Since Dennis isn't allowing comments (this week), I suppose I'll have to post here what I'd originally planned to do at Untethered:
Sire, for thirty years your ministers have violated all the ancient laws of state so as to enhance your power. They have increased your revenue and your expenditures to the infinite and impoverished all of France for the sake of your luxury at court. They have made your name odious. For twenty years they have made the French nation intolerable to its neighbors by bloody wars. We have no allies because we only wanted slaves. Meanwhile, your people are starving. Sedition is spreading and you are reduced to either letting it spread unpunished or resorting to massacring the people that you have driven to desperation.
Well, I'd say "Acid Flashback" about covers it, and if he thinks that real American Vets from Iraq and Afghanistan would behave like that, want to behave like that, he's on more than acid. Why on Earth are you linking to crap like this on you site, SS? Can't you find a better anti-war polemic than this maundering garbage. Do you agree with this nonsense? If so, maybe I'm reading the wrong blog.
I often find that Americans cite the oddest things when talking about their history. They'll talk about Edison and his light bulb - but he lost the patent suit on the light bulb. They'll talk about Columbus and his triumph over the flat-earthers - but every educated man, and every mariner, of Columbus's time knew the earth was round. They'll talk about Lewis and t'other fellow getting to the Pacific, and overlook the Spaniards who'd much earlier done it further south, and Mackenzie who'd earlier done it further north. So what will they talk about 200 years from now, if there still is a USA? My guess is that they'll talk about President Reagan walking on the moon.
I've never heard an American (educated or otherwise) refer to Columbus as an American, nor, for that matter, do I remember anyone (other than Bugs Bunny) perpetuating the child's tale that Columbus overcame the myth of the flat Earth.
Having both read about and watched a rather good TV documentary on Lewis and Clark, and having lived in America for most of my life, I learn for the first time, from dearieme, that Americans believe that Lewis and Clark were the first men, or European men, or white men, or something, to set eyes on the Pacific.
I had heard that Edison lost the patent on the light bulb, but I've just discovered, via Google, that at the height of his work, in 1882, he completed 106 sucessful patent applications, which would of course be slightly more than two per week.
Not bad for a Colonial.
All of this makes me wonder, dearieme, what sorts of Americans, or American history texts, you expose yourself to.
Do you work in a day care center? Well yes, in a sense I believe you do. Don't you teach in a British university?
Dale is full of it. He must be on something, that's for sure.
Black Sea, there is only one resemblance to Louis XIV's France and the US of today. That is the debased and debauched liberal aristocracy. That despises the people and wants them suppressed.
Since FDR's time, Liberal Aristocrats have sought to increase the power of the state for their own benefit. Sadly, most Republicans have not fought this, though a bigger state was inevitable given the Depression, WWII, and the Cold War.
As for our neighbors, America has provided peace and security for almost everyone on the planet, while being reviled for it. Instead of an imperialist system (exploiting others with gas $0.50 a gallon) we desperately try to keep the world stable because there is no one else.
France's elite fell because they lacked the resources to pay the soldiers to continue to hold onto power. Today we have a debased elite that mostly depends on the judiciary to keep power.
And Vietnam was 40 years ago. Sigh. Some people are just stuck forever in 1968.
- Dearieme, I'm not sure why, but I really liked your comment.
- Anon, you're very funny. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that you're right, you're NOT reading the right blog. Steve doesn't appear to me to be the type of person too greatly interested in creating a tribe of "yeah, we're SO right!"ers such as one encounters at Kos and LGF. You however appear to be in search of just such a tribe. No one who isn't of the tribe can be linked to and the leader owes his allegiance to the tastes of his followers as much as they owe their loyalty, love and obeisance to him.
Don't get me wrong, lots of Steve readers are quite similar to you in their closed-minded unwillingness to read anything that they don't already agree with, but lots more aren't.
What's more - even if the vast majority of Steve readers WERE of your tribal/servile/I'm-only-confident-when-surrounded-by-LOTS-of-people-who-agree-with-me predilections, I'm pretty sure that Steve would be able (eventually) to resist the urge of kowtowing to your demands so that you remain admirers of his.
Great post from Dennis. The "acid flashback" is so much mightier that whatever turgid, polemical dogma Anonymous would obviously prefer boring everyone to death with.
Hmmm. A little too much channeling of Carl Sandburg and Jack Kerouac for my taste. A bit of judicious editing would've gone a long way toward making it more readable.
"A new poll has found that many of Britain's young people have no knowledge of the nation's past, with some confusing scenes from Lord of the Rings with history.
Gandalf, Horatio Hornblower or Christopher Columbus were all thought by many to be an English hero and a sizeable number confused significant battles, with others thinking Britain had been conquered by the Germans, the Americans or the Spanish."
Yes, it is a shame, a great many people are rather ignorant of their national histories.
Though sad, this revelation hardly renders such people innately contemptible, since all of us are, in a variety of ways, ignorant. It's unavoidable, living as we do in a sea of facts and information.
I feel vaguely embarrassed posting this, since a US/UK pissing match strikes me as a monumental waste of time. Despite the manifest failings of both nations, when weighed against global norms, they are both societies of sometimes extraordinary achievement. In many ways, and justifiably, much of the world measures itself against the Anglophone nations.
That America suffers from many flaws, and is perhaps fatally flawed, is a proposition worthy of serious consideration. That America is simply a nation of fantasists, mall-walkers, and slack-jawed, drooling idiots who miraculously rose to global prominence seems highly unlikely from, among other perspectives, a Darwinian point of view.
Although an American citizen, I find much about contemporary America distasteful, and I live by choice beyond her borders. Nevertheless, I am well aware of a core (or perhaps a code) of decency to be found in a great many otherwise unremarkable Americans, and it is this core (or code) which I believe Dennis Dale sought to evoke in his post.
It may be to the benefit, or the sorrow, of much of the world's citizenry, but America consists of a good deal more than a nation of ciphers dreaming of Ronald Reagan upon the moon.
Dennis, firnig an M60 Rambo style is completely impractical. You do know that was just a movie right? The M60 should be fired mounted on a tripod with a T&E. Of course all the older ones (and the newer ones too maybe) are pieces of junk that jam all the time any way, so I'll request something a little more reliable.
Mr. Dale was certainly on his game with that post, acid flashback notwithstanding. This bit, especially, deserves to be carved in stone and placed prominently,
We have become incapable of recognizing the tragic pride of this attitude [that America, i.e., in its values and institutions, is "The Answer"]. This, the closest thing we have to a national religion, is a faith that cannot rise to the level of religion because it requires nothing of us--other than nodding, unthinking acquiescence to power. It combines the worst aspect of religiosity--resistance to contradictory reality, with the worst consequences of secularism--immodesty, intellectual and moral sloth, decadence.
Since Dennis isn't allowing comments (this week), I suppose I'll have to post here what I'd originally planned to do at Untethered:
ReplyDeleteSire, for thirty years your ministers have violated all the ancient laws of state so as to enhance your power. They have increased your revenue and your expenditures to the infinite and impoverished all of France for the sake of your luxury at court. They have made your name odious.
For twenty years they have made the French nation intolerable to its neighbors by bloody wars. We have no allies because we only wanted slaves. Meanwhile, your people are starving. Sedition is spreading and you are reduced to either letting it spread unpunished or resorting to massacring the people that you have driven to desperation.
-Fenelon, adviser to Louis XIV (c.1694)
One hardly needs to add, plus ca change . . .
Well, I'd say "Acid Flashback" about covers it, and if he thinks that real American Vets from Iraq and Afghanistan would behave like that, want to behave like that, he's on more than acid. Why on Earth are you linking to crap like this on you site, SS? Can't you find a better anti-war polemic than this maundering garbage. Do you agree with this nonsense? If so, maybe I'm reading the wrong blog.
ReplyDeleteI often find that Americans cite the oddest things when talking about their history. They'll talk about Edison and his light bulb - but he lost the patent suit on the light bulb. They'll talk about Columbus and his triumph over the flat-earthers - but every educated man, and every mariner, of Columbus's time knew the earth was round. They'll talk about Lewis and t'other fellow getting to the Pacific, and overlook the Spaniards who'd much earlier done it further south, and Mackenzie who'd earlier done it further north. So what will they talk about 200 years from now, if there still is a USA? My guess is that they'll talk about President Reagan walking on the moon.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard an American (educated or otherwise) refer to Columbus as an American, nor, for that matter, do I remember anyone (other than Bugs Bunny) perpetuating the child's tale that Columbus overcame the myth of the flat Earth.
ReplyDeleteHaving both read about and watched a rather good TV documentary on Lewis and Clark, and having lived in America for most of my life, I learn for the first time, from dearieme, that Americans believe that Lewis and Clark were the first men, or European men, or white men, or something, to set eyes on the Pacific.
I had heard that Edison lost the patent on the light bulb, but I've just discovered, via Google, that at the height of his work, in 1882, he completed 106 sucessful patent applications, which would of course be slightly more than two per week.
Not bad for a Colonial.
All of this makes me wonder, dearieme, what sorts of Americans, or American history texts, you expose yourself to.
Do you work in a day care center? Well yes, in a sense I believe you do. Don't you teach in a British university?
Happy 4th, Love.
Actually, no, we don't ahve to ask why they hate us, we just have to kill them.
ReplyDeleteDale is full of it. He must be on something, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteBlack Sea, there is only one resemblance to Louis XIV's France and the US of today. That is the debased and debauched liberal aristocracy. That despises the people and wants them suppressed.
Since FDR's time, Liberal Aristocrats have sought to increase the power of the state for their own benefit. Sadly, most Republicans have not fought this, though a bigger state was inevitable given the Depression, WWII, and the Cold War.
As for our neighbors, America has provided peace and security for almost everyone on the planet, while being reviled for it. Instead of an imperialist system (exploiting others with gas $0.50 a gallon) we desperately try to keep the world stable because there is no one else.
France's elite fell because they lacked the resources to pay the soldiers to continue to hold onto power. Today we have a debased elite that mostly depends on the judiciary to keep power.
And Vietnam was 40 years ago. Sigh. Some people are just stuck forever in 1968.
- Dennis Dale is beautiful. Truly beautiful.
ReplyDelete- Dearieme, I'm not sure why, but I really liked your comment.
- Anon, you're very funny. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that you're right, you're NOT reading the right blog. Steve doesn't appear to me to be the type of person too greatly interested in creating a tribe of "yeah, we're SO right!"ers such as one encounters at Kos and LGF. You however appear to be in search of just such a tribe. No one who isn't of the tribe can be linked to and the leader owes his allegiance to the tastes of his followers as much as they owe their loyalty, love and obeisance to him.
Don't get me wrong, lots of Steve readers are quite similar to you in their closed-minded unwillingness to read anything that they don't already agree with, but lots more aren't.
What's more - even if the vast majority of Steve readers WERE of your tribal/servile/I'm-only-confident-when-surrounded-by-LOTS-of-people-who-agree-with-me predilections, I'm pretty sure that Steve would be able (eventually) to resist the urge of kowtowing to your demands so that you remain admirers of his.
@blacksea: what a remarkably inaccurate reader you are.
ReplyDeleteGreat post from Dennis.
ReplyDeleteThe "acid flashback" is so much mightier that whatever turgid, polemical dogma Anonymous would obviously prefer boring everyone to death with.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. A little too much channeling of Carl Sandburg and Jack Kerouac for my taste. A bit of judicious editing would've gone a long way toward making it more readable.
ReplyDeleteDearieme,
ReplyDeleteFrom The Telegraph:
"A new poll has found that many of Britain's young people have no knowledge of the nation's past, with some confusing scenes from Lord of the Rings with history.
Gandalf, Horatio Hornblower or Christopher Columbus were all thought by many to be an English hero and a sizeable number confused significant battles, with others thinking Britain had been conquered by the Germans, the Americans or the Spanish."
Yes, it is a shame, a great many people are rather ignorant of their national histories.
Though sad, this revelation hardly renders such people innately contemptible, since all of us are, in a variety of ways, ignorant. It's unavoidable, living as we do in a sea of facts and information.
I feel vaguely embarrassed posting this, since a US/UK pissing match strikes me as a monumental waste of time. Despite the manifest failings of both nations, when weighed against global norms, they are both societies of sometimes extraordinary achievement. In many ways, and justifiably, much of the world measures itself against the Anglophone nations.
That America suffers from many flaws, and is perhaps fatally flawed, is a proposition worthy of serious consideration. That America is simply a nation of fantasists, mall-walkers, and slack-jawed, drooling idiots who miraculously rose to global prominence seems highly unlikely from, among other perspectives, a Darwinian point of view.
Although an American citizen, I find much about contemporary America distasteful, and I live by choice beyond her borders. Nevertheless, I am well aware of a core (or perhaps a code) of decency to be found in a great many otherwise unremarkable Americans, and it is this core (or code) which I believe Dennis Dale sought to evoke in his post.
It may be to the benefit, or the sorrow, of much of the world's citizenry, but America consists of a good deal more than a nation of ciphers dreaming of Ronald Reagan upon the moon.
Dennis, firnig an M60 Rambo style is completely impractical. You do know that was just a movie right? The M60 should be fired mounted on a tripod with a T&E. Of course all the older ones (and the newer ones too maybe) are pieces of junk that jam all the time any way, so I'll request something a little more reliable.
ReplyDeleteMr. Dale was certainly on his game with that post, acid flashback notwithstanding. This bit, especially, deserves to be carved in stone and placed prominently,
ReplyDeleteWe have become incapable of recognizing the tragic pride of this attitude [that America, i.e., in its values and institutions, is "The Answer"]. This, the closest thing we have to a national religion, is a faith that cannot rise to the level of religion because it requires nothing of us--other than nodding, unthinking acquiescence to power. It combines the worst aspect of religiosity--resistance to contradictory reality, with the worst consequences of secularism--immodesty, intellectual and moral sloth, decadence.
Well done, sir!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete