I am rereading Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Crime of the Congo”, detailing little Belgium’s monumental atrocities in Africa, made famous in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It’s easy to understand in retrospect how Europe blundered into the Great War. It had lost track of reality. Watching the way in which the media makes its own narrative today …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The jury is still out
Political historians are still divided over the cause of Hillary’s 2016 shock loss. Was she blocked by an unseen 8 foot center? Or was she alone under the basket and missed?
Blood, sweat and fears
“America has faced huge challenges before, WWII and putting a man on the moon,” Warren said. “This environmental catastrophe bearing down on us may be the biggest challenge yet.” Federalist
AOC denounces Manafort solitary confinement
This is all the reason why elections should mean “wait your turn till the next”. Manafort’s treatment may someday apply to his prosecutors. But people in power never realize this. “Happy Days” will never end. The money will never run out. The music will keep playing. Until it stops. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sided with imprisoned …
Continue reading “AOC denounces Manafort solitary confinement”
Put down your keyboard now and step away from your computer
After admitting on Tuesday that conservative comedian Steven Crowder had not violated their community standards, YouTube announced Wednesday it would strip his videos of monetization, which keeps him from earning income from ads on his content. Blaze
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
“The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” the debut film for both Fails and Talbot, is a lament for the exodus of black people from the city and the affordability crisis that is pushing out all but the rich. NYT People think they can manage complex systems only to discover it leads to unintended consequences. …
But environmentalists are constantly flying to conferences
The glaciers are melting, the coral reefs are dying, Miami Beach is slowly going under. Quick, says a voice in your head, go see them before they disappear! You are evil, says another voice. For you are hastening their destruction. To a lot of people who like to travel, these are morally bewildering times. Something …
Continue reading “But environmentalists are constantly flying to conferences”
He Stayed at Tiananmen to the End. Now He Wonders What It Meant
You do some things for yourself, because of who you are. What other people do is up to them. NYT
Elizabeth Warren’s Corporatism
Corporatism” is one of the most misunderstood words in the political vocabulary. American progressives use it to indicate the domination of the state by business interests, when in fact it means something closer to the opposite: the subordination of commerce and industry to political mandates. National Review “Corporatism” and all other systems of centralized control …
A Physicist Has Proposed a Pretty Depressing Explanation For Why We Never See Aliens
“What if the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?” he hypothesises. Science Alert
The truth is out there
New at the Belmont Club
The Last Longest Day
New at the Belmont Club
No Heroes Left: The MLK Revelations | Roger L. Simon
Great piece. The challenge since the Fall has been to live in a world without heroes yet still believe in heroism. The Judaeo Christian journey was always an enterprise of sinners. The difference used to be: we knew it. Roger Simon
Why Edmund Morris Couldn’t Capture Reagan
To this day nobody can figure out how Reagan, who all the intellectuals of the day proclaimed a cruel, reckless dunce with near unanimity, could have been a great American president. Atlantic
‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ on Obama’s Bad Cops and Spies
Shades of Jefferson and Burr Real Clear Politics
Changing more than pronouns: a non-binary teen fights education laws
Today, at 13, they’ve let their wavy, golden-brown hair grow past their shoulders, with thick bangs over eyelashes long enough to graze oversized aviator glasses. Hormone blockers have staved off puberty, leaving Santi’s face round and their skin clear and hairless. Guardian
The doctrine of deep ecology declares that we must keep our hands off nature
I found this out firsthand years ago, when I had a conversation with the late Arne Naess, the Norwegian father of what is known as “deep ecology” and guru of the European Green movement. How seriously did Naess regard the divinity of Mother Nature? He told me that the eradication of smallpox was a technological …
Continue reading “The doctrine of deep ecology declares that we must keep our hands off nature”
The upheaval in the West
There is a crisis of senescence in liberal politics. The reason Biden, Harris and Sanders are competitive is their ideas are all roughly the same age. The strategy of recruiting fresh new faces like Beto, AOC cannot obscure the basic problem of intellectual decrepitude. The challenge facing the West is that a generational agenda has …
Burr conspiracy – Wikipedia
When Thomas Jefferson faced a coup. Wikipedia
‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects – The New York Times
NYT