Motus Mentis

45 Comments

1. TheBigHenry says

   Premise: If America were a house, the Left would root for the termites!

   Discuss.

   Posted May 22, 2015 at 5:13 pm | Permalink
2. Whitewall says

   Henry, the Left would BE the termites, roaches, bed bugs, ticks, mold, radon…

   Posted May 22, 2015 at 8:06 pm | Permalink
3. JK says

   and of course the Right Mitch would stand firmly for as GW promised on the ashes, “We will never change our way of Life because a few [Saudi] terrorists tried to change Our Way of Life

   which, we pretend didn’t actually happen. not Conservatives especially but the Free To Speak First Amendment Liberals.

   and now here we are.

   Which – is to say Screwed – and though, not even the (and, purely coincidentally I’m certain – Lefty Nitwits) put themselves in that Nutty Position

   We

   (More or Less) people continue to have to hear this shit?

   And the most terrible thing is;

   Republicans generally believe John McCain didn’t have a “thing to do” with getting *us* into Libya

   and all that’s followed.

   Well. We Republicans can all act like we’re on Valium if only because

   http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2015/05/19/graham-im-gonna-call-a-drone-and-we-will-kill-you

   ________

   A “warhead in the forehead” reads like, you know more or like you know, well it sounds you know I [we] kinda nicer.”

   http://libertybellediaries.com/2015/05/20/right-wing-zealotry/

   _____________

   It’s really difficult to explain but one of “Our Guys” put it

   News headlines will focus on the surprising oddities revealed in the Bin Laden documents. Years ago it was that al Qaeda offered vacations or that Bin Laden dyed his beard black to look younger. This time, the favorite novelty document appears to be Bin Laden’s bookshelf laden with books on everything from climate change to Jewish conspiracy documents. Read these documents, enjoy, savor the weirdness and move on. Don’t read too much into them or try and glean some psychological insight into al Qaeda master plans. Remember, Bin Laden was holed up for a decade.

   ___________________

   I’m personally extremely privileged to know what my descendants assuredly will not

   Bless Rand Paul but really now – does anybody think that was other than Kabuki Theater? Senate Bullshit?

   http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/confessions-of-a-jihadi-nerd-a-guide-to-reading-the-new-bin-laden-documents/

   The problem: essentially is. everybody seving in Washington DC hasn’t got the time to know what the fuck they’re talking about.

   I wish somebody from any of the Southern States (before Tom Cotton got elected) had, had, the nerve to go “one-on-one” with California’s Diane Frankenstein.
   ___________________

   “We will never change our way of life?”

   Posted May 22, 2015 at 9:50 pm | Permalink
4. libertybelle says

   I say, “A pox on both their houses!” and even more so, “Lies, more lies and even damned lies!”

   The political Left and political Right in America are two sides of the same shiny Progressive penny. Long, before 9/11, in fact more than a century of the steady advance on progressivism, I see only a few rebels make it to Congress and end up quickly shot down, usually by the GOP praetorian guard. After all, “power” must be protected, and “absolute power”, well, um, absolutely…

   The press focused on the topic, I look to the connections. When Hillary needs the GOP to back off, she has Huma call John McCain and Lindsey Graham:

   http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/22/hillary-discussed-speculation-about-her-health-with-aides-in-emails/

   Posted May 22, 2015 at 10:38 pm | Permalink
5. TheBigHenry says

   LB,

   I’m with you. You will have noticed, perhaps, that I usually vent against the Left. But that’s only because I feel that their leadership’s anti-American posture is the more egregious of the two major wings.

   People who read my comments usually assume I’m a Republican. I am not. I have always been an independent voter; never joined any political party. I am an American, and I love America. And it is my sense that Obama and his ilk do not.

   Posted May 22, 2015 at 11:34 pm | Permalink
6. libertybelle says

   Henry, I admire your clear-thinking on political parties! Alas, I admit to clinging to the GOP for many years, believing there was more hope there of returning to our founding principles. In the past decade, I gave up on the GOP too and watching the fate of Tea Party candidates upon arriving in Washington, they’re quickly marginalized and dismissed as dangerous, fringe kooks, by the GOP power-brokers, no less.

   How America ended up with a college campus Marxist, who reveres Malcolm X more than George Washington, sitting in the Oval Office will likely be a question for future historians to debate. At this point, the acceptance of lying and corruption pervades every level of American society and the very rule of law rests at a crisis point, I fear. Either the rule of law applies to all Americans or it doesn’t and upon the answer rests our future.

   Posted May 23, 2015 at 12:14 am | Permalink
7. Whitewall says

   Henry and LB
   I acknowledge what both of you are saying and I have written as much elsewhere. Since there is no longer a Democratic Party that once could be counted on to at least stand by their oaths of office, the only thing left is the Republican party. The Left exists to destroy. The Right exists-supposedly-to conserve.

   Over the years I have been to many third world countries and have seen what too much of the Left, unopposed, will do. Venezuela today is a good example.

   At the moment, there is no organized alternative. What is needed with the Republican party is a fearless group of “disruptors” within as opposed to from without. As JK mentioned, a Senator Cotton as opposed to a Tea Party. Any other alternatives beside just step aside and allow the Left to have it all? That is one way to go–the route from capitalism back to capitalism is through communism?

   Posted May 23, 2015 at 8:35 am | Permalink
8. JK says

   Thanks for that Daily Caller link LB, well more accurately, the comments.

   Somebody going by (I think) “Cordsman” typed;

   Questioning McCain about Hillary is like asking the senile about the demented.

   ____________

   And Whitewall?

   It was actually something you said (here I think) not so long ago set me to thinking along those lines – paraphrasing;

   It’s almost too late. If the establishment GOP does manage to regain the levers, they’ll just occupy the ground taken by the Left then, the next time the pendulum swings Left again, we’re off the cliff.

   (Emphasis on paraphrasing.)

   Posted May 23, 2015 at 8:54 am | Permalink
9. Whitewall says

   Hillary’s health is her “out” if the damage becomes too great. Meantime, keep the heat on.

   JK, that is something like what I wrote a while back somewhere.

   Posted May 23, 2015 at 9:10 am | Permalink
10. Malcolm says

    Yes, Libertybelle, a pox, as you say, on both their houses. People often assume I’m a a Republican, but I’m actually a registered Democrat (though for purely strategic reasons).

    And when I say curse them both, may the greatest share descend upon the Republican leadership; they are nothing more than money-grubbing, power-hungry political whores, and traitors to their constituents, their cause, their country, and their Constitution.

    There simply is no coherent political opposition on the Right in this nation today. The Republicans and Democrats are just two slightly different flavors of the same product. It is a very dispiriting time for those of us on the actual, traditionalist Right; just as you say, we are seen by both Republicans and Democrats not as American conservatives, but as dangerous and subversive dissidents and “extremists”.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 11:00 am | Permalink
11. Malcolm says

    I should add that the accelerating pace at which the Left is consolidating its victories in all of our institutions, and its scorched-earth approach to its cultural and political conquest — in which formerly mainstream, commonsense conservative views have been marginalized, with rapidly increasing hostility, as “extremism” — only strengthens and confirms the Right’s grim diagnosis, and makes it clearer to us every day how deep the cancer goes, and how radical the surgery would need to be to remove it. “Extremism” is relative, and the further and faster the nation sprints to the Left, the more “extreme’ those of us who are simply trying to hold what were until recently fairly centrist positions begin to seem.

    The effect of all this is to turn conservatives into reactionaries. One positive effect is that it has forced some of us to delve deeply into the historical, ideological, and even biological causes of this decline and collapse. But once these are understood, it also becomes clear that the rot goes very deep indeed, and that an election here, a court victory there, will never be enough to right the ship.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 11:29 am | Permalink
12. Whitewall says

    Malcolm, to add on, the Left is not 10 feet tall. Their feet are only clay. Perhaps the best ally we have is the Left’s hatred of anything but itself. In time the grievance groups want their due. If not satisfied, one will turn on the other in the name of “ideological purity” and the war begins. This happened within the CPUSA, and it will happen with this current mob. They live to destroy.

    In the meantime, the radicalism and hypocrisy within the Left will begin to turn off younger members.

    While this goes on, it will be imperative for Conservatives to fight our own if need be. We have to be ready to advance into institutions the Left has controlled and polluted. A long game indeed.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 11:45 am | Permalink
13. TheBigHenry says

    Politics is not my game; never was. With rare exception (Washington, Lincoln) it attracts power hungry, money hungry, schemers, and low lifes who care not a whit about the responsibilities of the office they seek. To my mind, trying to influence political outcomes, especially intra-party outcomes, is fraught with the dangers of unintended consequences.

    As a citizen voter, whose primary goal has always been what I deem to be best for my country, it is basically and literally a crap shoot — most of the time it feels like mucking around in crap, trying to salvage a morsel of integrity.

    My only hope is that my trusty bullshit meter will enable me to choose the lesser of the two evils who represent the two major parties, who are generally the only candidates that have any chance of winning the election.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 12:28 pm | Permalink
14. JK says

    In time the grievance groups want their due.

    I’m gonna go out on a limb here (don’t worry y’all, I’m used to being in outer space without a net) and hazard a prediction.

    I’m predicting WW’s “In time” won’t be as far off as some might think before we are visited with an example.

    Had I been asked even a mere decade ago “where you reckon JK?” I’da gone with closer to my general neck of the woods – now as y’all are used to me referring to “my neck of the woods” being Arkansas – in this instance think wider. I’ll use the NWS as a convenient geographic illustration of what I’d then posited.

    http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/southmissvly_loop.php

    But nope – not on that map.

    ______________________

    Baltimore.

    Before winter.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 1:03 pm | Permalink
15. JK says

    Malcolm I’m pretty sure will recognize where I strongly disagree with John on the Iraq mess … and where I agree.

    (I *must* get offline and go *enjoy* a class reunion – I sincerely hope I’m not the only person … like last time … to have maintained most of my youthful vitality. Hopefully some plastic surgeons have been at work. God that was scary.)

    Henry? I don’t recall you being around here much during GW’s tenure – but perhaps my anxiety is … well …

    I would recommend reading John’s first embedded link too.

    http://20committee.com/2015/05/22/americas-top-five-mistakes-in-iraq/

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 2:57 pm | Permalink
16. JK says

    Oops. Second link, the “antidote.”

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 3:01 pm | Permalink
17. TheBigHenry says

    JK,

    I don’t recall when I started following Malcolm’s posts, but I’ve been here for several years.

    As far as GWB (43) is concerned, I don’t doubt that he made some tactical mistakes during his tenure as President. But I never doubted his love for America, especially our armed forces. That in itself is a very big plus in my book. My own ranking of W’s Presidency is on par with my ranking for Harry Truman, the first President in my life as an American. I liked them both, along with Eisenhower, JFK, Reagan, and 41. The others, not so much. And, of course, Carter and Obama least of all.

    I don’t know whom you are referring to as “John”.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 4:23 pm | Permalink
18. JK says

    Maybe Henry, I give the impression I didn’t care for the guy, quite the opposite actually. Yeah, you’ve been here awhile – long enough for us to’ve developed e-paldom which, given my peccadilloes, takes “a fair spell.”

    Regarding specifically the guy’s term, he had the bad luck of coming into office at the very time the Clintonian development of “apparatchiks” came into full flower.

    Bremer for instance. Cheney to a lesser degree. Wolfowitz.

    I think ranking him equal to Truman is pretty close.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 5:23 pm | Permalink
19. JK says

    John Schindler. Currently a consultant, formerly faculty at the Naval Warfare College, NSA … author of the blog I linked above.

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 5:26 pm | Permalink
20. JK says

    Looks like Henry, in about 198 hours will be my Ninth Anniversary of commenting on this here blog.

    (Not to be confused with the Ninth Symphony.)

    Posted May 23, 2015 at 5:38 pm | Permalink
21. Whitewall says

    Around here in the county where we dwell, there are many deer. We have an assortment in the woods beyond our yard. This am, a large doe came running across the road at warp speed, down my drive way with a small animal close behind her flank. Couldn’t be a fawn this early I thought. It was a large orange tabby cat that hangs around. The cat must have thought itself a lion at that moment. The doe abruptly stopped in our back yard under the kitchen window. Evidently she regained her composure and asked “a cat, really”? She then ambled across my yard to the woods, hoping none of the other deer saw her. The cat is no doubt off laughing itself into a good nap.

    Things like this are why we haven’t lived within a city limit since 1977.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 9:10 am | Permalink
22. JK says

    Pretty funny there fella – “hoping no other deer saw her” hilarious.

    Thanks.

    Have a fine day Robert.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 9:33 am | Permalink
23. the one eyed man says

    I’m puzzled why you run from the term extremist. The views expressed here — and the right wing blogs you link to — are at the extreme end of the political spectrum. A President with the support of half the country is loathed and demonized as a man dedicated to destroying the Union, while his opposition — the most conservative Congressional caucus since at least the 1930’s — are squishes who are “traitors to their constituents, their cause, their country, and their Constitution.” There is no room to the right of that position. It is definitionally extreme.

    Richard Hofstadter wrote The Paranoid Style in American Politics in 1964, when the John Birch Society was the antecedent of today’s extreme right.

    “The paranoid spokesman, sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms – he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization… he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated – if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.”

    Well, this pretty much nails it. You don’t have to look further than this comment thread to find apocalyptic terms (a cancerous “decline and collapse” of civilization), an assumed position manning the barricades of civilization (opposing the Left “consolidating its victories in all of our institutions, and its scorched-earth approach to its cultural and political conquest”), the inability to compromise (the steadfastly obstructionist Republicans in Congress are not absolute enough in their opposition), the Manichean worldview of absolute good and evil (those of different views are not merely thought to be wrong-headed, but are “termites, roaches, bed bugs, ticks, mold, radon”), and the conviction that only total triumph is acceptable (“how radical the surgery would need to be to remove it”). It is an eschatological worldview where we are perilously close to the end, and the only thing stopping the advancing barbarians is the True Believers in mortal combat with an evil and omnipotent adversary.

    Hofstadter’s description is Tocqueville-like with its prescience in describing the contemporary extreme right, with its red-in-the-face anger, its personalization and demonization of political leaders, its reliance on crackpot conspiracies (climate scientists conspire with each other to falsify data), its dismissal of opposing views by questioning their motivation and not their beliefs (leftists don’t care about the lives of illegal immigrants, they just want to get votes), its belief in the Hannibal Lector-like evil of non-Believers, and — the all-purpose right wing excuse for anything and everything — its a priori belief in the enemy’s perceived control of the press:

    “The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman – sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed, he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often, the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds.”

    Hofstader correctly notes that in America, the extremists never win. Views which are at the margin of American thought never amass enough political support to effect change, which leads to a never-ending cycle of defeat, leading to the conviction that it was dark forces, and not the unpopularity of their ideas, which caused that defeat. In the binary world where compromise is tantamount to surrender, they can jam up the machinery, but they can never achieve their goals. The current extreme right — convinced that it alone embodies true American values, and it’s everyone else who has moved — is reminiscent of the old SDS, where the only gradients of extremism ranged from those who wanted immediate revolution to those who wanted to build a worker-student alliance first before smashing the state. Like the Birchers, the SDS, and its other antecedents, today’s extreme right is also heading for the dustbin of history.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 10:19 am | Permalink
24. JK says

    Just like you Peter to, illumine me at the first yellow of the Indy.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 11:41 am | Permalink
25. libertybelle says

    Alas, views that were considered mainstream only a decade ago,for instance, let’s take the view that marriage between a man and a woman, created the bedrock foundational unit for what is commonly referred to as a nuclear family now rests as an extreme far-right view. And on most other of these issues you refer to as far-right and extreme, those you label far-right were, in fact, mainstream moderate views in just recent decades. So, despite your assertion, the measure of “extreme” has slid far to the left and many of us on the “extreme far-right” edge”, are in fact moderates and people like you defining all the terms of the game are the ones who have pulled the measuring tape to exceedingly extreme leftist positions.

    The vulgarity and collapse of sexual mores in society, where just about any sexual debauchery and deviancy has gone from perversion to “just another lifestyle choice” hits you in the face as soon as you turn on the TV. The left loves to label people, because by strict repetition of their terminology, they change the very terms we use and enforce their ideology on everyone. The left enforces a strict indoctrination by controlling “sex education in schools, control of mass media, and in academia”.

    To quote Rose Wilder Lane, from her 1943 book, The Discovery of Freedom:

    “Today the confusion of the meaning of words in these United States is a danger to the whole world. Few American schools any longer require a pupil to dissect his words to their roots, and to know what he means when he speaks. And for twenty years the disciplined members of the Communist Party in these States have been deliberately following Lenin’s instruction, “First confuse the vocabulary.”

    Thinking can be done only in words. Accurate thinking requires words of precise meaning. Communication between human beings is impossible without words whose precise meaning is generally understood.

    Confuse the vocabulary, and people do not know what is happening; they can not communicate an alarm; they can not achieve any common purpose. Confuse the vocabulary, and millions are helpless against a small, disciplined number who know what they mean when they speak. Lenin had brains.”

    Lane, Rose Wilder (2012-05-02). The Discovery of Freedom (LFB) (Kindle Locations 3259-3266). Laissez Faire Books. Kindle Edition.

    The draconian speech codes being implemented in universities rest as another chilling example of how the political left marches to, not only marginalize those on the political right as fringe kooks, as you do constantly, but to put a boot to the throat of those espousing opposing views and silence them completely.

    My views adhere to following The Constitution and welcoming all views, not trying to limit what words those opposed to me may use and also insisting they can’t even open their mouths to speak, if their views differ from mine. I think that’s a fair and moderate position and not extreme in the least. And more importantly it’s imperative for many voices and opinions to be freely argued in the public square and more importantly for more than one political ideological segment of society to control all public educational institutions, which is where America is at now.

    Geesh, one-eyed, the left now has hate speech codes to control what words we may use, they demand trigger alerts and we even have the President of the United States whining about “microagressions”, which sound like petty crap most people learned to cope with in childhood. Whining about some “racist” white woman clutching her purse in an elevator. And did he try to talk to her to bridge the gap or use the incident as a teachable moment. No, he has harbored years of bitterness and branded the woman a “racist”, without ever so much as trying to talk to her and get to know her – that is the definition of “prejudice” – prejudging people!

    This is where America is at one-eyed – inciting hate and violence in the name of leftist political ideological causes rather than embracing what used to be the American sense of respecting people’s RIGHT to hold differing views. It’s called FREEDOM to think and believe whatever I want and to be free to say it too. If the left chooses to POLICE our very language and initiate meaningless gibberish, to brainwash the masses in their political ideology, that’s a totalitarian approach that I will never obey. I will most vehemently resist to my dying breath, sorry I refuse to go along to get along!

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
26. libertybelle says

    Ha, ha, ha one-eyed, I think I outdid you with excessive verbiage in my last post, lol. Have a nice day :-)

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 12:14 pm | Permalink
27. Malcolm says

    What LB said.

    And the Right certainly has no monopoly on anger. (I’ll add that when the “red-in-the-face” Right expresses that anger in public, they even tidy up after themselves. When the Left does so, formerly civilized cities are left in ruins.)

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 12:54 pm | Permalink
28. Malcolm says

    Also: as for the Left’s “consolidating its victories in all our institutions”, it is never content simply to achieve cultural tolerance of its radical social objectives (demands that would have been correctly described as “extreme” always and everywhere until just a few short years ago), or even legal acquiescence; no, they demand nothing less than full-throated and enthusiastic support, on pain not only of social opprobium and even loss of employment, but even, in most other other Western nations, criminal charges.

    Not only have they won a bloody victory in the culture wars, but they are now, as someone said, roaming the battlefield, executing the wounded.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 1:08 pm | Permalink
29. JK says

    Repeating: What LB said.

    And, Malcolm’s parenthetical. (The one at 12:54.)

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 3:04 pm | Permalink
30. Malcolm says

    Also, regarding the quote by Richard Hofstadter (who was an anti-capitalist former Communist, and Frankfurt School adherent): It’s hardly surprising that a man who spent his life besieging the barricades of traditional Western civilization would denounce its defenders as “paranoid”. But if you look at the Left’s blitzkrieg through all of our social, academic, and cultural institutions in the half-century since Hofstadter wrote The Paranoid Style, the concerns of 1950s conservatives seem, if anything, to have underestimated the threat. If “paranoia” is defined as irrational anxiety, then the fears of those at the cultural barricades in 1965 have been shown to be not paranoid, but prescient.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 3:16 pm | Permalink
31. Malcolm says

    What’s interesting also, with all your talk of conservatism’s True Believers, red-in-the-face anger, its personalization and demonization of political leaders, its reliance on crackpot conspiracies (“vast right-wing conspiracy”, anyone?), dismissal of opposing views by questioning their motivation and not their beliefs (read any Krugman lately?), its belief in the Hannibal Lector-like evil of non-Believers (that’s “Lecter”), the enemy’s perceived control of the press, etc., is how blind you seem to be to just how aptly all of this describes your own side just as well as you think it describes ours.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 3:43 pm | Permalink
32. libertybelle says

    Malcolm, Excellent points on the liberal bias in the media, but even more disconcerting looms the almost complete and total cluelessness, bereft of even a hint of any background reading or study of the history of the issues they are reporting on. The vast majority of American reporters report news events, especially complex foreign crises, with long, complicated histories, as if it’s some “breaking news” event from Mars. Their understanding of the unfolding events rests on a few popular subject matter experts (usually from the far-left ideological realm of academia). From these shabbily constructed historical backgrounds, way too many American reporters rush to take sides in conflicts of which they know nothing about. Often the reporting fails to report news events, but instead serves as an ideological soapbox for the reporters and their hand-picked “experts”.

    The British press does better on the background history, leading me believe that perhaps history is still taught there.

    The emergence of ISIL/ISIS/IS serves as the perfect example. JK does the formulaic version of the Salafist radicalization process, but let’s just deal with the immediate precursor to IS, which was Al Qaeda in Iraq. IS didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere, these Al Qaeda radicals became more radicalized, in part due to blowback from American battles to subdue them – in the very cities they are now retaking.

    Another interesting example was the IS battle against the Kurds for control of Kobani, with Americans cheering for the Kurds, without even being aware that the Kurds in Kobani, willing to fight to the death, are also a State Department designated terrorist entity – the PKK. War makes strange bedfellows…

    Reporters boast of their liberal college education – I am self-educated thankfully and have devoted my life to studying history, particularly military history and military strategy. and oddly enough, being a homemaker afforded me the flexibility in my schedule to read extensively for decades, lol.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 5:55 pm | Permalink
33. JK says

    (And, oddly enough – the US strategy “appears to be”

    Decapitation.

    Though *Warhead in the Forehead* Drone … which is; hard to argue against but then …

    We have, as LB pointed out via “Does the Leopard Change His Spots?” [Malcolm: Waka

    http://malcolmpollack.com/2011/03/02/a-mighty-wind/

    & This is getting so … well, I was gonna use “tiresome” but that doesn’t – does it, quite get to the essence of it now does it?

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 7:51 pm | Permalink
34. TheBigHenry says

    What LB said.

    [img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qXMVMZqm4Ww/VWGP_xUKisI/AAAAAAAC3TE/88aCMqRUVYE/s1600/Toons%2BM24%2B%25281%2529.jpg[/img]

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 8:50 pm | Permalink
35. JK says

    Henry?

    Now I may be wrong but I may be right but I’m thinking here, is “our” first exchange. How we got to where we are I haven’t a fucking clue:

    http://malcolmpollack.com/2011/03/17/big-schtick/

    2011 “seems to me” about right. ‘Bout as you recall it?

    Not so much in my general opinion from where we started I’m thinking … where we are now donch you?

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 8:54 pm | Permalink
36. Malcolm says

    OK, one last point, Peter, and perhaps the most important of all: great civilizations actually do, as a rule, reach a point of exhaustion after which they slowly, then rapidly, decline and collapse. For more than the last decade I’ve devoted myself to studying the history and mechanisms of this oft-repeated cycle (as well as the long history of conflict between East and West). I’ve worked hard at this for a long time now, and I’ve learned enough, at the very least, to understand that those who see all-too-familiar warning signs (as well as some entirely novel ones) in the current condition of this civilization are anything but “paranoid”.

    No doubt there was a blithe and contented One-Eyed Man in late 4th-century Rome to tell his friends who sensed something amiss that they were crackpots, too.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 10:32 pm | Permalink
37. Malcolm says

    JK, I see Bob Koepp joined us in that thread. I miss him; he was an astute commenter. May he rest in peace.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 10:33 pm | Permalink
38. JK says

    I miss him too Malcolm.

    I watched his and your exchanges for oh, awhile before I dared comment here.

    But it was he actually, going toe to toe with another of your, at the time, commentors gave me “the nudge.”

    I pray you’ll not consider the less of him “inspiring” the lessor.

    Bob very apparently never did outer space.

    Thinking on it as I look back, I’m pretty sure as he was along here I’d not gone out to launch.

    Posted May 24, 2015 at 11:15 pm | Permalink
39. JK says

    Should anyone [be] find themselves – confused by all this Malcolm and I are reminiscing about the fellow Bob Koepp

    It’s a simple matter of a

    (relatively short [as if])

    period of *History.*

    —What One-Eye would/does call A Facebook Revolution—

    (And never you mind CBS’ Lara Logan.)
    _____________

    17 December 2010 a Tunisian fruit-cart fellow (One-Eye’d call the fellow “an entrepreneur” [who unfortunately *didn’t fully comprehend* the Tunisian version of the EPA Clean Air Act] being an diagnosed dyslexic – and in all likelihood suffering not only ADHD but also repressed memories of whatever the Tunisian version of childhood sexual abuse but definitely nothing to do with Islam

    Immolated himself – pardon – setting alight the *ahem

    “Arab Spring”

    (Which – had it been an Explosive-Belt fatally shredding “the otherwise” – the More-the-Merrier Act would’ve just been viewed *Normal.)

    But no, it wasn’t an act to kill apostates rather, Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi immolated some fruit and thus – Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham set about getting American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to lobby Obama to award Mister Bouazizi the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    But Senators McCain and Graham and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s lobbying effort – despite a $Zillion-Dollar K-Street Lobbying Firm’s effort was for naught.

    But President Obama was really impressed.

    So he acquiesced to first, blow up Libya without a plan and secondly, blow up the entire Middle East without a plan.

    Well. Not exactly without a plan. The existing plan.

    Status Quo!

    Posted May 25, 2015 at 1:42 am | Permalink
40. libertybelle says

    JK, That’s quite a fascinating “history” you penned there, lol. Those Twitter peeps did you one better, #MarieHarfHistoricalFacts:

    https://www.ijreview.com/2015/05/327907-marie-harf-gets-14-different-history-lessons-saying-iraqi-forces-held-ramadi/

    Posted May 25, 2015 at 6:31 am | Permalink
41. TheBigHenry says

    JK @May 24, 2015 at 8:54 pm:

    Sounds about right, my friend, though my recollectin’ ain’t as good as it used to be …

    Posted May 25, 2015 at 2:34 pm | Permalink
42. Musey says

    Fascinating commentary from the archives JK, and very interesting to see how you thought back then. I could read stuff into it, but why would I do that? I hope you’re okay.

    My husband is still away, having left here long before any funeral for a friend could happen. I do find myself to be more contemplative in my solitariness. It’s not all bad.

    Posted May 26, 2015 at 5:03 am | Permalink
43. libertybelle says

    Musey, My views probably sound strident, but believe it or not, I’ve managed to get banned from only two blogs in my online blogging experience and both of them were right-wing blogs, lol. I disagreed with a blogger on Sarah Palin, a few years back and to this day, I stick to my view that she should read more history and quit with the corny sound bites. I also didn’t like the hypocrisy of her whining about her family being the unfair target of media attacks, while at the same time trying to cash in on the “celebrity” status she acquired from her failed VP run by signing on to various reality TV shows – about her family. You can’t wail about your family’s privacy being violated at the same time you’re hosting a reality TV show, for big bucks, from your living room.

    The more recent banishment was where I challenged a blog hostess about her gross generalizations about the history of Islam and as she referred to it, the “Enlightened West”. Her understanding of the Crusades, the zenith of Islamic civilization at that time, while Europe was barbarian tribes and the Holy Christian Church acted about as tolerant toward non-believers as ISIS infuriated her, so banished I am… from another right-wing blog.

    I like reading your insights and views, especially because you bring a fresh, non-American perspective to the discussion.

    Posted May 26, 2015 at 10:08 am | Permalink
44. Malcolm says

    Boy, Peter, that comment of yours is the gift that keeps on giving.

    The current extreme right — convinced that it alone embodies true American values, and it’s everyone else who has moved — is reminiscent of the old SDS, where the only gradients of extremism ranged from those who wanted immediate revolution to those who wanted to build a worker-student alliance first before smashing the state.

    As Bill Clinton must have said to himself after deplaning on Pedophile Island: where to begin?

    Can you really believe that the direction of social movement over the past half-century hasn’t been relentlessly, and monotonically, to the Left? Look, for example, at same-sex marriage, which was a fringe-left position even in the current presidential administration, and now commands (and I do mean “commands”) fervent support, on pain of excommunication from polite society?

    It’s the Right that’s moved? Seriously?

    Next you compare the traditionalist Right with the SDS, on no other grounds than that they both seem “extreme” to you. Can there really be no difference, in your mind, between smashing a living culture to rubble, and seeking to preserve it?

    But there’s even more to unpack and examine in this fantastic comment of yours. I’ll do so in a separate post.

    Posted May 26, 2015 at 12:38 pm | Permalink
45. Musey says

    Thanks Libertybelle, I’d missed this comment.

    As an outsider, that is, a non American I do have some sympathy for Sarah Palin. She got as far as she did because she had a certain look and in the end, that got her. Good looking, but stoopid. That’s why she got as far as she did…so everyone can have a bloody, good laugh.

    I don’t know whether you will see this late reply, but if you do, cheers from here.

    Posted May 30, 2015 at 12:15 am | Permalink