The gentle reader did not comment on last week’s post, so I follow the famous orchestra conductor’s advice to slow down if the audience finds your tempo sluggish. With regard to old icons – the “figure” of my metaphor, as a literary critic would say, current news being its “ground” – my meaning was clear enough, I think.
I’ve watched at least some of every major party national convention since 1964, when I was nine. There’s something different about the Democratic National Convention this year. The speakers boldly laid out how they are going to impose tyranny on America. Don’t miss the key part of the festivities on Day Three, from about 18:00 to 28:00 on the video. It’s an unrelenting attack on gun rights, unalleviated by even a mention of the Second Amendment, or how owning hunting rifles would not be banned, the lines Bill Clinton and others long used. They want our guns – all of...
It was the Summer of 2008 when I first made my way up to Rockford, Illinois. It was a slow, languorous summer drive, with plenty of preparatory reading to do, some often crammed in during the final segment of the voyage. In many ways, this year was no different. In other ways, the long tentacles of Covid-19 (and its handlers) couldn’t help but be felt by the attendees. But perhaps the miracle is that we were able to meet at all, while most of the world huddled inside or behind masks, frightened by the government, media, and the new bands...
Disinformation, which we Russians lovingly nickname deza, differs from ordinary misinformation in that it is planted or spread knowingly, with malice aforethought and the intent to deceive. This looks good on paper, until a piece of fake news is actually before us and we start mulling it over, and then what is patently a case of carelessness or even of fraudulent intent may begin to take on the configurations of a gospel truth. That fake, after all, has not come out of nowhere. That fake is almost always a palimpsest of earlier fakes, and as one’s mind keeps burrowing deeper...
People are writing about Kamala Harris, our next president – maybe? Joe Biden clearly is out of it. I’m still predicting a Trump win. But if not, then either Joe will be replaced before the election, or will resign due to health reasons after it. But nobody I’ve seen is writing about her special relationship with the new Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley and its digital offshoots in San Francisco. California long was balanced between Northern California and Southern California. Northern Cal’s dominant families originally came from New England. Knob Hill in San Francisco was like the Boston...
I’m writing this on a terrace that overlooks cerulean infinity on three sides, yet a day here is costing me less than a cocktail, with an inevitable accompaniment of olives and roasted nuts, at the Cala di Volpe or any number of similarly fancy establishments dotting the map of Italy from the Costa Smeralda upwards
Prediction time: Trump will win on November 3 because he has supported our gun rights. Whereas the Democrats have not only continued to assault our Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms,” but have allowed antifa/BLM rioters to burn down our cities.
Some sensible person on FB suggested that only taxpayers have the right to vote. Some of his “friends” demurred. I gave this answer: Paying taxes is a significant part of citizenship, so is agreeing to do one’s duty, if drafted or receiving a summons to sit on a jury. I avoided but did not evade military service on legal and reasonable grounds, but if taking the franchise away from draft-dodgers meant that I forfeited the right to vote, so be it. But that is only the start. Decades ago, I proposed a general rule that taxpayers, but not tax-consumers should...
Not a kind word for him anywhere, East or West. They are calling him “Europe’s last dictator,” which only makes sense if neighboring Russia is a country in Asia, and every little French politician, every sniveling British journalist, every U.S. State Department flunky, and every Kremlin lackey are gloating over his political demise, which is said to be imminent. This coming Sunday, Belorussian elections may be won by a random female candidate who is capitalizing on the protest vote against the taciturn mustachioed incumbent, and I sincerely hope this grossly maligned man manages to falsify the result to stay in...
The fact that an intolerant, “woke” middle class is emerging out of the debris of higher education in the West, rejecting our value-system, challenging our liberties, causing havoc and undermining our safety, should alert everyone.
