Victor Davis Hanson is not feeling sanguine about the future: life is a cabaret, old chum
Weimar comparisons abound. You may need a good stiff drink when you’re done.
When I think about Weimar compared to today, one of the biggest parallels I can find is the degradation of popular culture and also of what used to know as high art. If Andrew Breitbart was correct when he said that politics is downstream from culture—and I think it was a brilliant observation—then what’s going on today politically is to be expected, if you consider our long Gramscian march towards the decline of our own culture.
About two years ago I wrote a post making some of this cultural Weimar comparision, and I’m going to reproduce a portion of it here.
This is what the well-dressed starlet/model/whatever is wearing lately:
Dresses that leave so little to the imagination seem to me to have almost nothing going for them except their power to shock (then again, perhaps the men in the crowd would disagree). And we’ve grown so accustomed to the display of more and more skin that such things have lost some of that power, so it’s necessary to escalate to get the requisite effect.
As in long ago Rome:
In lifestyle Roman actors did not enjoy a good reputation and their morals challenged even the decadence of Roman society. Their performances could be lewd, highly sexual and offensive, even going as far as to appearing naked on stage and engaging in sexual acts. They could also be highly critical of the political status quo and so ran the gauntlet of emperor and senator…Far from being great dramas most Roman plays were whimsical, more mimes and pantomimes; the classics we know and respect were in the minority…in the Imperial period a number of women emerged as famous actresses, earning reputations as infamous as their male counterparts…Over the years a number of actors became quite influential, counting among their friends men of high standing within Roman society.
And musn’t forget the ill-fated Weimar Republic:
Apart from the new tolerance for behaviour that was technically still illegal, and viewed by a large part of society as immoral, there were other developments in Berlin culture that shocked many visitors to the city. Thrill-seekers came to the city in search of adventure, and booksellers sold many editions of guide books to Berlin’s erotic night entertainment venues. There were an estimated 500 such establishments.
If you’re not familiar with Anita Berber (and I certainly wasn’t until I did the research for this post), her performances and life may retain their ability to shock, even now.
The Weimar Republic and decadence—makes me think of the Sally Bowles character in the musical “Cabaret,” which itself was a somewhat-cleaned-up version of the real Weimar goings-on. Sally was based on a British actress and writer by the name of Jean Ross, who lived with writer and playwright Christopher Isherwood in Berlin in the 30s (just as Bowles did with the highly fictionalized Isherwood character in “Cabaret”).
Unlike the apolitical Sally, Ross was a lifelong Communist, and possibly even an undercover agent for the Comintern. She latter married the British Communist journalist Claud Cockburn, one of whose three journalist children from his third marriage was Counterpunch’s leftist editor Alexander Cockburn.
That’s the end of the excerpt.
I’ll close—as I have several times before—with this poem by W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming.” Written in 1919 in the disillusion and desolation following World War I (the year the Weimar Republic began in Germany, and a time I believe to have been the beginning of the modern era in which we are still living), it goes like this:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I must interject:
The French — in the period immediately AFTER the Great Terror — adopted flagrant nudity — not on stage — but on the street — in the parks.
The survivors would strut around wearing scarcely more than the gal at the top of your OP.
The sex tempo ALSO went into orbit.
No small number of the gals were Great Terror widows.
( Young mistresses being very prone to survive, whereas their patrons were cut down — or had fled in a most timely way.
The video is not available, sayeth the link.
Yep. Politics are downstream of culture. Participatory politics subsume electoral politics. The activist game is the only social cultural/political game there is.
Here’s the thing: You’re not helpless. At least, you can choose not to be helpless. You can compete. But you have to choose to compete. And you must choose to compete collectively.
Activism is a team game.
Activism is a method, not an ideology. It’s not epic mythology. It’s not religious tide. It’s human endeavor. It’s essential competition. It’s merely sociology weaponized – or, if you prefer, industrialized. Activism works for anyone for any cause. It’s the people’s game.
Activism can work for conservatives, just like the method works for everyone who uses it against you. Like the method worked for the founding fathers. There’s no guarantee of victory, of course, because it’s competition. It simply equips you with a fighting chance.
If you choose not to be activist, then you’re choosing to be helpless and concede the future to anyone who chooses to be activist.
You don’t need to prefer activism to play to win. You don’t need to like it. It can be uncomfortable and even disgust you. You just need to accept that it’s necessary for deconstructing the social condition you dislike and constructing the social condition you prefer. Whatever that is, because the method works for anyone for any cause. And against anyone for cause.
Conservatives lament social decline but it’s a disingenuous complaint. Like anyone else, they have it in their ambit – collectively – to compete for the social condition they prefer. They’ve simply chosen to eschew the activism of the founding fathers that’s always required to fight for the future.
There’s no “rough beast”. There’s only the open field in the arena that your team has chosen to leave open for the competition to run up the score and gobble up critical social ground virtually unchallenged.
Any “jayvee” team of activists can look as scary as the anti-Christ when their putative competition chooses not to compete for real.
If you choose to compete for real and honestly, you’ll likely find out – as I did when I played – that the “revelation…at hand” is that changing the social condition is constructive human endeavor like anything else. It’s just competition – no more, no less.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture in which the egregious Kanye can be likened to Mozart, and in which no-one would dare to scoff at the doubly oxymoronic term “rap music scholars.” Higher education is infested with Cultural Marxism, and most politicians and journalists pander to the lowest and basest elements. Europe seems intent on committing demographic and cultural suicide; can our republic be far behind?
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Yup. Sure sounds like the times we’re living in.
I think I discovered your blog in 2007; and if my memory serves me well, you have referenced The Second Coming at least once a year for the past 9 years. 2016 is another year of the worst filled with passionate intensity.
I would prefer to grow old in far less ‘interesting’ times. 🙁
I’m glad someone finally made the connection between the Weimar Republic and cell phones. Wait a second, that doesn’t make any sense. What about the Weimar Republic sharing our unprecedentedly low interest rate? No, the opposite occurred. More pets than children? I couldn’t find the exact birth rate stats, but during the Weimar years, Germany’s population quickly rose above pre-war levels. Sometimes, VDH wants to make a point so much that he throws everything he can think of at the wall to see what sticks.
“. . . [N]ot especially decadent” Flanders and Swann may sidelong have taught us that we too may be reluctant cannibals preferring not to eat people; on the other hand, they may just as well have been incorrect to teach about “mud, mud, glorious mud, there’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood”: for we see with the great gobs of mud-slinging these days it manifestly appears to do quite the opposite.
Nick,
I don’t know whether you can connect the birth rates now and during Weimar. Weimar was a phenomenon of the “cultural elite.” Lots of people still lived in villages and went to church regularly. Today, we have the pill plus TV and the internet pushing the trash into every nook and cranny of the country. During the Weimar years, average people knew their place and didn’t expect to live like the elite.
I wasn’t trying to connect them; Hanson was. At least I assume that when a historian lists a bunch of contemporary things in an article entitled “Weimar America”, he’s implying a commonality. Neo’s intro implies that she read it the same way.
Nick:
You may have noticed—if you read my post—that the comparison I make between now and Weimer is a single one:
No one—and that includes Hanson, who drew more parallels on more levels than I did—is saying the situation is exactly or even mostly parallel in its details. Go easy on that strawman you’re beating.
You can’t denounce the bizarre crudity of much pop music without sounding like an old fogey. But dammit, much of it is objectively sick. And I say that as someone who thinks there is a lot of great pop music being produced today.
A couple of weeks ago something or other provoked me to check out Nikki Minaj. I watched part of her “Anaconda” video. You take a look at it (easily located on YouTube) and tell me if I’m judging it too harshly in saying it’s repulsive. I got less than halfway through it. I wondered what the hell she was talking about, so googled the lyrics. Again, very easy located. Again, repulsive. Also extremely stupid. I don’t care how it makes me look–the popularity of such stuff is a symptom of something very wrong.
High can no longer be distinguished from low, such has the use of the term culture fallen from its one time implied link to excellence. This is consonant with a general failure to distinguish good from evil, virtue from vice. That’s the thing about decay. Minds have been purposively melted.
Neo, you said “comparisons abound”. Can one comparison abound?
Sorry; that was cheap. I’m a Christian and a prude, and the decline of American culture scares me as much as it scares you. But VDH’s article didn’t sit well with me. I think the reader was supposed to walk away thinking, “these are all problems we share with Weimar Germany”.
Nick:
“Comparisons abound” was a description of Victor Hanson’s article. There was a link to the article on the word “abound.”
I did not write the article, nor do I agree that there are all that many comparisons. There are some. This post was not a run-through of every point he made. I thought his article was interesting and was recommending people read it.
Then I made my own comparison—to one thing about Wiemar.
Nick:
Let me add that I think Hanson was not making specific one-to-one comparisons either. He was comparing a mood of impending chaos and doom.
That’s why I put the poem in there, from that same era.
Eric is right. He has said the same thing before, in so many words, as we all have with our preferred themes.
But this time he has said it with a casual eloquence which carries a particular force.
The reminder that the founders acted jointly, that all movements are composed of people who have had enough, joined together to draw lines in the social sand, and then seized the initiative through the use of parallel, and alternate venues and fora, is rightly given.
Hell, there’s an analogous element to that in how even normal legislation is made before it is voted on. Committees, caucuses, cloakrooms … restaurants …
We are not really in letter to the editor territory anymore.
And we can all – probably – remember at least a few instances when, as rule abiding and as considerate as were were taught to be, there was nonetheless some occasion when a spontaneous impulse to act outside the ritual pattern on the part of a number of us, in response to some trespass or another, produced an almost magical seeming result.
“How did that happen?” we almost ask ourselves
If you don’t fight back, or merely make a show of it, and all the while knowing that you are being outmaneuvered, you are – despite any claim to holding yourself to a higher standard – really being complicit in your own destruction.
“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, written by English historian Edward Gibbon and published in six volumes from 1776, to 1789 is commonly thought to be the first modern historian of Ancient Rome.
Gibbon said that the following five attributes marked Rome at its end:
first, a mounting love of show and luxury (that is, the worship of affluence);
second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor (this could be between countries in the family of nations, as well as in a single nation);
third, an obsession with sex;
4th, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, & mere enthusiasms presented as creativity;
fifth, an increased desire to live off the state.”
Regarding Weimar, I have to quote a passage from Sebastian Haffner, who was there and did see some positives amid the crazy:
“Despite everything, one could find a fresh atmosphere in Germany at this time…The barriers between the classes had become thin and permeable…There were many students who were labourers, and many young labourers who were students Class prejudice and the starched-collar mentality were simply out of fashion. The relations between the sexes were freer and franker than ever—perhaps a fortunate by-product of the lack of discipline of the past years…we felt a bewildered sympathy for previous generations who had, in their youth, had the choice between unapproachable virgins for adoration and harlots for relaxation. Finally, a new hope even began to dawn in international relations; there was less prejudice and more understanding of the other side, and an unmistakable pleasure in the vivid variety that the world derives from its many peoples.”
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42473.html
1. Neo-neocon wrote:
Do such dresses leave little to the imagination, or do they stir the imagination-particularly in men?
2. I agree that there has been a degradation of our culture, but I do not believe that “creative” dress designs are in any way evidence of it. In my opinion the facts that evidence it include Chief Justice John Roberts’ Obamacare opinions, and the fact that the lying, corrupt, demagogic Hillary Clinton is still the favorite to win the Democratic Party nomination for president.
This is a long ongoing decline. Who was the Academy Awards host who spoke of all the women whose bare breasts he had seen? Some of those women were offended. Really? You took your clothes off in front of a camera and somebody noticed your face.
The creator of the bikini swimming suit was a single child raised without a father in his mother’s lingerie plant in Paris. He thought the underwear was so awesome he wanted women to wear them without clothes covering them. When he introduced the bikini swimming suit at a fashion show none of the models would wear it. He had to hire a stripper. Now beaches and pools are populated with teens, young women, and mothers wearing nearly nothing. Many a bikini is more revealing than these dresses. These dresses are only exciting in the hope of a puff of wind.
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and proclaimed it art. Real lasting art gives a hint of the infinitesimal, an understanding of the greatness of the Creator and our role in the universe. The vast majority of orchestral music played in concert was written over 125 years-ago by men who had a sense of the greatness of God. If we are living in a godless culture, a culture of death, why are we surprised by these things?
Myself, I prefer the Baroque art period and the Dutch Masters. (Well, ok, I like the Impressionists, but that I blame on my severe myopia.) I am firmly convinced that the three greatest pieces of music are Handel’s Messiah, especially the Hallelujah Chorus; Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, especially the Ode to Joy; and Bach’s Cello Suites.
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
One of my college girlfriends, upon our breaking up, added to my list of faults that I was a fan of both Kipling and Tennyson, white-supremacist racists. Oh well. Rudyard made an excellent point about that whole “White man’s burden” thang.
The Left incites and cheers for decadence, and attacks morals and good character, for one reason: Without our moral/character “endoskeleton,” we obviously need a totalitarian “exoskeleton,” which they are panting to clamp around us. Example? the lewd and promiscuous “hookup” culture on campus, soon followed by the “campus rape culture” protests and stringent requirements imposed by the Leftists on all the kids.
And, of course, there’s John Adams’s famous remark
about the Constitution and morality: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
So the Left, knowing this (and yes, they DO know this; watch their actions) cry down morality to water our bones, the better to rule us.
Beverly:
See this.
Ira:
I’m talking about a different sort of culture.
And compared to a normal dress—yes, these dresses leave little to the imagination. A normal dress leaves virtually everything to the imagination but the basic shape .
I saw pictures of Jaime Alexander’s dress (the one in black) back when she wore it. It’s worth noting that the back of the dress looks pretty much *exactly* like the front. I’d have to double-check, but I suspect that the only difference between the front and the back is that the bump-out in the back covering her rear-end extends a little further than the one in front covering her crotch.
I’m not sure how clingy that dress is, so I suspect that anyone walking just a bit behind and/or to the side probably gets an eyeful.
Just do what feels good. It’s a popular if nihilistic choice.
It’s also a good way to destroy the old orthodoxy and leave people begging for more.
Enter, stage left.
“Regarding Weimar, I have to quote a passage from Sebastian Haffner, who was there and did see some positives amid the crazy”
And look how it ended.
The call it freedom??
So now TV shows Cinemas, moves, Starts (American Idle judge Panel), Chief, dress & style, finally Kids | EllenTV.com all those we see are problematic they are neither men nor women.
Do you know why our families and societies became daily consumer on ground of freedom?
We lost our freedom, as majority of human men and women who were perfectly created by God, G-God, Allah…. so why all of us been subjected & humiliation by this mongers.
Is this what it call star? Star for what? SEX? Rihanna’s sexy “Work”.
No surprise this is how Trump make his money from
Try this linkRihanna’s sexy “Work”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_ancient_Rome
That ancient civilization had much the same issue as the current decadence and decay.
For them, it took hundreds of years to weaken, and Christianity helped support that rotting structure.
For the modern world, it won’t nearly take that long due to the Left and Islam, plus modern tech.
Cultural decadence which led both to Great War and ascent of Hitler began in Germany even before Weimar Republic. I remember a short story by Thomas Mann written in 1902 titled “Gladius Dei”, which in described in Yale textbook so:
“Gladius Dei (1902) is a novella by Thomas Mann. It follows the story of a radically religious and ascetic youth, Hieronymus, as he attempts to eradicate a painting of a Madonna that he finds especially sacrilegious. The story takes place in Munich in the early 1900s and raises the question of art’s relationship to religion, a theme that Mann develops in later works as well. The work reaches its climax as Hieronymus experiences a vision of the sword of God (Latin: Gladius Dei) as it destroys the art found everywhere in Munich at this time.”
Actually, this was not about conflict of art and religion, but about Sword of God above the Earth, which took no long time to strike, and which destroyed not sacrilegious art, but lives of dozen million people. This “conflict” actually was just a symptom of general decline of civilization, which opened all the gates of Hell.
The fact of Trump popularity is ominous and supports VDH Weimar comparison. This hybrid of Hitler and a clown feeding on general frustration with politics as usual signifies the same public frustration which in Weimar Republic led to wish to abandon all parliamentary procedures and replace State and Law with cult of Fuhrer. Clear symptom of society regression under stress, its devolution to primordial forms of government by a charismatic leader free from all constrains of law, tradition and morality in general.
I believe that moderate, clerical “fascism” is now the best antidote to Leftist or Islamist takeover of societies, at least in Europe. Who saved Spain from Communist takeover in 1930s? Franco. Who saved Chile from the same in 1970s? Pinochet. Both were maligned by leftists as “fascists”, but they were heroes who saved civilization. They needed to rule harshly, use martial law, but the alternative was much, much worse.
If Eric is still checking out this thread, I would like to direct him to VDH’s latest article today at NRO. It is even better than the Weimar piece.
I worked with a young woman decades ago who dressed so as to moderate the visual effect of what would have been called, even earlier, a “splendid figure”.
Left a lot to the imagination, which is what imaginations are for.
I think sales people call this kind of dress, “spilling your candy in the lobby”.
To put it another way, when people get filled up with the free samples, they’re not likely to actually buy the stuff.
Historical parallels are always tricky and you can pick and choose which factors are important and which not in order to make one case or another.
So they may as well be fiction. There are some, based in human nature–weakness invites trespass, the tragedy of the commons–but those are perennials.
That is an interesting point. Those old enough to have at least a vague memory of a somewhat ritualized and straitjacketed upwardly mobile middle class life will sympathize.
If you look at the “old days” you will notice that even then people sought release and relief from the class and clock driven constraints to which they were subjected. My guess is that much of the fascination with Vista-Vision cowboy movies and outdoor activities like family camping, or even the suburban backyard were a way of counterbalancing trends toward industrial formality and regimentation.
Actually I don’t have to guess, because that is what were were told in college in the late 70’s .
A life where you are judged by the model of car, the pattern of perforations in your oxfords, the weave of your shirt, and the price of your golf clubs, is stifling.
On the other hand people seem to go from there to dropping their trousers at the dinner table and letting child rapists run free.
The pendulum seems not to be in time and society so much as in the psychology of some people who just cannot abide a balance of novelty and sound tradition.
Re my own remark.
I guess the point of others here, is that we have the worst of both worlds, rather than the best: both the crassest and most abominable novelties, and the crudest status seeking standards and values at the same time.
I have not kept up on the recent labeling trends, but what you are referring to was once commonly called Falangist or Phalangist.
A long while here i laid out these parallels of history as not only being what they are, including the names of the women and others in weimar, but the point that the left has been recreating that to create the similar outcome of a voted in despotism of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
mention was made in neos post The rape of innocence in 2009 – referring to hilmar von campe (who was a jugend and been warning people before he died recently)
What we Germans thought was greatness was blind pride before the fall. And the fall was terrible. I know what comes of the complacency of the millions of bystanders who can’t kill a fly but stand up for nothing.
Hilmar Von Campe
but for the most part, all your seeing is what FEMINISM created.. they have always been akin to hitler, from sangers publishing ernst rudins work…
[ernst rudin was the father of the holocaust]…
the other tactics including disparate impact, race politics, and a negating of modesty and so on.
the image that neo uses in her article reminds me of the famous black performaer of weimar, and their love of GAY life, and so on..
the point was to create the situation where the people are so upset they will vote in a strong socialist… (ha ha, a capitalist jumped in and is taking their plans someplace else!!! and their fear is that he will upset their apple carts on both sides, just by not being a part of it… he cant help but do so by accident or on purpose if he sees something and can use it!!!]
as i said, i covered this in 2009 here
Artfldgr Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
http://neoneocon.com/2009/09/29/the-rape-of-innocence/#comment-127373
here is a pic of her from that era:
Josephine Baker is banned from Munich stage for “indecent public behavior.”
xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/time/1929/baker.jpg
a big sudden problem with Cocaine… destroyed the family, etc… anyone remember Anita Berber.
we mimic and copy, and we step in the shoes of people we do not know.
Dancer and Actress, Prostitute and Drug Addict, Lost Girl and Wild Woman.
Expressionist exotic Dancer and Actress in German Silent Movies, “Anita Berber” epitomized for many the Decadence of Weimar-Era Berlin (1918-1933). However, recent Scholars have re-evaluated Her as an Icon of unfettered Sexuality and a Precursor of modern Day Performance Artists.
[snip]
It was as a Dancer that “Berber” plied her most celebrated Skills and incurred her greatest Notoriety. She brought flamboyant Eroticism, exotic Costuming, and grotesque Imagery to Performances, danced to the Music of Composers such as “Debussy”, “Strauss”, “Delibes”, and “Saint-Sé¤ens”. A Pioneer of modern Expressive Dance, “Berber” was at first taken seriously as an Artist, but soon became better known for her scandalous personal and professional Life.
not like i didnt say where we would end up
The big qestion is how did i know in 2009 what would be topical now, and in the minds once it got too far?
tons of stuff in those old posts that if i tried today, i would be cut down… at least now they are there for reference.
after all, do a search on
“magnus hirschfeld gesellschaft”
“magnus hirschfeld glsen”
Among those Anita Berber claimed as members of her vast sexual harem were Marlene Dietrich, Magnus Hirschfeld (the founder of modern sexology and gay liberation), Klaus Mann, Conrad Veidt, Lawrence Durrell, and the King of Yugoslavia. Berber acted in Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler and starred in the silent epic, Lucifer. Even Leni Riefenstahl credits Berber for inspiring her controversial career. After sated Berliners finally tired of Anita Berber’s libidinous antics, she became a “carrion soul that even the hyenas ignored,” dying in 1928 at the age of 29.
tons of stuff in those old posts from over seven years ago…
compare the image neo has up in the article with this one:
Anita Berber in dancing costume and pose, Atelier Madame d’Ora, 09.12.1922
http://41.media.tumblr.com
/1b07c1e5f00153b1b8dd01b05744a1ef/tumblr_mqr2mcdA4n1stppfao1_1280.jpg
not much difference at all…
the disparate impact stuff making germans hate jews for being more successful is also copied. as is many other things…
history repeats because you can be ahead of the curve and lay it out and a decade can pass before someone notices the warning, if at all.
remember this?
Artfldgr Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Socialists andCommunists have no compass for right and wrong, have no compassion for anybody, recognize no legality outside their perceptions, in general are unable to debate honestly and listen to arguments of others and in their perverted minds in whatever the argument may be their side is always right and the opponent is always wrong. That is the Nazi way which I have felt.
Expat – Great article. Meticulous research, solid historical parallels. Pieces like this are why it drives me crazy when VDH gets sloppy.
We can give you a tumble,
if that’s your taste,
and times being what they are.
Otherwise for a jingle of coin
we can do you a selection
of gory romances.
Pirated from the Italian
and it doesn’t take much
to make a jingle…
even a single coin has music in it,
should it be gold.
Tragedians,
at your command.
Tragedians?
What exactly do you do?
Tragedy, sir.
Deaths and disclosures,
universal and particular,
denouements…
transvestite melodrama…
We transport you back into a world
of intrigue and illusion.
Clowns if you like…
murders…
We can do you ghosts…
and battles…
on the skirmish level…
heroes… villains…
tormented lovers…
set pieces in the poetic vein,
we can do you rapiers,
or rape…
or both,
by all means faithless wives
and ravished virgins…
flagrante delicto at a price.
For which there are special terms.
It costs little to watch,
and a little more to get
caught up in the action.
If that’s your taste
and times being what they are.
What are they?
Indifferent.
Bad?
Wicked
See anything you like?
Lucky thing we came along.
For us?
Also for you.
-Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead
If I ran a company, I’d approve both of those dresses as acceptable office attire.
Ms. Alexander is a pretty lady. That dress makes her look vulgar.
It’s unfortunate that there is confusion between the two, but not really a surprise in the ongoing moral slouch of society.
One of the more dispiriting parts of the Cabaret movie took place in a restaurant–a big place with big windows looking over the blue/green German mountains. Not a gasthaus in a little town.
Some young tenor in lederhosen starts singing about the stag in the forest runs free and the Rhine gives its gold to the sea. So forth.
A couple of blue-jowled pluguglies, baritones, stand up and drag the thing into an ominous march tempo. Obviously set up.
Then everybody in the restaurant is standing, giving the Hitler straight arm.
Richard Aubrey:
The real Von Trapp story.
Beverly has a good point. The Left engineers the bridge’s collapse, then they rush in and demand that they be given “emergency powers” to fix the bridge that they demolished, all the way blaming their enemies for the bridge.
And Eric’s activism always seemed closer to war to me, in the way the Left waged it. That is how I see it and understand it.