As I have stated before, even when I had opposed Donald Trump in 2016 I had taken issue with calling him a Nazi or a fascist. That incendiary theme itself, however, has lasted for almost a decade at this point and shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down.
I think my favorite line was “the creation of tariffs.” Oh my God almighty the creation of tariffs! As a guy who hates tariffs a lot more than she, assuming she has no problem with Biden’s tariffs, that really cracked me up.
The guy’s screed put me in mind of a Newspeak word coined by Mr. Orwell: duckspeak, i.e. a quacking style of speech emanating from the larynx, not the brain. Granted that in this case it’s duckwrite, but the principle applies.
I was glad to see you put in a good word for Shirer. He has been criticized as you pointed out, but his general overview is still an excellent introduction. His demonstration of proto-fascist tendencies in 19th-century German thought was very important.
In the Weimar era, the Moscow controlled Communists routinely denounced more moderate socialists as "social fascists," and refused to cooperate with them. This hysterical denunciation in the most extreme terms is a standard Communist tactic. I believe Saul Alinsky advocated it also - blackening your opponent as absolute evil with no redeeming qualities.
I believe there is Chinese money and influence involved in these extreme and irrational attacks on Trump. That the Soviets bought journalistic influence in the USA during the Cold War is I believe an accepted historical fact.
Regards your concluding comments, i'm almost sure you must subsctibe to eugyppius's A Plague Chronicle? Hard to imagine a more 'perlustrative' coverage of today's Germany thah his? But then, in Ole Yurrrp you also have one Claire Berlinski in Parisi, lucid as can possibly be when it comes to the Levant, but when it comes to Trump, close to certifiably insane? Impossible to get one's head around, I swear. I myself reside in Japan, where instantly identifiable wokeisms seep evermore insidiously through the news reports every day...
Ok (oh no, why does every utterance of "ok" now channel KH?) I've noticed from the start you're?too busy constructing your next post to attend much to comments. But i'm wondering hard how useful of a metaphor is "blind spot"? Is there really some part of the scene the likes of Berlinski is wholly unable to see? Due to some sort of pathologiical defect? Or is she rather wilfully imposing spmething that will ensure she does not see that part?
Interesting about you and Shirer. I turned in a book report on Rise and Fall when I was eleven, and the teacher sent me home with a note that I couldn’t possibly have understood the book. My incensed mother marched to the school and insisted that the teacher grill me in front of the class. It wasn’t difficult. For all the detail, Shirer did a remarkable job of clarifying not just Nazi Germany, but the way of the modern world and the foibles of mankind. Later on, when we moved to Europe permanently, I took that worldview with me. It was a remarkable head start for a young mind.
Another great essay, and I'm someone who voted against him twice. Once you realize what the left has become, and pull yourself out of it (I pulled myself to a few degrees right of center), you see these screeds and over-the-top freakouts a lot more clearly.
Trump has a very high bar to achieve the status of the most authoritarian President ever. He even has a high bar to become the most authoritarian President in the last hundred years. Think about it; if he sends American citizens who belong to an ethnic minority to internment camps and he tries to pack the Supreme Court and he stays in office for four terms, he will still only be tied.
Kool-Aid drinkers are all the same. They're given talking points by their controllers and then promulgate them as the truth because they know nothing else. Their "truth" comes from other people's thought, and they question none of it. "Orange Man Bad" is enough for them. Ask how he's bad? That's against the script. Theirs is only to listen and repeat. Thinking is above their job description.
I think you are are probably reading as a scholar, and probably preparing to publish your own book someday on one of the WWs. I'm strictly a layman, with eclectic interests, and not much interest anymore in a deep dive into Hitler and WWII. I read Churchill's version of each world war, and much else, and I feel like I've exhausted my interest in those topics. Vietman, being my generation's war, was also of much interest to me.
I'm 77 years old. My wife and I live in Plymouth, Indiana.
I reached out to you because I sense that you are similarly like-minded, and I like your point of view on most things. I think you're an excellent writer, by the way, which is something that I notice as I read.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll be reading your unwoke notes.
As I have stated before, even when I had opposed Donald Trump in 2016 I had taken issue with calling him a Nazi or a fascist. That incendiary theme itself, however, has lasted for almost a decade at this point and shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down.
I think my favorite line was “the creation of tariffs.” Oh my God almighty the creation of tariffs! As a guy who hates tariffs a lot more than she, assuming she has no problem with Biden’s tariffs, that really cracked me up.
The guy’s screed put me in mind of a Newspeak word coined by Mr. Orwell: duckspeak, i.e. a quacking style of speech emanating from the larynx, not the brain. Granted that in this case it’s duckwrite, but the principle applies.
I’m still doubled over at “the creation of tariffs.” That may be the funniest thing I ever read online.
I was glad to see you put in a good word for Shirer. He has been criticized as you pointed out, but his general overview is still an excellent introduction. His demonstration of proto-fascist tendencies in 19th-century German thought was very important.
In the Weimar era, the Moscow controlled Communists routinely denounced more moderate socialists as "social fascists," and refused to cooperate with them. This hysterical denunciation in the most extreme terms is a standard Communist tactic. I believe Saul Alinsky advocated it also - blackening your opponent as absolute evil with no redeeming qualities.
I believe there is Chinese money and influence involved in these extreme and irrational attacks on Trump. That the Soviets bought journalistic influence in the USA during the Cold War is I believe an accepted historical fact.
Regards your concluding comments, i'm almost sure you must subsctibe to eugyppius's A Plague Chronicle? Hard to imagine a more 'perlustrative' coverage of today's Germany thah his? But then, in Ole Yurrrp you also have one Claire Berlinski in Parisi, lucid as can possibly be when it comes to the Levant, but when it comes to Trump, close to certifiably insane? Impossible to get one's head around, I swear. I myself reside in Japan, where instantly identifiable wokeisms seep evermore insidiously through the news reports every day...
We all have our blind spots. Some are bigger than others...
Ok (oh no, why does every utterance of "ok" now channel KH?) I've noticed from the start you're?too busy constructing your next post to attend much to comments. But i'm wondering hard how useful of a metaphor is "blind spot"? Is there really some part of the scene the likes of Berlinski is wholly unable to see? Due to some sort of pathologiical defect? Or is she rather wilfully imposing spmething that will ensure she does not see that part?
Interesting about you and Shirer. I turned in a book report on Rise and Fall when I was eleven, and the teacher sent me home with a note that I couldn’t possibly have understood the book. My incensed mother marched to the school and insisted that the teacher grill me in front of the class. It wasn’t difficult. For all the detail, Shirer did a remarkable job of clarifying not just Nazi Germany, but the way of the modern world and the foibles of mankind. Later on, when we moved to Europe permanently, I took that worldview with me. It was a remarkable head start for a young mind.
Another great essay, and I'm someone who voted against him twice. Once you realize what the left has become, and pull yourself out of it (I pulled myself to a few degrees right of center), you see these screeds and over-the-top freakouts a lot more clearly.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
Trump has a very high bar to achieve the status of the most authoritarian President ever. He even has a high bar to become the most authoritarian President in the last hundred years. Think about it; if he sends American citizens who belong to an ethnic minority to internment camps and he tries to pack the Supreme Court and he stays in office for four terms, he will still only be tied.
Valid points, indeed.
Kool-Aid drinkers are all the same. They're given talking points by their controllers and then promulgate them as the truth because they know nothing else. Their "truth" comes from other people's thought, and they question none of it. "Orange Man Bad" is enough for them. Ask how he's bad? That's against the script. Theirs is only to listen and repeat. Thinking is above their job description.
Sometimes we have to read a dissection of the left's thought processes.
But it is written for the sane.
Much of the left suffers from TDS.
Facile phrase, but many on the left are unhinged.
By itself, their TDS is unimportant.
But unfortunately, like so many zealots, lefties feel unconstrained by legality or morality.
The country will have to find a way to handle this derangement.
Like you, I'm a lifetime, self-educated reader. Shirer's "Rise and Fall..." is one of the best books anyone could, and should, ever want to read.
As I said, it's a good place to begin. But a lot more has been written since Shirer's book was published in 1960.
I think you are are probably reading as a scholar, and probably preparing to publish your own book someday on one of the WWs. I'm strictly a layman, with eclectic interests, and not much interest anymore in a deep dive into Hitler and WWII. I read Churchill's version of each world war, and much else, and I feel like I've exhausted my interest in those topics. Vietman, being my generation's war, was also of much interest to me.
I'm 77 years old. My wife and I live in Plymouth, Indiana.
I reached out to you because I sense that you are similarly like-minded, and I like your point of view on most things. I think you're an excellent writer, by the way, which is something that I notice as I read.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll be reading your unwoke notes.
Thanks very much. As it happens, though a Massachusetts native I’ve lived in Indiana since 1982. These days, my wife and I live in Granger.
Vietnam I remember all too well.