301 Comments

I hope that this pilgrimage will be a tremendous blessing for you. If you choose to share nothing about it when you return, that would be fine with me. Some things just need to stay in the heart.

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You know he's not gonna choose that. . . .

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And thus we are doomed, because we (well, some of us, anyway) will force ourselves to stay up late reading all of it when we should be sleeping. Because we just can't help it. Rod must write and we must read.

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Actually, not just the post, but the comments.

All of them.

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Your service is commendable.

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Vienna is indeed very cold in winter. My first time there, in the winter of 88, was freezing mostly and yet delightful all the same. It’s a special city that often is too far down the bucket list for many.

On Germany, where I’ve lived twice as an expat, I’d say the tension you have identified is indeed there, but it’s the core aspect of the post war German state, and the basis for its legitimacy. At some stage it would make sense for Germany to become a “normal” country, but there’s a massive resistance to that, overall, despite the rise in some quarters of the AfD, especially in the former East. The rest of Europe is similarly uneager for Germany to become.a normal country as well, and many Germans are keenly aware of that.

I’d also say that the struggle against fascism in WW2 is not just defining for German identity post-war, but forms the lynchpin of the larger vision of the entire West. Fascism is seen as a kind of in-house danger in the West in a way that the far left is not, because fascism prevailed politically for a time in the heart of the West, whereas communism never really did. Fascism is therefore always seen as the bigger risk, internally, in the West - the fear that it could prevail again, as it once did, because it once did. Our political imagery, for this reason, remains very much stuck on the conflicts of the middle 20yh Century … and this is the case far away from Germany, such as this n the US.

WW2 casts a very long shadow.

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Well written. I would only disagree with Communism not having prevailed politically in the West (unless meant purely geographically in Western Europe). Communism existed far longer than Fascism in the West (from a social perspective) in Central and Eastern Europe. And it did so arguably with more pervasive evil.

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Communism was very strong in Russia (1917-91) and Eastern Europe (1945-89). Italy and France both had very strong Communist Parties after World War Two, a condition that lasted until 1989 when the anti-Communists won the Cold War.

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4dEdited

Fascist states were short lived due to WWII destroying them. Communism lasted longer which accounts for the fact that it did a lot more evil. Of course we owe the toll of WWII in Europe to Nazi Germany (and to a lesser extent to Mussolini in Italy) so the entire death toll of that war in Europe must be laid at the fascist doorstep.

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Certainly. But the trauma of the creation of communist satellite states in the aftermath of WW2 is also a part of the legacy of WW2, which was primarily (in Europe) a conflict against fascism. It's important that communism existed in a large part of Europe for decades, but I do think that most people, for good or ill, view the satellites as a different case from what happened in Germany and Italy in the 30s, where fascist regimes were popularly elected without the kind of pressures that existed in the elections in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. But it's true that the Eastern European countries had a different historical experience during the period, and have a somewhat different perspective in terms of internal threats.

I agree, by the way, that Eastern Europe is a part of the greater "West", but from my perspective both the European and Atlantic institutions reflect primarily the perspective of the Western European countries, and the United States, rather than the perspective and experiences of the Eastern European countries, despite the current inclusion of the latter in these institutions.

Eastern Europe has a different historical antagonism acquired in WW2 and its aftermath. Unsurprisingly, it's generally very much more concerned about the left than the right, in terms of internal political danger. And of course Eastern and Western Europe are much more aligned on the concern regarding the *external* threat posed by Russia, in fact or in theory.

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I don't know if we disagree. Yes the historical difference are there and the course of the East from the West geographically speaking was different. I am only saying that the West (from a cultural/social/religious perspective) is more encompassing than the historical situation of the 20th Century. Marxism/Communism impacted the West, so understood, in a profound way.

Part of that impact was WWII. It was primarily a war against Fascism as you state, but it was in fact aided in its initiation by Communism (Stalin did use the Non-Aggression Pact to take part of Poland and within the year to invade Finland). Ignoring the role Communism played in the War's beginning ignores the role it had in impacting the West both socially and geographically.

The latter reality, may in part reflect the Eastern and Western European concerns about current day Russia that you note.

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Beethoven's 9th is very much a New Year's tradition in Japan. I'm curious how that came about, but it is an incredible piece of music. I have heard it played at least once on a classical network in Korea (KBS Classic), but don't know whether it is as much of a tradition there. I should have set aside time to listen to it this (last) year, but it seemed that there were too many odds and ends to take care of. I suppose one can always do it belatedly.

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It seems that its premiere date was May 7, 1824. Unfortunately, we just missed the 200th anniversary, but you could catch the 201st.

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Your German acquaintance has done well to recognise some basic truths about Germany at the age of 23. I lived there for too long before I figured it out, doing myself real harm in the process. It really, really is not a place of opportunity, and is getting worse in multiple respects. If I were him, I would aim at America, not China (although at his age he can afford some false starts). The US is in rough shape ATM, but in comparison to Europe it still offers a great deal to the talented and industrious, and I think it has a much better chance of effectively addressing its many ailments.

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4dEdited

The US is in pretty decent shape compared to anything short of Shangri-La or some rose-colored vision of a past conveniently distant (and not in the living memory of many people).

Rod is respecting the privacy of the German guy, which is well and good of course, but if he's started a business of his own then he's obviously better off than quite a lot of his compatriots. Grousing about not being able to afford a house is pretty common for the young. A generation ago a lot of millennials in the US were similarly complaining, though now we find that their generation is moving into home ownership at rates only slightly less than the preceding generational cohort (which is mine and Rods' - Gen X)

I don't know how the German housing market works-- is it as common to buy and sell houses as it is is in the US? Or do houses tend to remain in families by inheritance? A mix of both? However there is housing in Germany and if "no one" can afford it then prices will necessarily come down unless would-be sellers don't mind not being able to sell.

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Saw The Northman, partially based on what Rod wrote here, partially based on the fact that I do support Robert Egger's directorial efforts. His stuff is not to my tastes, but he has a cinematic sense and visual perspective. Need more like him. But The Northman, though beautiful in appearance, was a grim, stark, bleak affair. The things that I like most in film, terrific writing, were not there. I mean, the script, what was there, served to paint this world of Northern pagans, a primitive, savage, foreboding place. If this was an accurate depiction of their world and their mindset, it gives you far greater appreciation of just how bad the pre-Christian world could be and just exactly what Christ was saving us from.

It was interesting, but not enjoyable. Cannot really recommend it.

On the other hand, I do highly recommend Saturday Night, the film depicting the final 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired. The volatile cauldron of talents, the behind the scenes shenanigans, the pressure, and the sheer gazing into the unknowns, and the load being carried on Lorne Michael's shoulders...this one I do recommend.

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You might also enjoy reading Gilda Radner's "It's Always Something." She gives a lot of insight into the heady first season of SNL.

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Hey, there is something we both admire! (Happy New Year Anne).

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Happy New Year, Charlie!

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Theodor Adorno famously wrote that to write poetry after Auschwitz was “barbaric”. He later somewhat took it back, but in fundamental ways his take on the possibilities of art in the West became normative for all “decent” people.

The problem with both Europe’s bien pensants and our own is they assume there is some inherent evil encoded in the West, and therefore, mirror-wise, the non-West is what can liberate us from it. Of course it’s idiotically shallow. The first *real* lesson that might be taken from the 20th century’s nightmares—namely that totalizing projects to remake society are per se going to end badly—remains unlearned. The second, older lesson—that evil is not European but *human*—is likewise resisted, because it too closely echoes that older European teaching, Christianity.

So we see German elites as busy as ever.

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4dEdited

I'm almost done reading Gary Saul Morson's recent book, and he gets into the psychology of why people refuse to learn that first lesson. It's sort of a dark parody of hope springs eternal: the prospect of total revolution provides people with a surge in vitality and makes them feel young, and they want to re-capture that feeling endlessly and live in the liminal moment, with no regard for practical consequences. In short, they won't learn because they're chasing the high.

I understand the impulse, but I think it needs to be channeled *upward* into transcendence in order to find its proper rest.

Also, I'm struck by how stone-cold stupid the revolutionary "philosophy" really was. Like, you read Lenin, and while it's obvious that he was a psychopathic monster, it's also just as obvious that he was an effing moron, without even the most elementary education in basic logic. People listened to this guy? That testifies to the extent to which people will listen to anyone who tells them what they wanna hear or hypnotizes them with magic words like "revolution".

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Don’t know if Morson mentions Eric Hoffer’s great little book *The True Believer*. A really withering, systematic study of those who are susceptible to the draw of that “liminal” life. Lenin and friends didn’t need solid logic, they just needed to get people cracking those eggs for the omelette. The difference between a *thinker* and a *revolutionary*.

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Read once that President Eisenhower had his Ivy League-educated aides to read Hoffer's "True Believer". They didn't think a longshoreman who philosophized on the side had anything to teach them.

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A longshoreman almost always has something to teach Ivy League educated anythings. But as with the Ivy Leagues, not all longshoreman are equally insightful. Hoffer was so-so.

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Thinkers don't end tyranny. Revolutionaries do. How did Eric Hoffer's administration change the world? Lenin was rather lucky, but he was able to seize power because a mass conscript army heartily sick of the war, and the industrial working classes of Petrograd and Moscow, were supportive at a key point in time. He didn't do it on sheer force of will. We were lucky at the inception of the USA to have thinkers who were revolutionaries, although not all their thoughts were good, and on certain key points that would plague the nation for decades, they were moral cowards. Still, its the 250th anniversary of one of the world's best revolutions (considering the context and the alternatives).

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4dEdited

Did . . . Lenin end tyranny? And how much blood does Hoffer's regime have on its hands?

It seems more appropriate to say that whatever thinkers may or may not do, revolutionaries most often generate tyranny and produce net loss. Tsarist Russia was practically paradise itself compared to the system built by these alleged liberators.

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It's a rare revolution that does not run far beyond its initial aims. The US was exceedingly fortunate in that respect. For one thing, the folks opposed to our revolution were mostly domiciled overseas, and the ones who were here had somewhere they could go when things did not fall out as they would have liked. When two (or more) bitterly opposed factions are shut up together that's when you get fights to the death and the accompanying bloodbaths.

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I am descended on my grandfather side from United Empire Loyalists.

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A war of independence and a revolution are two different things.

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One could say that Lenin ended A tyranny... But then there is the matter that the Czar had already abdicated before Lenin arrived at the Finland Station, so he ended the Provisional Government. He also defeated Kolchak and Denikin, and they were indeed tyrants in the making.

Tsarist Russia, in order to survive, would have had to become a much more intensive tyranny, as the Tsarist generals would have done if they had won the civil war. Thomas Jefferson was wise to write in the Declaration of Independence than men will tolerate a certain level of tyranny for the sake of peace as long as they can. I wouldn't say that the Somoza regime should have been left in place, even knowing how Ortega turned out. For one thing, it could have gone much better if the US had not funded the contras, if Mrs. Chamorro had been a more competent president, if Ortega had not come back to power in alliance with right-wing business men. What would have happened? Nobody is ever told that.

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4dEdited

Evidently the radicals in Russia were practicing terrorism and saying "no reform is possible" as early as the 1860s—which is to say, right when Alexander II was emancipating the serfs and improving the court system. So I'm not really buying that this whole thing was about much more than angsty nihilists trying to find some semblance of meaning in their post-God lives.

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What was Eric Hoffers administration?

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I was being sarcastic. He didn't have one.

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Semi apologies/ should have realized that!

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The Lord will render as fools those who envision themselves as wise.

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But he also sometimes gives wisdom to those perceived as fools.

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I believe Bertrand Russel had that same impression of Lenin, except that he met him in person!

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Whatever issues I have with Russell's hostility to religion, I give him full credit for seeing right through Communism to the Beast at its heart when so many intellectuals were swooning over the Bolsheviks.

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4dEdited

Possibly, his hostility to religion in general alerted him to the religion-shaped nature of Communism.

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They were swooning because Lenin had won a revolution. Russell had a chance to see Lenin's criteria for making use of the opportunity.

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"...he was an effing moron" Which crystalizes in my mind the metaphysical component to these types of movements. Something sinister animates this stuff....

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4dEdited

There is indeed a quality of demonic parody to the stuff. The way that they used "science" from the start to refer to a form of dogmatic certainty, for example: it appears to have actually not been cynical. They seem to have just not been able to comprehend what an open-ended search for truth could mean.

There's also a story of a woman who went on and on about how awesome it is to lie and cheat and terrorize and steal—and then she was absolutely crushed to learn that a cop had infilitrated her radical cell. "How dare they," she said. "He just ruined my ability to trust anyone."

Likewise, when critics argued that our perceptions of reality aren't fully objective, the radicals came back with: "Oh, so you're saying reality doesn't exist and it's all in your head?" It's sort of irritating how they just couldn't *get* it. And then you realize that it's kinda weird, and maybe they're missing a piece.

All in all, it seems plausible that the demons have maintained instinctive cunning and the basic *form* of reason while being eviscerated of the actual content of intelligence. It *looks* like a philosophy, but it's actually gibberish.

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I would have known from the get-go that any form of government based on "from each, according to his ability, to each, according to his need" was bound to fail because it goes against human nature.

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4dEdited

It's worse than a misunderstanding of the existing facts; it's also about fundamental internal contradictions that don't even make sense on their own terms. To say that they reason like a two-year-old would be an insult to all of toddlerdom.

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After Dorothy Day became a communicant Roman Catholic, she said that principle was something she still wanted. I think she was right. The problem is how to get there. A perfect Christian community would operate on exactly those principles. However, its also true that attempts to make and enforce perfection by fiat, whether Christian, communist, or other, seem to end with either the Inquisition or the Lubyanka. How to take steps in the right direction, deal with the almost demonic opposition of the global elites, and still respect the fundamental humanity of all concerned, that's the hard part. Ever see the movie "The Last Emperor"? I won't say its typical of Chinese communism, but I think its heartening that the last emperor of China, a collaborator with Japanese occupation, could live the last few decades as a competent and contented gardener. "Class identity" isn't innate -- its structural.

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The original pre-Marxist -- mainly French -- socialists, understanding that only a different kind of human being could make socialism work, made being a Christian a prerequisite of living in a socialist community. Marx's belief was that the changes in the economic and political environment would simply produce this New Man. Lenin decided to enforce those changes at gunpoint.

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That was propaganda. Who knows what Pu Yi thought. He was a prop and basically a prisoner all his life. As for utopian visions, Christian or Communist, bad, destructive and ultimately oppressive.

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Re: "Class identity" isn't innate -- its structural.

I very much agree with this. For most of our species' history social classes didn't even exist since our ancestors lived mainly in small groups where there may have been some division of labor but very little permanent wealth which could have been divided up unequally.

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I grew up - age 12 to 18 - in a church where the pastor preached against socialism/communism. I hear that is unusual. And a good Protestant sermon is at least 30 minuted, usually 40-45. Well, at least it was when I was Protestant. Anyway, I still can hear the pastor say, "Suppose you collected all the money in the world and then gave it out equally to each person. In not much time, maybe a year or so, pretty much everyone would be back where they started." That was his view of human nature. While I do not think it exact, I think it is close.

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Damn—I'm glad I'm not a Protestant. The shorter the homily, the better. 10 minutes is too long; I start squirming after about 5. I'm really not there to hear the guy's opinions. Let's get on with the show, please.

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That last part is particularly discerning, the house of cards nature of all their constructs. And then, you realize, reason and truth has nothing to do with their constructs at all. They go for what "feels" or "seems" right and actively fight you when you insist on closer examination.

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I've probably read more Lenin than you have. He confronted a seemingly immovable 300 year old dynasty sustained by a ruthless secret police, and an inchoate revolutionary movement that couldn't organize its way out of a paper bag. He was trying to sideline the equivalent of "woke" he found around him, and get some focused, professional, dedicated work done that could appeal to a mass constituency and actually win. I still sometimes refer to the "woke" as infantile disorders, to use Lenin's language.

His methodology failed on its own terms -- never mind what the Chamber of Commerce and the Voice of America said about it. He posited that a tightly disciplined party led by an authoritative central committee could insure fidelity to founding principles, and exert sufficient control to implement a coherent strategy with military precision. I knew for certain that this was wrong, when I saw Slobodan Milosevic turn an international socialist party into a national socialist party at the stroke of a pen -- the Leninist party models insures fidelity only to the man at the top, whoever that may be. The only party chair to be turned out by his own central committee was Nicolae Ceauceascu (a bright shining moment, but it didn't last). Even the way parties out of power function and get into petty factionalizing over personalities shows the weakness of the model. But, Lenin remained popular in revolutionary circles, and some communist parties retained a strong working class base, because Lenin did, unlike most of his contemporaries, win a revolution.

Steve Bannon has declared himself a Leninist, and I understand what he means. Chiang Kai-Shek was trained in Moscow, and he organized the Kuomintang as he was trained -- he just made different alliances than expected by those who trained him. That too shows that Lenin was distinctly misguided. But the cries of the MAGA people, at least some of the more intelligent and perceptive, about the global elites, shows that Lenin's study of Imperialism was more or less accurate. There really is a wealthy and powerful elite class running our lives and our world, that will be very difficult to remove from holding that power.

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4dEdited

I'm referring presently to the many quotes from Lenin found in Morson's book. And, bracketing what very much looks like copious evidence that he was a psychopath who enjoyed maximal brutality for its own sake, I'm criticizing him as a philosopher, since he fancied himself to be one.

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Its wise to limit broad sweeping characterizations based on a cherry picked set of quotes from one author's book. I refrained from commenting on your choice of adjectives or adjectival nouns, because I didn't consider them the main point -- but apparently in reading Morson they were. That's a limited context.

There were some features of his conduct that could be psychopathic, or neurotic. Certainly he had a large ego -- something he shared in common with Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Robert Mugabe, and Daniel Ortega, not to mention Elon Musk. This is a danger that lurks everywhere. It can be particularly dangerous in someone who has led a revolution and is not constrained by well established constitutional norms. As for his being a philosopher... that's another reason to distrust him. I have grave doubts about applying Philosophy to real life. Of course everyone has a philosophy, small-p, but Philosophy is by nature abstract, and trying to reify it may be precisely what leads to the Gulag.

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4dEdited

I don't think it's mere "cherry picking" that results in this picture of a man who enjoyed cruelty and brutality for their own sake, justifying this preference with the ideological veneer that compassion is a reactionary bouregeois concept. And what is such a person?—a psychopath, quite technically.

As for philosophy, now that just turns into a word game. (I'd say the problem is "ideology", and Morson calls it "theory".) But I'm just saying that Lenin thought badly; his ethics and epistemology don't make any sense even on their own terms.

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Well, I agree his methodology failed on its own terms. Lenin had the peculiar failings of an intellectual leftist who has never done a day's real work. He had a sense of ruthlessness and brutality that do exist in working class milieus, but are hardly the epitome of what working families seek for themselves and their children. He had absorbed a Robin Hood view of the wealthy and nobility, but hadn't really lived with the complexities that motivate some employees to actually appreciate an employer, or that might motivate someone to put up with present evils if they can be borne rather than accept the uncertainty of breaking established laws and customs. Most of all, he couldn't stand anyone getting in his way or questioning him. (There is a really good movie on Fidel Castro which clearly presents how his self-confidence and determination made it possible to mount an improbably resistance to a truly vicious dictatorship, but made him incapable of thinking twice about policies that might not be working for mundane reasons. Castro was actually quite humane to government soldiers taken prisoner, but he still couldn't see the forest for the trees when he had responsibility for running a government. Sometimes those who lead the overthrow should step aside from running the affairs of state.

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Gabriel Marcel makes a critical point about philosophy. One must go from the concrete to the abstract and back to the concrete.If philosophy can not be applied to real life, then there is no point to it.Believing it has no application to the real world reminds of the old saw from Keynes, - Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist” . Is the reification problem a matter of trying to apply philosophical insight to society or taking words as reality. In philosophy, you can of course use it to reify or clarify. Go back to Plato’s cave , philosophy can be the tool out.

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3dEdited

It's the double-edged nature of language in general: we can use words to delve into deeper realities, or we can use them to get ever more lost in our own spectral fantasies.

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There is a difference between using our intellect and indulging in philosophy. Philosophical speculation is harmless in itself, and may lead to useful perspective on real world problems. It is the attempt to define everything by a comprehensive philosophical world view that is necessarily abstract which can promote real world atrocities.

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The cult-like dedication of a few dozen of Bolsheviks to the pre-1917 Lenin is a mystery.

A man of no accomplishments and no future.

Solzhenitsyn carves him up in "Lenin in Zurich".

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I found Lenin in Zurich to be a rather sympathetic portrayal... not an endorsement, but a perceptive and understanding sense of what made him tick and even his more benign motivations.

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Both excellent points

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The assaults on the German psyche are a continuing PsyOP operation of the American deep state. It manifests as absolute hatred of Germany, the German people, and to a larger extent, all western peoples. Cui Bono.

It was not even close to this bad in the 50s, 60s and 70s. In that era, Germany was vibrant and confident, assuming her role, again, as a leader in Europe. Decision were made to permanently neuter/hobble Germany. Again, cui bono.

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The US, and for that matter much of the rest of Europe, wanted a Germany that was strong enough and prosperous enough to stand against the USSR, but not one so strong as to dominate Europe let alone challenge the US. That's what has guided US policy in regards to Germany and does so still.

But blaming Washington for Germany's ills is a load of taurine byproduct. By and large Germany has made its own bed and is having to lie in it.

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It’s the spirit of “Generation 68,” destroy the past so you reach some sort of imagined utopia. Use any means necessary to do so. Historical change usually moves more slowly than you expect but the stage is being set for some sort of reckoning in Europe. It’s not clear what this will look like, maybe 5 or 6 different reckonings depending upon the region. Reckoning in the West and the Russian nutcracker in the East. It does not look good….

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"Sous les pavés, la plage!" I've always rather liked this slogan. While tearing up the pavement and throwing the cobblestone projectiles at the CRS (elite French riot squad), the students of '68 were dreaming of the beach. Who can blame them really? And who can be surprised that the revolution never really got off the ground?

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Hearing about this I had to comment. Have seen the 9th Symphony scene from "Immortal Beloved" on You Tube. It was first performed in 1824, and watching that scene I thought to myself "Can you imagine being in the audience and hearing that performed for the first time in history." It must have been truly incredible. Also, I read that Beethoven got 5 standing ovations, causing the police chief to call for silence since the Austrian Royal Family only got 3. But then, they weren't Beethoven.

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Rod My Brother

Happy New Year to you and yours. I can't lie. I'm furious over the terrorist attack in New Orleans. Probably as furious as I've been since 9/11. Let's get something straight. There is a supremacist streak in Islam that is extremely prevalent in the Wahhabi/Salafi school of Sunni Islam to which it's most extreme incarnation of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) belong to. It's not secret that the oil rich Gulf Arab Kingdoms are the chief financiers and proponents of this puritanical brand of Islam (Wahhabi/Salafi). It's also no secret that both of those nations are closely allied with the United States Government. I hate the Salafi/Wahhabi sect of Islam. They would kill me and my entire family in a heartbeat. We are Kafirs (infidels). There is no compromise with these people and that is exactly why Middle Eastern strongmen always suppressed them. They always kept the Fundamentalists under the boot because they knew if they weren't under the boot they'd be at your throat.

There's another Sunni Islamic movement that became the Taliban's chief ideology and that's Deobandi Islam which is centered in Pakistan. It should be no surprise then that the Wahhabi/Salafis and the Deobandis are the chief suppliers of Sunni Islamist Jihadists throughout the entire world. Between the two of them these are the people who make up not only the Taliban, but Al Qaeda and ISIS and all of their offshoots. These are also the very same Muslims with that Supremacist streak that I spoke of. A supremacist streak that would think nothing of grooming and raping (not that rape at any age is right) underage British girls. You don't want to know how I think that should be handled. All I can say is that my solution for that problem is both medieval and final.

I've come to the realization that I hate supremacists of any stripe. I hate Neo-Nazi, White European Supremacists, I hate Muslim Supremacists, I hate Jewish Supremacists, I hate Communist Supremacists, I hate Capitalist Supremacists. I am an Orthodox Christian, but I'm absolutely not a Supremacist. I won't call you an infidel and cut your throat if you don't submit to my will or convert. Neither will I kill you for being different from me even if you were something I despise (I cannot assure the safety of rapists and pedophiles though).

I believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, I believe in the Virgin Mary and the Saints. I believe in the true presence in the Eucharist, but I won't harm you if you say or think differently. God gave you free will as He did me.

What should disturb us all in the West is that it was Washington and London and our NATO allies who conspired with Israel to overthrow Bashar Al Assad's Syrian Arab Republic and replace it with Wahhabi/Salafi Sunni Islamists sponsored by not only the West and Turkey and Israel but Saudi Arabia and Qatar. What did they replace it with? They replaced it with the very kind of people who flew planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11. The very kind of people who just drove through a crowd of New Year's celebrants in New Orleans. Ahmed Al Sharaa/Al Jolani is ISIS. Make no doubt about it. We put him in power in Damascus and he's ideologically identical to Shamshud Din-Jabbar the man who just murdered 15 innocent people in New Orleans. Two peas in a pod and our cursed government is sponsoring shit like that!

PS: I don't hate Muslims. My wife is Shia Muslim. We've been married for 18 years. I love her family. They are my family. Her cousins are my cousins. All of us. Her family, my family would be dead under the rule of these Takfiri (Sunni Wahhabi/Salafi/Deobandi) cutthroats. She has Sunnis in her family who are secular and Russianized. They would have their throats cut too as Kafirs. The Takfiri are my enemies. Until death. Unfortunately it's the CIA and MI6 who are these bastards biggest sponsors.

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"A supremacist streak that would think nothing of grooming and raping (not that rape at any age is right) underage British girls."

Let us not forget this is the same religion whose founder "married" his favorite wife when she was only 6, and allegedly consummated it when she was just 9. And he is supposedly the perfect Muslim, the pattern for all other Muslim men generally speaking.

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I actually agree with you about the nastiness of Muhammad. I don’t think a direct line can be drawn to Islam, at least not without a lot of footnotes, and certainly not to all Muslims. Even if it could, what would you propose to do about it? Nevertheless, I don’t share Alexander’s semi-sympathetic view of Islam.

You seem to have missed Alexander’s main point, which is that the very nastiest form of Islam has been supported by the USA and allies for 50 years. ISIS has never attacked Israel, and has now been installed in Syria.

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ISIS is not running Syria, though yes, there is another gang who may prove to be just as nasty, but they aren't ISIS. (Nasty characters and violent splinter sects are a dime a dozen in that part of the world)

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They're all from the same Wahhabi/Salafi well and Al Jolani does have "former" ISIS commanders in his interim government. I believe the different sects break down to who is backing them financially and otherwise. HTS is obviously a Turkish proxy.

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They appear to be ISIS in disguise. The Syrian leader "resigned" from ISIS and got a "make-over", so that one day they could take over and hope to be accepted as a legit government, but word is the break was not sincere.

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ISIS hasn't attacked Israel...so far. Any bunch that nasty is certainly capable of it. And I think our federal government indirectly has a lot of blood on their hands. I have no doubt many Muslims would have a problem with the behavior of the rape gangs, but looking at the trajectory of Muhammad's life I think an argument can be made for the more extreme sects being a more accurate representation of Islam by the end of his life.

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What's really disgusting is all the slobbering over those ISIS folks in Syria, like they could really bring freedom and democracy. Ludicrous.

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Did you see how they first fixed up that Al Jolani guy to look like some young Fidel Castro and then they put a suit on him. The Western MSM is in overdrive to make this guy like anything except for what he truly is.

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Yes, I saw right through him immediately. The first thing I said to my wife when he emerged victorius was: "a pig with make-up is still a pig".

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That's what George Galloway was saying yesterday about Al Jolani.

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It is ironic that the Nazi practice of “sippenhaft” - collective, family, and general guilt - has been carried into the modern day. No, no one is being thrown into a concentration camp or beheaded, but it does feel like the world has decided there will be no atonement for Germany. I sometimes wonder if this is because how the demands of the Cold War made people reluctant to really excise war criminals from German life. Some familiarity with war crimes besides the camps is necessary to fully grasp how lightly most of the notorious criminals escaped justice, but far too few people in the Nazi government and military paid a real price for what they had done. I would guess, in many circles, that this shortcoming is recognized and so trying to import barbarians and ruin the lives of Germans who had nothing to do with the war seems like a fair approach.

Or maybe it is a delayed implementation of the Morgenthau plan. Proposed by Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s secretary of the treasury, it would have de industrialized Germany, so that it could no longer have any industry related to the military. In short, pretty much all industry. The proposal likely stiffened German resistance due to soldiers wishing their nation and families be reduced to peasant farmers.

On Islam, it is very hard to find consistency in the positions of the left. If you oppose Islam, you are a racist, even though there is no Islamic race. If you oppose Islam, you are intolerant, even though intolerance is practiced by Muslims more than anyone else in the world these days. If you are a Christian, you clearly wish for the Handmaid’s Tale to become reality, even though Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states are quite close to that.

Like the privileged folks who stood in solidarity with George Floyd (and never ever have had dealings with anyone like him), most of the “fellow travelers” with Islam have never really had candid conversations with anyone who is Muslim. It is very much a supremacist worldview and jihad is not some sort of goofy “internal struggle,” unlike what some morons believe. Islam is a totalitarian system, in the sense that it combines economics, governance, religion, all things in life into one package. When people in the West decide to bring in immigrants from Muslim nations, they are either ignorant of this aspect or don’t care. What it means is that Islam is incompatible with the Western ideals of governing, that government should be secular and religion a personal matter. It is like oil and water.

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One of the great features of our own revolution was to constitutionally ban guilt by association, corruption of blood, etc.

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And the traditions of English Common Law and English history helped a lot with that. There were no mass reprisals associated with the English Civil War and the Stuart Restoration-- or even with the War of the Roses era. Sporadic gross injustices yes and bills of attainder were an ugly thing, but not a crushing boot coming down on the necks of the losers across the board.

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Yes and no. The founders of the USA read a lot into English Common Law that has never been recognized by the British Crown, or parliament, as actually being there. But it was a helpful foundation. There were no MASS reprisals, as in, every soldier who fought for the losing side being hung en masse, but, Charles I lost his head, and those who sat in judgment were hunted down, tried, and executed. Attainder and corruption of blood were available options under the hodge-podge of laws and court rulings that the Brits call their "constitution." That's why ours had explicit language to prohibit both.

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Speaking of Beethoven and Vienna: On Christmas, I attended what I will call a “Work Beethoven” lecture there. A nice Italian guy (yes, he was nice!), a musician, hosts them in his home as an Air B&B Experience

This experience was not lodging. Air B&B offers some very cool “experiences” – for instance, I was to be taken around Vienna by an excellent guide on my first morning in an orange 1960s VW van However, all three of my guides in Vienna spoke from the Left, though with a Leftism that was noticeably different from that of the States. For instance, they can’t fully reject their heritage, but they do have to re-write/insert. Freud, for instance, figured out people have minds as religious people did not know that (not) and his family moved to Vienna party for women's rights (not).

After 55 countries, how could this be my first time in Vienna? (a) It is close, and was easy to save for something special, like Christmas (2) Years ago, my German-Austrian boyfriend, who lived in Salzburg, did not want to go there.

The was to be a “classical music appreciation” lecture. Yes, my bachelor’s is in music ed (mater’s math ed, PhD education) but I wanted to go. When we got to the Beethoven part of the talk, Giacomo asked if I thought Beethoven was classical or romantic. “A bridge, taught by Haydn, but we mainly listen to his later, Romantic pieces”, I said. “I will update you”, he replied. I said I’d like to learn. Giacomo proceeded to explain, i.e., claim, that the Enlightenment was Rational, and Beethoven wrote “Ode to Joy”, in particular, about brotherhood, which is quite rational and not about personal emotion at all. Not at all! Those dreadful Romantic composers emphasized selfish personal emotion, all lockied up in themselves. Also “Ode to Joy is definitely not religious, said my guide.

I realized that this was like Dr. Zhivago, where Uri was not supposed to write poetry and got in trouble. I never understood why, until now. My guide was perhaps a traditional communist? Or subscribed to an older form of Leftism not common in the States? - - Anyway, I researched it and there has been no “update” – people do not believe Beethoven belongs only in the classical period. And of course Ode to Joy is about both brotherhood and God. And of course Beethoven is a beautiful picture of the two types of knowing, as well as both rationality and emotion.

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I am working on my next book: Not Just for Kings: Founding Families for the Ages" and hired a genealogist to see how far back my family can be traced. We always assumed our first ancestor in the New World (Aaron Ruse, c. 1740) was from England. Almost immediately the genealogist came back and said, "you are German." My world turned a bit sideways at that. I was kind of excited about what all that may mean. I went and told a German couple whose daughters go to my daughters' school. When I told them, their faces fell and they said, "I am so sorry." They were reacted to history, to be sure, but also the current political situation in Germany. Still...sad all they had internalized.

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In re: German culture and shame. Decades ago I was an exchange student at a German university and paid intern at a major corporation. It occurred to me only after I returned to America that part of my attraction to my German friends and colleagues was my enthusiasm for their language, culture and better parts of their history - things they could not socially express - but I, as 'ein Auslaender' - could, allowing them to do vicariously.

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Re: Still, the attack came as a shock to him. “This is a complete 180 from the quiet, reserved person I knew,” he said.

Every tine there's some horrendous crime, there are people who opine about the perp, "But he was such a nice guy..."

IMO, The most interesting, and in some ways dismaying, fact about Shamsud-din Jabbar is that he was an American convert, not an immigrant who brought his murderous ideology with him.

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Was he actually a convert, or a nominal Muslim who became fanatical? I’ve seen different reports.

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He was a convert, and brought up in a (vaguely at least) Christian family. This is per the guy's brother so I think we can treat it as accurate. I'm not seeing any report as to what the guy's original name was. It's very common (maybe mandatory?) to take an Arabic name upon conversion (see: Cassius Clay--> Mohammed Ali).

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That was part of Rodney Dangerfield's monologue circa 1980. "He was a quiet man."

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Terrorists are made, not born.

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That's a question worth pondering. While I repeat "there but for the grace of God go I" in many instances, I doubt I could ever be a terrorist. I wonder if terrorists are somehow "born that way", at least as an inclination, since actions are always mediated by the agent's free will. Terrorists have the capacity to connect abstract and lofty ideas to concrete acts of violence, and I'm not built that way. At least, I hope I'm not...

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We all hope that -- or most of us do. The man under discussion who drove a vehicle into a crowd in New Orleans appears, from the biographical information coming out in the news coverage, to be a man who had lot of troubles in his life, who took to whatever sense of Islam he has as an antidote, and splattered his troubles all over other people's lives. If it wasn't Islam or Isis, it would have been something else... fundamentalist Mormonism, Sun Myung Moon (yeah, that's faded away, but just for example). Its also true some are committed cadres who made a conscious commitment and carried out orders. But far from all.

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Out of curiosity how many mass murderers have justified their crimes on the basis of Mormonism or Moonism in recent times?

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I think that doesn't denies the "inclination" theory, though. There might be beliefs that are more morally permissive of certain acts. Us humans always need to believe that even our most loathsome acts are good. The amoral is a very rare specimen.

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There might be beliefs that are more morally permissive of certain acts.- It’s clear that there are.

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What crossed my mind as I was typing that was the two FLDS men who are serving life sentences for cutting their sister-in-law's throat because she was an insufficiently submissive wife. They were asked in an interview, what's the difference between you and Osama bin Laden. The one who answered said "I'm right and he's wrong."

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3dEdited

With "there but for the grace of God go I," we could say that being born with inclinations that inhibit us from becoming a terrorist would itself be the result of grace. (By "terrorism," I mean not targeted violence, which anyone could do given the circumstances, but indiscriminate brutality against known innocents.) And I do think different people are born with different inclinations; there are subtypes to human nature, so to speak. That's also the basis of callings.

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Tell that to the Israelis as they bomb Gaza to rubble.

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Case in point.

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Rod's New Year's concert was at the Vienna Symphony. The other great Vienna New Year's concert is at the Vienna Philharmonic, where each year a guest conductor leads the program inevitably ending with "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" and "Radetzky March".

The conductor inevitably spends more time on the "Radetzky" finale conducting the audience to clap on-time, at the right times. One year (2014?), conductor Daniel Barenboim, typically unconventional, decided to stop conducting Radetzky and amusingly wandered off among the musicians shaking random hands.

Here's the televised 2025 concert with prerecorded ballet interludes at 33:41 and 51:36, conducted by Riccardo Muti, lately of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and his facelift-paralyzed mien making music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-S0NFCDuGA

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I imagine the audience clapped "correctly" (soft, loud silent) without Barenboim? - - On December 27 I went to a concert with orchestra and soloists at the Hofberg, Vienna - basically the same program as New Year's Eve (e.g. Strauss, Radetzky encore) with very good musicians though not the Vienna Philharmonic.

Earworms! I can't get that music out of my head. I don't like that music, actually, well, I like it briefly, but not as a simplistic (Radetzky) tune stuck in my head. So never again. - -

But there is a cure for earworms (tunes stuck in head). They will stop if a person goes through "The Girl from Ipanema", one verse and one chorus. Then both the Girl song and the earworm will stop. (Might come back in a few minutes but rinse and repeat.)

There will never, never be a "concert" like the unexpected (for me) free one at the mass I attended in Peterskirche, Vienna on Christmas morning with Orchestra and Chorus. I'm told this happens at masses all over Vienna, especially leading up to Christmas. The quality was out of this world. I may have to return next Christmas, God willing.

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Movie recommendation-Charlie Wilson's War, Aaron Sorkin script, Tom Hanks (Congressman) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (CIA spook) chewing dialogue about 80s era Afghanistan. Highly recommended.

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Was trying to recall the name of that movie the other day. Thanks!

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Charlie Wilson laid the groundwork for 9/11. George Bush's terrorists were Ronald Reagan's freedom fighters.

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Yes, and they touched on that in the film. There's a chilling scene towards the end which made that very point.

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I may have to watch it after all. From the propaganda when the film came out, I got the impression it was unalloyed hero worship.

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No, it wasn't. The only "hero worship" element was the skilled people involved in this campaign, which did accomplish what it set out to do. But the element you alluded to, the unintended consequences, the uncontrollable elements, and the questioning of such campaigns in the first place, was not swept under the rug. The CIA made no bones about the kind of people they were dealing with while fighting the Russians, and there is a final scene between Charlie Wilson and PSH's CIA character where they discuss just this thing. Wilson is still feeling the elation from the victory, but then, Gust brings up the "realpolitik" element. IMO, that scene turned an already great movie into a prophetic/haunting one and made it stellaer.

I will also say, Aaron Sorkin is indeed one of those writers who wears his political views on his sleeve, BUT he is fair and layered in his characters and his scenarios. Only one of his shows I have seen I just did not care for, and that was "Live From The Sunset Strip." I just don't think he had enough familiarity with the kind of show a Saturday Night Live type show to portray it well. Plus, making such a show appear central to sociopolitical conflicts in America at the time was beyond realistic verisimilitude. His other shows about media seemed to more realistically grasp their scope, The Newsroom and Sports Night.

Yes, it is fair to say I am a Sorkin fan.

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Thank you. That's helpful to know. The previews I can recall seemed to mostly show Wilson on a camel throwing his arms into the air and smiling broadly. The voice over made Charlie Wilson's War sound like a great thing, almost a romp.

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Sorkin's signature is witty, rapid-fire dialogue. But there is always multiple things going on with many of those exchanges. And some other tasty chunks of meat are in the quieter moments. Put it all together, you have your story.

Check it out.

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I will watch it tonight. Thanks.

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Pretty convinced that Shamsud-Din Bahar is a stooge (Biden jumping in this morning and tagging him as an ISIS asset nails that, I think), "radicalized" by a cut-out. The ultimate perps are I am pretty convinced going to surprise everybody when identified. Your Senator, John Kennedy, has vowed to get the truth.

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I just got off my first trip onto X this morning and there is a small but noticeable sprinking of hate ("clown") for John Kennedy. Watch that space.

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He's asked some sensible questions for a Republican. I wouldn't be quick do discount what he says. If he's sticking to, we need to investigate, rather than making unfounded accusations, that's worth pursuing. I recall when there was a particularly unqualified (Trump) nominee for a federal district court post, Kennedy asked him to explain a motion in limine, and they guy didn't know the answer.

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I've spent more time looking, and am also convinced that the pot shots at Kennedy are orchestrated. By what or whom I can't say.

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Without really thinking its an organized conspiracy, I was conditionally agreeing with you. It doesn't take much for a bunch of loudmouths to sound off on social media.

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Kennedy is a party politician in office-- of course there's an opposition taking pot shots at him. That comes with the territory.

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Not sure what you're getting out. The FBI and the police are investigating the possibility (which is apparently a strong one) that the guy was no lone wolf, but part of a larger plot. If it turns out there's an ISIS cell out there which put Jabbar up to this I don't think it will be a huge surprise. There's also speculation that this is somehow connected to the exploding Tesla in Las Vegas though that's only speculation-- last I saw we don't have definitive word as to whether the Tesla explosion was due to explosives or was a result of a battery fire.

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Whatever it is, it isn't what we're being fed.

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And your evidence for this is what exactly?

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I have no evidence. I have a hunch. The evidence I have that my hunch is correct is the unanimity of finger-pointing at ISIS, including the index of that doddering old fool in the White House. I'm not the only one who smells a rat, btw:

https://x.com/jpodhoretz/status/1874879849229435220

I don't know what's happening, but it's not what we're being told.

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Actually the latest is that there's no evidence of any "handlers" or accomplices; he was (it seems, but stay tuned) working alone. Pure speculation on my part, but he may have been psycho enough to have created an imaginary conspiracy partnered around himself and thereby left fake clues that appeared to implicate a broader but non-existent group.

The Las Vegas Tesla explosion appears to be a suicide going out in a blaze of glory-- the guy shot himself in the head right before the vehicle blew up. More pure speculation: was this a case of someone with severe but undiagnosed PTSD from his military service?

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It was explosives. Daily Mail is reporting bomber was Green Beret on leave from active duty

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No report that he was Muslim so far. Seems highly coincidental that both he and Jabbar used electric vehicles rented through Turo to carry out attacks.

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He was absolutely not a Muslim and there appears to be zero connection with the NOLA incident. The Las Vegas guy seems to have bent on a spectacular suicide (and shot himdelf before the car exploded) owing to personal problems.

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