Category: Access

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Fleming / On the House

17 Dec, 2016

Jerks 2: Taxonomy, Part D

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Self-made millionaires set the tone for this class, and any scholar or man of letters who has had to raise money among men of wealth and influence will see himself in Eliot’s Prufrock.  These poor fools have to listen, hour after hour, to Dives’ tales of victories on the golf course and of his personal prowess in beating down less competent or less ruthless rivals.  I have friends who used to know a Georgia business tycoon—let’s call him Ted—and they regaled me with tales of how the buccaneering plutocrat boasted of besting not just his enemies but his friends.  Once,...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

16 Dec, 2016

Why the Russians Couldn’t POSSIBLY Have Helped Trump

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  “If your opponents are digging a hole for themselves, let them,” advises “Debate, Student Edition,” a guide for high schoolers. I also remember Franklin Roosevelt said something similar, “If you opponent is committing suicide, don’t interfere.” But I can’t find the reference online. Perhaps the Russkies deleted it to sabotage the reputation of Uncle Joe’s old Yalta pal. That’s the best reason the Russkies actually didn’t interfere in our election to help Trump: They knew Hillary’s campaign was a loser and didn’t want to interfere with her slide toward oblivion. Only Hillary and her brainwashed Main Sleaze Media worshippers...

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All Paid Subscribers / Free Content / Seiler

14 Dec, 2016

Trump Must Break Up the CIA, Reform Entire Military

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Back when I marched as a soldier in the U.S. Army in West Germany from 1979-82, I used to listen to Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America. They broadcast in English, German, Russian, Czech, Polish and other languages. I had never heard them back in The World, as we called our free America, because they were banned from broadcasting in the United States. All federal intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, were banned from interfering in any way with our domestic politics, even to reveal the horrors of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But three years...

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Fleming / On the House

14 Dec, 2016

Dealing with Putin

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Andrei Navrozov has posted a very timely remark on my piece “Donald and the Russians”: “Indeed, let us not “build an even more costly, inefficient, and tyrannical intelligence apparatus.” Let us instead rebuild a military decimated by 30 years of wishful thinking, fraudulent arms control treaties, and suicidal unilateral disarmament.” I agree with my Russian friend, with this proviso: that we take an honest look at who has gained the most since the death of Brezhnev. Where once the West confronted the Soviet Empire in Germany, we now enter into contests of subversion and electioneering in Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, et...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

14 Dec, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  A Samizdat of the Internet

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My childhood reading in Russia was divided between ordinary printed books–that is to say, rectangular objects recognizable by their covers and spines–and loose paper sheaves, underground artifacts that friends of friends of friends had been disseminating and passing to friends of friends until a copy reached one friend or another of my father’s. The principal engine for the dissemination of “samizdat,” as those sheaves were called, was the typewriter, loaded with as many as six carbons, and the avowed aim of the disseminators was the collapse of the existing regime. The disseminators of those forbidden typescripts, who were known as...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Feature / Wednesday's Child

7 Dec, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  This Way Up (3)

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The self-indulgent rooster, crowing solely for his own biological pleasure, is seen by some as nature’s alarm clock and an enduring symbol of the countryside.  Others prefer it as coq-au-vin. Some would say that the critical reaction to Second Nature was no more than I deserved.  I had already made a nuisance of myself, what with those convoluted explanations of feeling and coquettish invocations of the Russian soul, so by wringing my neck the reviewers were merely performing a socially useful task.  My point is that whatever critical opprobrium I may deserve for all that self-indulgence, the genuinely interested reader...

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Fleming / Free Content

6 Dec, 2016

California Nightmare

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Meet Derick Almena, model Californian and prototype for the next generation of Americans.  Derick—in his world we dispense with formalities—is “manager” of a warehouse in Oakland California, where he sublets space to various artistes.  At this for-profit arts collective, which he named the Ghost Ship, Derick and his rentors throw parties.  At a dance party last Friday night, a fire started and raced through the rabbit warren, killing at least 36 people.  Derick’s first reaction, posted on Facebook, expressed no sorrow for the victims—much less remorse: “”Everything I worked so hard for is gone.  Blessed that my children and Micah...

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Free Content

6 Dec, 2016

Marco Bassani on The Italian Crisis

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A Conversation  with Prof. Marco Bassani of the University of Milan. TJF:  Prof. Bassani, over the weekend Italian voters decisively rejected a set of “reforms” proposed by PM Renzi.  It is hard for Americans to understand the significance of the vote, particularly since very few of us follow Italian politics.  To begin with, could you please describe Renzi’s proposals.  MB:  Quite frankly I believe that even most Italians had only a vague idea of the proposed constitutional reforms. They voted from their political guts and clearly rejected  Matteo Renzi’s Constitution.  The package was a very complex transformation that revolved around the change...

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Fleming / Free Content

1 Dec, 2016

Jerks 2: Taxonomy, Part B

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Let’s begin with the basics.  Rather than breaking down Jerks into categories of severity—rating them from one to ten—we can agree to divide them broadly into what I am calling Boors and Louts.  The boor is someone who does not know how to behave.  He constantly makes a fool of himself by using the wrong fork or insisting upon steak in a seafood restaurant.  He will pay embarrassing compliments to women he has just met and make himself the life of every party by telling anecdotes about his not very interesting life—anecdotes in which he inevitably plays the hero.  Most...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

30 Nov, 2016

Wednesday’s Child:  An Awl in Sackcloth

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The pantheon of Stalin’s era contained, alongside the martyr Pavlik Morozov, killed by the peasants of his village for informing the secret police that his father had hidden his own grain, two other iconic images.  One of these was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.  Conveniently for Stalin’s propagandists seeking to plant her story in the consciousness of the common people, Zoya’s surname came from the twin Saints, Cosmas and Damian – as prominent in the Orthodox iconography as in the Catholic one – though, unlike them, this granddaughter of a Russian priest was a member of a partisan band, specializing in reconnaissance and...