I can’t recall ever using this blog to recommend a podcast episode before. In any case, I haven’t done it often. But I just listened to one that is a “must listen”, if such a thing exists.
It is Peter Robinson’s latest. He interviews a historian on the topic of The History of Communist China. (It is just over an hour.)
Do you know any communists? If so, listen.
Have you somehow marooned yourself and your WordPress Reader alone on an island? If so, listen.
Let’s just say, upon completing the episode, I have begun teaching A- and J- (5 and 4 respectively) two general and absolute truths. (I do it catechism-style, Q&A.)
Firstly, What is the first defense against communists?The first defense against communists is books—communists hate books.
Secondly, Who do guns protect us from?Guns protect us from communists.
In the same vein, it seems now is as good of time as ever to share another national security proverb my young progeny get to repeat, “The Democrats are not the fifth column.”
Anyone else’s read of the passing scene include that the Juneteenth folks are desperate? They are even more lame than most pastors and evangelists. No matter how ambiguously noble they make their particular “holiday” sound, no matter how much of the population they invite, no matter how family friendly they make it, I will never celebrate Juneteenth.
Why?
Because it is rooted in victimhood.
Lincoln didn’t wait for someone to tell him it was okay to be free. Neither did GW or TJ.
The slaves, however, waited. The enslaved waited. And they always will wait. That’s what makes them slaves. That what allows them to become enslaved.
So “no”, my family and I won’t be celebrating.
Their cause isn’t noble. Their invitation isn’t sincere. And the whole family friendly ploy is a joke. If bounce houses had any value, world peace would have broken out, starting in urban neighborhoods—last generation.
I recently rewatched The English Patient. (You should too.)
I also am looking forward to seeing Avatar’s latest installment, but refuse to pay.
Today I want to draw attention to the way Hollywood handles the constantly interesting problem (to literates) of illiteracy still existing on the Earth.
In EP, she says, “I wanted to meet the man who could write such a long paper with so few adjectives.” Any man who could write that paper would know instantly that she was his for the taking.
In Avatar, there is an assertion (“I see you”), which is context dependent. Men can say it to men in greeting, but it can also mean, “I want to have babies with you.” Here’s the second meaning’s scene.
Question to ponder: Are they actually communicating the same idea?
Follow-up for “this-is-difficult camp”: Are they even able to communicate the same idea, as in, can illiterate people actually “see as far/much/deep” (metaphorically) as the literate?
Anyone who has ever visited a custom framing store knows that the easiest upsell in the universe is museum quality glass. For the uninitiated, the glass companies, or whoever, provide this shadow box which holds an item—usually a yellow tassel—behind what appears to be one half of a pane of glass. That’s the gimmick. It appears like there is no glass on one half. But there is. And now you’re hooked. How could you ever cover any framed object with a dirty window?
Naturally, this museum quality glass gets its name from its use in museums—these carefully curated places of unfiltered history. Or at least that’s how I think of museums. Sure, there are going to be words of explanation besides the clear-glass-encased pieces and sure these words will naturally be written with an agenda of some sort. But the objects behind the unseen glass are the real communicators.
Luckily for us, this is still the case with Mt Rushmore. You see, I just took the kids to visit it—A- had learned about it in kindergarten. And all I can say is I am happy to report the museum piece was worth it. Because the description was sorely lacking.
The video presentation, which spent a lot of time on the importance of the right type of rock for such a project, had a line, “Years later, the artist (I can’t recall his name) was asked if there was enough room for another face and he said, ‘No’.”
TDS has infected a national memorial. Firstly, if Trump wants his face on it, he will get it done—and in gold. Secondly, the Left is somehow afraid of this man. What has he done to them besides disagree and name call? It’s incredible to witness their fear.
Oh, and did you know women and minorities helped create Mt Rushmore?
It is impossible—literally you can see both from the road—to not want to go to check out the Johnny-come-lately Indians’ effort while in the Rushmore area. Of course, I mean Crazy Horse.
Unfortunately, for anyone who has ever seen South Park, the experience is uneasy. Rushmore charges $10 to park. And the entire site is built to last—lots of stone and whatever that fake but permanent wood is called that decks can be built out of. Bathrooms are great. Viewing area is great. The whole experience is great.
But the Crazy Horse experience is embarrassing. They have a fee schedule—to include $10(!) to walk up. And a car load is $35. The entire monument (which will be epic at a LOTR level if they ever get smart and finish it) is very far away. Everything about the place is VHS in a world of 4K streaming—and I mean the kind of chasm involved in visiting your distant relatives whose TV/VCR combo unit isn’t flat, let alone do they have two bathrooms.
We watched a video (as recommended) to continue the post-parking lot experience which began with actually handing a just-received physical ticket to a gatekeeper. The movie was informative, and it contained the key flaw to the concept: the belief in adherence to unduly stubborn principles.
Again, back at Rushmore we were informed us that the artist and his son barely touched the mountain—instead they directed the many workers.
Crazy Horse’s artist was the sole worker, at least to start. And from Rushmore’s crew.
Rushmore took 14 years.
Crazy horse is 78 and no horse in sight.
I understand TTP (Trust the Process) and am living proof that it is true. Also, I cannot stress enough how cool the final monument will be. I am also totally fine with the tragic concept behind the project, that of an Indian pointing to where his home was—even though it necessarily carries the false idea that losers were participants in an unfair fight.
Back to the visit, we next perused what there was to peruse and noticed that in only 8 minutes there would be a proper drum and dance performance.
We took our seats and proceeded to listen to a real (looking) lady Indian dressed in real (looking) Indian gear lecture us for 50 minutes of an hour, on how the 600 tribes of Indians were living in perfect harmony, how they forecast Einstein’s E=mc2, and how the word “Sioux” means “snake”.
It was a family affair, we learned. So her 10 year old daughter came out and sang a short Indian song. And then her 19 year old daughter came out and danced two dances, accompanied by iPhone drums (probably not AI song) over loudspeakers, in a dress strung with hundreds of bell-looking things that sounded like kazoos jingling.
I need to emphasize here: I understand totally the concept of “talk before eat”. It is impossible to serve free food and then ask people to stay for a free lecture. Main attractions have to come last, I get it. But the lecture was 5/6ths of the allocated time and rife with inaccuracies—she even pointed out the brains of buffaloes were used to oil the hides.
(See Wilder’s settler’s written description of “butchering day” for context.)
Anyhow, after driving away, and while tearing down our campsite the next morning (have I mentioned I am an Eagle Scout and quite literally one of the Last Boy Scouts?), it hit me. These people need to, firstly, tell the truth about how tragic and brutal life was before civilization approached and conquered. Secondly, after starting with the depressing, they need to regain some face and their only way to do that is to highlight proudly (and most welcomed-ly) all the ways the Indian ways influenced and sustains the dominant civilization—like, say, Indian Guides, Boy Scouts, chief, army helicopter titles (blackhawk, kiowa etc).
Lastly, the food at Rushmore is exactly what I imagined food in communist countries is like—terrible. But guess what?! The entire restaurant facility is award winning in its “green”-ness. I mean, consider this. The restaurant which serves terrible food (except the ice cream of course) is award winning: “Feel good about how the preparation and housing of the terrible, and overpriced, food adheres to irrelevant, purpose-less government guidelines.”
This brings me to my concluding advice: the food at Crazy Horse smelled really good—even to a full stomach. So don’t let any of my criticism deter you from seeing both monuments. But skip Rushmore’s restaurant and donate your money to the Crazy Horse food crowd instead of the commies.
My friend thinks I am an asshole for insisting that I gave him all the context he needed to understand this snippet.
Accompanying that image, I sent him:
His response:
It’s all there, I assure you. But let’s break it down.
Nobody says “negro” anymore. My adding this was to more assuredly call attention to the time period, geography, and mood of the snippet.
Montgomery and Negroes and 1956 all call to mind Civil Rights time period and events—and to, say, a person who fancies himself a historian—the bus boycott.
On “her employer”: The established time and place makes it near certain that the employer isn’t a negro and the her is. It is also fine at this point to run with the assumption that the employer is a man.
On “tells her”: This Employer-Boss Man-Mister-Master is telling her-negro-woman something to correct her behavior.
On “Everybody is saying”: classic (and classically faulty) passive and indirect approach to admonition.
On “Communists refuse to ride the bus”: here we have confirmation of bus boycott and Alabama. The use of the C-word in the 50s is meant to be so repulsive that any self-respecting Negro would never group themselves by action with the commies.
On “I know you got them told, Miss Lucy”: We have both (a) confirmation that employee is Negro Woman through “got them told” (read: I know you corrected everybody holding this errant belief) and (b) we found out we were wrong on sex of employer. Miss Lucy clearly indicates a woman. And on the whole, we appreciate the setup for the punchline that the Negro Woman just delivered. Compelling stuff.
On “‘Cause you wouldn’t let no communist raise your six chillun”: This is both (a) more confirmation that a Negro Woman is the her, adding specifics of job requirements, and (b) the punchline. The punchline is that the white employer lady—white employer ladies are supposed to be smart—turns out to be a rather grave hypocrite when the plain facts are recounted. This is because a refusing-bus-Negro-servant, whom everybody thinks must needs be communist, cannot possibly be communist, because if she was a commie, then it would mean employer-white-lady-boss would be raising communist children. An thar aint no way in hayell Klan members is commies.
****
As usual, “What is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.” Or as Mark Twain puts it, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reconsider.”
I remember catching my mom in a bookstore aisle, kind of tucked away once. The book she was reading was self-help for “control freaks”. Understand, then, that she was the control freak in our family, and my sense of the encounter was that she was embarrassed that her son had seen that maybe she didn’t want to be.
I barely need to repeat the following, but for the unfaithful readers, please accept without question that my wife isn’t in love with yours truly anymore.
Books actually play a pivotal role in the drama, albeit in an unpredictable way. One of her main complaints to me, about my way of life, is that all my book reading does not lead to more money.
For my part, one of my main “asks” of her is that she stop reading the latest Christian bestselling “health and wealth” sermon transcripts masquerading as books. And truthfully, I don’t care that she reads them, but I would like her to read, at least some of the time, real books—not “The Secret” part 73. I mean even pulp fiction or Louis L’Amour or whatever is flying off the grocery store shelves these days.
This last time home, I saw an unfamiliar book stacked upon her bible called something like, “How to Live With A Manipulative Husband”.
Do you see the problem, folks? It’s easy to miss, so I understand if you don’t.
As for me, I am seriously considering putting out a best seller for us husbands. What do you say?
The title will be, “How to Smarten Up Your Wife AND Get Her to Stop Buying Crap.” Or maybe, “How to Make Your Wife Understand That She Doesn’t Need Makeup and Wigs Just Because All Other Women Wear Them.”
This might need to be a series, actually.
Another could be, “How to Live with a Woman Who, as It Turns Out, Is an Immature Child Who Lacks the Ability to Reason.”
Then there could be one on, “When Your Wife Married You, But Listens to Every Other Human Being Who Has Ever Uttered Speech Sounds Instead.”
The capstone, and I mean Fifty Shades of Grey success, will, of course, be, “How to Actually Get Your Wife to Stop Complaining and Be Happy.”
Men of the blogosphere, I’ve got you pegged as less than 10% of my readership. But what say you? Would you pay to unlock these secrets?
Motionless pictures can be art, too. The Bride!, like Sinners, is art for the reason motionless pictures can be art. The trouble, the thing that has everyone ate up, isMs. Gyllenhaal’s picture is in motion. Hmm.
Lucky for her, the door for this kind of post-post-modern, detached, boundary-less art was opened by Mr. Coogan (and I am sure others). Just the same, I have always heard about some people who are able to be captivated by a single painting for hours. That is the closest this wind-riding-knuckle-dragger-with-a-blog can use in describing how this movie works.
Is The Bride! a reimagining? I have no idea. The interwebs confirm that there is no book by Shelley. Apparently there is an early movie and some other movies and books of the titular concept (Bride of Frankenstein). But I am pretty sure this film is just an original continuation story—and it should have been marketed and reviewed as such.
The most striking part of the movie was the leading lady’s effortless range. I mean she goes from repulsively demonic to irresistibly infatuating in the blink of an eye.
The gore is realistic and nauseating—another instance of “I hope my kids never find out I watched this”.
There are scenes of obvious first wave feminism (…like I know what that distinction means to experts. What I mean by first wave is that some women don’t want to be stay at home moms). But unlike some reviewers, I didn’t see it as proselytizing or advancing an agenda. It’s just a movie, folks. At ease!
On the whole, in addition to Sinners, I place it alongside Joker 2. I would like to give it a second chance now that I know what’s coming. But I am not sure there will prove to be enough time.
When I moved to Minnesota I immediately noticed the Somalis. If you’re unaware, they are in many towns up there, not just the Twin Cities—small and large.
The most obvious thought I had—being a geographically and climate-varieties informed American—was, “Why the eff are they staying in the cold?”
I would see them, men especially, wearing one thin layer of buffalo plaid pj pants, holding their parka tightly with ungloved hands when the wind was blowing around below zero chills.
“What is wrong with this moron?” I would constantly think.
Don’t misunderstand me. This had nothing to do with that part of the body between the brain and the wind. I thought the same thing about any poorly dressed soul. It’s just that typical Minnesotans, if they know anything, know how to put on a coat. So the Somalis stood out.
For the life of me, I couldn’t think of any industry or job that these Somalis worked in that wasn’t in every other state in the Union.
The God’s honest truth is that I just shook my head and reckoned, “Well, I have heard of Chinatown(s). So I guess a feature of American life is that some country’s immigrants just arrive and stay close.” I had never experienced the desire to stay with “my people” beyond the concept that moving out of America has never been a consideration. America is mine. So I will move around it as I please or where the wind blows me.
Just the same, I still thought they were dumb for staying in the cold. Like even my Midwestern-grown self had no idea how different the weather really is in latitudes north of Nebraska. But I also wasn’t from latitudes north of Nebraska. These people, the underdressed Somalis, were from the desert. They had actual experience in a different, surely more pleasant climate. Why didn’t they drive south? The St. Louis airport has the same work available that MSP does. Why not just move down to the Midwest and start the life there? Or, hell, why not just keep going and end up in Dellis. Or Tampa?
I thought and I thought and I thought. I just couldn’t figure it out. Why did they stay?
I first heard of Thucydides in college. This would have been 2001-ish. We weren’t studying him, but the professor needed to make a point and used the classic “Athens-open, Sparta-closed” historian to do so. Along the way, the professor interlaced a story about how a student came to him complaining about the reading and pronounced thoo-sih-di-deez: Thuck-Y-Dideez.
Funny stuff.
I do not know what the Thucydides Trap is, but I want to post an informed guess before I google it. What did Xi mean when he used the phrase?
Before I reveal my surmise, I want to add here that a chinaman using a western anecdote is real evidence that America and the West are already winning the war with China. And rightly so, since we’re obviously the more relevant civilization.
Okay. That said. What is the “Thucydides Trap” that we hope to avoid?
War.
(Wish me luck in my AI-ing for confirmation/information.)
Captain’s Log 