Pletho had concealed his growing attachment to what he thought was the old religion of the Greeks, though it was in fact NeoPlatonic Neopaganism, but some part of his explicitly pagan work The Laws came to the attention of his more Orthodox friends. However the last fragment of the Roman Empire had more on its hands in the 1450’s than a brilliant pagan
September must be allegory month, and fittingly one of the films now the talk of the Venice Film Festival is an offering from the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky entitled “Dear Comrades.” Its subject is the massacre of striking workers at Novocherkassk, a city near Rostov-on-Don, in 1962, and in fairness it ought to be said that a 2012 TV miniseries, entitled “Once Upon a Time in Rostov,” had done that subject ample justice, notwithstanding that it was made in the first year of what will enter history books as Putin’s Terror. But Konchalovsky regards himself as an artist, and hence...
I’m sure you’re heard the totally fake news about Trump supposedly insulting American troops, calling them “losers” and “suckers” Scott Adams totally refutes them on many points on his Friday podcast, starting at 27:00, calling it the “Losers and Suckers Hoax.” But he also notes this hoax will be devastatingly effective against Trump, as were the previous Fine People Hoax and the Russia Collusion Hoax. But I think this latest massive lie will unleash Trump to improvise a total war on Biden and the Democrats. Campaigns can be rough, such as LBJ’s 1964 “Daisy Girl” ad, implying Republican Barry Goldwater,...
“No matter how totalitarian is Putin,” one of our readers has asked in response to last week’s post, “is there any other way to keep Russia from falling into the hegemonic abyss represented by our deracinated Western leaders?” The question, to me, is hardly new, at least when raised rhetorically.
Dr. Fleming talks about property and ownership. Do you really own it or can it be taken away?
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...
