Perhaps the baby speaks Italian and is questioning her mother’s choice of arias? “O mio babbino caro” is from Puccini’s, “Gianni Schicchi” and translates to, “Oh my dear Papa.”
If you still doubt the U.S. is headed for a major crisis, look at the recent media coverage of COVID, the border crisis, and the impending Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. Now imagine how different that coverage would be if Trump were still President and remember that our professional/managerial class is largely guided by such media coverage.
I can’t tell if that baby is frightened or confused or frustrated or what.
I do know kids and cannot read that reaction.
As for Afghanistan, can someone tell me why that sh*thole is strategically important to the United States?
MBunge,
I vacillate between our having already gone over a precipice and accelerating towards a very horrendous impact OR our having turned a corner and being on our way to a new era of freedom, individualism and prosperity. I know those are polar opposites and seemingly unrelated, yet I sincerely go back and forth between both scenarios fitting current events.
In the cultural nomenclature among the “cool kids” the first scenario is called being “black pilled” (which sometimes happens after being “red pilled*”) and the second scenario is referred to as being “white pilled” (which also usually requires first being “red pilled”). Being “blue pilled” is believing the MSM, Biden administration, CDC, WHO and Don Lemon are all extremely intelligent, straight shooters working tirelessly to bring forth Utopia.
Regarding the white pill scenario; all you write is true, and I’ll add our Treasury Department’s furious pace to ignite hyperinflation and rend the dollar completely worthless. Yet, here you and I are discussing it. We know about it. (I’ve never even met you, yet we are having an open discussion regarding information that is widely available.) There are always cabals of people who conspire towards nefarious ends, but has there ever been a period in human history where more clandestine plots have been exposed more quickly to more people?
Look at something as seemingly small as Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s a treasure trove of information on myriad scandals. Prior to the last, several decades, it wasn’t even possible for anything one individual owned to contain so much information. Julian Assange. Michael Snowden.
Look at COVID-19. Medical professionals are making videos reporting from the front lines. Retired Physics professors like our own “physicsguy” are gathering the CDC and WHO’s daily data sets and reworking them and publishing their theories nearly instantly. Parents are speaking out at school board meetings. Videos of policemen brutalizing maskless mothers sitting alone with family at sporting events are being filmed.
Look at George Floyd. We’ve seen the autopsy results. Michael Brown. We’ve read the court transcripts. Patrisse Cullors. We’ve seen the mansions.
Sure Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have tremendous power over information, but is it anything like the three major television networks from the 1940s – 1980s, or CNN in the 80s and 90s, or the major newspaper syndicates of the 1900s – 1990s? Everyday a thousand videos, podcasts and blogposts go up questioning, challenging and refuting the narrative being pushed by Big Tech, the MSM and those pushing global governance. (And a special “Huzzah” to our own Neo who does daily battle to find and propagate the Truth!)
Yes, many, many folks are either uninterested or too self-absorbed to look into any of these things, and are unaware. Yes, many folks are more concerned with being members of the elite, chattering class than investigating and admitting the truth in front of their faces.
But many, many folks are aware and the elite institutions are losing their sheen. It is blatantly obvious Joseph R. Biden is currently an imbecile. Even if one respected his abilities in the past (I always found him middling) it is irrefutably obvious he is not the man he was. His administration is a literal joke and the more his courtiers attempt to cover for him the more obvious and laughable it becomes. Laughter and contempt are two things no regime can survive. Look at CNN. They feature a legal analyst who masturbated in front of female co-workers at a company meeting. They promoted Michael Avenatti as a Presidential candidate. Chris Cuomo lied about quarantining while infected with a disease during a pandemic then helped his brother attempt to subvert sexual harassment charges. Look at Twitter and Facebook. They took down posts from legitimate news outlets regarding a Presidential candidate’s son’s computer that had gigabytes of scandalous and incriminating data on it. They took down posts encouraging mask wearing. Then took down posts discouraging mask wearing. It is obvious they are lying in their appearances before Congress.
It is truly an absurd farce and the farcical machinations of those who want and demand to lead us have never been more apparent and transparent. Obama tells us we must drive less because climate change is an existential threat (including rising seas) and we must cower alone in our homes because there is a deadly pandemic; then he buys a seaside mansion and throws a party and dances the night away with hundreds of maskless guests. Gavin Newsom. Nancy Pelosi. John Kerry. Professor Gates. Professor West. Robin DiAngelo… Those who pretend to lead us as our “betters” are not only clowns, it’s clowns all the way down. As Tucker Carlson has said, “I don’t mind being led by elites, I just want them to be competent.”
The “information age” has given us technology that makes information more free (both in cost and abundance) than it has ever been before. Naturally this had to be disruptive to the institutions that were the gatekeepers; the prior purveyors of information; newspapers, television, government staff, business communications departments, medical and scientific journal boards, the entertainment industry…
As the saying goes, you get the most flak when you’re over the target. The mania, disruption and chaos we are living through now just may be the death throes of Institutions that have been gutted and our now houses of cards, about to collapse into irrelevance.
* Red pilled is simply waking up to the realization that there is coordination among some media outlets and government to propagate a pre-determined narrative regardless of actual reality “mostly peaceful protests.”
Here’s a video about Sarper Duman, a piano teacher in Istanbul who rescues injured cats and plays the piano for them when he isn’t giving lessons to music students. He became a cat rescuer after a cat rescued him; he was close to suicide at one point a few years back but came across a street cat who followed him home . . . and gave him a reason to keep going: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-u-bt9MSl4&ab_channel=TheDodo
One online article about Duman asks why cats like piano music: “A cat’s senses are much more fine-tuned than ours. Its whiskers are sensitive to even the smallest of vibrations, which explains why some cats love certain music and other cats hate certain music. Play at the right tone, pitch and tempo to suit a cat’s senses and you may just find your cat snuggling up to you as you play.”
My cats seem indifferent to any instrument or particular tune I play, but they always snuggle up to me and interfere with my arms, hands and sheet music when playing; as readily as they insist on getting between my eyes and any book I am reading and walking on my computer keyboard when my eyes are on its screen.
RTF–
My cats are the same way– except they distinctly prefer classical music to jazz, rock, or disco. As for interrupting book, magazine, or computer screen reading– yep, kitties are hard-wired to seek human attention– as witness this advice to cats from Purina on the art of taking care of a human:
It’s a mournful sound and [facial] expression. That said, cute baby, pretty mommy, and an opera beautifully sung.
I would describe the baby’s expression as a combination of surprise and puzzlement. But basically, it’s hard to tell.
My mommy is dying can anyone save her?
I like classical music, opera gets on my nerves
She looks distressed. Must not be a Puccini fan.
@Skip:
If you don’t like O Mio Babbino, you’re going to utterly hate the rest of Gianni Schicchi.
Taken singly, or as a whole, the operas comprising Il Trittico are a Massive Black Pill.
O Mio Babbino Caro sounds lovely… even more lovely in the Opera itself where it’s the one melodious still/pivot point in the entire composition — there it magically is, this sweet jewel in the midst of a spiky racket of semi-cacophony — but when you look at what’s happening in it, not so sweet at all, really. A Red Pill.
(Red Pill: Women not all Sugar and Spice. Black Pill: Diogenes had us all figured.)
At least GS is funny. The ll Tabarro and Suor Angelica are Grim.
PRC Covid-Delta Data Point. Someone tested positive, they shut down part of a Container Port:
Opera singing is designed to be heard in a large auditorium without electronic amplification. It is very loud.
Babies are very sensitive to loud sounds. Baby is probably pleased to be the object of her mama’s attention and stressed out by the volume.
We once lived in an apartment in Manhattan, directly adjacent to a couple of opera singers. The husband occasionally appeared at the Met. The building was old and had concrete block walls between apartments, but we could them practice very easily.
@Robert Schotzberger:
She hasn’t heard Nessun Dorma yet.
Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs wrote a lovely meditation on a vacation in which a man down the hall played Verdi’s “Aida” every day. She’s written more well-known songs, but this is the one that has stuck with me.
It’s a rare song which improves with the lyrics in black-and-white. The ending is perfect.
_______________________________________
Verdi Cries
The man in 119 takes his tea all alone.
Mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries.
I’m hearing opera through the door.
The souls of men and women, impassioned all.
Their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call.
I fill the bath and climb inside, singing.
He will not touch their pastry
but every day they bring him more.
Gold from the breakfast tray, I steal them all away
and then go and eat them on the shore.
I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand,
sing of a lover’s fate sealed by jealous hate
then wash my hand in the sea.
With just three days more I’d have just about learned the entire score to Aida.
Holidays must end as you know.
All is memory taken home with me:
the opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago.
Loved the song, from years ago. Thanks, the lyrics written out do make it better.
om:
You’re welcome!
I was surprised reading web comments that many people consider “Verdi Cries” to be Merchant’s best song and personally special. I thought that was my quirk.
The lyrics help because the pauses between verses are longish and each verse is in a different world from the others. (As well as being well-written.)
I’m wondering if the “La, la-la-la, La, la-la-la” chorus is from “Aida.”
Just watched the video. That baby doesn’t like high soprano! It alarms her. When I practice soprano parts at home, my dog barks or whines when I hit high notes.
There’s opera and there’s bel canto. Try Greensleeves bel canto.
Somebody described opera as what happens when the human voice competes with an orchestra. Prior to that it was motets with minimal accompaniment.
Not to bitch or anything, but could we cut the trill by about half?
Huxley… I have for years had a “crush” on Natalie Merchant’s voice.
That was a fine accompaniment to my breakfast. Muchisimas Gracias!
Rufus T. Firefly–
If this were a work of fiction, the black pill, white pill, and blue pill trends would build and build to a simultaneous climax, triggered by the actions of the protagonist and leading to a great change in the actors and society.
I don’t think we’ll get that lucky. Even the Fourth Turning isn’t obvious to the people going through it. What we’ll get will be messy and ambiguous and diffuse and only clear in hindsight.
@Zaphod–
She hasn’t heard Nessun Dorma yet.
Nessun Dorma the vocal performance, isn’t anything all that special. It’s the orchestral climax that makes the hairs stand up.
Driving the news: The study, conducted by nference and the Mayo Clinic, compared the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the Mayo Clinic Health System over time from January to July.
– Overall, it found that the Moderna vaccine was 86% effective against infection over the study period, and Pfizer’s was 76%. Moderna’s vaccine was 92% effective against hospitalization and Pfizer’s was 85%.
– But the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection dropped sharply in July, when the Delta variant’s prevalence in Minnesota had risen to over 70%.
– Moderna was 76% effective against infection, and Pfizer was only 42% effective.
. — Yes, but: There has been no data so far that has found either vaccine’s protection against severe disease and death is significantly less against Delta, and the study notes that there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference in complications stemming from breakthrough infections based on which vaccine someone got.
I was unable to find any discussion of Ct cycle counts or PCR test sensitivity, in a quick scan. I could easily have missed it. And it is primarily a positive PCR test study. Sigh.
Now those goddamn slanty-eyed sallow-faced Nazis have gone and put on the jackboots and kicked Big Data Tech into line so that the average citizen can be tyrannised if he criticizes Winnie the Pooh but can unbelievably live his life in peace if he opines against compulsory Drag Queen Story Hour for his kids. If that isn’t Genocide, I don’t know what is.
And… to make things worse.. Imagine forcing your tycoons to invest in real scientific R&D instead of resting on their laurels or expanding their rent extractions? What’ll they think next?
Gotta go… Three Citroën Traction Avants just pulled up outside. The General Tso Chicken Gestapo have come for me! Nice knowing you, Om.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Z:
Enjoy your CCP. You could leave Hong Kong for the mainland, or for anywhere else on the orb that would have you. Too much drama and too little wit.
Operatic singing is highly controlled, highly trained yelling. Sort of, I know I’m over simplifying. The singer has to be heard in a hall over a pit orchestra, after all. Puccini utilized larger orchestras, in bigger venues than his predecessors using Wagnerian methods. All this without (perish the thought) electrical amplification, predating those methods. The kid is merely wondering why mommy is yelling.
Zaphod:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t understand the US and the liberties we enjoyed here just a short while ago (and to a certain extent still enjoy), nor do you understand how much that still matters to at least half the country. I could summarize the whole thing with a literary reference: you are somewhat simpatico with Mustapha Mond in Brave New World, whereas we prefer exile if need be. Life is somewhat harder there, but there is more liberty.
Mond:
Sophisticated and good-natured, Mond is an urbane and hyperintelligent advocate of the World State and its ethos of “Community, Identity, Stability”. Among the novel’s characters, he is uniquely aware of the precise nature of the society he oversees and what it has given up to accomplish its gains. Mond argues that art, literature, and scientific freedom must be sacrificed to secure the ultimate utilitarian goal of maximising societal happiness. He defends the caste system, behavioural conditioning, and the lack of personal freedom in the World State: these, he says, are a price worth paying for achieving social stability, the highest social virtue because it leads to lasting happiness.
Right now in the US we are losing the fight, however. We are well aware of it, although we still don’t know how it will go long-term. But Brave New World does not attract us (although it’s a great book).
@Neo:
Netflix trailer for a new movie encouraging Blacks to kill you.
But it’s Free Speech. So all you need to do is start your own movie studio and start making movies encouraging Whites to Kill Blacks… err.. I mean everybody to live together in perfect harmony… Perhaps your movie could star a Drag Queen Story Hour Trannie as heroine?
I mean you love freedom and all. So why are you all supine while your Overlords make movies about you being slaughtered like lambs?
I think I have a pretty good grasp of human nature and the need to be free. You might infer from my posts that I’m not into being told what to do or think or say by anyone and revel in being a square peg wherever I go. I like freedom. I like radical autonomy for *me*. Don’t we all?
But I’m also interested in the world as it and in making institutions which fit people not in pretending that people fit some fairy tale stories.
The question is whether or not it’s remotely workable or hackable to make your America of Yore work again in 2021 with the people you have now and the tech you have now… Well you don’t have the tech. Your Oligarchs have it. I see very little evidence that there is much serious thought happening about can the Old Gods of Freedom, Liberty, Constitution, etc. be made to work *now*. All I see is at best talk about how to count votes better and that’s at best. Mostly it’s just ‘Hand Waving’. Signing everyone up for PragerU isn’t going to bring balance to the Force.
It’s just conceivable that a Monolithic rather than Multipolar (you got this now) Tyranny is your best bet. I could be wrong. But again, look around you at where you are, where you came from and where you appear to be going at freight train speed.
I don’t always connect all the dots, but I think you can grok that in the post above I was pointing out that it might conceivably be better to have the Government telling Big Tech what to do per China rather than what you have in the USA where Big Tech Oligarchs and their Red Guard employees have their own crazy agendas which they push on Big Government .. of course Big Government / Deep State has its own incestuous relationship with Big Tech Oligarchs… and so you have multiple power centers virtue spiraling and feeding back into each other driving political craziness like it’s Moscow 1921 or Beijing 1966. Except faster. And soon harder.
At the risk or repeating myself and drawing simple diagrams. I am not just talking about Making the Trains Run on Time. I’m trying to suggest that folks re-assess some of their axiomatic unquestioned beliefs about what is Good and Bad in politics.
You can dare to hope for more, of course. I seem to recall A Man from Hope.
And on cue, here’s Jennifer Rubin. She’s got your backs:
You see… the CCP rounded up all the Jennifer Rubins after 1976, locked up the Gang of Four, rehabilitated their victims (including the dead.. what a relief!) and got on with shit… squashing the odd few thousand students with tanks in 1989 was a rounding error compared with what their Jennifer Rubins / Red Guards had done during the Cultural Revolution. And they thought it was worth the bad press for Tiananmen just on the off chance that it might have metastasized into a second Cultural Revolution. Strong Never Again vibe.
If these Jennifer Rubin types aren’t brought to heel soon, you’ll be very lucky to get just a Cultural Revolution without a Great Leap Forward thrown in for free.
Those nasty Communist / Fascist (according to taste) Chinese Rulers know all this. They and their parents have seen it all before and want no part of it. It’ll take a lot more than Village Green LARPing with AR-15s to stop Ms Rubin and her several million Bolshevik friends from finishing the job. You can stop them, but when you’ve worked through all the hell of that will you even *want* a democracy / Const. Republic again given that seems to be impossible to stop these sainted democratic institutions from being subverted by Rubins and their ilk?
Making the High Speed Trains Run On Time is just the icing on the cake.
More smoke from the far east. It’s a feature. Prefers the CCP/PRC.
Were not your monkeys and it’s not your country. Pound sand.
Zaphod:
I hear Ezra Pound made the quatrains run on time…
In any events you bring up good points and I’m divided on them. I haven’t given up that we can right the boat with voting and better organizing. I believe we are the majority.
But geez, man, have a heart … Jennifer Rubin!?
Correction for the Z:
“We’re” not “were,” and pound more sand.
Jenifer Rubin? What a tool. LOL
@Huxley:
He ‘translated’ Chinky Poems too… What’s not to like? 😀
I’m not proposing Solutions… Final, or otherwise. I am suggesting that everybody needs to take a good hard look at their axioms and givens.
Muh Constitution and Muh Lexington Minute Men and Muh Take that King George’ are about as valid as copes in 2021 as saying ‘We lost in Vietnam because we were never allowed to fight properly plus those goddamn commies cheated by doing an end run on our home front.’ — Well of course they did. Coffee is for Closers. And something must be wrong with your entire system because they could do it and they did do it and they’re still doing it. Taliban seem to have just retaken Kandahar. Look! Ponies!
It’s all broken. Someone is going to Build Back Better. Who? Whom?
Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium gave Seth Keshell gave a detailed 35m run down of his seriously reasoned 2020 election projections, demonstrating that the reputed results are crazy outliers.
And therefore without detailed audits, ought to be rejected.
Steve Bannon declared this the best inferred case for massive election shenanigans, amounting to widespread fraud. And not just in the chief contested five states – but almost everywhere.
There was never a “Man from Hope,” there was a grifter from the mobbed up town of Hot Springs. When a politician starts selling hope, it’s dope for his dopes. They should leave hope to religion where it belongs and fits.
Gotta hand it to Progs though… they know better than to take a plastic butter knife to a gun fight.
@geoffb:
You’re right.
But the Dopes Vote. Whether they know it or no.
And you’re unlikely to see a Third or Fourth (depending on who does the historical counting) Great Awakening anytime soon, so the religious impulse is going to continue to be misdirected.
The reason I bring up Clinton is that at the very moment of the greatest idealogical and material victory in the history of humanity to that date, at the moment of your very real triumph of the ages, this is what your fabled System threw up to lead it. Not a Bug. A Feature. It happened. Not a simulation. Calling it a Bug is a Cope. I’m super mega down on Copes this week in case anyone hasn’t noticed 😀
@Zaphod:
“Not a Bug. A Feature.”
I agree and that feature was the start of the greatest grift in history, trillions and trillions, and the power that that can bring. I can only ‘cope’ day to day with just me and mine anymore and even that, I know, can be whisked away if I get seen as a bug to be squashed harder than I’ve been squashed before.
Re: Pound’s Chinese translations…
Zaphod:
That’s a bit generous, though they are called as such. More accurately they are Pound poems based on the Chinese.
Pound didn’t really read Chinese and relied extensively on notes from another Westerner. There are many mistakes. Yet the poems are credited for conveying Chinese poetry well and were the bridge for many Western poets into Chinese poetry.
For me, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” is one of the great poems of the 20th C, however it was produced.
Did you ever run into Su Tung-P’o (or Su Shi, his more modern name)? Almost 1000 years old, yet fresh as today’s headlines:
___________________________________________
On the Birth of a Son
Families when a child is born
Hope it will turn out intelligent.
I, through intelligence
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope that the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he’ll be happy all his days
And grow into a cabinet minister.
–Su Tung-P’o, translated by Arthur Waley
_________________________________________
Su Tung-P’o worked in the government and he had a tendency to fall into disfavor.
@Steve Walsh:
Afghanistan has been strategically important to a lot of people’s back pockets. To the tune of $2T of freshly-printed dollars laundered through the joint.
Never let it be said that I blame *all* Raghead-related foreign policy stupidities on the Israel Lobby. Just some of them. And Afghanistan is a full-on home-grown US Ruling Elite Mongolian Cluster#%^& of Corruption, Stupidity and a tragic waste of blood and treasure.
The lamp posts should be groaning.
@Huxley:
Hence the quotes around ‘translations’.
@Huxley:
It’s quite a famous poem. There’s a whole genre in this vein by erstwhile Confucian Mandarins (no other sort) who got into trouble, got fired, and then experienced Road to Damascus Conversions and became ardent Taoists banging out poems about exile, the moon, and how they have just drunk one pot of wine too many.
Arthur Waley — Another disguised Ashkenazi, dammit. But I really like this guy. He spent his entire life producing wonderful translations of Classical Chinese literature and Japanese literature and made a point of never visiting the Orient — didn’t want his illusions shattered.
Waley and Needham I think did more to get Chinese thinking into the English Language before 1970 than anyone else. Maybe Lin Yutang also.
You might be interested in a thin volume called “Classical Chinese for Everyone” by Bryan Van Norden. Chapter 1 jumps right off into Confucius’s Analects beginning with ‘Confucius Say’ 🙂
Zaphod:
I missed the single-quotes on translations.
Didn’t know it was a famous poem. I browsed a book of Su Tung-p’o at City Lights, started reading, was wowed and took it home. I’ve only met one other person who knew his work.
And so to bed.
@Huxley:
Making oblique reference to the poetic output of guys like Su was how you criticized political developments in the 1950s… and had been true back during earlier Dynasties. You could almost get away with it then if you had a light touch. So Chinese Intellectuals have always kept a bunch of these type of poems in their quiver to be used to send gentle remonstrances to their Rulers. After the Hundred Flowers Campaign and for sure during the Cultural Revolution, one tended to find out that even that level of indirection and allusiveness could be fatal.
Lots of scintillation from your poetry cites, Zaphod.
But this? “Afghanistan is a full-on home-grown US Ruling Elite Mongolian Cluster#%^& of Corruption, Stupidity and a tragic waste of blood and treasure. The lamp posts should be groaning.”
This simplicity is wrong. It’s not the graveyard of Empires for nothing. And because its5 Islam, nothing violent about the Taliban will go gently into that oacific good night.
The obvious solution furthering the management of Afghanistan is not to fly in 3,000 US troops as Xi-den is doing.But rather to partition the ersatz nation to nearby powers and contain the remainder that’s not profitable to be managed by neighbors.
No one talks about this obvious managerial maneuver. Partition and containment. ($2T oughta have bought THIS, are least.)
The Chinese have a wary contingency plan for a Taliban takeover. Let’s hope a sensible alternative plan emerges in time — soon enough and not later.
We cut in to Gianni Schicchi 2 minutes before the aria. The trick is that it’s the only thing you could really call an Aria in the whole opera — everything before and after it is something else.. as you’ll see and hear.
@TJ:
Partition Afghanistan? Nobody except Afghans want to be there. Place is ungovernable. It made some sense to whack the Taliban about a bit after 9-11 perhaps… but otherwise should have stayed the hell out of the place. This notion that teaching Afghan girls to use vibrators whilst pissing $2T against the wall is going to win friends and influence people is something the West and especially the USA needs to get over. Think about it. in the early 2000s… the supposedly smartest greatest people running the greatest nation on earth convinced themselves that they could *CHANGE* the @#$%ing Afghans. It was dumb enough to think that about the Iraqis, but the Afghans FFS? Jaysus wept. This has got to stop and must never be done again.
Should never have tried. I’ve nothing against nuking guys in caves from orbit or sending Special Forces from time to time in to get their chops before they retire to become 9M subscriber YouTube stars and make bucks… whatever… But folks gotta wake up and stop with this dumb idea that humans are fungible and all you need to do is move them elsewhere or move in some GloboHomo institutions and they’ll suddenly see the light and make like they’re in Brooklyn.
Taliban guys were in China last week or week before lining up some deals. Can be sure that they’ll have agreed to not help or shelter Uighurs in return for cash and hardware. This is how stuff gets done and the USA is not good at getting this kind of stuff done because of humbug and bully pulpits and all the other accoutrements that go along with being the Light on the Hill.
Can only be a Light on the Hill if stay at home.
I just hope the lesson has been learned. I’d learn a lot if I lost $2T, I suspect. But countries and institutions seem to have more trouble with this. Some more than others. It’s painless to lose Other People’s Money.
The Australians (but of course!) don’t have a %$^&ing clue:
Great. More goat-%^&*ing welfare queens randomly cutting throats and trying to mow down crowds in pedestrian malls.
Being Australia, it’s actually a criminal hate speech offense to make the predictions in the preceding para.
Just checking in to read the latest screeds on “The New Zaphod” blog – Formerly hosted by a woman called “Neo” whose political/cultural takes mostly approximated my own.
Neo and I both hail from NYC and have travelled similar philosophical journeys.
Opera maven/tech boffin and CCP apparatchik Zaph has expropriated the blog to persuade its readers to evolve from their rickshaw thoughts to his own high-speed rail cogitations. Quite a cultural revolution.
Zaph – But to say it’s “ungovernable” is to repeat the error that led to 9/11 in the first place.
Al Qaeda documents found in Afghanistan after 9/11 (see “The Al Qaeda Reader”) show that they wanted to reverse engineer smallpox virus and unleash this on the world.
This ambition made breaking up Isis in Syria and Iraq necessary.
We may want 5o go home and hide but Islamist to terrorists will not disarm and go away.
Afghanistan will remain the base for renewed Islamist terror mayhem. The costs of attempting this project in an urban area are now way too low for them not to work towards this aim and the money supporting it too much and too available for it not to go on again.
This intransigent stance is denial that’s disproved by history and experience.
I don’t like this at all. But there it remains – a threat wielded by Islamic zealots. Against the US and the world (See “Future Jihad” by Walid Phares).
It would be racist to insist that some benighted folks don’t want and can’t manage New England town meeting democracy and Norman Rockwell social ideals.
So opposing such efforts to change places like Astan can be socially costly to those making the case that it’s a much wasted effort.
This doesn’t mean different tactics involving whatever it takes to kill people–in this case Taliban–won’t be useful.
A sky full of drones, and a few informers, along with disguised spy microphones dropped here and there as a permanent or near permanent feature could keep the trouble localized.
When your allies kill you–blue on blue–they’re not your allies.
In other worries, ZeroHedge glosses two new studies from Japan and Chile on Covid Lamda out of South America.
They confirm that it’s more infectious than Delta. And more vaccine resistant.
“They confirm that it’s more infectious than Delta. And more vaccine resistant.” TJ
I encourage anyone interested in the science to open up the pop-up in this BMJ article from October 2020 that clearly defines the clinical trial information for the various vaccines. You will see that it shows that “Reduction in severe covid-19 (hospital admission, ICU or death” was not tested, nor “Interruption of transmission (person to person)”. In the case of “Prevention of symptomatic disease in vaccine recipient” Yes is recorded except for “Presumably” in the case of Sinopharm. We now no this is not true. We also see that Children/Adolescents, the Immunocompromised and Pregnant/Breastfeeding women were excluded. Additionally, the Control Group was offered the vaccine and thereby no Control Group as orginally devised exists. The push for EVERYONE to be vaccinated will eliminate a control group period.
But their high speed trains run on time! And their international travelers went far and wide … cough, cough, spreading poetry.
Nothing to see, listen to Z and Xi.
LeClerc:
Zaphod provides a POV that is not persuasive, but it is instructive about how certain people think. I don’t like the blog being an echo chamber, and he certainly prevents that. Is Zaphod a troll? Borders on it, but IMHO at this point he is not a troll. Give him A for effort, anyway.
Neo:
He gets an E for energy.
I dunno LeClerc… When was the last time you walked through a public space that was noticeably *better* than it was 10 years ago? The people as well as the fabric.
I don’t think many in the West can answer an honest ‘Yes’ about this going back 30 or 40 years. Much longer in some places.
There’s a kind of Frog Boiled Slowly aspect to this in that if slow decay and decline happens where you live then you filter it out — at least consciously — and build up an arsenal of Copes.
I wonder if you can even imagine what it’s like to live with optimism and hope. (Nuclear-armed Levantine Greenhouses don’t count. Let’s stick with the West proper.)
Those super oppressed (not really — at this point you’re more oppressed) Chinky hordes I don’t troll for, have optimism and hope. Every year, things just seem to get a bit better and they get a bit richer. In a perverse kind of way, the fact that they had to begin from Zero 50 years ago off a base of self-inflicted madness and destruction inoculates them against many of the present evils, stupidities and complacencies so apparent in Western Liberalism today. Dare I say it, they have good reason to believe that Tomorrow Belongs to Them.
I hate what they did in Hong Kong.. I also grok that had Western Liberalism won out here, it would have meant Drag Queen Story Hour and Black Guys with Chinese Women in every sitcom plus their Mulatto brats. Another kind of defeat and subjection. Better their own did it to them. Probably too complicated and subtle and not cartoonish enough for you.
I don’t really have any solutions. Frankly I don’t care what you think of my arguments or myself. If my bloviations encourage just one or two readers to re-assess some of their Priors about Western Liberalism then all good as far as I’m concerned.
Blah blah Muh Background, Muh Political Journey from NYC Liberal to Neocon and doubtless now to ‘Conservative’ given that Neocons are out of fashion and deservedly so after the shocking Iraq and Afghanistan debacles. Try being me and having spent most of your life *refusing to see* what was in front of my eyes in cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai and constructing my own copes for the endless train of unforced errors made by every Western Liberal (I laugh) Democracy (wot dat?) and raised to the nth power by the supposed Best of the West. I’m very late to my Damascene Conversion… and therefore in a bit of a hurry to try to shake people awake. But not as late as you will be.
” I wonder if you can even imagine what it’s like to live with optimism and hope. “
I could at one time; and still can with reservations.
But that taken-for-granted state was before I realized that about half of the country was populated by people who were a strange combination of opportunistic sociopath and frightened herd animal: Neurotic creatures with one main goal in life; to be included in. These are profoundly shallow people with a labile mortality; emotionally needy, self-serving, manipulative, duplicitous, and quite often simply delusional. Their one strong conviction in life being that there is some magic social umbilical that interconnects all men in such a way that it creates an account against which they are free to draw on at will once their membership is certified.
Yet the currently prevalent moral wisdom is that these subversives are simply human, ‘all too human’, yada yada yada … and not to be marginalized or stigmatized … that latter act, being supposedly the greatest of all moral crimes according to this now popular moral calculus.
“Those super oppressed (not really — at this point you’re more oppressed) Chinky hordes I don’t troll for, have optimism and hope.”
That accusation against you – shilling for the Communist Chinese when all you are doing is pointing out how pathetically hemmed-in and hedged-about we have become in some important comparative ways – is one I don’t get.
But then, I don’t get the idea of race loyalty either, to be frank. There’s a homoerotic element that seems to creep into race loyalty schemes which subsequently elevate the fundamental absurdities of such programs from a simple metaphysical point of view, into a kind of transcendentally sick farce.
Yeah, but that idea of regaining optimism and hope is an attractive one. And I readily admit that it is one hell of a rotten thing to be willing to stand by and watch the neighborhood burn down, in the hope that the crazies and pests will disappear along with it.
We have been taught that above all else, it is wrong to hurt anyone. They however – these others (and that the very idea of ‘the other’ has become problematic shows the depth of our problem) have never been taught that their part of the bargain is to keep their goddamned hands and their whining to themselves.
I once thought I could figure anything out. But how to do this one, has got me stymied. Even developing alternative societies – those informal kernels of what used to be called civil institutions – are on the radar of the totalitarian collectivist beings. How we get out of this without push coming to shove, I cannot see.
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Perhaps the baby speaks Italian and is questioning her mother’s choice of arias? “O mio babbino caro” is from Puccini’s, “Gianni Schicchi” and translates to, “Oh my dear Papa.”
If you still doubt the U.S. is headed for a major crisis, look at the recent media coverage of COVID, the border crisis, and the impending Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. Now imagine how different that coverage would be if Trump were still President and remember that our professional/managerial class is largely guided by such media coverage.
I can’t tell if that baby is frightened or confused or frustrated or what.
I do know kids and cannot read that reaction.
As for Afghanistan, can someone tell me why that sh*thole is strategically important to the United States?
MBunge,
I vacillate between our having already gone over a precipice and accelerating towards a very horrendous impact OR our having turned a corner and being on our way to a new era of freedom, individualism and prosperity. I know those are polar opposites and seemingly unrelated, yet I sincerely go back and forth between both scenarios fitting current events.
In the cultural nomenclature among the “cool kids” the first scenario is called being “black pilled” (which sometimes happens after being “red pilled*”) and the second scenario is referred to as being “white pilled” (which also usually requires first being “red pilled”). Being “blue pilled” is believing the MSM, Biden administration, CDC, WHO and Don Lemon are all extremely intelligent, straight shooters working tirelessly to bring forth Utopia.
Regarding the white pill scenario; all you write is true, and I’ll add our Treasury Department’s furious pace to ignite hyperinflation and rend the dollar completely worthless. Yet, here you and I are discussing it. We know about it. (I’ve never even met you, yet we are having an open discussion regarding information that is widely available.) There are always cabals of people who conspire towards nefarious ends, but has there ever been a period in human history where more clandestine plots have been exposed more quickly to more people?
Look at something as seemingly small as Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s a treasure trove of information on myriad scandals. Prior to the last, several decades, it wasn’t even possible for anything one individual owned to contain so much information. Julian Assange. Michael Snowden.
Look at COVID-19. Medical professionals are making videos reporting from the front lines. Retired Physics professors like our own “physicsguy” are gathering the CDC and WHO’s daily data sets and reworking them and publishing their theories nearly instantly. Parents are speaking out at school board meetings. Videos of policemen brutalizing maskless mothers sitting alone with family at sporting events are being filmed.
Look at George Floyd. We’ve seen the autopsy results. Michael Brown. We’ve read the court transcripts. Patrisse Cullors. We’ve seen the mansions.
Sure Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have tremendous power over information, but is it anything like the three major television networks from the 1940s – 1980s, or CNN in the 80s and 90s, or the major newspaper syndicates of the 1900s – 1990s? Everyday a thousand videos, podcasts and blogposts go up questioning, challenging and refuting the narrative being pushed by Big Tech, the MSM and those pushing global governance. (And a special “Huzzah” to our own Neo who does daily battle to find and propagate the Truth!)
Yes, many, many folks are either uninterested or too self-absorbed to look into any of these things, and are unaware. Yes, many folks are more concerned with being members of the elite, chattering class than investigating and admitting the truth in front of their faces.
But many, many folks are aware and the elite institutions are losing their sheen. It is blatantly obvious Joseph R. Biden is currently an imbecile. Even if one respected his abilities in the past (I always found him middling) it is irrefutably obvious he is not the man he was. His administration is a literal joke and the more his courtiers attempt to cover for him the more obvious and laughable it becomes. Laughter and contempt are two things no regime can survive. Look at CNN. They feature a legal analyst who masturbated in front of female co-workers at a company meeting. They promoted Michael Avenatti as a Presidential candidate. Chris Cuomo lied about quarantining while infected with a disease during a pandemic then helped his brother attempt to subvert sexual harassment charges. Look at Twitter and Facebook. They took down posts from legitimate news outlets regarding a Presidential candidate’s son’s computer that had gigabytes of scandalous and incriminating data on it. They took down posts encouraging mask wearing. Then took down posts discouraging mask wearing. It is obvious they are lying in their appearances before Congress.
It is truly an absurd farce and the farcical machinations of those who want and demand to lead us have never been more apparent and transparent. Obama tells us we must drive less because climate change is an existential threat (including rising seas) and we must cower alone in our homes because there is a deadly pandemic; then he buys a seaside mansion and throws a party and dances the night away with hundreds of maskless guests. Gavin Newsom. Nancy Pelosi. John Kerry. Professor Gates. Professor West. Robin DiAngelo… Those who pretend to lead us as our “betters” are not only clowns, it’s clowns all the way down. As Tucker Carlson has said, “I don’t mind being led by elites, I just want them to be competent.”
The “information age” has given us technology that makes information more free (both in cost and abundance) than it has ever been before. Naturally this had to be disruptive to the institutions that were the gatekeepers; the prior purveyors of information; newspapers, television, government staff, business communications departments, medical and scientific journal boards, the entertainment industry…
As the saying goes, you get the most flak when you’re over the target. The mania, disruption and chaos we are living through now just may be the death throes of Institutions that have been gutted and our now houses of cards, about to collapse into irrelevance.
* Red pilled is simply waking up to the realization that there is coordination among some media outlets and government to propagate a pre-determined narrative regardless of actual reality “mostly peaceful protests.”
Here’s a video about Sarper Duman, a piano teacher in Istanbul who rescues injured cats and plays the piano for them when he isn’t giving lessons to music students. He became a cat rescuer after a cat rescued him; he was close to suicide at one point a few years back but came across a street cat who followed him home . . . and gave him a reason to keep going:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-u-bt9MSl4&ab_channel=TheDodo
One online article about Duman asks why cats like piano music: “A cat’s senses are much more fine-tuned than ours. Its whiskers are sensitive to even the smallest of vibrations, which explains why some cats love certain music and other cats hate certain music. Play at the right tone, pitch and tempo to suit a cat’s senses and you may just find your cat snuggling up to you as you play.”
https://www.pianistmagazine.com/news/meet-the-piano-teacher-who-plays-the-piano-for-his-19-rescue-cats/
PA+Cat,
My cats seem indifferent to any instrument or particular tune I play, but they always snuggle up to me and interfere with my arms, hands and sheet music when playing; as readily as they insist on getting between my eyes and any book I am reading and walking on my computer keyboard when my eyes are on its screen.
RTF–
My cats are the same way– except they distinctly prefer classical music to jazz, rock, or disco. As for interrupting book, magazine, or computer screen reading– yep, kitties are hard-wired to seek human attention– as witness this advice to cats from Purina on the art of taking care of a human:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJPJUaZZOss&ab_channel=BuzzFeedVideo
Rufus T. Firefly:
We call that “kitty helps” in our house.
It’s a mournful sound and [facial] expression. That said, cute baby, pretty mommy, and an opera beautifully sung.
I would describe the baby’s expression as a combination of surprise and puzzlement. But basically, it’s hard to tell.
My mommy is dying can anyone save her?
I like classical music, opera gets on my nerves
She looks distressed. Must not be a Puccini fan.
@Skip:
If you don’t like O Mio Babbino, you’re going to utterly hate the rest of Gianni Schicchi.
Taken singly, or as a whole, the operas comprising Il Trittico are a Massive Black Pill.
O Mio Babbino Caro sounds lovely… even more lovely in the Opera itself where it’s the one melodious still/pivot point in the entire composition — there it magically is, this sweet jewel in the midst of a spiky racket of semi-cacophony — but when you look at what’s happening in it, not so sweet at all, really. A Red Pill.
(Red Pill: Women not all Sugar and Spice. Black Pill: Diogenes had us all figured.)
At least GS is funny. The ll Tabarro and Suor Angelica are Grim.
PRC Covid-Delta Data Point. Someone tested positive, they shut down part of a Container Port:
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3144830/china-coronavirus-infection-closes-shipping-terminal-massive
Opera singing is designed to be heard in a large auditorium without electronic amplification. It is very loud.
Babies are very sensitive to loud sounds. Baby is probably pleased to be the object of her mama’s attention and stressed out by the volume.
We once lived in an apartment in Manhattan, directly adjacent to a couple of opera singers. The husband occasionally appeared at the Met. The building was old and had concrete block walls between apartments, but we could them practice very easily.
@Robert Schotzberger:
She hasn’t heard Nessun Dorma yet.
Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs wrote a lovely meditation on a vacation in which a man down the hall played Verdi’s “Aida” every day. She’s written more well-known songs, but this is the one that has stuck with me.
It’s a rare song which improves with the lyrics in black-and-white. The ending is perfect.
_______________________________________
Verdi Cries
The man in 119 takes his tea all alone.
Mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries.
I’m hearing opera through the door.
The souls of men and women, impassioned all.
Their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call.
I fill the bath and climb inside, singing.
He will not touch their pastry
but every day they bring him more.
Gold from the breakfast tray, I steal them all away
and then go and eat them on the shore.
I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand,
sing of a lover’s fate sealed by jealous hate
then wash my hand in the sea.
With just three days more I’d have just about learned the entire score to Aida.
Holidays must end as you know.
All is memory taken home with me:
the opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago.
–10,000 Maniacs, “Verdi Cries”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8m-DaMM4z0
huxley:
Loved the song, from years ago. Thanks, the lyrics written out do make it better.
om:
You’re welcome!
I was surprised reading web comments that many people consider “Verdi Cries” to be Merchant’s best song and personally special. I thought that was my quirk.
The lyrics help because the pauses between verses are longish and each verse is in a different world from the others. (As well as being well-written.)
I’m wondering if the “La, la-la-la, La, la-la-la” chorus is from “Aida.”
Just watched the video. That baby doesn’t like high soprano! It alarms her. When I practice soprano parts at home, my dog barks or whines when I hit high notes.
There’s opera and there’s bel canto. Try Greensleeves bel canto.
Somebody described opera as what happens when the human voice competes with an orchestra. Prior to that it was motets with minimal accompaniment.
Not to bitch or anything, but could we cut the trill by about half?
Huxley… I have for years had a “crush” on Natalie Merchant’s voice.
That was a fine accompaniment to my breakfast. Muchisimas Gracias!
Rufus T. Firefly–
If this were a work of fiction, the black pill, white pill, and blue pill trends would build and build to a simultaneous climax, triggered by the actions of the protagonist and leading to a great change in the actors and society.
I don’t think we’ll get that lucky. Even the Fourth Turning isn’t obvious to the people going through it. What we’ll get will be messy and ambiguous and diffuse and only clear in hindsight.
@Zaphod–
She hasn’t heard Nessun Dorma yet.
Nessun Dorma the vocal performance, isn’t anything all that special. It’s the orchestral climax that makes the hairs stand up.
New politically or corporately incorrect data on vaccine effectiveness.
More at Axios linked above. Here is the whole unreviewed pre-print.
I was unable to find any discussion of Ct cycle counts or PCR test sensitivity, in a quick scan. I could easily have missed it. And it is primarily a positive PCR test study. Sigh.
Now those goddamn slanty-eyed sallow-faced Nazis have gone and put on the jackboots and kicked Big Data Tech into line so that the average citizen can be tyrannised if he criticizes Winnie the Pooh but can unbelievably live his life in peace if he opines against compulsory Drag Queen Story Hour for his kids. If that isn’t Genocide, I don’t know what is.
And… to make things worse.. Imagine forcing your tycoons to invest in real scientific R&D instead of resting on their laurels or expanding their rent extractions? What’ll they think next?
https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3144823/china-tech-crackdown-beijings-soft-touch-tax-big-tech-set-end-it-seeks
Racists *and* Fascists, I tell you!
Gotta go… Three Citroën Traction Avants just pulled up outside. The General Tso Chicken Gestapo have come for me! Nice knowing you, Om.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Z:
Enjoy your CCP. You could leave Hong Kong for the mainland, or for anywhere else on the orb that would have you. Too much drama and too little wit.
Operatic singing is highly controlled, highly trained yelling. Sort of, I know I’m over simplifying. The singer has to be heard in a hall over a pit orchestra, after all. Puccini utilized larger orchestras, in bigger venues than his predecessors using Wagnerian methods. All this without (perish the thought) electrical amplification, predating those methods. The kid is merely wondering why mommy is yelling.
Zaphod:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t understand the US and the liberties we enjoyed here just a short while ago (and to a certain extent still enjoy), nor do you understand how much that still matters to at least half the country. I could summarize the whole thing with a literary reference: you are somewhat simpatico with Mustapha Mond in Brave New World, whereas we prefer exile if need be. Life is somewhat harder there, but there is more liberty.
Mond:
Right now in the US we are losing the fight, however. We are well aware of it, although we still don’t know how it will go long-term. But Brave New World does not attract us (although it’s a great book).
@Neo:
Netflix trailer for a new movie encouraging Blacks to kill you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFqj276vwBo
But it’s Free Speech. So all you need to do is start your own movie studio and start making movies encouraging Whites to Kill Blacks… err.. I mean everybody to live together in perfect harmony… Perhaps your movie could star a Drag Queen Story Hour Trannie as heroine?
I mean you love freedom and all. So why are you all supine while your Overlords make movies about you being slaughtered like lambs?
I think I have a pretty good grasp of human nature and the need to be free. You might infer from my posts that I’m not into being told what to do or think or say by anyone and revel in being a square peg wherever I go. I like freedom. I like radical autonomy for *me*. Don’t we all?
But I’m also interested in the world as it and in making institutions which fit people not in pretending that people fit some fairy tale stories.
The question is whether or not it’s remotely workable or hackable to make your America of Yore work again in 2021 with the people you have now and the tech you have now… Well you don’t have the tech. Your Oligarchs have it. I see very little evidence that there is much serious thought happening about can the Old Gods of Freedom, Liberty, Constitution, etc. be made to work *now*. All I see is at best talk about how to count votes better and that’s at best. Mostly it’s just ‘Hand Waving’. Signing everyone up for PragerU isn’t going to bring balance to the Force.
It’s just conceivable that a Monolithic rather than Multipolar (you got this now) Tyranny is your best bet. I could be wrong. But again, look around you at where you are, where you came from and where you appear to be going at freight train speed.
I don’t always connect all the dots, but I think you can grok that in the post above I was pointing out that it might conceivably be better to have the Government telling Big Tech what to do per China rather than what you have in the USA where Big Tech Oligarchs and their Red Guard employees have their own crazy agendas which they push on Big Government .. of course Big Government / Deep State has its own incestuous relationship with Big Tech Oligarchs… and so you have multiple power centers virtue spiraling and feeding back into each other driving political craziness like it’s Moscow 1921 or Beijing 1966. Except faster. And soon harder.
At the risk or repeating myself and drawing simple diagrams. I am not just talking about Making the Trains Run on Time. I’m trying to suggest that folks re-assess some of their axiomatic unquestioned beliefs about what is Good and Bad in politics.
You can dare to hope for more, of course. I seem to recall A Man from Hope.
And on cue, here’s Jennifer Rubin. She’s got your backs:
https://vdare.com/posts/jennifer-rubin-s-census-take-in-the-washington-post-we-need-to-prevent-minority-white-rule
You see… the CCP rounded up all the Jennifer Rubins after 1976, locked up the Gang of Four, rehabilitated their victims (including the dead.. what a relief!) and got on with shit… squashing the odd few thousand students with tanks in 1989 was a rounding error compared with what their Jennifer Rubins / Red Guards had done during the Cultural Revolution. And they thought it was worth the bad press for Tiananmen just on the off chance that it might have metastasized into a second Cultural Revolution. Strong Never Again vibe.
If these Jennifer Rubin types aren’t brought to heel soon, you’ll be very lucky to get just a Cultural Revolution without a Great Leap Forward thrown in for free.
Those nasty Communist / Fascist (according to taste) Chinese Rulers know all this. They and their parents have seen it all before and want no part of it. It’ll take a lot more than Village Green LARPing with AR-15s to stop Ms Rubin and her several million Bolshevik friends from finishing the job. You can stop them, but when you’ve worked through all the hell of that will you even *want* a democracy / Const. Republic again given that seems to be impossible to stop these sainted democratic institutions from being subverted by Rubins and their ilk?
Making the High Speed Trains Run On Time is just the icing on the cake.
More smoke from the far east. It’s a feature. Prefers the CCP/PRC.
Were not your monkeys and it’s not your country. Pound sand.
Zaphod:
I hear Ezra Pound made the quatrains run on time…
In any events you bring up good points and I’m divided on them. I haven’t given up that we can right the boat with voting and better organizing. I believe we are the majority.
But geez, man, have a heart … Jennifer Rubin!?
Correction for the Z:
“We’re” not “were,” and pound more sand.
Jenifer Rubin? What a tool. LOL
@Huxley:
He ‘translated’ Chinky Poems too… What’s not to like? 😀
I’m not proposing Solutions… Final, or otherwise. I am suggesting that everybody needs to take a good hard look at their axioms and givens.
Muh Constitution and Muh Lexington Minute Men and Muh Take that King George’ are about as valid as copes in 2021 as saying ‘We lost in Vietnam because we were never allowed to fight properly plus those goddamn commies cheated by doing an end run on our home front.’ — Well of course they did. Coffee is for Closers. And something must be wrong with your entire system because they could do it and they did do it and they’re still doing it. Taliban seem to have just retaken Kandahar. Look! Ponies!
It’s all broken. Someone is going to Build Back Better. Who? Whom?
Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium gave Seth Keshell gave a detailed 35m run down of his seriously reasoned 2020 election projections, demonstrating that the reputed results are crazy outliers.
And therefore without detailed audits, ought to be rejected.
Steve Bannon declared this the best inferred case for massive election shenanigans, amounting to widespread fraud. And not just in the chief contested five states – but almost everywhere.
View this. I’m convinced.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/0kzEOjMw2UNm/
There was never a “Man from Hope,” there was a grifter from the mobbed up town of Hot Springs. When a politician starts selling hope, it’s dope for his dopes. They should leave hope to religion where it belongs and fits.
Not Very Diverse:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/rachel-maddow-endeavor-msnbc-contract-1234996897/
Gotta hand it to Progs though… they know better than to take a plastic butter knife to a gun fight.
@geoffb:
You’re right.
But the Dopes Vote. Whether they know it or no.
And you’re unlikely to see a Third or Fourth (depending on who does the historical counting) Great Awakening anytime soon, so the religious impulse is going to continue to be misdirected.
The reason I bring up Clinton is that at the very moment of the greatest idealogical and material victory in the history of humanity to that date, at the moment of your very real triumph of the ages, this is what your fabled System threw up to lead it. Not a Bug. A Feature. It happened. Not a simulation. Calling it a Bug is a Cope. I’m super mega down on Copes this week in case anyone hasn’t noticed 😀
@Zaphod:
“Not a Bug. A Feature.”
I agree and that feature was the start of the greatest grift in history, trillions and trillions, and the power that that can bring. I can only ‘cope’ day to day with just me and mine anymore and even that, I know, can be whisked away if I get seen as a bug to be squashed harder than I’ve been squashed before.
Re: Pound’s Chinese translations…
Zaphod:
That’s a bit generous, though they are called as such. More accurately they are Pound poems based on the Chinese.
Pound didn’t really read Chinese and relied extensively on notes from another Westerner. There are many mistakes. Yet the poems are credited for conveying Chinese poetry well and were the bridge for many Western poets into Chinese poetry.
For me, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” is one of the great poems of the 20th C, however it was produced.
Did you ever run into Su Tung-P’o (or Su Shi, his more modern name)? Almost 1000 years old, yet fresh as today’s headlines:
___________________________________________
On the Birth of a Son
Families when a child is born
Hope it will turn out intelligent.
I, through intelligence
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope that the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he’ll be happy all his days
And grow into a cabinet minister.
–Su Tung-P’o, translated by Arthur Waley
_________________________________________
Su Tung-P’o worked in the government and he had a tendency to fall into disfavor.
@Steve Walsh:
Afghanistan has been strategically important to a lot of people’s back pockets. To the tune of $2T of freshly-printed dollars laundered through the joint.
Never let it be said that I blame *all* Raghead-related foreign policy stupidities on the Israel Lobby. Just some of them. And Afghanistan is a full-on home-grown US Ruling Elite Mongolian Cluster#%^& of Corruption, Stupidity and a tragic waste of blood and treasure.
The lamp posts should be groaning.
@Huxley:
Hence the quotes around ‘translations’.
@Huxley:
It’s quite a famous poem. There’s a whole genre in this vein by erstwhile Confucian Mandarins (no other sort) who got into trouble, got fired, and then experienced Road to Damascus Conversions and became ardent Taoists banging out poems about exile, the moon, and how they have just drunk one pot of wine too many.
Arthur Waley — Another disguised Ashkenazi, dammit. But I really like this guy. He spent his entire life producing wonderful translations of Classical Chinese literature and Japanese literature and made a point of never visiting the Orient — didn’t want his illusions shattered.
Waley and Needham I think did more to get Chinese thinking into the English Language before 1970 than anyone else. Maybe Lin Yutang also.
You might be interested in a thin volume called “Classical Chinese for Everyone” by Bryan Van Norden. Chapter 1 jumps right off into Confucius’s Analects beginning with ‘Confucius Say’ 🙂
Zaphod:
I missed the single-quotes on translations.
Didn’t know it was a famous poem. I browsed a book of Su Tung-p’o at City Lights, started reading, was wowed and took it home. I’ve only met one other person who knew his work.
And so to bed.
@Huxley:
Making oblique reference to the poetic output of guys like Su was how you criticized political developments in the 1950s… and had been true back during earlier Dynasties. You could almost get away with it then if you had a light touch. So Chinese Intellectuals have always kept a bunch of these type of poems in their quiver to be used to send gentle remonstrances to their Rulers. After the Hundred Flowers Campaign and for sure during the Cultural Revolution, one tended to find out that even that level of indirection and allusiveness could be fatal.
@Huxley:
From the “It’s Just a Poem” Department:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Terrace_Poetry_Trial
Lots of scintillation from your poetry cites, Zaphod.
But this? “Afghanistan is a full-on home-grown US Ruling Elite Mongolian Cluster#%^& of Corruption, Stupidity and a tragic waste of blood and treasure. The lamp posts should be groaning.”
This simplicity is wrong. It’s not the graveyard of Empires for nothing. And because its5 Islam, nothing violent about the Taliban will go gently into that oacific good night.
The obvious solution furthering the management of Afghanistan is not to fly in 3,000 US troops as Xi-den is doing.But rather to partition the ersatz nation to nearby powers and contain the remainder that’s not profitable to be managed by neighbors.
No one talks about this obvious managerial maneuver. Partition and containment. ($2T oughta have bought THIS, are least.)
The Chinese have a wary contingency plan for a Taliban takeover. Let’s hope a sensible alternative plan emerges in time — soon enough and not later.
Here’s O Mio Babbino Caro in context:
https://youtu.be/4dOR2xxxY5c?t=1679
We cut in to Gianni Schicchi 2 minutes before the aria. The trick is that it’s the only thing you could really call an Aria in the whole opera — everything before and after it is something else.. as you’ll see and hear.
@TJ:
Partition Afghanistan? Nobody except Afghans want to be there. Place is ungovernable. It made some sense to whack the Taliban about a bit after 9-11 perhaps… but otherwise should have stayed the hell out of the place. This notion that teaching Afghan girls to use vibrators whilst pissing $2T against the wall is going to win friends and influence people is something the West and especially the USA needs to get over. Think about it. in the early 2000s… the supposedly smartest greatest people running the greatest nation on earth convinced themselves that they could *CHANGE* the @#$%ing Afghans. It was dumb enough to think that about the Iraqis, but the Afghans FFS? Jaysus wept. This has got to stop and must never be done again.
Should never have tried. I’ve nothing against nuking guys in caves from orbit or sending Special Forces from time to time in to get their chops before they retire to become 9M subscriber YouTube stars and make bucks… whatever… But folks gotta wake up and stop with this dumb idea that humans are fungible and all you need to do is move them elsewhere or move in some GloboHomo institutions and they’ll suddenly see the light and make like they’re in Brooklyn.
Taliban guys were in China last week or week before lining up some deals. Can be sure that they’ll have agreed to not help or shelter Uighurs in return for cash and hardware. This is how stuff gets done and the USA is not good at getting this kind of stuff done because of humbug and bully pulpits and all the other accoutrements that go along with being the Light on the Hill.
Can only be a Light on the Hill if stay at home.
I just hope the lesson has been learned. I’d learn a lot if I lost $2T, I suspect. But countries and institutions seem to have more trouble with this. Some more than others. It’s painless to lose Other People’s Money.
The Australians (but of course!) don’t have a %$^&ing clue:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-to-rescue-afghan-workers-in-international-emergency-evacuation-20210813-p58ij1.html
Great. More goat-%^&*ing welfare queens randomly cutting throats and trying to mow down crowds in pedestrian malls.
Being Australia, it’s actually a criminal hate speech offense to make the predictions in the preceding para.
Just checking in to read the latest screeds on “The New Zaphod” blog – Formerly hosted by a woman called “Neo” whose political/cultural takes mostly approximated my own.
Neo and I both hail from NYC and have travelled similar philosophical journeys.
Opera maven/tech boffin and CCP apparatchik Zaph has expropriated the blog to persuade its readers to evolve from their rickshaw thoughts to his own high-speed rail cogitations. Quite a cultural revolution.
Zaph – But to say it’s “ungovernable” is to repeat the error that led to 9/11 in the first place.
Al Qaeda documents found in Afghanistan after 9/11 (see “The Al Qaeda Reader”) show that they wanted to reverse engineer smallpox virus and unleash this on the world.
This ambition made breaking up Isis in Syria and Iraq necessary.
We may want 5o go home and hide but Islamist to terrorists will not disarm and go away.
Afghanistan will remain the base for renewed Islamist terror mayhem. The costs of attempting this project in an urban area are now way too low for them not to work towards this aim and the money supporting it too much and too available for it not to go on again.
This intransigent stance is denial that’s disproved by history and experience.
I don’t like this at all. But there it remains – a threat wielded by Islamic zealots. Against the US and the world (See “Future Jihad” by Walid Phares).
It would be racist to insist that some benighted folks don’t want and can’t manage New England town meeting democracy and Norman Rockwell social ideals.
So opposing such efforts to change places like Astan can be socially costly to those making the case that it’s a much wasted effort.
This doesn’t mean different tactics involving whatever it takes to kill people–in this case Taliban–won’t be useful.
A sky full of drones, and a few informers, along with disguised spy microphones dropped here and there as a permanent or near permanent feature could keep the trouble localized.
When your allies kill you–blue on blue–they’re not your allies.
In other worries, ZeroHedge glosses two new studies from Japan and Chile on Covid Lamda out of South America.
They confirm that it’s more infectious than Delta. And more vaccine resistant.
Not what we want to hear because it makes a new winter contagion more possible.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/new-studies-suggest-lambda-variant-could-be-vaccine-resistant
Those poor folks at the CDC are going to really have to scramble and come up with more “reasons” and “rationales”, “whys” and “wherefores”.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/cdc-director-says-shes-really-struggling-with-how-to-communicate-about-covid-19_3945630.html
High stress job, no doubt. Time for another good cry…before figuring out another, more credible way to slander DeSantis et al.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/08/11/cdc-corrects-mistake-with-floridas-weekend-covid-numbers-n1468677
——
In other news, China unleashes the “Fairness Doctrine”, Xi style:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-regime-blames-russia-as-source-of-recent-covid-19-surge-in-china_3944952.html
…While Heather Mac Donald profiles a very, very dangerous (and courageous)—and extraordinary—man:
https://www.city-journal.org/for-the-love-of-music-john-mclaughlin-williams
“They confirm that it’s more infectious than Delta. And more vaccine resistant.” TJ
I encourage anyone interested in the science to open up the pop-up in this BMJ article from October 2020 that clearly defines the clinical trial information for the various vaccines. You will see that it shows that “Reduction in severe covid-19 (hospital admission, ICU or death” was not tested, nor “Interruption of transmission (person to person)”. In the case of “Prevention of symptomatic disease in vaccine recipient” Yes is recorded except for “Presumably” in the case of Sinopharm. We now no this is not true. We also see that Children/Adolescents, the Immunocompromised and Pregnant/Breastfeeding women were excluded. Additionally, the Control Group was offered the vaccine and thereby no Control Group as orginally devised exists. The push for EVERYONE to be vaccinated will eliminate a control group period.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037
Third time I am sharing this link since the beginning of the year.
Related:
“Frontline Care Doctor Shares How to End COVID”
https://tinyurl.com/5afhs6jw
A “Frontline care doctor” speaks about “mistakes” made in the officially authorized treatment of Covid.
I don’t believe they were mistakes. Neither does Dr. Zelenko:
https://rumble.com/vkrdx6-dr.-zelenko-speaks-to-a-rabbinical-court-in-jerusalem.html
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/13/china-and-its-winnie-the-pooh-leader-throw-a-temper-tantrum-after-their-covid-cover-up-is-exposed-n425775
jun
“China is a totalitarian, dumpster fire state run by rabid, genocidal maniacs, including “President” Xi Jinping. ”
But their high speed trains run on time! And their international travelers went far and wide … cough, cough, spreading poetry.
Nothing to see, listen to Z and Xi.
LeClerc:
Zaphod provides a POV that is not persuasive, but it is instructive about how certain people think. I don’t like the blog being an echo chamber, and he certainly prevents that. Is Zaphod a troll? Borders on it, but IMHO at this point he is not a troll. Give him A for effort, anyway.
Neo:
He gets an E for energy.
I dunno LeClerc… When was the last time you walked through a public space that was noticeably *better* than it was 10 years ago? The people as well as the fabric.
I don’t think many in the West can answer an honest ‘Yes’ about this going back 30 or 40 years. Much longer in some places.
There’s a kind of Frog Boiled Slowly aspect to this in that if slow decay and decline happens where you live then you filter it out — at least consciously — and build up an arsenal of Copes.
I wonder if you can even imagine what it’s like to live with optimism and hope. (Nuclear-armed Levantine Greenhouses don’t count. Let’s stick with the West proper.)
Those super oppressed (not really — at this point you’re more oppressed) Chinky hordes I don’t troll for, have optimism and hope. Every year, things just seem to get a bit better and they get a bit richer. In a perverse kind of way, the fact that they had to begin from Zero 50 years ago off a base of self-inflicted madness and destruction inoculates them against many of the present evils, stupidities and complacencies so apparent in Western Liberalism today. Dare I say it, they have good reason to believe that Tomorrow Belongs to Them.
I hate what they did in Hong Kong.. I also grok that had Western Liberalism won out here, it would have meant Drag Queen Story Hour and Black Guys with Chinese Women in every sitcom plus their Mulatto brats. Another kind of defeat and subjection. Better their own did it to them. Probably too complicated and subtle and not cartoonish enough for you.
I don’t really have any solutions. Frankly I don’t care what you think of my arguments or myself. If my bloviations encourage just one or two readers to re-assess some of their Priors about Western Liberalism then all good as far as I’m concerned.
Blah blah Muh Background, Muh Political Journey from NYC Liberal to Neocon and doubtless now to ‘Conservative’ given that Neocons are out of fashion and deservedly so after the shocking Iraq and Afghanistan debacles. Try being me and having spent most of your life *refusing to see* what was in front of my eyes in cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai and constructing my own copes for the endless train of unforced errors made by every Western Liberal (I laugh) Democracy (wot dat?) and raised to the nth power by the supposed Best of the West. I’m very late to my Damascene Conversion… and therefore in a bit of a hurry to try to shake people awake. But not as late as you will be.
I could at one time; and still can with reservations.
But that taken-for-granted state was before I realized that about half of the country was populated by people who were a strange combination of opportunistic sociopath and frightened herd animal: Neurotic creatures with one main goal in life; to be included in. These are profoundly shallow people with a labile mortality; emotionally needy, self-serving, manipulative, duplicitous, and quite often simply delusional. Their one strong conviction in life being that there is some magic social umbilical that interconnects all men in such a way that it creates an account against which they are free to draw on at will once their membership is certified.
Yet the currently prevalent moral wisdom is that these subversives are simply human, ‘all too human’, yada yada yada … and not to be marginalized or stigmatized … that latter act, being supposedly the greatest of all moral crimes according to this now popular moral calculus.
That accusation against you – shilling for the Communist Chinese when all you are doing is pointing out how pathetically hemmed-in and hedged-about we have become in some important comparative ways – is one I don’t get.
But then, I don’t get the idea of race loyalty either, to be frank. There’s a homoerotic element that seems to creep into race loyalty schemes which subsequently elevate the fundamental absurdities of such programs from a simple metaphysical point of view, into a kind of transcendentally sick farce.
Yeah, but that idea of regaining optimism and hope is an attractive one. And I readily admit that it is one hell of a rotten thing to be willing to stand by and watch the neighborhood burn down, in the hope that the crazies and pests will disappear along with it.
We have been taught that above all else, it is wrong to hurt anyone. They however – these others (and that the very idea of ‘the other’ has become problematic shows the depth of our problem) have never been taught that their part of the bargain is to keep their goddamned hands and their whining to themselves.
I once thought I could figure anything out. But how to do this one, has got me stymied. Even developing alternative societies – those informal kernels of what used to be called civil institutions – are on the radar of the totalitarian collectivist beings. How we get out of this without push coming to shove, I cannot see.