California People’s Republic
Jerry Jeff Davis Brown is taking California out of the Union. Is it too early to celebrate?
Category: Feature
The Language of Lying
North American English is now the dominant form of the language, and as one can tell by reading British newspapers or listening to British speakers, under American influence American English is edging out other, local varieties of English, bringing with it American habits of speech and the habits of mind that go with them as it does so. This is not necessarily a welcome development. As anyone who moves to America from England immediately notices, besides the obvious differences in sound, one peculiar, noticeable feature of North American English is a constant tendency towards euphemism, suggesting that Americans, however big-hearted...
In Search of the Different Drummer (a postscript)
As a college freshman, I made friends with a high school senior who was permitted to live in our dormitory. I never learned how Gary, a Catholic high school student from Chicago, ended up in a college dorm in Charleston. Perhaps I should have asked. Whenever someone did make the mistake of asking Gary what he was doing in Charleston, he invariably answered: “I’m just waiting for a streetcar.” And, if the questioner persisted with the inevitable protest, “But there aren’t any streetcars in Charleston,” Gary responded: “That must be why it’s taking so long.” That is where many of...
I’m So Sensitive I Could Cry
The most recent offense against the religion and morality of the World Controllers was perpetrated by a German figure skater named Nicole Schott, who had the unmitigated gall to use the theme song of Schindler’s List for her routine at the Olympics. In the report I read, the writer was so busy quoting the horrified tweets that the poor dear did not even mention Ms Schott’s actual performance, the score and/or medals it received. Outrage over the cultural appropriation of Hollywood junk music was trumped by a West Coast crime writer, who was simply horrified to see someone in her...
Even the Financial Press Attacks Trump
You might think the financial press would be a little bit more modest than the regular press. They write about money, and if they just do straight reporting, that’s one thing. But if they have opinions, the old question arises: If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich? Yet financial writers after the February 5 market crash immediately trashed Trump. Here are two from the popular Yahoo News. The first: “The Dow has given up all its gains since the day the Trump tax cuts became law,” by Isabella Steger, that evening. The second: “The Trump tax cuts are looking...
Wednesday’s Child: American Nightmare
A Russian painter friend of mine, who had followed our family into exile in the United States yet never went back on his contention that English articles are a petit bourgeois nuisance, used to joke that the American Dream is “finding Rembrandt in garbage can.” Although the major actors in the nightmare I record here are about as American as Confucius, and the dream object in question a Da Vinci rather than a Rembrandt, in the past few days my friend’s quip ran through my mind more than once. Let me begin from afar. It is a rule of life...
Welcome to the World of Stephen King
Stephen King, on learning of a train crash in which Republican members of Congress were shaken up and the driver of a garbage truck was killed, tweeted: “A trainload of Republicans on their way to a pricey retreat hit a garbage truck,” King noted Thursday. “My friend Russ calls that karma.” King was immediately attacked and he later apologized for his indiscretion. If we wish to be kind, we might recall that King was a suicidal alcoholic who drank mouthwash, when he could not get real booze, and ink when he could not get mouthwash. If we probed deeper, we...
Divided America
Once upon a time, Americans occasionally united. Here are some election percentages of presidential victors: FDR 1932, 57.4%; FDR 1936, 60.8%; IKE 1952, 55.2%; IKE 1956, 57.4%; LBJ 1964, 61.1%, the most of any candidate not named George Washington; Nixon 1972, 60.7%; Reagan 1984, 58.8%. Average: 58.8% Moreover, if you look at the issues in 1960, JFK and RN held substantially the same views, differing only in nuance, style and ability to rig state elections (detailed by Roger Stone in “Nixon’s Secrets” and Robert Caro, with all the facts on how LBJ ripped off Texas for himself and JFK, in...
Wednesday’s Child: The Rotten Thread
For the better part of the last ten years, in the California town of Perris – which is probably how you pronounce “Paris” if you’re a child molester, though this conjecture is, I admit, of little relevance to the larger argument here – a couple enslaved and abused thirteen persons of various ages, allegedly their own biological offspring, keeping them in chains and starving them in ways that would make Mr. Bumble take pity on poor Oliver Twist. This is all happening in America, in 2018, yet the only reaction to the madness, apart from the grinding of the wheels...
Wednesday’s Child: The Driving Fail
If one cares to understand something about the South of Italy, I suggest spending four minutes of one’s time viewing this masterpiece of daily life on YouTube. It has all the truthfulness, spontaneity, and absurdity of an early Chekhov story, and it explains something central about individual liberty – something missing in Burke on the right as well as in Mill on the left. In short, it’s a good illustration of why this is still the best place to live in Europe. Neither I nor my wife drives, so we’re well placed to observe disinterestedly, without the bitter rancor that...
