Category: History

The Revenge of the Buzzwords (Part 2: Angry White Men)

Now that Ole Joe and the band have opened the show with “Conspicuous Consumption”, and now that the fans in the front row have dutifully begun to scream enthusiastically at the familiar opening notes, the band is planning to bring the house down with a big encore performance of “Angry White Men.” Except this time… Continue reading The Revenge of the Buzzwords (Part 2: Angry White Men)

A notable passing

When I first discovered Rush Limbaugh as a teenager, the local Virginia AM station where I discovered him had Watergate Break-in Mastermind* G. Gordon Liddy on in the slot right after Rush. Today, Liddy died at the age of 90. Let’s be clear, Liddy committed a serious crime. This country cannot survive if we begin… Continue reading A notable passing

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Categorized as History

Culture War and Cold War

In 1983 an American director, Michael Apted, then at the height of his game hired a stellar cast including at least two current movie stars (William Hurt and Brian Dennehy) and one aging movie star (Lee Marvin) to make GORKY PARK, a thriller about the endemic corruption and soul-killing evil of Cold War Soviet Society.… Continue reading Culture War and Cold War

Movie Connections

I have a weird brain for movies. I can remember lines and characters from movies even if I only saw them once fifteen years ago. And often when I watch movies based on historical events, especially when I’ve seen them before, I watch with a Google window open (or Bing or DuckDuckGo for those who… Continue reading Movie Connections

OK fine, it’s not Genocide… now what?

Last week the Economist spent a thousand words explaining to us why, techincally, what the Chinese are doing to the ethnic Uyghurs is not genocide. Their argument is that a genocide requires that the offending regime be actively slaughtering people. Otherwise it’s just (gasp!) “persecution.” On the one hand, I think this a weird hill… Continue reading OK fine, it’s not Genocide… now what?

That way lies Evil

This is evil. And I don’t use that word lightly… To save you the click, this is the story of a University Professor forced to submit to unecessary medical procedures as a condition of keeping his job after expressing “wrongthink.” In one of my first posts, titled NEVER AGAIN?, I quoted Burt Lancaster’s famous speech… Continue reading That way lies Evil

The worst gun violence article of the year (so far)

Please take a moment to read this piece from The Economist, before I give it the Fisking it so richly deserves… https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/01/16/america-is-experiencing-the-worst-recorded-increase-in-its-national-murder-rate Are you finished? OK… let’s go, then. Right out of the gate, we need to deal with that accompanying photograph. Ideally you would want a photograph to convey something about the article you… Continue reading The worst gun violence article of the year (so far)

Burning Books

Burning books, both literally and figuratively, is coming back into fashion. Sadly, this makes a twisted sort of sense. As we willfully and deliberately forget more and more of our history, there remain fewer and fewer cultural mile markers, like the Nazis, to remind us that burning books is anti-intellectual at best, destructive and evil… Continue reading Burning Books