stupid. If "Biden is senile" gets baked into the cake, a strong debate performance won't unbake that.
Nah, he has genuine dementia. Explains the weird quality of the anger he exhibits at times too. Though in the clip here I think he is just going over to check out what some people outside the frame are doing. Too bad, I don't support the Democrats in any way but don't have any personal hate towards Biden.
Dementia patients tend to get worse at night. I wonder if it is true with the President.
"Sundowning". Pretty common.
I think Biden's mind and body are ground zero for the latest CIA drug experiments.
I would be very interested in seeing the actual video instead of this obviously cropped version.
The whole video is easy to find. It does not improve things.
Ambulatory metaphor is right: I've thought for awhile that there's something outright poetic about this guy being our dotard-in-chief at this time.
Its me again, willing to be unpopular. It is almost a matter of principle for me.
(1) Yes, it appears to me Biden often does not know where to go, and that he wanders. (2) I do not think this is an instance of that.
In the lower right corner of the video, after Biden starts off, you see that there is a second parachutist. Biden is at the end of the line of those observing the first parachutist. He goes over and tries to talk to the second guy. Meloni then comes over, grabs his elbow and turns him around. All the others come over and the group stands and pose for a picture.
PS: But the general look on Biden's face has changed even since he became president. These days, he almost always has that squint, and that puzzled look like he does not know where to go, or perhaps where he is. He always waits for someone to direct him, generally for someone to take his arm. There is also a very weird recent video in which four people, including Biden, stand behind a speaker The speaker turns and shakes hands with each of the four in turn. When he finishes, Biden stretches out his hand for a handshake holding it there. Then when he does not get one, he seems to remember, and tries to deflect by wiping his face or hair in some way. - Biden's moments of clarity do come and go. And Trump saying "They give him a shot in the a** when he debates" is hilarious and could well be true.
"These days, he almost always has that squint...."
That's the "work" he's had done.
Maybe Biden's imitating Lee Van Cleef in "A Few Dollars More."
I think he is imitating Chauncy Gardner.
Or Terry Kiser in Weekend at Bernie's.
Re: These days, he almost always has that squint
Linda, I'm no where near Biden's age but as I have aged my eyes have somehow receded a bit into my face (there's a name for that, but I forget what it is) and in pictures taken of me I look stoned or half-asleep. My solution: put on sunglasses for any pics whenever possible.
Sorry, this doesn't work. Had he all his buttons he would know that this is an issue and make an effort to stay with the pack and chat up his fellow "leaders" (what a detestable word). He doesn't know what he's doing and he doesn't care how he looks.
Well, I think its fine to go talk to the lone parachutist for a bit. But perhaps I should not have bothered to say it. Biden has been lost on many other occasions. I will concede he may have known a group picture was in the offing, and should not have wandered off. But further, maybe his hearing is bad, he is standing and the end of the line, and he was supposed to know that but did not.
So he's deaf too? This is getting serious.
As always, I appreciate your thoroughness.
I was skeptical of this video too particularly after I got burned by the editing of the d-day memorial video and the "narrative" of "there's not even a chair there!" When there was.
I think Buck Sexton said that the "Biden has dementia" stuff is just like the "Trump's a criminal" stuff in that neither is going to determine the election.
I watched a longer, unedited version of the video. It wasn't cropped to show Biden in a bad light. Macron and Ursula van Der Leyen noticed his strange behavior but didn't know what to do or how to handle the situation. It took Georgia Maloni, who was on the other end of the line, to walk past all those other "leaders" and gently guide him back to the group.
Shortly after Joe Biden was installed as president, there was a video of some sort of event being held in the East Room of the White House. The room was jam-packed with Democrats. Obama and Michelle were there. Obama gave a speech and told a joke poking a little fun at Biden. After the speech people crowded around Obama for a chance to talk to him or shake hands, but everyone totally ignored Joe Biden. The video showed him wandering around aimlessly, not knowing what to do or where to go. He was the supposed the Leader of the Free World and people in the room totally ignored him. To me, it showed how little regard for the man they placed in the White House.
Biden did the samething similar when he visited King Charles at Windsor Castle awhile back. Biden and the king slowly reviewed a line of troops standing at attention when Biden suddenly stopped, walked away from the king and tried to strike up a conversation with one of the soldiers. I think the king had to go over and take him by the arm to finish the review.
But I think the most bizarre incident was during his campaign. Jill Biden was speaking to a group of voters, when she extended her right arm in front of Joe. He took her hand and started nibbling on her fingers! Nothing wrong with that in the privacy of ones own home, but not in public in front of strangers when you're running for the presidency.
Joe Biden has been a disaster for this country, and I don't know if we will ever be able to recover from it. The tragic thing is that he has been nothing more than a figurehead, a puppet or a tool of the Democrats, and possibly even by his own wife and family.
I don't know who's running the show in the White House but it sure isn't Joe Biden - most likely its Obama.
And, I'm pretty sure the Democrats are going to replace him with someone else at the convention so we should all brace ourselves and be ready for that possibility.
Yeah, I'm fine if he just goes over there near the parachutist guy. Though I think he does show serious signs of dementia.
Why does Meloni turn him around if what he’s doing is perfectly logical.
Because they want to do a group photo. If you have ever been with a group you know how much fun being forced into a group photo is, yes?
Why does everyone else know about the group photo?
Maybe I’m wrong but it does look odd IMHO.
Good for you. I prefer people to give their honest take, it keeps us all more alert and strengthens the others who had a dissenting view but were afraid to say so.
Even a certain "Compro" made a good point in another thread last night, a valid contribution to the topic.
But there exist photos taken from a different angle which show Biden talking to some people who are paying attention to him-- yet these do not appear in the video, either because of the angle it was taken, or because they were edited out.
I've come to the point where if something cannot be vetted by high standards similar to those used by courts or reputable scientific institutes it should be set aside under suspicion of fakery. And this problem is only going to get worse, much worse.
In the clip I saw, Italy's Prime Minister Georgia Merloni actually rushes out to steer Joe Biden back to the gaggle of G-7 leaders. Georgia Merloni looked like a dutiful daughter helping out her senile father at a picnic,
She's a lot better than his better half. Dr. Jill, who is either out of the frame or not there, ignores these what's the word? episodes. Either she thinks she's the President, or she doesn't want to be seen as his minder, or both.
She's the deep-dyed villain of this piece, btw.
True. Jill Biden should explain to Joe that he shouldn't run for re-election. Why doesn't she? She likes the power. On January 20, 2025 she would become irrelevant.
Alas, she's stupider than he is. You know Joe Epstein's epithet for the title of her doctoral thesis--“Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs”? "Unpromising".
Also, the EdD is not a real doctoral degree; whatever she wrote would be more akin to a master's thesis at best.
Who is not going to give Joe Biden's wife a pass on her thesis? The whole thing is derisory.
You mean Dr. Jill can't fill out prescriptions for Joe's ED?
I read her dissertation. It reads like something written by an industrious but not particularly bright high school student. Next to it, Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis was a scholarly masterwork.
I suspect a major fraction of theses these days especially in social science or the humanities, are well fermented BS. Pretty much everything worth discoursing about has already been done to death.
Too true (at least in my experience) but rarely true of my own students.
What an awful family. They're abusing him, he's retiring as a fool. He could have retired from VP. Also Hunter's on crack, and buying a handgun. Neither man has seen the 5 year old daughter/grand-daughter. He has an affair and smokes crack with his sister in law of dead brother. They seem evil awful family.
Families do have black sheep. I have a distant cousin (twice removed) who stole his dying grandfather's morphine solution and substituted water in it. (And there are other tales concerning that clan I could regale folks with-- that one strikes me as the most atrocious).
Neil Bush. Billy Carter. Prince Andrew. Patti Davis. Randolph Churchill. Jane Fonda.
There is no deep dyed villain... only the banality of evil.
Meloni fancies herself the female Frodo...or should that be Lady Galadriel? Either way, she's just another globalist foot soldier.
I lost all respect for her when Trudeau lectured her on some "anti" LGBT bill wending its way through the subterranean world of Italian politics. Even though she was clearly fuming, Meloni just sat there and said nothing, instead of unleashing her inner Italian on that Canadian fool.
She has to be somewhat diplomatic.
She should have said, "Shut your mouth, boy."
I still respect and have hope for her and Italy.
Why argue with Trudeau? He doesn't appear malleable in his views in any way. She was preserving her energy for the fights she can win.
What Trudeau says has absolutely nothing to do with whether a bill becomes law in Italy. She could afford to ignore him.
Trudeau just can't help himself. It's Prime Minister Blackface's nature to pontificate and lecture others. Can you imagine Meloni giving Trudeau a sermon about the mass graves found at Canada's Indian schools? I can't (and the mass graves were mostly fake news).
Several months ago at an international summit, Trudeau attempted to schmooze with Xi, who promptly rebuked Trudeau for releasing to the Canadian press the contents of an earlier meeting. I say rebuked because I suspect the official Mandarin translation was sanitized for Western ears. Xi turned and walked away, leaving a flustered Trudeau standing alone, staring down at his shoes.
Only the Celestials can deliver an insult like that. Trudeau had no idea what hit him.
Meloni lacks the subtlety of Confucius or Lao Tzu but certainly had the opportunity to go full Machiavelli on Trudeau. Or better yet, Borgia. Missed opportunity.
Probably true. It would have been amusing. But I suspect that she just didn't care enough to bother.
Maybe she knows that arguing with idiots is pointless. It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you & annoys the pig.
One can't be in permanent outrage mode (someone please tell the Woke Left!) At a guess she likely regarded the situation as a tempest in a teapot and nothing to cause a diplomatic incident over.
That was my impression too. I thought it was very kind of her.
Yes. Lately any act of human kindness such as this tempts me to weep. People do a lot of very crappy things but at the same time human decency abounds.
If it were not for the West’s bungling, Putin would have been out of power a long time ago. He has been able to make the case that the problems Russia faces stem from how the West has acted towards Russia. That is perhaps twenty five percent true, but seventy five percent has been corruption, fatalism, the hole left in the Russian soul by communism, pick something, all things inherent to Russia itself. But Putin can point to things like Ukraine and bolster his position by being able to blame an external enemy. I seriously doubt that everyone in Russia believes that, but it seems to be enough to have enough of an edge to hold onto power.
The obsession of the West with Russia is just baffling, too. I guess it really boils down to the Empire brooking no rivals. The problem is that the rivals of the Empire also have nukes. I would be skeptical that Russia would actually be able to fully deploy its nuclear arsenal in a war, given how bad a shape their military really is in, but I would guess enough nukes still work that a devastating handful could make it through. It is funny that the Empire just doesn’t get the idea that working with Russia might have gotten them a lot farther than just trying to roll over them. I miss the 90s when we didn’t have to worry any longer about the Cold War turning hot. Now, it seems like Western leaders want to go pick a fight just to prove themselves or something. I don’t get it. It makes no sense. Why not maybe try something like putting all those resources into technological advancement, space exploration and colonization, pretty much anything than trying to make war that can never bring any benefit to mankind?
Putin did a good job of getting Russia out of the ditch after the downward spiral of the 90s. He deserves credit for that.
What? Fix random power outages in some of the coldest civilized places on earth? Make sure that SocSec checks are delivered on time, or at all? Put down the Chechens (I don't endorse how)? Who in that country would support such a person?
You sound suspiciously like a Trump supporter now. No, Putin deserves credit for picking up the pieces after the Yeltsin train wreck, but his time has come and gone. Russia needs leadership now that can engage the West, while protecting Russian interests, instead of the either/or it has been for two decades now.
Why would I support Trump over whether or not Vladimir Putin managed to do some good in Russia? I am a Russophile in the larger cultural sense. But the nation has been badly governed for most of its existence. And yes, subject to some historical horrors the like of which we Americans have never come close to (No, our Civil war can't hold a candle beside the Time of Troubles). But that said, I do think Russia has gone off the rails in its quest to restore it imperial glories, and yes this does concern us. Our two oceans might as well be mud puddles insofar as they are any sort of protection from the storms of the Old World.
Ah, that was actually a joke. The simpletons on the woke left can’t seem to understand that the world is more complex than their cartoony ideas of who is on what side. I’ve known quite a few Russians over the years, and don’t care much for the simplistic attitudes displayed in the west towards Russia, having a deep appreciate of the history and culture as well. Russia as a whole is far less alien than China is, and it would make far more sense for us to engage Russia on terms that benefit everyone, but I suppose that doesn’t make for as many defense contracts…
"... it would make far more sense for us to engage Russia on terms that benefit everyone,"
My thoughts exactly.
I've always thought that Hillary used the Russians as a distraction from the real threat - China. The Democrats and the Billionaire class love the Chinese because they are a wonderful source of abundant, cheap and docile labor.
I don’t think that is necessarily the primary reason they love China. I think they tend to love the traditions of the Chinese, with the rulership with divine mandates, the imperial bureaucracy, ideological purity, the large peasant classes ruled by an imperial elite, you get the idea. Russia is none of those things, so if the elite were going to embrace one or the other, on ideological grounds, it would be China. Russia is the “red state,” while China is the “blue state.”
It's not only the cheap labor. It's also that China's extensive natural materials processing and manufacturing industries take a load off the West in terms of polution generation. So they can virtue signal endlessly regarding their own countries while keeping shut about who is the new kid on the block polluting.
There's been a remarkable amount of continued improvements in Russian material life regardless of whether the west wants to engage with Russia or not. The problem is that Russia of 2024 is compared to the USA of 2023, not the Russia of 2010, and the Russia of 1999. It's the same problem that West Virginia has (I've lived both places so I feel comfortable iwth the comparisons) in that it's not usually judged according to where it has come recently, but vs places which weren't in such a deep hole to begin with.
For example, the existence of new big box stores in provincial cities isn't an interesting story for Americans who have had them for half a century and are somewhat suspicious of them at this point, but its a big deal in Russia.
If you're a journalist in West Virginia, the story is the poor people up in the hollar, not the newest suburban subdivision. If you're a journalsit in Russia the story is going to be the poorest district you can find (which still has less crime than a lot of the USA) not the latest middle class apartment tower near the new Metro stop in Moscow.
No matter who succedes him the second anything bad happens in post-Putin Russia a huge number of Russians are going to say "Putin would have handled this way better". That both Russian nature and the nature of human beings in general.
I'm not sure how the numbers were fudged but I saw somewhere -- the Financial Times? -- that the Russian GDP is now the fourth highest in the world, surpassing Japan. Didn't Dear Leader Obama once say that Russian is a "gas station masquerading as a country?" Would you like ethanol with your fill-up, sir?
The World Bank puts Russia's GDP at 8th place. I'm not persuaded by a vaguely-remembered reference. https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
The oil and gas industry is about 20% of Russia's GDP, which is less than, Saudi Arabia, but substantially more than the US.
I think you're right, but I've heard the same arguments used during the Cold War. The USSR has to be evaluated by its economic condition compared to its past history, starting with an industrial plant knocked flat by a civil war, not compared to American stats about an economy that thrived on its civil war, since the main industrial areas weren't invaded, and then kept on growing after that.
I think one thing that is overlooked is that many of our legislators are people who seem stuck in the 1980’s and are in their 80’s. When I listen to them talk about Russia - it really sounds like they never accepted that the Cold War ended.
It’s kind of like how some look for a racist or misogyny under every rock. I get being cautious or suspicious, but some really do sound paranoid when talking about Russia, Russia, Russia.
When Mitt Romney was talking about Russia in 2012, he sounded a bit delusional to me then, so the desire to blame everything on Russia these days just rings hollow to me. (Especially after the Russia/Trump stuff we were given for years that turned out to be false)
It’s like some want to cosplay a twisted version of Rocky/Bullwinkle or something.
It’s not out of a love of Putin that I’m writing my observations, but a love of reality.
I just don’t think the paranoia over Russia matches what Russia actually does or wants. They aren’t particularly innocent by any stretch, but geez - it really looks, at times, like we are more of the problem than they are. I’m just not sure what the truth of the situation is at times because it seems like a lot of people want to run a ‘Russia is evil doom loop.’ But is it actually warranted? Russia is a threat, but how much of this is of our own making and/or in our politicians heads? I don’t have a good answer.
It seems like some people are running on autopilot. It’s like they are running outdated programming from another era. And they are running it because it’s all they know and all they want to see.
🤷🏻♀️
The world changed in 1991 and many "conservatives" did not accept it. 1991 should have been liberating.
You should waste an hour or two in listening to the Republican talk show host, Hugh Hewitt. He's the most farsighted man of 1955.
Hugh Hewitt and Grover Norquist would be a couple of parrots.
I don't think our elites have an obsession with Russia. I think they have an obsession with war. And the Russians with their white skin make a target the intersectional Marxists can get behind.
But how could the West NOT have "forgotten God?" Isn't it inevitable that a society, like any other living thing, goes through a life cycle; and that the West, simply, is at the end of its life cycle?
To everything there is a season; and we stand on the cusp of winter.
I've been reading a lot about World War I recently (and then last night watched Mel Gibson's fantastic WWII epic "Hacksaw Ridge" with my youngest son) - how could the industrial wars of the 20th century not shaken or even destroyed man's faith in God, and as a consequence society's faith in God? How could one have endured the Somme or Okinawa and come out of that experience thinking "God is good, God is here?" The only possible reaction for a generation must have been, "There is no God, for if there were this wouldn't be happening."
Such wars, such experiences - at a time of technological advance where science and technology can explain many things once attributed to God - must destroy religious faith, mustn't they?
There may be no atheists in foxholes but there are atheists in comfy boudoirs. I don't think it was the wars that harmed religious feeling, but rather the post war prosperity and the conquest of nature which has left us feeling like we are the gods. The problem of evil challenges us but luxury and small pleasures simply numb us.
I think both are true. Read Paul Fussell's staggering book "The Great War and Modern Memory," and/or Modris Ekstein's history "The Rites of Spring," which is about how WW1 affected the Western mind and spirit. Kgasmart is onto something, no doubt. But so are you: the therapeutic spirit and, as William Cavanaugh has it in his great book of the same title, "The Enchantments of Mammon," replaced the hunger for holiness. Rieff talks about Religious Man giving way to Psychological Man in the late 19th and early 20th century. Nietzsche saw it. The rest of us took a long time to catch up.
100% agree that it was both. The "Progessive Era" had softened us, and WWI was a hard reality check. WWII raised even more questions.
This is going to get people mad, but I don't think Fussell's book has aged well. For one thing he spends an awful lot of time on marginal figures (I mean, Siegfried Sassoon?), slights masterworks (Evelyn Waugh in NIght and Day reviewed In Parenthesis brilliantly upon its publication, and gets it just fine); to make Owen's poetry simply about his supposed same-sex attraction is reductive; and his grand finale is...Pynchon. Now, the last was the great white hope of the English Department when the book was published (I was an undergraduate at the time), and he certainly hasn't held up well (Hugh Kenner said Pynchon's books were what he conceived the world as, i.e., comic books). And he ignores other very substantial work, Wyndham Lewis, and, yes Hemingway.
It's been awhile since I've read it, and you may be right, but to be fair Fussell was writing more about the cultural memory of the war than the war itself. I recall that the book had its limitations, but I'd still say it's worth reading. Again, though, it's been at least 10 years since I read it so a re-read might change my view.
Oh, it's certainly worth reading, and rereading. But he needed someone to push him away from English Dept. ephemera like Sassoon. The chapter on Graves is exemplary.
Again, to be fair, Sassoon seems to be considerably less ephemeral in England than he is here. Ditto Blunden, E. Thomas, etc.
I agree. The anti-spiritual impact of WW1 on American servicemen was minimal. In fact, many American units were still arriving in Europe as the war was ending and so they saw minimal combat. The impact that war had on Europeans was significant, but the transmission to America was delayed until the 1960s and even then did not fully unfurl until the 1990s.
I agree that WWI was not the shock to the US that it was ti the European combatants. But we did have the Roaring 20s still. Every time Rod writes about the Weimar "decadence" I want to point out that we had a similar louche Bacchanalia right here a century ago, and on a fairly massive scale, connected to a surge in organized crime.
The 60s were the fruit of the post-war prosperity exacerbated by the civil rights struggle and of course Vietnam. The 90s? I recall it as our last halcyon era, and while it covered up some dry rot (mainly in foreign policy and economics) it was particularly decadent compared what came before or after.
In his Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork wrote that there was evidence of such decadence in the America of the 90s - the 1890s, that is. The word 'flapper' in the modern use dates from that time (which Bork did not mention). Of course, the very rich were materially decadent even prior to then.
In the 1920's for most people saw the decadence limited to their stock market hopes and an occasional alcoholic drink. The media of the day made the decadence appear more massive than it was by focusing on the more interesting outliers. But yes, American society even then was so large it could see a small subculture finance significant organized crime.
Charles Darwin and the victory of science created modern atheism. World Wars I and II expanded the concept of atheism. Why did God allow the wars to happen?
Religiousdevotion handily survived Darwin just as it survived Galileo. The modern problem is not really atheism, but indifference.
Scientistic ideology is also a problem: people don't actually understand what the science says or the nature and limits of science as an epistemology.
Yes, true. File under "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
Science is not a body of proven facts, it is a method that gets us reliably close to an approximate truth if it is applied properly. It applies to a limited material universe, and does not tell us if there is a larger metaphysical universe, or if there is, what that is all about.
Exactly: the only metaphysical posture that would be appropriate for science is pure agnosticism, not atheist materialism. It's the fallacy of converting a method into a metaphysics. Science started by bracketing off a single sphere as its proper field of investigation, but then people forgot about the brackets and jumped to the notion that the limited material sphere is all there is.
Interestingly, some historians of science claim that Darwin was not the biggest cause of modern atheism, at least in Britain. At that time Euclidean geometry was taught with almost religious certitude (even Aquinas did so), so the appearance of non-Euclidean geometries by Lobachevsky, Bolyai, and Reimann was a real shock to many.
The odd thing is that Reimannian geometry is a better fit with the Christian worldview than Euclidean.
Now that is a curious statement. I know that Reimann's geometry is the one most applicable to the curved surface of the earth as a whole. Is there another way that you mean this?
Reimannian geometry is the one applicable to space being curved, i.e. to the curvature of the three dimensions in a fourth, and thus with the expanding universe.
Euclidean geometry views the universe as having three dimensions that extend to infinity through time and space. Reimannian geometry is a better fit with a universe that is finite but unbounded spatially, and has a beginning temporally. In the section about Genesis in "Confessions", St. Augustine makes a number of comments that seem to pointing to this sort of idea, although of course the maths and physics were not there yet.
Already in the late Enlightenment there were atheists who claimed that Newton's work obviated the need for any God. "Where is there room for God is your system?" Napoleon asked Pierre-Simon Laplace. "Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis" Laplace replied.
"In fact Laplace never said that. Here, I believe, is what truly happened. Newton, believing that the secular perturbations which he had sketched out in his theory would in the long run end up destroying the Solar System, says somewhere that God was obliged to intervene from time to time to remedy the evil and somehow keep the system working properly. This, however, was a pure supposition suggested to Newton by an incomplete view of the conditions of the stability of our little world. Science was not yet advanced enough at that time to bring these conditions into full view. But Laplace, who had discovered them by a deep analysis, would have replied to the First Consul that Newton had wrongly invoked the intervention of God to adjust from time to time the machine of the world (la machine du monde) and that he, Laplace, had no need of such an assumption. It was not God, therefore, that Laplace treated as a hypothesis, but his intervention in a certain place...
"I have it on the authority of [the astronomer François] Arago that Laplace, warned shortly before his [1827] death that that anecdote was about to be published in a biographical collection, had requested him [Arago] to demand its deletion by the publisher. It was necessary to either explain or delete it, and the second way was the easiest. But, unfortunately, it was neither deleted nor explained." - astronomer Hervé Faye, 1884
"I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God does not exist. It's just that he doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science." - Stephen Hawking, 1999
Re: "I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God does not exist. It's just that he doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science."'
Fine for a Deist. But a Christian (or other classical theist) has to allow for miracles, however rare.
Freya India had a superb substack piece this week on how the present crises in mental health are the result of the loss of faith (i will pitch in that ubiquitous internet use is another factor). Her theory matches my intuition on the topic. The belief that the universe is being overseen by an all-knowing and morally good force is a huge stabilizing factor; remove that and you've got and random and crazy world where your actions ultimately mean nothing and your only option is to search for "happiness" which is ephemeral, hard to find and hard to keep.
This is a point that Chambers makes in 'Witness' if I remember correctly. Not that these things "must" destroy faith, but that we should not be surprised by a wholesale questioning of it, given that there were, in fact, new things under the sun that had never been confronted before.
Not sure. It's a common trope in any writeups of persecuted Christians that the persecution strengthens rather than weakens their faith in God. Don't know whether that dynamic would apply here. I think the Holocaust certainly affected the faith of Jewish people.
And there are things once attributed to God that can be explained by science, and others that cannot.
Re: Americans like Biden just cannot get it out of their system that Russia Is The Enemy™.
Russia is not "the enemy" but it is a rival, and worse it's going off the rails and its reckless aggression threatens to destroy the post WWII order which has kept the nukes sleeping like purring cats in their silos. Whatever else you may want you do not want those things waking up and spitting and hissing.
Re: could it be that there are more intelligent beings in the cosmos than the Bible says?
??? The Bible has nothing to say on that topic.
Um, that's the point. They talk about this on the Lord of the Spirits podcast too.
I forget where, but St. Paul says something about how all the spirits are under Jesus' authority now, which could be interpreted to refer to a wider range than just angels and demons. It could refer to nature spirits as well, for example: faeries, djinn, kami, yakshas. . . .
Well, yes, God is truly sovereign over all creation
Huldufolk (Hidden Folk). They are real. They are like us - doing both good and bad. My current theories: They are fourth dimensional beings. Beings like this - not just found in Iceland, though more common there - are responsible for the UAPs. Such things have been seen in the past, for instance, in medieval times, but described as "other-than-UAPs".
Was the fourth dimensional portal even open in biblical times? Oh, I know "Ezekiel saw the wheel". But assuming his was a vision of a wheel, is there any evidence of these beings prior to medieval times? I know records are sparse before then, but isn't it possible they just were not coming through extant portals?
Well, if they're from a higher dimension, they wouldn't need "portals" per se, would they? Interacting with our dimension would simply be a perennial possibility for them, like a sphere crossing the plane of any given circle.
But in the scientific telling, wormholes can be portals. It does not deny , in Flatland, that the great Circle had a special place at which he could enter Flatland. I mean, otherwise, he would have to be a pretty ghostly Circle not to pierce the paper when he decided to pass through it.
Hm, yeah, I suppose. Also, there's the possibility that entities like the huldufolk are not exactly in a "higher" dimension but more like in an adjacent and mostly parallel but sometimes intersecting dimension.
Or simply a parallel universe where evolution went in different directions yielding rather different sentient life forms.
"Whatever else you may want you do not want those things waking up and spitting and hissing."
Damn right, which is why we shouldn't be engaging in the poking and prodding.
If we were smart we would be trying to develop some rapproachment with them. The world has begun an irreversible realignment, our hegemony threatened by China, Brics, Muslims destabilizing Europe. Times are changing and we can't afford any unnecessary enmities.
Agree, but there are too many doofuses in the State Department and in Congress who think that the Cold War never ended, and they are being played like a fiddle by the globalists among them.
Russia is not even a rival really. They are the in the grips of a demographic catastrophe, have a small and not dynamic economy, and a not so great military.
True. Russia is as much a rival to America as Vanderbilt is a rival to Alabama and Georgia.
A country in bad times may well go off the rails and wreak havoc. The obvious example, if I can be excuse for using it, was Germany in the 1930s with its catastrophically bad economy. For time immemorial rulers have "wagged the dog" to focus public ire outward on external "enemies".
As long as they have nuclear weapons, and are geographically adjacent to NATO, they are a rival.
Only the having nuclear weapons makes them a rival because theoretically they could end the world. As a real threat with this army to Europe, not so much. They are a threat in peoples minds only. Russia greatest threat is being able to sustain their country and land with the crashing population. Since 2016 Russia's has had over 3.5 million deaths more than they have had births and the numbers out so for from this year are not looking any better. In 1989 Russia itself had over 2 million births. In 2023 they had just over 1.2 million and the numbers are trending down for 2024. The future belongs to those who are there and it is increasingly absent of Russians.
What you say is all true, but economically Russia’s not doing too badly. They now have the 4th largest economy in the world - after China, the USA, and India (https://www.intellinews.com/russia-overtakes-japan-to-become-the-fourth-largest-economy-in-the-world-in-ppp-terms-328108/#:~:text=The%20World%20Bank%20has%20improved,to%20reflect%20the%202021%20figures).
That is in PPP and they are largely an extraction economy, not a technical powerhouse.
Having the 4th largest economy in the world, even in PPP terms, is still, I think, pretty impressive. They must be doing something right!
Yes sitting on a lot of oil, gas, and mineral reserves.
Don't you think that Russia, China and America should have talks lowering the amount of nukes for each to perhaps 100? One hundred nukes seems to be enough deterrent to me.
Eisenhower's first significant speech as President was at the United Nations in 1953. He proposed nuclear disarmament.
Russia's demographic situation is about the same as a lot of Europe's at this point. It isn't the 1990s any more. That said, Russia yes, is a vastly overhyped threat and mostly is only a rival in that it competes with the USA and our partners in extraction.
Yes it is a lot like Europe's at this point. Europe's population is larger and they have the backing of the US. That is why Russia is no real threat to Europe. Plus we have seen just how potent their military really was. They never could have overran Europe to begin with, even without the US.
Yes even without the USA in it Europe's only question would have been a matter of will.
After Yeltsin took control of the Russian SFSR, and broke up the Soviet Union in collaboration with kleptocratic executives in several other SSRs, he was hailed as a hero of democracy and America's greatest ally. Republican senators were intent on getting nuclear weapons out of Ukraine and other areas, back into the safe hands of the Russian Federation which we could trust to hold them responsibly. Etc. Etc. Etc. There is a generation of journalists who seem to have no idea of the distinction between the Russian Federation and the USSR, and apply classic Cold War dichotomies, but the competition with Putin is not ideological -- its pretty mundane great power rivalry. Putin seems to understand that better than the EU leadership, or Biden, or Trump.
Or, if there are aliens, they would have rightly concluded from monitoring our broadcasts that there is no intelligent life on this planet, and to not even bother with Earth.
The "Cosmic Quarantine" theory. Like the signs I see down here around ponds: Warning! Alligators and Other Dangerous Wildlife!
CS Lewis in his Space Trilogy adopted a version of this noting that Earth was Off Limits to the Martians.
I was speaking tongue in cheek, but there are several hypotheses to address the Fermi paradox of, "where is everyone?" the most disturbing of which is the Dark Forest. Most likely, we are alone, given the incredible number of factors in a planetary system that would have to be just right for supposedly intelligent life such as ourselves to arise.
Alone in our neighborhood? Probably. In the whole universe? Very unlikely. The Universe is so immense that even extraordinarily unlikely things become occasional certainties. However the sheer distance, especially between galaxies, would make contact all but impossible, absent things which exist only in scifi.
https://rmx.news/article/one-third-of-primary-school-children-in-vienna-are-muslims-overtaking-catholics-as-largest-religious-group/
"According to figures published by the Education Directorate and cited by the Exxpress news site, 35 percent of [Vienna] primary school students are Muslims, while 21 percent are Catholic, 13 percent are Orthodox, and 2 percent are either Protestant or belong to another denomination."
"...Anne Applebaum. Lo, she seems to think that the Arendt book anticipates — wait for it — Vladimir Putin."
Him and Donald Trump:
https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2024/05/june-2024-cover-anne-applebaum-new-propaganda-war/678302/
For a person who has written so well about the crimes of Communism, she fails to recognize the true threat at home. Hint, its not Donald.
Anne Applebaum's book on the Gulag is brilliant. But her problem is that she literally marinated in the little bubble of Washington DC. She doesn't understand the rest of the country where she lives. The 40 % illegitimacy rate in America doesn't concern her. Or the 50 % divorce rate. Or the 1.6 children per woman. Or stagnant wages. Or high housing prices in metro areas. Or the drug problem. She's secure on Foxhall Road and her biggest adventure is going to dinner parties where she gets to chat with other people like herself.
I can't say I've read the Anne Appelbaum's book, but, after Solzhenitsyn and Conquest isn't she me-tooing?
She wrote the intro to the most recent reissue of 'The Gulag Archipelago,' which I just bought. Haven't read it yet, and frankly don't know what to expect from her.
That's a book that needs no introduction. From anybody.
Putin+Xi+Trump= Gulag 2025.
You've read it?
No. Just a quip.
She can think and write well within the boundaries of her tribe and its needs and narratives, but she can go no further. Everything else is outer darkness to be either feared or ignored. She would have made a great courtier, paid lavishly to write official Royal histories.
It's also the influence of her husband, who is the current Foreign Minister in Warsaw, and has been an ally of Donald Tusk politically since before the Law and Justice stint in power. He's basically a Polish neoconservative, and profoundly anti-Russian. I believe Appelbaum lives in Warsaw these days, although it wouldn't surprise me if she moves around a lot.
She moves about from Poland to Washington DC and back. She's great friends with David Frum and his wife, Danielle Crittenden.
Props for the REM reference as well; I turn 57 next month and REM was a favorite band throughout the 80s for me, from high school well into college and beyond. And I'd argue that "Life's Rich Pageant" is their best album.
I find that outside my age cohort, though, most people don't remember REM. They were as influential, I think, as any band of the '80s; one of the most important bands of the era. But they feel forgotten, except by those of us who were there.
Oh, how I loved R.E.M! I do think Lifes Rich Pageant is one of their very best. Automatic felt like such an adult album, struggling with mortality as they had never done before. for me, Find the River hits so hard:
There's no one left to take the lead
But I tell you and you can see
We're closer now than light years to go
Pick up here and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
Fall into the ocean
And then there is Man on the Moon and that wonderful video:
https://youtu.be/dLxpNiF0YKs?si=nb099fx4VwcjP9gA
Both of those are great tunes.
I was a big fan through the first four albums (I was in college when 'Murmur' dropped), but started losing interest after that, with a brief rekindling with 'Automatic for the People.' Except for the odd song here and there I didn't care for the subsequent stuff much at all.
I lost the thread after "Automatic" though I did like "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" off Monster. Couldn't even tell you the name of the album that followed "Monster," though.
Taught myself how to play guitar in part by listening to "Murmur" and "Reckoning." Used to play "Pop Song 89" and "Don't Go Back to Rockville" in a band a while back. For me it was all about the jangle.
Oh, and "Near Wild Heaven" is about the most perfect pop song I've ever heard.
"Monster" was the last album of theirs that landed with me.
Never got that far. Is that the grunge-y one?
As a fellow Gen Xer, I loved REM too. For me they're part of the soundtrack of high school, and all the memories of growing up and leaving home.
One of the delights of reading Rod's newsletter for me is its peripatetic and personal nature. He wanders from current events to politics to culture issues, and manages to throw in some personal emotional anecdotes from his life. It makes me feel like I know him, even though we've never met! It's relatable and just lovely.
Well said.
Thank you. That's what I aim for. It's called "Rod Dreher's Diary" for a reason.
I agree with Laura. Well written. And I've barely heard of REM. I'm a bit older than many posters. But I'm glad our host brings up topics like REM because REM was important to a lot of people.
The first full-length REM album came out in 1983. I was 22.
I was 20. I played that vinyl to absolute death. Growing up in the shadows of classic rock, REM felt like they were actually ours, along with The Replacements, Husker Du, and The Smiths.
Funny, but I didn't like 'Murmur' as much as I do until I had heard 'Reckoning.' THAT'S the one I played to death -- a friend lent me his cassette and I kept it for at least a month until I bought the LP. It was at that point that I went back to Murmur and realized just how good it was.
I didn't like the three bands you mention as much, because I was more of a post-punk guy: early U2, Chameleons, The Sound, etc. I love Joy Division now but at the time I didn't like them -- too much of a downer. Around that same time I bought a Cocteau Twins EP on a whim, and have been a giant fan ever since.
My Du and ‘Mats love had a lot to do my growing up in MN and living in Mpls. at that time. They, along with Prince, made us proud. Seems kind of silly now. And, well…Morrissey…. I'm still devoted to him. Cocteau Twins are special. Robyn Hitchcock, early U2, Talking Heads, Psychedelic Furs, Violent Femmes. man I could go on and on. I love anytime Rod brings up music around here.
I dropped out of rock music about 1980 when in college and drifted backwards in time and more toward country music.
Ok -- just didn't want you thinking it was only youngsters who liked REM!
I am late Gen-X (born in 1978) so REM was part of my middle and high school years. I saw them a couple times on their "Monster" tour. Luckily I had an older brother and sister who liked them, so I got to know their older stuff too. "Driver 8" remains one of my favorite songs.
As far as the age of the candidates is concerned, making hay of the opponent’s decline is a cottage industry on both sides. If there is a better metaphor for the Baby Boomers’ refusal to accept their own mortality, I can’t think of it.
Trump, of course, is the leader of a religious cult. Naturally his followers will accept no-one but their messiah. Biden is really rather more difficult to explain. He’s more like a Chinese emperor, surrounded by his mandarins, I suppose. But here, we really see the superiority of the British system over the American. If Biden were a prime minister, I suspect his MPs would have come to him long ago and eased him up into the House of Lords. Here in the US, we have no such option and our primary system is yet again revealed as the disaster that it is.
Senility 2024 is apparently the ticket that can’t lose.
So we choose between the mandarins on the one hand and whoever is most adept at stroking Trump’s ego. I strongly expect a second Trump term to be a complete validation of Karl Marx’s dictum about history repeating itself. Certainly Trump himself seems to have zero interest in actually governing. In this, the Republican Party could have no better representative of its existence solely as a vehicle for posturing and grievance. But that does have the unfortunate result of uncertainty over what actual policies (if any) Trump would pursue. Trump doesn’t do policy. He does loyalty. He demands the complete lack of a spine in his toadies. That opens the door to any number of charlatans and flatterers. The mandarins at least are a known quantity.
In Britain in the 70s, Harold Wilson knew he was losing his mental edge and came from a family where many had early dementia. So Wilson wisely gave way to James Callaghan and accepted a seat in the House of Lords. Of course, the House of Lords is likely to be mothballed in the next couple of years and made into a museum.
I hope Wilson didn't lose his mental edge from his legendary overuse of HP sauce. I just bought some.
I suppose it’s a measure of my despair over American politics that I’ve immersed myself far more in the current British election and Canadian politics. Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer both seem like refreshingly decent sorts, at least by way of comparison with their American counterparts. And what I wouldn’t give to have Pierre Polievre in charge of the GOP or Justin Trudeau in charge of the Democrats!
The American system of politics really does seem to have turned into a kakocracy.
The House of Lords has served one useful purpose, as a “promotion” that comes in handy when it’s time for someone to move on out. There’s even an opportunity for a rehabilitation of sorts occasionally, as the Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton shows.
Both American political parties will move on to fresh faces in 2028. The Democrats have Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Wes Moore. The Republicans have JD Vance, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley. The presidential race of 2024 being the election of the geriatrics is an anomaly.
The crazy thing is that if either party had pulled forward one of those fresh(er) faces to this year, they’d probably have won in a landslide. But no. We are being subjected to the political equivalent of that Family Guy episode where Herbert fought his WWII nemesis Lt Schlechtnacht. Which candidate corresponds with the pedophile and which with the Nazi is left as an exercise for the reader.
Our politics are utterly broken and need a variety of structural changes. Both choices for president are awful and there's no "none of the above" option.
Marco is not exactly a "fresh face". For that matter neither is Desantis (and in 2028 he will have been out of office for two years).
You should watch/listen to Jordan Peterson's latest: The Devil and Karl Marx.
"For example, could it be that there are more intelligent beings in the cosmos than the Bible says?"
I raise meat rabbits. (Yes, like the infamous rabbit lady from Roger and Me. ) They lead happy little lives chewing on my pasture grass and frolicking among the clover in their tractors (basically mobile cages with a wire that allows them to reach the grass). On graduation day, they're swiftly dispatched never knowing what hit them.
Rabbits have no idea what a pasture is. They don't understand that they are in a tractor. They also have no idea what's in store for them at 16 weeks of age. In the grand scheme of things, humans aren't that much smarter than rabbits. They only thing that distinguishes us from them is that we are in a possession of a hubris so profound that we won't even entertain the idea that we are bumping and frolicking about on the pasture of some higher intelligence.
*Flatland* seems instructive here: how would a circle react to the presence of a sphere? Well, if that circle is like an average human, then probably at least at first with denial and shock and anger.
Absolutely. But that idea of hubris is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's certainly a sentiment that's always infected humanity, but following, say IDK, the late 1800s it's reached truly profound levels. You can trace that thread through everything from Communism to the myth of progress to transexuality. But where I think it's most pernicious is when it runs through spirituality and ontology. We have our particle colliders, detailed maps of the subatomic strata, gravity wave detectors, and so forth all of which have made us immensely proud of ourselves. But no one seems open to the very real possibility that all of that could be nothing more than a child's idea of how the universe works. We are limited beings with limited senses, limited consciousness, and limited life spans. We have truly no idea what could actually be out there, what reality is, or even why it is. To say we live on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way is just as absurd an idea that we are butterflies dreaming we are men.
Well, I'm sort of a Blakean in my temperament and approach, though; and I'm also a Christian and believe that we are created in the image of God, and that the Logos did indeed walk among us as a man. So, I wouldn't go as far as you with the ontological skepticism. I think there's a lot that can be known and that has in fact been known, via the revelation of God and our mystic-poetic apprehension of it, along with our own creative response.
I think I have to align myself with the Buddha on this one. I think we can know a lot, but what we can tease out is distinctly human. We can figure out what constitutes the "good life", what leads to human flourishing, what makes us like God, even. The Buddha offered as much - "I teach suffering, its causes, and its cessation". But he claimed to know plenty more which he would not discuss such as the nature of reality, where a Buddha goes after death, etc. The traditional take on that is that those things had nothing to do with the end of suffering so they were best ignored. That may be true. But I think more practically, there's just no way for an ordinary human to grock all that. I think only God can truly know himself and all that He created.
I'm just okay with taking it a step past that with the Hermetic analogy of "As below, so above", and with the premise that the Logos is fundamentally human—or that the essence of the Logos is also our own human spiritual essence, meaning that we are in fact capable of understanding each other, just was He was capable of becoming one of us.
Also, is it just me, or are you sounding oddly pessimistic today? I was under the impression that you were more ambitious about what it's possible for humans to know.
Oh we can absolutely know a lot. But ultimately? Just a handful of straw! How wonderful is that though??
Sorry, too much Rust Kohle there for my liking. Certainly not a Christian sentiment.
Time is a flat circle, man.
But if true, that doesn't imply that the President of the Immortals is sporting with us.
Oh, I was joking—remember, that was Rust's line? Haha. I'd say that at the very least, time's an ascending spiral, with harmonic intervals and octaves as it rises.
No, actually didn't remember that line!
The Washington Post operates within a tighter and tighter bubble that extends from Northwest Washington, Cleveland Park, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Adams-Morgan and skips over to Capitol Hill. Arlington and Alexandria are side shows. The Post mindset never leaves that bubble. Exurban Maryland, the Eastern Shore, the Shenandoah and rural Virginia are where the mean Trumpers live and they don't count.
The pre-woke Post had plenty of unhinged lefties like Richard Cohen and Dorothy Gilliam but they also had the erudite, well-read moderate liberal Jonathan Yardley writing for the Post and he was almost always worth reading. Evans and Novak were always a must read. Today the Post exclusively prints people like the ultra-woke Petula Dvorak. I dropped the Post fifteen years ago because the Post made it clear that they despised people like me. The only thing I miss about the Post is that the paper was useful in starting fires in my woodstove.
Should rich patrons subsidize uneconomical institutions? It is up to the rich patron. If the rich patron doesn't think he's getting his money's worth, then he would be stupid to throw money away unproductively. Apparently, that is the conclusion of Jeff Bezos.
Yes. I think a part of the Post's problem is, as Rod says, the Times simply does that kind of journalism much better than the Post does. The Times is very woke, too, but it also has more comprehensive news coverage than any other newspaper in the US -- and much more than the Post ever had. In the past the Post was worth reading due to the inside baseball perspective it once had on Washington politics, but that really got watered down, and, in recent years, the Times has surpassed it, even in terms of coverage of that topic, which is the home turf of the Post. It just isn't a great newspaper, and really there's probably only room for one national woke newspaper for the overeducated ... and that's the NYT. TL;DR is that the NYT ate the Post for lunch.
I drift into hating the Times because of their bias but they do plenty of really great coverage.
Read a long piece today from 2014 about the aging chemical weapons we found in Iraq and our military's refusal to treat our soldiers adequately who were harmed disposing of same. Linked from a David French piece explaining why he still thinks going into Iraq was a good decision.
Great analysis in the first segment. Accelerating toward the iceberg indeed. It's biblical-scale mass insanity on the part of our corrupt leadership class and its doddering figurehead president.
The Regime's obsession with Russia is ideologically driven. Moscow is seen as the capital of the global forces opposing the New Moral Order. Ironic as hell that it is left to the likes of Vladimir Putin to be the default champion of the ancient truths of Judeo-Christian civilization.
As for the conservatives and Republicans happily along for the ride, you can't fix stupid. These are people too shallow and dumb to understand the difference between the Evil Empire of the totalitarian communist Soviet Union and the broken non-communist nation of Russia that rose from the former's ashes. Post-Soviet Russia never needed to be our enemy...until we set out to make her so.
The only question now is whether this madness will end in mere disaster...or historic catastrophe.
Yes, with the collapse of World Communism, the left felt empowered to force modern liberalism down the throats of the whole world. The Russians wouldn't abide. But I don't get why "conservatives" like McConnell and Graham are all in with the modern left against Russia. I can only guess that it is a reflexive, puerile hatred from the Cold War combined with campaign funds that the defense industry showers on the Republican Party.
"But I don't get why 'conservatives' like McConnell and Graham are all in with the modern left against Russia."
IBM, Raytheon, Boeing (erm), Lockheed Martin, Apple, GM. It's a big part of the answer.
Yep. Too much neo-conservatism in D.C.'s water.
"Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks"
Dylan is on the record saying he was prodded into writing that song. I'm rewatching the Scorsese's PBS thing and he says in the interviews, over and over, that, e.g., Hard Rain, isn't about nuclear rain, it's about a hard rain gonna fall.
Prodded by Joan Baez, maybe? It does seem a little politically overt for him.
Or Seeger.
"IBM, Raytheon, Boeing (erm), Lockheed Martin, Apple, GM. It's a big part of the answer."
I have to disagree. The large majority of U.S. defense expenditures are aimed at the Middle East and North Korea. China comes in a distant third, and Russia long after that. Even when considering strategic missiles and bombers, it should be noted that the U.S. has target lists for EVERY other nuclear power, and any consideration of the cost of opposing any particular power with strategic assets should be seen as a fraction of the cost (i.e., Russia gets about one-seventh of the strategic bill, and not even that when we consider that one or two Trident subs are slated to be held in reserve for World War Four).
How do I know? Among other reasons, a French contractor told me that French SLBMs are targeted on the U.S., and the U.S. knows about it, and we can be sure reciprocity holds.
Slight correction -- it's not "the left" who's doing the forcing here. It's the neocon/neolib elites. They are pushing cultural leftism because it greases the skids for The Machine.
In classical political theory it is the FAMILY that is the unit of the state. A crowd of atomized individuals is just easier to push around.
Bingo.
I'm not saying our rulers are not into a little libertinism themselves (look at the Clintons), but do you think that Andrew Sullivan, Britney Griner, and Martha Nussbaum know they're being used? Me neither.
How so? For ages it's been a tool of demagogues and would-be tyrants to panic people by claiming some sort of threat to their families (wives and children). Hence some of the uglier slanders cooked up against the Jews in the Middle Ages. And in our own history claims of black men raping white women. And nowadays good old Qanon and its vile slanders. Seems to me "unattached" individuals are less likely to be moved by such tactics. (I do have some doubt that there are very many people who are truly unattached-- as opposed to merely single and/or childless. I'm one of the latter, but so far the demagogues have not figured out ways to freak me by claiming threats to my friends. They rather would have to appeal to my own self-interest but they seem singly uninterested in doing so)
Yup, I think you're onto something. Ignorance and craven greed: a deadly combination.
What worries me is Karma. The rottenness and corruption of these people have inflicted so much pain on so many...here...in Ukraine...everywhere...that the moral tectonic plates of the universe have been tensioned beyond their tolerance. We're overdue for an earthquake.
The pain in Ukraine is being inflicted by its neighbor Russia.
It's an unnecessary war incited and invited by a recklessly aggressive policy on the part of our corrupt Regime.
Russia is the proximate cause of Ukraine's pain. The Regime is the ultimate cause...the Regime and its stooge in Kiev.
Russia's leadership bears the responsibility for this war, period. There was nothing just, or even necessary about it.
Agree that the war is neither just nor necessary. Neither was our government's support for the overthrow of the elected president of Ukraine in 2014 or the aggressive westward expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was a reckless, mindless, arrogant policy on the part of the West that set the stage for this insanity. The Ukrainians are being sacrificed on the altar of the Regime's sicko ideology.
You should force yourself to waste a couple of hours in listening to the Republican radio talk show host, Hugh Hewitt, who in his view of Russia is the most impressive visionary of 1955.
Yes, the fine for not taking immigrants is outrageous! I don't know if Hungary will pay, but if they do, here is some math: 216 million divided among 10 million Hungarians is $21.60. The one million euros a day divided by 10 million is 11 cents a day per Hungarian in US currency.
Rod, what did you mean about closer ties with China helping this situation? I am not politically brilliant enough to see how that would work.
Counterweight to US/EU pressure. Kind of like dealing with the devil, but I suppose sometimes that can't be avoided.
OK, so, US Dems/EU say "Orban do as we told you", and Orban says "I won't, and if you try to make me I will get even closer to China." Is that it? Or...Obran says "Fine, I'll pay your fine. I'll use all the money China bribed me with to let a bunch of Chinese come in and build cars." Or...what's up?
Excellent idea.
Certainly it would help to have easy Chinese money to pay the fine. But if Hungary becomes a concern of China, protecting Hungary from ridiculousness from the EU becomes a Chinese interest as well.
Gorsh, that's good. So China might threaten not to give chips to the EU if they don't get to make cars in Hungary because either times have grown hard there or Orban limits such car-making conditioned upon EU policies. You're a genius. (And I assume Rod thought of this but thought we were all as smart as you and him.)
I'm not a genius - just interested in history and international relations... IR was actually my major in college. Kind of ironic at a school where most of the students were from mid-Minnesota and never intended to leave mid-Minnesota. *L* I wasn't nearly as much a traditional conservative then, but I really was surprised stopping by IR groups online back in the day ('02, '03) how leftist they were and how different opinions were not tolerated at all. And... it's not like I did nothing with what I learned in college either. I didn't go into an IR profession, but I suppose I didn't do badly with it either.
Interesting! I did not know this about you.
Both my first cousin's daughter and my other first cousin's granddaughter, each age 23, majored in International Relations. My thought was that it interests me so much and would have been fascinating, but I worry a bit about what they will do for a career. You say you didn't do badly with it? So it was a good choice?
A more diversified economy, one with shock absorbers to whatever the EU dishes out.
Biden’s physical and mental decline is distressing and, frankly, scary. Not only is he experiencing steep cognitive decline, but it’s now so noticeable and routine that it’s more or less expected, as if it were perfectly normal behavior. What is also worrisome is the moral vacuity of the individuals who interact with him daily. No one steps forward, for the good of the country, to publicly state that he is no longer fit to serve. Also, what is he doing? Yesterday, he signed a ten-year defense/reconstruction agreement with Ukraine, with the goal of that country’s eventual membership in NATO. Are we stumbling ever forward to another strategic fiasco?
I now believe it is close-to-certain, though not absolutely certain, that Dems will have to change their candidate, and I look for that at the Democratic National Convention. Biden performing well in the June debate (after a probable medical injection) might change that. But otherwise: We might even have President Harris for a few months after the sad announcement about Biden's health is made, but she won't be their candidate. (Quite possible, it will be Newsom, I guess). Just a theory...but looking more and more likely....
Common sense would tell you that, but these are Democrats.
How would President Harris take being shouldered aside in favor of some white dude? Or, even if she's not President, being pushed aside at the convention in favor of such? If I were her I'd make a godawful fuss and play the "this is racist, this is gynophobiac" card. What's she got to lose in either of those situations?
Agreed. In fact this scenario is likely one reason why the Dems keep Joe propped up.
I'd agree if President Harris actually were to happen, but for the reasons you state, I don't think there will be a President Harris i.e. a 25th Amendment removal scenario. Easier not to have her as a summer stopgap.
Biden is useful puppet, but that toy is winding down; the winding key has been lost. I think it more likely that Biden/Harris are replaced by NotBiden / PossiblyNotHarris at the Chicago convention. It's possible that the Dem leadership is counting on a Biden failure in the debate in order to smooth the path for replacing him, but it's hard to handicap these reindeer games.
The rules do not allow that sort of replacing. If Biden has the delegates he will be nominated. Ditto Trump on the GOP side. Like or not (absent death) we're stuck with these guys for this election.
There is quite a bit the "powers that be" can do if they really want something. They can make it so that Kamala does not want to be president, and will not speak of the real reason why she does not want it. I'd say they know they must do this. Kamala will not continuously cooperate with puppet masters, as Joe Biden has. But she will cooperate with blackmailers to at least remain silent and step aside. Plus, even though through some miracle of daily PRAVDA, about 30 percent of the public says they approve of Joe Biden, and only 57 percent say they disapprove, she could never keep even those kind of numbers, - a disaster for Democrats. She may even meet with some accident, ala JFK, RFK, countless Clinton allies and who knows who else. But I truly believe we will never see a president Harris. Just my opinion.
"Countless Clinton allies"?
The crinkle of some old worn out 90s tinfoil can be heard.
JFK was murdered by Oswald, his brother by a Palestinian terrorist. Conspiracy theories can be fun- I came up with some in my own fiction writing- but the reality is just plain boring.
My father is 84 and still mentally competent. But even he would agree that he doesn't have the stamina any longer.
I’m 70 & I’m not gaga yet but I’m not as sharp as I was. Names often escape me. It’s frustrating. But I don’t have to run anything but my own household.
I'm 64 and guilty, too. Two weeks ago I drove my Odyssey up to my barn where my truck was. I left my Odyssey on while I drove off with my truck for two hours. The Odyssey was still on when I got back.
My cousin with whom I live is almost 88. She's quite spry and very much "with it". And she would sooner vote for an alligator than for Trump, but she considers Biden as really too old for the job.
Laurence, why aren’t there alarm bells going off everywhere? Why are we poking the Russian bear repeatedly? That has to be rescinded.
Some think that he will win the election and step down for health reasons leaving Kamala in charge.
"You I thought I knew you, you I cannot judge. You, I thought you knew me, this one laughing quietly underneath my breath." Yeah, Nightswimming, I feel that grief. It wasn't "our" song, but it's a killer.
"She sailed away on a bright and sunny day
On the back of a crocodile
"You see," said she, "he's as tame as he can be
I'll ride him down the Nile."
The croc winked his eye
"As she bade them all goodbye
Wearing a happy smile
At the end of the ride, the lady was inside
And the smile was on the crocodile"
Rod, you may be right as the rain with respect to Hungary's immigration policy, but your stance on Russia could not be more wrong. Russia has for 300+ years consistently demanded control of what it refers to as its "Near Abroad", the Warsaw Pact most recently serving that function. Russia sees it as a necessary buffer to the West inasmuch as there are no physical boundaries between Russia and the rest of Europe to do the same. The rush of the Balkan states, Poland, and other Warsaw Pact nations to join NATO demonstrates their understanding of history.
Right, but they now ARE part of NATO, and I don't think Russia is going to cross that line. Ukraine is NOT part of NATO, and shouldn't be. It's way too close to Russia, not only geographically (yes, so are the Baltics, but they're tiny; Ukraine is huge) and spiritually/psychologically. The Kievan Rus, you know. NATO can survive very well without Ukraine. Russia can't.
So many Russian issues. The Ukraine War is more an example of this than many would like to see. One major example is the disastrous Russian initiative at the start of the current war. From Russia's participation with the allied powers against Napoleon followed by Napoleon's ultimately failure in 1812, to the 1916 Kerensky Offensive, which was a Russian failure followed by a Central Powers invasion of Russia that ultimately stalled inside Russia, to the 1939 Molotov-von Ribbentrop understanding that allowed Russia to take half of Poland only to see Hitler the next year break the agreement, invade Russia, and come to grief at Stalingrad, in each of these examples, Russian initiatives were followed by Russian losses but ultimately Russian victories due to its greater manpower and territorial reserves. For these reasons Putin has said several times that he wants to restore the boundaries of the Soviet Union to include the Warsaw Pact/Near Abroad. Success in Ukraine for him is just the start. Undermining NATO by encouraging popular dissatisfaction in the US and Western Europe is already underway. Putin is as much ego driven as any other Russian autocrat. The best, though cynical, bet for the West is to bleed Russia dry until it ultimately overruns Ukraine, giving NATO another generation of security.
NATO can survive without Kievan Rus . So can Russia.
"Kievan Rus" spent much of its late medieval and early modern period history as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was not an integral part of the Russia which came to be centered on the Muscovite tsardom.
Right. My point was - what logic is there to the comment Russia can’t survive without Kievan Rus.