I get the feeling some political analysts have been following me around w/a notepad. Folks like Ridenour and Shahid Bolsen are saying what I've been saying all along now, following Hegel's theme of the "world historical individual": that Trump is the agent of what I've called The Larger Shift (see previous post). The key phrase in this article is "unbeknownst to himself." Trumpi is sleepwalking thru History. He thinks he's making America great, when he's actually dismantling it. And this is what History is calling for rt now. All of his (proposed) absurd antics--buying Greenland, turning Gaza into a chic 'riviera', and so on--facilitate this geopolitical transformation. Perhaps our situation is similar to England in 1956, when the UK was finally eclipsed. That it is a douchebag doing all this is perhaps a gd thing, because his douchebaggery is so out there, so utterly egregious. The eclipse of America will have most of the nations of the world dancing in the street. So just as I love a gd buffoon (i.e., typical American), I can also love a gd douchebag. The nuttier he gets, the more I chant: Go, Trumpi!
-mb
ps: Just so there's no confusion, I do regard Trumpi as an utterly vile scumbag, the lowest lifeform on the planet. It's just a kind of cosmic quirk, that History chose him to effect the tectonic shift. Hegel called History a "slaughter bench," wh/is true, but apparently it has an odd sense of humor as well.
Will Trump and Netanyahu build condos and casinos there? Burger Kings? Games arcades? Meanwhile, who will stand up for the Palestinians? Who will protect them from these jackals? No one? It's OK to let them be butchered, then kicked off their land a 2nd time, and for everyone to remain silent in the face of this shame, this horror? Cowards all!
#3. Gaza. The Israeli army, according to numerous reports, has been esp. active in killing Palestinian children. The idea is that there should not be a future generation of Palestinians that wd rise up and seek revenge for what was done to their people. One example: a popular T-shirt worn by the IDF, showing a pregnant Palestinian woman, in the crosshairs of the telescopic sight of a rifle, w/the Hebrew caption: “Two for one.” Who are these soldiers? Descendents of the Jews murdered by the pogromchiki, or by the Nazis: great-great-grandchildren, perhaps. And doing the same thing to their victims—killing babies—that had been done to their ancestors. What in God’s name cd they possibly be thinking? I’m sorry, I can’t fathom this. When I see a Palestinian mother holding the doll or teddy bear of her now-dead two-year-old, I want to scream until I have no more breath left in me. How in the world cd Jews do this? What does it mean, to have no feeling for the infant you just murdered, or the mother, her heart forever broken, holding the doll?
The usual American pattern is to force a country into a corner, and then when it strikes back, to react w/indignation. Noam Chomsky has a YouTube video out there on how we did this to Japan. It's controversial, but FDR may have even planned it, known abt the attack in advance. Essentially, we gave Japan the choice of becoming an economic colony of the US, or bombing Pearl Harbor. This allowed FDR to make his famous "Day of infamy" speech. Never mind our own, more hidden infamy. In retrospect, given the atomic bomb, the former choice wd have been better, but who knew abt the atomic bomb in 1941? Anyway, I'm not cheering Putin; I'm just recognizing that we left him no choice. And this was what that genocidal warmonger/warcriminal doofus Schmiden wanted: Cold War redux. It was the only foreign policy maneuver he understood: the standard American playbook. Not a day of infamy; rather, a nation of infamy. Meanwhile, a clueless American populace, living in a fog, cheers the gov't on. From top to bottom, a nation of violent turkeys.
ps2: I don't know if u.r. aware of how incredibly stupid Americans are, rt up to the university level. As a result of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Russian restaurants in the US pulled beef stroganoff off the menu and replaced it w/beef zelensky--! Universities took Doestoevsky off the rdg lists, canceled courses in Russian lit.--!! During our destruction of Iraq, rdg the Koran was a no-no, and because France wdn't join us in that destruction, the menu at the cafeteria of Congress was changed from French fries to Freedom fries. This is the level of stupidity at wh/we live. (Note that during WW2, "Mein Kampf" was practically required rdg--know yr enemy. We had at least half a brain, back then.)
ps3: And what % of the American public cd read a bk like "The Brothers Karamazov," and understand what Dostoevsky was saying? <2%?
3 vignettes. These are all true. They are abt babies, toddlers, and v. little children.
#1. A pogrom in the Ukraine, 15 Feb 1919. The Cossacks swept thru the town (Proskurov, later renamed Khmel’nitski) between 1 and 5 pm, and murdered 1600 Jews. My father’s family was living there at the time, and escaped getting killed by a strange fluke. The Cossacks went esp. for the babies. They wd throw them up in the air and catch them on their bayonets. Or grab them by the ankles, and swing them against a stone wall, bashing their heads in. They also cut open the bellies of pregnant women, and cut out the fetus. Documentation: there is a record of all this, in English and Yiddish, identifying the dead. I found it online. It’s somewhere on my computer; I downloaded it a few yrs ago. In addition, this particular pogrom was written up in a book called "Pogromchik" (a person who wages a pogrom), by Saul Friedman, 1976.
#2. The Holocaust. The Nazis also were esp. intent on murdering Jewish children. When I was growing up, there was a man who lived across the street, w/his family, who had been an army photographer during the War. He was in on the liberation of one of the death camps, I forget wh/one. He was actually the first soldier in, and when he pushed open the gate, he was greeted by a mountain of baby shoes. He took pictures of it, and of the rest of the camp. The War ended, and he was discharged and shipped home; whereupon he had a nervous breakdown, and was hospitalized for 9 mos.
Well, she hedged a lot on Putin's domestic repression, and wdn't say anything pro or con abt the invasion of the Ukraine. But her assessment of Putin as smart and skilled is surely rt on. Check out my bk "The Soul of Russia" to see what a remarkable, magnificent culture that was, then compare it to America. There is no American Tchaikovsky or Tolstoy, and the comparison between "Solaris" and "2001" throws the shallowness of American culture into stark relief, the more so since the US film industry has called the latter "the greatest film ever made," or something in that vein. "Solaris" is an exploration of the human condition; "Space Odyssey" is just typical American whiz-bang techno-crap--pseudo-profundity, as Tarkovsky rightly called it. Sure, we never had a Stalin, and we never had gulags (altho some wd say American prisons qualify as such), and in no way am I overlooking that difference. But it is so impressive to me, that in the USSR, poets were regarded as a threat to the state, and in the US they aren't regarded at all. As the popular joke went, yrs ago, in Russia you are not free to say what you want, whereas in the US you are, but nobody cares, and certainly not the gov't. Let us also add that the Russians are a very intelligent, culture-oriented people, where America is by and large a collection of morons, a "culture" only in an anthropological sense of the word. And of course, the leadership reflects this, as George Carlin once pointed out. The American president is a dolt because Americans are dolts; our leaders don't come from Mars. And so, as you say, buffoonage will bring the US to its knees. It has no future beyond being an agent of the tectonic shifts--West to East, and Modern to Something Else--now in process. But it is kinda funny, that the "world historical individual" leading these shifts is a dummy. As I pointed out earlier, History apparently has a sense of humor.
Well, amigo, it is indeed hopeless. This dolt represents 99% of the American population. He also falls into one of my favorite categories, the Hi-IQ Moron. American brainwashing is remarkably powerful; few can escape it. To quote an old saw I've quoted b4, When myth meets fact, myth always wins. Long ago, I stopped having political discussions w/Americans. And then, of course, I left. (Think of what the psychological cost wd be, to this idiot, if he were to admit to what yr saying. Possibly a nervous breakdown.)
David-
In the Twilight bk, I said that what we had in America was "vital kitsch." The country had a lot of apparent energy, but at bottom, it was all kitsch. That was in 2000. We have now evolved into a Potemkin village. The kitsch isn't even vital anymore. Mao also said that the wind from the East was going to overcome the wind from the West. Gee...
We shd chg the name from AI to BI, where the latter represents the Beatoff Index--very high in America. Pls read WAF ch. 3; the ch. on Turing in Eminent Post-Victorians; and the ch. on Tarkovsky in The Soul of Russia. Americans will do anything to hide from reality, and tech has been central to that agenda. Ontologically spkg, a v. stupid people.
Very gd review of a bio of Reagan by Max Boot. Actually, I regard Reagan as a douche bag (Philip Roth called him a 'knucklehead') who did a lot to take the US down the rd of decline, and Boot as a consummate asshole.
Check out esp. the last 2 sentences of this review.
When Americans are asked, in periodic polls, who their favorite president was, Reagan invariably comes out on top. Proof, imo, that the American populace consists of douche bags and knuckleheads.
Elon Musk is now running, or shd I say dismantling, the government. RFK Jr. and Tulsi von Schmulsi will soon be confirmed by the Senate. Psychotic war criminal Netanyahu is feted by Trumpaloni. The GOP is completely supine to him, and the Dems are weak and pathetic, having no vision at all. The only movement afoot is the bowel movement. We are speeding toward 2030, the year when it will be all over for a very depraved nation.
Think of charlatans like Tony Robbins, or Six-Pack Chopra. And motivation for what? Gee, cd it be $? Do you realize how many Americans need to be vigorously slapped? Plus, their shoes are too dry. This is a turkey country filled w/turkeys.
Thanks for sending this in, and the essay by Rorty. I was never attracted to him because I thought of him as postmodern, and I don't put much stock in that school of philosophy. Perhaps that was a mistake on my part, but his essay seems to reflect regret, that he didn't fill his life w/poetry, rather than doing what he did. Did he look back on his work as 'clever', whereas at the end of his life saw poetry as profound? He also regrets not having made more close friends. At least, he's being honest. In any case, that essay gave me a few things to think abt. Personally, I believe the only things worth pursuing are love and truth (and now, in my 9th decade, health), and all the rest is just one big waste of time. But hey, that's just me. Abrazos, Chico.
Keir, not Kier. UK has been in dustbin since Suez Crisis of 1956, and in real economic terms since 1918 and the breakup of the landed estates. It's a Potemkin country, and soon we shall be one as well. Only 1 diff: while the Buffoon Index (BI) is pretty high for all Anglo countries, in the US it's thru the roof. A short poem on the subject:
Wafers take note: Very favorable review of "The Jews and the Irrational" just appeared on Amazon. Check it out. In addition, if any of you guys want to write yr own review, I promise I won't stand in yr way. :-)
For those of you who might want to get a glimpse at the horror that is Israel, check out "A Deadly Apathy" by David Shulman in the Jan. 16 NYRB. Here are a few poignant excerpts:
"What is striking, and horrific, is the fact that Israel has embraced cruelty and atrocity as a normative mode of waging war...the Jewish supremacists marshal biblical texts proving the joys of revenge. For them, and for many others in Israel, tens of thousands of dead Palestinian civilians in Gaza are an acceptable price to pay for a reckless, savage war...Not once in the course of the last fourteen months have I heard the well-meaning reporters and commentators on Channel 2 [mainstream Israeli TV station] utter a single syllable of sorrow, let alone remorse, at the mounting count of Palestinians killed in Gaza."
He writes: "For this we created a Jewish state?"
(For more details along these lines, check out Ch. 3 of my most recent bk, "The Jews and the Irrational." Like Shulman, I continue to be sick over this.)
Med-
I get the feeling some political analysts have been following me around w/a notepad. Folks like Ridenour and Shahid Bolsen are saying what I've been saying all along now, following Hegel's theme of the "world historical individual": that Trump is the agent of what I've called The Larger Shift (see previous post). The key phrase in this article is "unbeknownst to himself." Trumpi is sleepwalking thru History. He thinks he's making America great, when he's actually dismantling it. And this is what History is calling for rt now. All of his (proposed) absurd antics--buying Greenland, turning Gaza into a chic 'riviera', and so on--facilitate this geopolitical transformation. Perhaps our situation is similar to England in 1956, when the UK was finally eclipsed. That it is a douchebag doing all this is perhaps a gd thing, because his douchebaggery is so out there, so utterly egregious. The eclipse of America will have most of the nations of the world dancing in the street. So just as I love a gd buffoon (i.e., typical American), I can also love a gd douchebag. The nuttier he gets, the more I chant: Go, Trumpi!
-mb
ps: Just so there's no confusion, I do regard Trumpi as an utterly vile scumbag, the lowest lifeform on the planet. It's just a kind of cosmic quirk, that History chose him to effect the tectonic shift. Hegel called History a "slaughter bench," wh/is true, but apparently it has an odd sense of humor as well.
Could anything be sicker?:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-officials-defend-trumps-call-for-relocating-gazans-who-call-idea-delusional/
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/27/middleeast/trump-clean-out-gaza-middle-east-intl/index.html
Will Trump and Netanyahu build condos and casinos there? Burger Kings? Games arcades? Meanwhile, who will stand up for the Palestinians? Who will protect them from these jackals? No one? It's OK to let them be butchered, then kicked off their land a 2nd time, and for everyone to remain silent in the face of this shame, this horror? Cowards all!
(continued from below)
#3. Gaza. The Israeli army, according to numerous reports, has been esp. active in killing Palestinian children. The idea is that there should not be a future generation of Palestinians that wd rise up and seek revenge for what was done to their people. One example: a popular T-shirt worn by the IDF, showing a pregnant Palestinian woman, in the crosshairs of the telescopic sight of a rifle, w/the Hebrew caption: “Two for one.” Who are these soldiers? Descendents of the Jews murdered by the pogromchiki, or by the Nazis: great-great-grandchildren, perhaps. And doing the same thing to their victims—killing babies—that had been done to their ancestors. What in God’s name cd they possibly be thinking? I’m sorry, I can’t fathom this. When I see a Palestinian mother holding the doll or teddy bear of her now-dead two-year-old, I want to scream until I have no more breath left in me. How in the world cd Jews do this? What does it mean, to have no feeling for the infant you just murdered, or the mother, her heart forever broken, holding the doll?
-mb
Psychopathy is *the* explanation for this.
Jarid-
The usual American pattern is to force a country into a corner, and then when it strikes back, to react w/indignation. Noam Chomsky has a YouTube video out there on how we did this to Japan. It's controversial, but FDR may have even planned it, known abt the attack in advance. Essentially, we gave Japan the choice of becoming an economic colony of the US, or bombing Pearl Harbor. This allowed FDR to make his famous "Day of infamy" speech. Never mind our own, more hidden infamy. In retrospect, given the atomic bomb, the former choice wd have been better, but who knew abt the atomic bomb in 1941? Anyway, I'm not cheering Putin; I'm just recognizing that we left him no choice. And this was what that genocidal warmonger/warcriminal doofus Schmiden wanted: Cold War redux. It was the only foreign policy maneuver he understood: the standard American playbook. Not a day of infamy; rather, a nation of infamy. Meanwhile, a clueless American populace, living in a fog, cheers the gov't on. From top to bottom, a nation of violent turkeys.
-mb
ps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art,_Truth_and_Politics
ps2: I don't know if u.r. aware of how incredibly stupid Americans are, rt up to the university level. As a result of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Russian restaurants in the US pulled beef stroganoff off the menu and replaced it w/beef zelensky--! Universities took Doestoevsky off the rdg lists, canceled courses in Russian lit.--!! During our destruction of Iraq, rdg the Koran was a no-no, and because France wdn't join us in that destruction, the menu at the cafeteria of Congress was changed from French fries to Freedom fries. This is the level of stupidity at wh/we live. (Note that during WW2, "Mein Kampf" was practically required rdg--know yr enemy. We had at least half a brain, back then.)
ps3: And what % of the American public cd read a bk like "The Brothers Karamazov," and understand what Dostoevsky was saying? <2%?
Wafers-
3 vignettes. These are all true. They are abt babies, toddlers, and v. little children.
#1. A pogrom in the Ukraine, 15 Feb 1919. The Cossacks swept thru the town (Proskurov, later renamed Khmel’nitski) between 1 and 5 pm, and murdered 1600 Jews. My father’s family was living there at the time, and escaped getting killed by a strange fluke. The Cossacks went esp. for the babies. They wd throw them up in the air and catch them on their bayonets. Or grab them by the ankles, and swing them against a stone wall, bashing their heads in. They also cut open the bellies of pregnant women, and cut out the fetus. Documentation: there is a record of all this, in English and Yiddish, identifying the dead. I found it online. It’s somewhere on my computer; I downloaded it a few yrs ago. In addition, this particular pogrom was written up in a book called "Pogromchik" (a person who wages a pogrom), by Saul Friedman, 1976.
#2. The Holocaust. The Nazis also were esp. intent on murdering Jewish children. When I was growing up, there was a man who lived across the street, w/his family, who had been an army photographer during the War. He was in on the liberation of one of the death camps, I forget wh/one. He was actually the first soldier in, and when he pushed open the gate, he was greeted by a mountain of baby shoes. He took pictures of it, and of the rest of the camp. The War ended, and he was discharged and shipped home; whereupon he had a nervous breakdown, and was hospitalized for 9 mos.
(continued above)
Mike-
Well, she hedged a lot on Putin's domestic repression, and wdn't say anything pro or con abt the invasion of the Ukraine. But her assessment of Putin as smart and skilled is surely rt on. Check out my bk "The Soul of Russia" to see what a remarkable, magnificent culture that was, then compare it to America. There is no American Tchaikovsky or Tolstoy, and the comparison between "Solaris" and "2001" throws the shallowness of American culture into stark relief, the more so since the US film industry has called the latter "the greatest film ever made," or something in that vein. "Solaris" is an exploration of the human condition; "Space Odyssey" is just typical American whiz-bang techno-crap--pseudo-profundity, as Tarkovsky rightly called it. Sure, we never had a Stalin, and we never had gulags (altho some wd say American prisons qualify as such), and in no way am I overlooking that difference. But it is so impressive to me, that in the USSR, poets were regarded as a threat to the state, and in the US they aren't regarded at all. As the popular joke went, yrs ago, in Russia you are not free to say what you want, whereas in the US you are, but nobody cares, and certainly not the gov't. Let us also add that the Russians are a very intelligent, culture-oriented people, where America is by and large a collection of morons, a "culture" only in an anthropological sense of the word. And of course, the leadership reflects this, as George Carlin once pointed out. The American president is a dolt because Americans are dolts; our leaders don't come from Mars. And so, as you say, buffoonage will bring the US to its knees. It has no future beyond being an agent of the tectonic shifts--West to East, and Modern to Something Else--now in process. But it is kinda funny, that the "world historical individual" leading these shifts is a dummy. As I pointed out earlier, History apparently has a sense of humor.
-mb
Jeff-
Well, amigo, it is indeed hopeless. This dolt represents 99% of the American population. He also falls into one of my favorite categories, the Hi-IQ Moron. American brainwashing is remarkably powerful; few can escape it. To quote an old saw I've quoted b4, When myth meets fact, myth always wins. Long ago, I stopped having political discussions w/Americans. And then, of course, I left. (Think of what the psychological cost wd be, to this idiot, if he were to admit to what yr saying. Possibly a nervous breakdown.)
David-
In the Twilight bk, I said that what we had in America was "vital kitsch." The country had a lot of apparent energy, but at bottom, it was all kitsch. That was in 2000. We have now evolved into a Potemkin village. The kitsch isn't even vital anymore. Mao also said that the wind from the East was going to overcome the wind from the West. Gee...
-mb
Woolly-
We shd chg the name from AI to BI, where the latter represents the Beatoff Index--very high in America. Pls read WAF ch. 3; the ch. on Turing in Eminent Post-Victorians; and the ch. on Tarkovsky in The Soul of Russia. Americans will do anything to hide from reality, and tech has been central to that agenda. Ontologically spkg, a v. stupid people.
-mb
Very gd review of a bio of Reagan by Max Boot. Actually, I regard Reagan as a douche bag (Philip Roth called him a 'knucklehead') who did a lot to take the US down the rd of decline, and Boot as a consummate asshole.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n01/jackson-lears/honey-i-forgot-to-duck
Check out esp. the last 2 sentences of this review.
When Americans are asked, in periodic polls, who their favorite president was, Reagan invariably comes out on top. Proof, imo, that the American populace consists of douche bags and knuckleheads.
-mb
Elon Musk is now running, or shd I say dismantling, the government. RFK Jr. and Tulsi von Schmulsi will soon be confirmed by the Senate. Psychotic war criminal Netanyahu is feted by Trumpaloni. The GOP is completely supine to him, and the Dems are weak and pathetic, having no vision at all. The only movement afoot is the bowel movement. We are speeding toward 2030, the year when it will be all over for a very depraved nation.
Black-
Think of charlatans like Tony Robbins, or Six-Pack Chopra. And motivation for what? Gee, cd it be $? Do you realize how many Americans need to be vigorously slapped? Plus, their shoes are too dry. This is a turkey country filled w/turkeys.
-mb
ps: I meant to say, Deep-Pockets Chopra.
Eresh-
Thanks for sending this in, and the essay by Rorty. I was never attracted to him because I thought of him as postmodern, and I don't put much stock in that school of philosophy. Perhaps that was a mistake on my part, but his essay seems to reflect regret, that he didn't fill his life w/poetry, rather than doing what he did. Did he look back on his work as 'clever', whereas at the end of his life saw poetry as profound? He also regrets not having made more close friends. At least, he's being honest. In any case, that essay gave me a few things to think abt. Personally, I believe the only things worth pursuing are love and truth (and now, in my 9th decade, health), and all the rest is just one big waste of time. But hey, that's just me. Abrazos, Chico.
-mb
David-
Keir, not Kier. UK has been in dustbin since Suez Crisis of 1956, and in real economic terms since 1918 and the breakup of the landed estates. It's a Potemkin country, and soon we shall be one as well. Only 1 diff: while the Buffoon Index (BI) is pretty high for all Anglo countries, in the US it's thru the roof. A short poem on the subject:
The Buffoon Index is high;
Soon it will reach the sky.
What does Philip Larkin have over me, eh?
-mb
The UK as a Potempkin country is putting it perfectly...
PS I'm a big Larkin admirer too!
Days by Philip Larkin | Poetry Foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48410/days-56d229a0c0c33
No censorship!
Wafers take note: Very favorable review of "The Jews and the Irrational" just appeared on Amazon. Check it out. In addition, if any of you guys want to write yr own review, I promise I won't stand in yr way. :-)
-mb
Many blessings. Happy this got through.
Wafers-
For those of you who might want to get a glimpse at the horror that is Israel, check out "A Deadly Apathy" by David Shulman in the Jan. 16 NYRB. Here are a few poignant excerpts:
"What is striking, and horrific, is the fact that Israel has embraced cruelty and atrocity as a normative mode of waging war...the Jewish supremacists marshal biblical texts proving the joys of revenge. For them, and for many others in Israel, tens of thousands of dead Palestinian civilians in Gaza are an acceptable price to pay for a reckless, savage war...Not once in the course of the last fourteen months have I heard the well-meaning reporters and commentators on Channel 2 [mainstream Israeli TV station] utter a single syllable of sorrow, let alone remorse, at the mounting count of Palestinians killed in Gaza."
He writes: "For this we created a Jewish state?"
(For more details along these lines, check out Ch. 3 of my most recent bk, "The Jews and the Irrational." Like Shulman, I continue to be sick over this.)
-mb
Osoff: One of the gd American Jews.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/politics/jon-ossoff-georgia-jewish-democrats.html