“Well, I think Harvey was saying something funny, and you can take something someone said a few years ago out of context, but I think that’s a funny thing he said. Are you asking for a comment about Harvey Weinstein? I mean, I don’t know exactly what he’s being accused of yet, but I know some of the people involved in that situation, one very sweet person, and it hurts to hear her speak about it. Really, it hurts … I feel the pain about it and the pain is not over.”You can take something someone said a few years ago out of context, but I think that’s a funny thing he said.... Might have been funny a few years ago, but that's the context: A few years ago. Now, it's The Era of That's Not Funny, and apparently you not only have to stop infusing your speech with humor that's not so hit-on-the-head obvious that the dumbest person in the room gets it, you have to account for not having spoken up about the not-funniness of jokes that were cracked before The Era even began.
June 3, 2018
"Being a Murray-ite is a religion, where you can behave as badly as you want to people, and they still love you. I used to feel guilty about behaving badly, and then I met Bill, and it feels so much better."
Said Harvey Weinstein about Bill Murray, back in 2014, well before Weinstein became a pariah. Murray is asked about it now by The Guardian. He says:
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I don’t know exactly what he’s being accused of yet
Creeping with intent to mope.
When do we have to start dressing in drab colors? We aren’t somber enough. It’s time to get serious. They demand it.
Up against the wall, humorless harridans!
I'm looking forward to seeing Bill Murray, via TV, at some of Louisville basketball games this year now that we have new coach Chris Mack and one of his assistants is Bill Murray's son Luke Murray.
Stick to feminism. A moral guru your not.
The best way out of all this is for all creative production companies to physically leave the US, with all their talent, and work entirely abroad. They would distribute entirely over the internet to a global audience, with or without the US as a market.
The US market is far too risky, it is riddled with expensive landmines.
This all to avoid legal and reputational risk, and to lock in a safer audience, the rest of the world.
This should appeal even to companies like Disney, that have gone far into decadence in their corporate culture. This is because they too are at risk, no matter what side they are on.
"you have to account for not having spoken up about the not-funniness of jokes that were cracked before The Era even began."
Actually, as an old white man, he has to justify his existence.
Anyway, I'm sure #HeKnew. But #HillLostSoNowItCanBeTold.
The new system is women's feelings have the highest priority in law, or should. Hence that's-not-funny as a legal principle.
Society as a whole is the new husband.
The Age of That's Not Funny is the Attack of the Single Loop Learners. They're not really coming for you, and they really, really don't get you. But they're going to catch you anyway, you natural double loopers. Bill Murray better shut up, because shut up. Some single looper ascendant is going to decontextualize. Apparently context is this thing that happened once. Once something is taken out of it, it can't ever be put back. Videos and recordings are forever, context dangerously ephemeral. That way danger lies. Bill Murray has fuck-you money to defend his sweet self from from his comedic fuck-you persona, while his comedy gems are turned into turds that will soon be flying in his direction. Does he have children?
Hence that's-not-funny as a legal principle.
Unfortunately, it's ex post facto law.
A good witch hunter understands that much evidence of witchcraft can only be seen for what it is in hindsight.
If he has no children, he should have fun with this. If he has them, he probably should shut up. For the children.
Ah, I see he has a Luke. I hope Luke has a strong rabbi in Louisville.
and you can take something someone said a few years ago out of context?
Hey, I bet that applies to Trump, too.
No reflection on Luke Murray, but Louisville is among the dirtiest sports programs in the NCAA, and that's saying something.
Bill Murray's one of those guys who can be really,really, great - or a prick.
I've worked with people like that, and its fun - years later - to tell all the great stories about how "wild and crazy" they were.
It wasn't fun at the time. you can be good 20 times, but you're evil once, people will rememeber the evil. Human nature.
Rapey Wein-pig of course was making a joke. He was all rapey BEFORE 2014.
It seems like everyone in NYC has a story like this about Bill Murray: I saw him in a restaurant/club/party, said hi, he came over and ate my steak/drank my drink/cut in on my dance/gave my wife a peck on the cheek. Then he decided to come with us to the afterparty and hung out in the loft until 4am before calling a car home.
I can see how people might be made uncomfortable by that sort of behavior, but rcocean: evil? No.
The best way out of all this is for all creative production companies to physically leave the US, with all their talent, and work entirely abroad.
The problem is that, for all their threats to leave, the talent all want to live here. Even Clooney came back from Italy.
"I can see how people might be made uncomfortable by that sort of behavior, but rcocean: evil? No."
Read the article. Bill pissed off a lot of people with some very bad behavior. Didn't speak to Ramis for 20 years. I'm just saying, I've worked with guys like that. 80% good - 20% bad. Whether the good makes up for the bad, depends on you. Mileage may vary.
"The problem is that, for all their threats to leave, the talent all want to live here. Even Clooney came back from Italy."
Too bad we couldn't make Hollywood an international city - like the Vatican. Then maybe peeps would understand they make movies for THE WORLD - not just the USA, and many of them are globalists who don't consider themselves 'muericans.
I don’t know what’s wrong with responding “Yes it is; what’s the matter with you?”
Why leave Buwaya? Why not stay and fight? And why would we want a Disney to thrive, rather than suffer under this regime? Is it really that hard to imagine a reversal in the Attack of the Single Loopers? It's true that a cognitive counterattack is doomed to fail, since lack of metacognition is the fundamental problem. But there are other ways of pushing back. That Aussie didn't debase himself the way so many others have under the spotlight for their 2 minute hate.
Are there stories out there about Bill Murray acting like a licentious grub like Weinstein?
I mean, he debased himself a little, but Pogo's was a relatively strong showing. Jordan Peterson is here to help.
Sounds like Harvey Weinstein laid the predicate for a (Murray-)cult defense. "Bill convinced me we were living in an endless Groundhog Day loop, and nothing mattered. I was just getting around to the self-improvement phase when the #MeToo ax fell." Counsel for the Defense demands that the jury be shown Groundhog Day, as a documentary.
White washing the badthink will continue until Leftist Collectivists have complete power or no power whatsoever. There is no middle ground.
Decide which alternative seems best.
No, I don't think Bill Murray is a licentious grub. He's an envelope pushing "lifestyle" comedian whose life is his life's work as much as any particular project.
Scott Adams, "My best estimate is that about a third of the public don’t possess the capacity to even recognize humor when they see it." Here.
The "left" is already as out of power as it is out of ideas. This is a fighting retreat fought by the only institutions left to the left. The hero ascendant of the left is Slavoj Zizek. He's got conferences and a journal dedicated to him. I'm sure one day monstrosities will be attempted in his name, but he's less about power and more purely about bullshit, some despicable bullshit for sure, but at least he's really, really funny. He's a clown, actually. Highly recommend the recent piece on him in City Journal.
Chuck, long-time reader here, and that's the funniest thing you've ever posted.
Why leave?
Judgement call on my part. Too much familiarity with your kids.
The fact is that the kids are not all right (mine are fine, but not most others).
If the kids are not right, there is no recovery to hope for.
Whatever is/was good about the US will die out with the last of the virtuous generations.
And there is no sign of substantial reform of the educational system. At this point it would take a wholesale abandonment of all of it to even begin to address your problems. I don't see it. If there were hope it would be because there was an intense war on universities and K-12, but there is no war.
“Why leave?”
“Judgement call on my part. Too much familiarity with your kids.
The fact is that the kids are not all right (mine are fine, but not most others).
If the kids are not right, there is no recovery to hope for.
Whatever is/was good about the US will die out with the last of the virtuous generations.”
Our kids are every bit as good as yours. Whatever is good with the US will continue to be good despite those who despise her.
I do not despise, I mourn.
I am at the bedside of a moribund friend.
> Whatever is good with the US will continue to be good despite those who despise her.
Civilization is fragile, when principles and knowledge are lost, it falls. I've thought that we were headed for a dark age for several decades, mostly because education in this country absolutely sucks. I know immigrants who were afraid to send their kids to the public schools because they would not get an education. It may be that much will survive elsewhere, China perhaps, but it will take a major upheaval to fix things here.
“I do not despise, I mourn.
I am at the bedside of a moribund friend.”
Long live these United States of America. Your constant negativity toward this country makes me wonder why you aren’t already gone.
“Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on the fate! We know what Master laid the keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, — are all with thee!”
"The Republic 'The Building of a Ship'" — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow would come after the traitorous Left with plenty of rags and change of clothes. The traitorous Left wants America to be some other country, one he wouldn't recognize. Or live in.
Excellent example. They no longer study Longfellow in your schools. Or not in nearly any. Consider that.
I studied Longfellow, out there across the Pacific, among 50 little brown boys, led by a little brown teacher under a mango tree, we memorized long bits of Hiawatha and Paul Revere's Ride.
But this is not done here in the US, now. It's expunged, erased. Things that made Americans Americans, especially things that made Americans out of immigrants, gone, all gone, as if they never were.
Buwaya
I and my ex and my parents went to considerable pains to make sure my son was educated in Canada after his mother got ill (and later died) when he was in grade school and I was working in the USA. Immense bother. Great investment.
daskol said... [Slavoj] Zizek would rule someday. But he was a clown.
So, pursuant to my goal of continuing education, I looked up the Slavoj Zizek, non-Funny Funny.
1. Slavoj Zizek translated Derrida into Slovenian. [That's not funny.]
2. Slavoj Zizek edits a series called Diaeresis written in English [That's not funny] which "deals with" philosophy but also can "intervene at the levels of ideology critique, politics, and art theory." [That's funny]
3. Slavoj Zizek wrote that "the convention center in which nationalist Slovene writers hold their conventions should be blown up, adding, "Since we live in the time without any sense of irony, I must add I don't mean it literally." Similarly, he jokingly made the following comment in May 2013, during Subversive Festival: "If they don't support SYRIZA, then, in my vision of the democratic future, all these people will get from me [is] a first-class one-way ticket to [a] gulag." In response, the right-wing New Democracy party claimed Žižek's comments should be understood literally, not ironically. That's ... not ... or that is ... or ... funny, you should ask. I know funny when I see it.
Anyhow we can see that Zizek encountered "that's not funny" long before most of us were aware.
But is it really a funny joke to say in Eastern Europe: I am a communist still, and in my preferred democratic future you nationalists will get a "one way ticket to the gulag?"
Is it funny to joke about ugly things that happened not so long ago to people still alive?
> I don’t know exactly what he’s being accused of yet,
Whaddaya got? It's targets of opportunity at this point.
I hope you realize how hugely important your opinion on this is, Ann. Not kidding. At all. Many men are looking to you and at other smart women very hard right now. We want you to adjudicate it without misandry (a word literally underlined as unknown and possibly misspelled as I type this, that's how un-PC the whole notion of it is), when it comes to women's general view on men's attraction to you and when it is OK. Totally unfair probably to ask. I'm sure a lot of us want to know regardless. Would you even have an answer? Or must men wonder in suspense forever and let the feminine be shrouded in mystique while the masculine is prosecuted? 20 years before I married her, my wife complained to me, "You turned away and gave up when I said no! You're supposed to come back!" I hated that and didn't marry her until 20 years later.
Whatever is good with the US will continue to be good despite those who despise her.
Well, since you speak from the group that says, "America was never great!" I guess we should be reassured.
Your constant negativity toward this country makes me wonder why you aren’t already gone.
Hilarious. From the group that applauded, "For the first time in my life I am proud of my country."
"Scott Adams, "My best estimate is that about a third of the public don’t possess the capacity to even recognize humor when they see it."
Adams is saying what any intelligent person has noticed. *Literally* 1/3 of the country cannot recognize satire, humor, hyperbole, or sarcasm.
Again and again, I've seen Adams or whoever post an OBVIOUS satirical or humorous post and seen people respond as if it was dead serious.
Even I have adjusted some of my posts to be more literal minded. Which was shocking to me. I mean, Rcocean, "Mr. Joe Six-pack", "Mr. Average Guy", and even *I* can't be read as "satirical"? Damn. But its true.
Never take no for an answer.
It took three years to get my wife to say yes.
Fire and blood and a costly, grinding siege are often the price of a good woman, or at least it can feel that way.
wildswan, he's full of bullshit, much of it despicable. his despair at his powerlessness may account for some of his more violent ideations. but he is THE thinker on the left now. maybe look into his opinions on identity politics and immigration. the left/right dichotomy is not merely useless at this point in terms of modeling thought and politics, it makes things damned confusing. inscrutable actually.
and buwaya, hear you about the kids. but there are other ways to get education than schools today. and jordan peterson is indeed here to help the kids. as is kanye.
Here's another thing that's shocking. The mere fact that you read "Althouse" and are smart enough to read the post/comments and understand them, places you in the top 80 or 90th percentile of American intelligence.
Incredible as it may seem, even some dumbo like "Chuck" or "Inga" is more knowledgeable and intelligent about public affairs than 90% of the USA.
You don't don't understand how Dumb most of America is. 50% of the USA doesn't read books. Even a cook book. 25% maybe read one - I repeat ONE - book a year. That's ANY book. A cook book, a self-help book. Whatever. That's how dumb the USA is.
Buwaya makes the case, or rather Inga did quite inadvertently, with Longfellow. Poems are not memorized any longer in the public schools, nor are times tables. I suppose it is considered high scholarship to google a topic and come up with Longfellow to make a point you did not intend to make. Again, the case made.
Shakespeare? Too hard. The Iliad? Too violent. Huckleberry Finn? Too racist. Hemingway? Too white. Mallory? Who? The King James Bible? Hateful myth.
Oh, we are coming to an end alright and at an accelerating pace. The good news is that my children and my grandchildren were or will be educated privately and will possess most of what the rest have lost or thrown away. They will be the one percent. You can count on that.
A useful revisionist look at Reagan in California.
He won the governorship in part through his prior renegade stance at the boisterous 1964 San Francisco Republican convention, when he joined the right-wing populist Goldwater, who snatched the nomination from the old-guard low-energy Rockefeller Republicans. He further infuriated the Republican status quo by running a last-minute insurgent campaign for president against the establishmentarian Nixon in 1968, and in 1976 by challenging Republican incumbent President Jerry Ford — an acrimonious, insurrectionary, and divisive primary for which Reagan was later blamed for the Carter victory. Indeed, the Republican establishment, despite its current nostalgia, never much liked Reagan until he won the presidency, blasting him as a yahoo who wanted to keep the Panama Canal or a voodoo economist who thought that cutting taxes and spending more on defense would lead to balanced budgets.
I do not know who the next charismatic California Republican leader might be to lead a Reagan-populist revolt against the welfare state. Most likely, if it is to happen, it will probably be a Hispanic conservative who will sound a lot like the take-no-prisoners Reagan, and who will likely be just as shunned by the state’s and nation’s Republican establishment.
Devin Nunes ?
My daughter was, for a while, in an advanced ("honors") program in a public middle school. She was and is a very literary girl. I asked her teacher what they would be reading in English lit and confessed to a fondness for Dickens.
No, no, no, that was much too advanced and out of reach, they would not attempt Dickens, in "honors" English. My sons went to a Catholic middle school. They slammed them with ten novels a year.
You don't don't understand how Dumb most of America is
What is really disturbing is tat this includes college students.
I read to my kids when they were little and always encouraged them with books.
There are circles in this country who call that "white privilege."
Fortunately, they also seem to be the group that is not having children.
> From the group that applauded, "For the first time in my life I am proud of my country."
The sudden rediscovery of patriotism by the Democrats, nee the Left, is one of the most remarkable events in my lifetime. Or it would be if it wasn't just more of the same, never ending, opportunistic BS put forth in the pursuit of power.
My younger son, who is the only non-college graduate in the family, went to private school and, in 8th grade, was assigned "Great Expectations."
I bought two copies and told him we would read it together. A couple of weeks later, I was far ahead of him but, with "encouragement," he finished it. I wish I could afford private schools for his kids but the tuition is now out of sight. Two of his are in charter schools, though.
Posterity occasionally gets it right. Bill Murray is the enduring star of the first generation SNL. Not Chevy Chase. Belushi has legend status, but he's not really a star.......From his persona, you would think Murray would have a few #metoo moments, but his excesses, at least the ones I've read about, were free from sexism. He goes over the line without crossing the line. That's a neat trick. It's hard to maintain a sense of humor and absurdity when you're old and rich.
Inga: Long live these United States of America. Your constant negativity toward this country makes me wonder why you aren’t already gone.
[quotes Longfellow]
So it's buwaya's negativity that caused Longfellow not to be taught to American schoolchildren anymore. Finally overcame the stalwart prog defense of this country's patriotic and Americanizing educational traditions, did he?
buwaya: But this is not done here in the US, now. It's expunged, erased. Things that made Americans Americans, especially things that made Americans out of immigrants, gone, all gone, as if they never were.
You sure do have a lot to answer for, buwaya.
>>The sudden rediscovery of patriotism by the Democrats, nee the Left, is one of the most remarkable events in my lifetime.
The sudden rediscovery of "The Red Menace" by the left is one of the most amusing events of my lifetime.
1970: "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming" = Right wing paranoia.
2018: "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming" = Nightly headline
If you enjoy literature, you will eventually find your way to Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare. Getting lost in a book is one way of enjoying life, although I have read many books that claim that there are other ways.....I don't think reading a lot makes you a better person. Perhaps well read people can cover their flaws with more eloquence or express their moral ambiguities with more precision, but there's no reason to believe that they're better people.
>>Things that made Americans out of immigrants
Crimethink. Double plus ungood.
In Longfellow's time, educated people claimed that children were not properly learning Latin and Greek. Not enough caning......WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics, spoke French, and went to church on Sunday.
Bill Murray was never funny and spoiled many a golf tournament with his exhibitionist antics.
People who could get lost in books, as a proportion of the population, no longer do.
This is evident in literary markets of all kinds. The is seen in unit sales, library usage, etc.
There was a golden age of the middlebrow, the time of book clubs and Readers Digest, that is dead.
And the loss is indeed in "better people".
Readers know more about more, and at far better able to deal with complexity.
This is evident in the daily barbarism of life, as we see in this and so much else.
But the populations that went to war in 1914 were able to sustain such a struggle.
They could absorb such a sacrifice, such an immensity of hardship.
They were better people than the moderns, tragically wasted, but better.
The moderns, were they to get into such a terrible war, would get rolled over by the peoples of 1914.
> WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men
Belonging to the aristocracy of the Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and German empires, mostly the last two. It was the end of the old polyglot empires and their rulers, who were unable to deal with the rise of Romantic Nationalism. That is not our current problem. Our current problem is the maintenance of basic infrastructure, both social and material.
"Readers know more about more, and at far better able to deal with complexity."
One of the hallmarks of this century (so far) has been the thudding, obstinate literal-mindedness of the public sphere. The loss of a sense of humor noted by S. Adams is probably part of this, as is a near complete inability to comprehend and handle complex issues.
I sometimes wonder how much this can be traced to the decrease in Serious Reading.
Literature we read in Junior High and High School [public schools], to name a few:
Homer's Iliad, Dickens Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth and Hamlet, Moliere's Tartuffe [in French] and of course Keats, Shelley and Byron. [I'll admit our American Lit fare was unmemorable].
My parents [in public school] learned Latin, my grandparents learned Latin and Greek and at least two great-grandfathers knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Low expectations reap predictable results.
In unrelated news, today they are marching to decriminalize prostitution.
Harvey Weinstein is marching at the front of the column holding up million dollar checks for would be actresses in his next films.
See, he didn't do anything wrong, they just haven't decriminalized prostitution yet. As soon as they do, he'll be sure to write certain acts into the contract.
Michael: Buwaya makes the case, or rather Inga did quite inadvertently, with Longfellow. Poems are not memorized any longer in the public schools, nor are times tables. I suppose it is considered high scholarship to google a topic and come up with Longfellow to make a point you did not intend to make. Again, the case made.
Shakespeare? Too hard. The Iliad? Too violent. Huckleberry Finn? Too racist. Hemingway? Too white. Mallory? Who? The King James Bible? Hateful myth.
Oh, we are coming to an end alright and at an accelerating pace. The good news is that my children and my grandchildren were or will be educated privately and will possess most of what the rest have lost or thrown away.
All isn't lost for people who can't afford to pay for private schools for their children or grandchildren. Inexpensive copies of classics, even long out-of-print, fondly remembered series from my own childhood, are easily found and acquired online. (E.g., I've been laying in volumes from those wonderful old Time-Life series, published before the Great Dumbing-Down. Great stuff for first-graders to early teens.)
I had the benefit of being sent to decent private schools, but even so the vast majority of my reading, and acquisition of general knowledge, was done on my own. Read to your children and grandchildren, then give them good books after they've learned to read. The important thing is that they establish an independent reading life. The best school can only give them so much. And if you're stuck with sending them to inadequate schools, liberation is affordably available through a few clicks. (You can even use the Althouse Amazon portal!)
See, a serious reader would realize that "WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics" is a pathetic excuse for an argument.
"People who could get lost in books...."
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment. As a lover of books, as I'm sure many here are, it is our loss.
"barbarism of life"
Books have been replaced by the barbarism of the internet.
WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics, spoke French, and went to church on Sunday.
I am reading an interesting book titled, "The Sleepwalkers" that goes in great detail about the origins of that war. The origins were far more complex than the usual version, even by Barbara Tuchman, who is so popular. Most people assume the Germans were the barbarians and once the war began they did behave atrociously but they were not as responsible as has been assumed.
The only real villains in the book I have discovered are the Serbs who were trying to build a major power from weak roots. The French also share as they funded the Serbs and the Russians which were both poor countries.
They failed to learn the lessons of the American Civil War, which should have taught them that Napoleon's tactics were obsolete.
Paco: See, a serious reader would realize that "WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics" is a pathetic excuse for an argument.
Beat me to it, Paco.
"The important thing is that they establish an independent reading life"
Even my son, who was such a reluctant student in elementary school, is now an independent reader.
I had a time with him. He is a big handsome guy and I had a rule that none of the kids could get a drivers' license unless they had a B average. Joe outwaited me and, when he was 17, he had girls picking him up for dates in Ferrari cabriolets. I gave in and he got his license.
My youngest daughter said, "What do I get if I have an A average?" I told her I would buy her a car. I had to cough up when she was 16.
Michael K, in reading a lot of history one concludes that there are as many different angles to various conflicts as there are people willing to develop them.
"... it's The Era of That's Not Funny"
Meh. This is a small potatoes concern, I suggest.
More importantly, it's"The Era of Agree With Me or F..you, you cunt!".
Michael K: Even my son, who was such a reluctant student in elementary school, is now an independent reader.
I had a time with him. He is a big handsome guy and I had a rule that none of the kids could get a drivers' license unless they had a B average. Joe outwaited me and, when he was 17, he had girls picking him up for dates in Ferrari cabriolets.
Lol. The dawg. You gotta get wilier with some kids. Especially the ones who can have no wheels (in California!), and still pull chicks.
Paco: See, a serious reader would realize that "WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics"
This is the exact reason that I think that it is so important for everyone in a democracy to work things out for themselves to the best of their ability. This is why I am a free speech absolutist. Trust the intellectuals completely and the next thing you know they will be conscripting your children to send them to some Hell on earth. This is known as anti-intellectualism.
Mockturtle said...
Michael K, in reading a lot of history one concludes that there are as many different angles to various conflicts as there are people willing to develop them.
I just finished Max Boot's biography of Edward Lansdale.
Talk about what might have beens !
He had led the Philippines and Magsaysay to defeat the Huks and was close to Diem in South Vietnam.
Kennedy and Cabot Lodge, over Lansdale's protests, took out Diem and SV dissolved into repeated military coups.
I don't know that we would have won with Lansdale but there would not have been 500,000 American soldiers there.
He was opposed to big army tactics, both in the Philippines and in SV.
Especially the ones who can have no wheels (in California!), and still pull chicks.
Joe now has a terrific wife and three great kids and is the only one that owns a nice home in OC.
He'll be 50 next April. He's been a fireman 25 years.
"Readers know more about more, and at far better able to deal with complexity."
Usually, I have noticed, readers deal with more complexity by treating hand waving as a valid step in a logical argument.
> The French also share as they funded the Serbs and the Russians which were both poor countries.
In particular, they funded the Russian railroads because of their importance to the military. One could say that they deliberately sought to put Germany between two enemies. OTOH, there was no good reason for Germany to have antagonized their old Russian ally except for their own territorial ambitions in the East; lebensraum was not a Nazi invention, and even Engels, in the spirit of the age, referred to the Slavs as the natural enemies of the Germans. I think Engels made that observation about 1853.
Even given all that, I think WWI was avoidable, and that any of the Kaiser, Franz Joseph, or even Nicholas could have avoided it if they had had sufficient judgement and the courage to stand against the forces urging war.
"to work things out for themselves to the best of their ability"
I would argue that such working-out will be greatly handicapped without the wide exposure to the world (both physical and intellectual) that a broad literary background provides. You don't have to experience bullshit and misfortune first-hand, you can learn from some other poor bastard's experience and misfortune.
It's not a panacea, but you're better off with it than without it.
> You don't have to experience bullshit and misfortune first-hand, you can learn from some other poor bastard's experience and misfortune.
Yeah, but I was around 40 before I figured that out and even then it was hard to take advantage of it. It still is, and I'm a reader.
A serious reader would know that when I stated that WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics I was not making an argument but observing a fact.
I have some mistrust of great literature. In just about every possible way, Wellington was a superior man to Bonaparte. But it's just a fact that there was something about Napoleon that inspired the artists of his time. Not just French writers like Stendhal and Hugo, but Germans like Heine and Goethe and even English writers like Byron and Carlyle celebrated Bonaparte's genius......In our own time, Eisenhower seems to have gotten most things right, but JFK gets all the glory. Artists are a particular kind of stupid, but there are other varieties.
The collapse of education usually dates from the year after one's own graduation. This has been going on since Socrates, at least. There were probably grey-beards in Ur complaining that kids don't read enough.
"The collapse of education usually dates from the year after one's own graduation. This has been going on since Socrates, at least. There were probably grey-beards in Ur complaining that kids don't read enough.'
Says, the planglossian dope who probably doesn't read anything.
Yes, today is the best of of all possible worlds, and it always has been.
OTOH, there was no good reason for Germany to have antagonized their old Russian ally except for their own territorial ambitions in the East;
There is a pretty good argument that Russia, in spite of the 1905 defeat, was shifting troops west and the Germans were pessimistic about the future. People forget that Czarist Russia was rapidly modernizing and looked much more powerful than they really were. The Bolsheviks set them back 25 years but the Russia that defeated Hitler was Czarist Russia of 1930.
I got interested in this literature from reading Pat Buchanan's book. "The Unnecessary Wars," in which he attacks Churchill and Edward Grey. I think he has a fair case with Grey. The huge error that brought on WWII was the Poland guarantee by Chamberlain. Churchill was not part of that. Buchanan's argument is that Hitler would have attacked Stalin, not France.
I don't know that I buy that but it is interesting to speculate.
I do agree that WWI was avoidable and France bears a lot of the blame.
Wellington was in no way a greater man than Napoleon.
Napoleon worked in a vastly greater scale, the problem set he addressed was much greater.
Napoleons vision and ambition were on global scales.
He was also more flawed, indeed he was amoral far beyond Wellingtons own limits. It would not be wrong to call him evil.
Wellington had his virtues, but not that vision. And Wellington, even in the military sphere, was not running the entire military effort of his alliance, or even that of his national military. He was a good man with a middle sized army in a battle, and a campaign, but was never tasked with the sort of complex coordination of converging independent corps that was Napoleons signature move.
Wellington could not have subjugated Europe, and he was never tested as a generalissimo of the armies of a continent.
It is more apt to compare Wellington to the better of Napoleons marshals, Davout say.
William: A serious reader would know that when I stated that WWI was initiated and continued by cultivated men who had read the classics I was not making an argument but observing a fact.
Usually observations of facts in the context of a discussion have a point.
Here, I assume you're making an implicit argument about the value (or lack thereof) of being a cultivated man who has read the classics. If so, it would be interesting if you could expand on your point. If you are merely observing that being cultivated and reading the classics in itself cannot prevent human beings from doing catastrophically stupid things, that would be a trite observation of fact unknown to nobody, so hardly worth the trouble of typing it out and posting it.
The artists of the time saw a new Alexander or Julius Caesar, an almost mythological figure, a superman, a demigod.
And they were right.
It just took them a while to realize that a demigod was not a good thing, that they were the Persians and Gauls.
> Pat Buchanan's book. "The Unnecessary Wars,"
I haven't read it, but I think I have encountered echos of it, so to speak. What seems to go missing in those arguments I've read is the personality of the Kaiser and the thinking of the German General Staff. For example, the Kaiser asked the General Staff to draw up plans for the invasion of the US as part of a strategy aimed at acquiring navel bases in the Caribbean. That's strategic thinking in the grand style, but also nuts. The Kaiser also broke with Bismark over the latter's desire to maintain peace with Russia. From Wikipedia: Bismarck told an aide, "That young man wants war with Russia, and would like to draw his sword straight away if he could. I shall not be a party to it."
@Buwaya -- In seventh grade we had to memorize and recite a poem of our choice. Most of my classmates chose very short poems. I figured, what the hell, if I am going to do this I might as well do it, and memorized Paul Revere's Ride. I still remember vast stretches of it after many years.
Classical education need not have a practical application. It has value in and of itself. That goes for basic scientific research, as well.
"Wellington was in no way a greater man than Napoleon.
Yes, but Wellington won in Spain and ultimately in Belgium with troops that he despised. History is written by the victors.
They knew there was nothing impeachable...
...so that’s why you were impeached, President Bubba? Not as bright as you get credit for..
"Michael K, in reading a lot of history one concludes that there are as many different angles to various conflicts as there are people willing to develop them."
So brilliant!
Nothing to mock re this sorta genius jabber.
Carry on.
Was chop sticking:
“Great doubts… deep wisdom; small doubts… little wisdom.”
> but Wellington won in Spain and ultimately in Belgium
Also India, which I find interesting. But I think buwaya has a valid point, which is that Wellington was a part of a much larger organization that included a fine navy, a competent government, developing industry, and finance, that worked on an even larger scale than Napoleon. The contribution of such as Nelson cannot be neglected.
Now, what if Napoleon had been English ;)
Gluttony. One is not enough.
"You are magnetic in your bearing."
Napoleon was ultimately done in by nepotism. He appointed all his relatives to posts they had no business holding.
He made Joseph, his older brother, King of Spain and Jerome, his youngest brother, led his left against Hougoumont at Waterloo. Jerome was supposed to be leading a feint to draw Wellington's center to the right but he kept reenforcing failure and ended up losing 8,000 of his 10,000 men.
Jerome probably did more to lose that battle than the rain, which made cannon fire less effective.
Like Trump, he had a small cadre he could rely on. I hope Trump does better then he did.
"Mock need not be self-aware."
So brilliant!
Nothing to mock re this sorta genius jabber.
Carry on.
If you were not a fool, you would notice that was not my quote.
Carry on, dipshit.
Yur the best Doc!
Blogger anti-de Sitter space said...
Yur the best Doc!
An apology would be appropriate. If you are going to try to mock someone, try to get your facts right.
Carry on.
As I said above, Napoleons problem sets were always immensely larger than Wellingtons.
chuck is perfectly right.
Just consider that in the three months before the day of battle, Napoleon had to overthrow the French monarchy, install his own government and (politically) subjugate all of France, act as the French Head of State and head of government, be his own geralissimo and re-build and reorganize the whole French army, which had been mostly demobilized, conduct foreign affairs against a hostile coalition, organize and run a lightning campaign on two axes of movement, and very nearly crushed both allied armies in Belgium, which outnumbered his considerably, on June 16 (Ligny-Quatre Bras), which he missed doing by a hair.
And in all that Napoleon was not at the height of his powers.
His ambitions always exceeded even his abilities, but nobody else had his abilities.
Wellington was an excellent commander of medium-sized armies, but in no way a Napoleon.
Doc,
Thanks to you bein' you, this time you were unexpected collateral, re mocking. I knew I was referring to someone other than you. Left plenty of clues re 'Mock' (as if my quotation re 'Mturtle' wasn't enough).
Anywho, it's too much, now. Respect for my elders requires me to nudge you to stop digging.
"chuck is perfectly right"
Life long.
chuck =/= Chuck.
Chuck is the LLR.
BTW,
I am still sorry re my quoting a dumb teen movie re FBI gals, such as yer kid.
"Eddie Lampell: Who would you rather do: Agent Scully or Gillian Anderson?
Alicia DeGasario: They're the same person, you idiot.
Eddie Lampell: [to Chase] How about you?
Chase: Let's see, a flaky, self-absorbed actress or a gun-toting, badass FBI agent with years of pent-up sexual tension? No contest.
Eddie Lampell: My man. What I wouldn't do to Scully...
Alicia DeGasario: I'm sure she's been drooled on before."
Ever since, I've held back. As contrition.
Believe it or not, I also still holdback re Mock. Very early on she expressed exasperation re too much questioning from me (several handles ago). So, I still moderate re her.
And, It seems like I've been too harsh re Althouse, too.
I forget that most folks here care about here.
Anywho, Drago is a fully free target
Oh, I do usually scan the threads.
But, I didn't here.
My bad.
It's OK, shiloh or whoever you are. Mockery is not neatly as interesting as contribution to the discussion.
What do you think about the First World War ?
I shocked a friend of mine, a retired British colonel, by saying we should never have gotten into that war.
I added, they should have stayed out too.
ADSS, what is your purpose?
Care to talk about 3.8% unemployment?
Or U6 unemployment at 7.7%
Obama never got U6 under 10%.
Be substantive, you worthless punch-bowl-swimmer.
Wellington thought his men were scum and had them flogged for minor infractions. On the other hand, he was very sparing of their lives and avoided battles that he could have won because the cost in lives would be too great. If you wished to survive a war and get paid regularly, Wellington had the right army for you.......Napoleon did not flog his men and promoted enlisted men to the officer's ranks. His men were loyal to him. More fools they. Napoleon abandoned three or four armies in the field, but the survivors of his failed campaigns remained loyal. They refused to fire on him when he returned from Elba. They marched with him to Waterloo. Another forty thousand lives wasted.......Some two million men died before their time to satisfy Napoleon's ambitions. There is no counterbalance to the debit entries in this ledger.......The fact that Napoleon commanded the admiration and respect of such men as Goethe, Kant, Hugo, Byron should give you pause.
Doc Mike,
I currently know that we're (occasionally) droning Al-Qaeda in Yemen, but we're mostly selling weapons to Saudis and UAE who work w/ Al-Qaeda re the civil war in Yemen. Houthi's are pals w/ Iran, though even before Saudi import controls there wasn't direct, documented links re weapons, and now there's a severe Saudi lockdown re boarders.
Anywho, w/ hindsight, and no way to test my hypos, many decades from now I hope I'm not blathering about this.
Just sayin'
Wellington was an abolitionist. At the Congress of Vienna he was the one who insisted on freeing the slaves in the French West Indies.it was Wellington, not the French Revolution, who emancipated the slaves on Josephine's sugar plantations......Additionally, it should be noted that Wellington was instrumental in the repeal of the Corn Laws and giving (propertied) Catholics the vote in Ireland........In India and in the Peninsular Campsign, he consistently won battles where he was outgunned and outmanned. There used to be a thing where a field of battle was considered a field of honor and it was considered dishonorable to refuse battle. Wellington's great innovation to warfare was to refuse battle if themortal cost appeared to be too high. The Russians observed this tactic and put it to good use during Napoleon's campaign there. An argument can be made that Wellington and not Napoleon was the outstanding man of his era.
Greatness is not a matter of debits or credits, ethics or "niceness", or even value to the human race.
It is all about ability and significance. Evil men matter as much, or more, usually, than the good. Any other qualities are incidental though often useful, in an amoral sense.
"mockturtle said...
Bill Murray was never funny and spoiled many a golf tournament with his exhibitionist antics."
He's very funny is some stuff...Caddyshack, Stripes. SNL. And I agree about his crap at Bing Crosby Pro-Am (or whatever it's called now.) But that's more a show then a tournament. But he sure does wear on you.
"I was dumbfounded that he would intellectually blind himself to the most stupendous invention in our lifetime, one that even relatively incurious people have come to rely upon for information, entertainment and learning."
Right, how can folks live w/ printed jabber if they don't have Lil Tay and Woah Viky?
Refusing battle is not "a great innovation".
This is ancient. Quintus Fabius was famous for it, 2300 years ago.
Closer to the period Peter the Great and Field Marshal Daun famously defeated military genius opponents by doing just that (Charles XII of Sweden and Frederick the Great respectively).
rcocean said...
"You don't don't understand how Dumb most of America is. 50% of the USA doesn't read books. Even a cook book. 25% maybe read one - I repeat ONE - book a year. That's ANY book. A cook book, a self-help book. Whatever. That's how dumb the USA is."
************************************
That factoid has been around for more than thirty years. Given that a huge number of people do their reading on the Internet and via Kindle and its like, it's a bit flaky as a statistic. Why read a physical book when you can get a digital version on-line?
Here's site that shows the rise of ebooks and the decline of printed books in the US, with a $20 Billion revenue total:
https://www.statista.com/chart/1159/ebook-sales-to-surpass-printed-book-sales-in-2017/
Here's a website's abstract re the number of printed books:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/703391/number-of-books-consumers-read-per-year/
"The statistic shows unit sales of printed books in the United States from 2004 to 2017. In the last presented year, 687 million printed books were sold in the U.S."
Lessee, that's roughly 2 PRINTED books per person per year. If 25% don't read at all, that's roughly 3 books a year for everyone else. Man, woman, child.
But read on:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/703391/number-of-books-consumers-read-per-year/
"The statistic shows the average number of books consumers read per year in the United States in 2017. During the survey, 20 percent of respondents stated that they read up to 10 books on average per year. The highest proportion of respondents, 41 percent in total, stated that they read more than 15 books a year.
So right there---you're full of shit. 61% of respondents said they read more than 10 books a year. Yes, that's a self-selecting sample, but it's a fuck of a lot higher than your claim that 50% don't read at all.
"The most avid book readers were those aged 60 and older, as 43 percent of respondents in this age category stated that they read more than 15 books per year. During a worldwide survey among internet users in 17 countries, 30 percent of respondents stated that they read every day or most days. In contrast, just six percent stated that they never read books."
****
The actual graphs with the data are paywalled, but I think it shows that the US population reads more than than you claimn -- a lot more.
But thanks for sharing your bigotry toward fellow Americans.
*******************
But hey! You want Dumb---I'll give you Dumb.
A college pal of mine, a Psych major, carved out a good income working for the state government his whole life, and by moonlighting in group therapy on the side.
He's in his 60's now, and after I saw him for the first time in many years, he remarked that he doesn't "do" computers, let alone the Internet. Never learned, never wanted to.
I was dumbfounded that he would intellectually blind himself to the most stupendous invention in our lifetime, one that even relatively incurious people have come to rely upon for information, entertainment and learning.
So I guess he's a counter-example to my point. HE doesn't get info from the Internet. But I'm sure he's not the kind of "dumb" American you want to feel superior toward. After all, he's a lib.
He also assured me that ordinary Cubans don't complain about their impoverishment, because "they don't know any better" ----AS IF they can't see for themselves party bigwigs riding around in big-ass Mercedes while they are stuck fixing their 1960 Chevrolets. AS IF they can't see the wealth of the tourists who "go slumming" in their country. AS IF they can't see the big-ass jets flying in from other countries with those countries with their fat-ass tourists.
Snort.
Yes what was the point of the first world,war why was a,generation sacrifices on the plains of Belgium and France, for what.
In Gibson's the difference engine, Wellington has become the man on horseback around 1831, British diplomacy has prevented the colonies from consolidating among other details.
anti-de Sitter space said...
"I was dumbfounded that he would intellectually blind himself to the most stupendous invention in our lifetime, one that even relatively incurious people have come to rely upon for information, entertainment and learning."
Right, how can folks live w/ printed jabber if they don't have Lil Tay and Woah Viky?
*************************
You have to be a REALLY serious fucktard not to know the difference between Instagrams and printed/ebooks.
But it doesn't surprise us.
After a life wasted on action figure/transformer/superhero movies, why would you have the capacity to actually engage in critical thinking??
In fact refusing battle was SOP in Austrian operational thought, by the 1770s. They did very well wt this, against Frederick the Great in fact, during the War of the Bavarian Succession, 1778-79.
It worked, for a while, though it ultimately failed against the French Revolutionary armies, in the Austrian Netherlands in the 1790s.
"You have to be a REALLY serious fucktard not to know the difference between Instagrams and printed/ebooks."
Ha!
So, after all your jabber (incl deleting and re-commenting) you agree that a person who only reads actual paper is not lacking anything at all sans the internet idiocy.
Sheesh.
Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. Sun Tzu.
Says, the planglossian dope who probably doesn't read anything.
To be candid, this is not the best of all possible worlds, nor is it the worst.
Buwaya asserts: It is all about ability and significance. Evil men matter as much, or more, usually, than the good. Any other qualities are incidental though often useful, in an amoral sense.
I think significance is the key. Nietzsche understood it. Although he, himself was not great.
I was,struck rereading candide recently, how,extraordinarily violent the scenes depicted are.
Probably Tarantino might do that part justice.
Why read a physical book when you can get a digital version on-line?
I d=finally got my medical history book converted to Kindle and you can find it right here.
I read Kindle books in bed and when waiting at some office. Otherwise, I prefer the real thing.
I do listen to audio books in the car when commuting.
I get the distinct impression that nobody is innocent these days. You just haven't been accused yet. Then yure good deeds and self-control will get you no more than your innocence did, becuase we have a cultural disease and some people seem to have so little important work to do that they must resort to the enjoyment of watching others suffer public destruction.
It's aptly reminiscent of communist purges which happened wherever communists ever took power. Are they here now? No. This is the free nation version of totalitarianism. It has everything except total power. The Constitution, as ignored and disheveled as it it is now, still struggles in weakness to hold things together while weakened by the disease.
Just bought your Kindle book Mike, on the Althouse Amazon portal.
Just how much of of our world would exist without the contribution of people who read few books. If everyone was an intellectual, we would starve while drowning in our own waste, but we would be very proud of ourselves anyway.
Napoleon lost something like 30% of his forces on his advance into Russia. This was in good weather during a mostly unopposed advance. This tactic of withdrawal without battle was orchestrated by deTolly who consciously emulated Wellington's tactics of non engagement.....It should be noted that although Napoleon did not flog his troops, neither were his troops noted for their good behavior. The rapes and plunder they engaged in inspired the partisans in Spain and Russia. There's more to winning a war than winning the battle. When Wellington crossed the Pyrenees into France, the French civilians there greeted his troops as liberators.......Napoleon was some kind of elemental force, but he was no great statesman and his gifts as a general only caused a great many unnecessary deaths.......A lot of people took him for the second coming of Charlemagne but he was really the early edition of the totalitarians of the next century. Maybe someday people will look on him the way we look on Lenin, Hitler, and Mao, but, until such time, we will continue to produce leaders like Lenin, Hitler, and Zamora.
Where the hell did Zamora come from. S/b Mao.
I probably read 10 times the volume of information today that I did before the internet. I would say that is due to the quality of the finding. You can find what you need much quicker, and also find what you had no idea existed more often. These are incredible advantages to anyone interested in learning, or enjoying history, ideas, creativity, accomplishment, and competence. It's an incredible time to be alive, even with its obvious negatives. Books were nice, but so was the model T. Now I would enjoy having a model T, and driving it about, but if I wanted to get things done, I'd choose something faster and more capable.
Zelaya the wannAbe dictator of HondurAs, I guess. This was the first contest the Obama administration lost.
"Now I would enjoy having a model T, and driving it about, but if I wanted to get things done, I'd choose something faster and more capable."
I honestly prefer my 1935 Packard more than my Ferraris et. al.. It feels more human, less douche bag-y. I'm pro-more-human.
Different strokes fer different folks.
> but he was really the early edition of the totalitarians of the next century.
This makes me wonder if there has been an Englishman that could be called great in the way that Napoleon was. The only example I can think of might be Cromwell, but even he had the advantage of a working bureaucracy and didn't try to conquer the continent. I think the English traditions of government and the English Channel works against it.
Would the great upheaval gives,a decent sketch of where Napoleon cAme from, he was a reaction to the terror, the way maybe kornilov had been if he had deposed Lenin in the civil war.
F yur books:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsp7IOr7Q9A
Books are for ne4ds!
Paco Wové said...
"Readers know more about more, and at far better able to deal with complexity."
One of the hallmarks of this century (so far) has been the thudding, obstinate literal-mindedness of the public sphere. The loss of a sense of humor noted by S. Adams is probably part of this, as is a near complete inability to comprehend and handle complex issues.
I sometimes wonder how much this can be traced to the decrease in Serious Reading."
We didn't have WWI take out a great generation, but we have endured unfortunate demographic trends that may have distorted ratios a bit. Procreation fell out of fashion among people whose progeny might have been helpful, while having babies stayed broadly popular. Social media puts the stupid up in your face in a way we've never seen before. Are we mistaking that for more stupid than we've ever seen before? Because in the digital age, you can't help but get your face rubbed in the stupid, but turns out that's actually pretty helpful. Maybe even makes up for some of that lack of proper learning, and then some.
In any age, all that great learning can only ever be useful to a small number of the people getting it. Don't know how long the golden age of the middlebrow lasted, but it certainly is not a precondition of civilization across history. Our particular civilization? Yeah, it's been pretty helpful. But is it really over, or does it just look really different now? We fucked up our schools. Check.
Social media rubs your face in the stupid, and some of you are picking up on bits and pieces of the other, more sympathetic effects: we're talking about Roseanne Thursday, and by Friday it's all about Samantha Bee. And now, maybe, Bill Murray. Social media rubs your face in the stupid, and that's another way of learning. It's not elevated, lofty learning, but shame works too. A cognitive solution is doomed to fail when the problem is a lack of metagcognition to begin with. Social mores have broken down, but shame is still all around us, if you'd just take a look. That works too, always has, on most of the people. And it's working quite well today, even without the traditions, conventions and elevated water-cooler conversation of the middlebrow highpoint of our civilization. The digital age rubs your face in the stupid, but it also accelerates the cognitive cycle of the collective hive mind. That way optimism lay.
I'm not worried about Bill Murray either, because he's got balls. He's always had balls. Like Big Mike said above, Bill's answer was basically: yes, it was funny, so what of it? I figure he'll stick with that.
I hear you anti-de Sitter space. Although I haven't got a fucking clue what that name is about.
Maybe they should start with Kanye.
This Childish Gambino song, the way he plays with beats, kinda reminds me of how David Byrne and The Talking Heads used rhythm. Especially towards the end of the opening number to Stop Making Sense, David Byrne's "solo" Pscyho Killer, which is my favorite version of that song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY
It also plays with paranoia, although the playfulness is a bit more aggressive and less personal than David Byrne's style. Still, it is playful paranoia.
Now, what if Napoleon had been English ;)
What if he'd been French?
Wasn't Andrew Sullivan a big Talking Heads fan?
Or, was it some other gay-ish band.
Not that there's anything wrong w/ that.
Yes he was Corsican Hitler was Austrian Stalin was Georgian and Lenin was of chuvash and kalmyk roots.
What the hell?
I started w/ Daskol's link at 10:31 Altwich time, and just now Google (i.e. youtube) logic decided, after a winding path, I should land on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FdP0eS47ts
The same song they chose for me the last time I followed a music link from here.
I do love that song.
F-ing Gooogle! Or, thanks Google!?
The latter. IMHO.
P.S. I can always console myself by knowing I don't get the 'crazy cat lady' ad that Althouse gets from Google.
P.P.S. Also, I do get ads for baller stuff. Just sayin'
OTOH,
Now that I've stated that I love that song on a Google platform (i.e. these threads) I'd guess that it wouldn't take a very sophisticated algorithm to keep feeding it to me.
Now, the test will be to see if the algorithm adjusts and ditches serving it up before I lose interest.
BTW nerds at Google,
I never (at least so far) get tired of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fa4lOQfbA
Slip that in, please.
It's cool to see how Althouse's POV re being so-called on topic has morphed.
Anywho, if I was one of the first comments here, I say that Bill said:
“I have to be leaving, but I won’t let that come between us. OK?”
Cause, I respect the house rules. Meade, too. Though he makes it hard when he acts like an adolescent riding his bike in the backyard. At least he's is a stickler for grammar, so that's manly.
Wellington and Napoleon weren't on equal standing William Pitt was his rival for the better part of 30 years, he,was also a relatively young man when he became prime minister.
Maybe 20 years
https://www.britishempire.co.uk/biography/pitttheyounger.htm
Hope Sandoval is dreamy.
saw kant, byron and a few others up there, but nietzsche also seemed to admire napolean. always thought of that fact, along with his disdain for german nationalism/unification, as making nietzsche more appealing.
Sullivan Hoped for Pethead.
Hard-core:
https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/06/for-hard-core-petheads-the-tennant-interview-in-full/200905/
used to read sullivan a lot, and have started reading him again recently. but this hilarious pethead stuff is from his middle period, which I'd missed. funny stuff.
that conversation about wellington vs. napolean: wow. I've been reading more military history lately, but still on ancients, with a smattering of WWII. if I'm understanding buwaya's perspective, sounds like wellington may be in the mold of the brilliant tactician, while napolean was grand strategist. perhaps a similar dynamic to Patton vs. Ike in WWII? Ike managed multiple campaigns and huge organizations spread all across the globe, while nobody could touch patton when it came to innovating creative ways to grind up germans, usually with tanks, and thwart grand plans of german generals.
Contrasting the leadership and tactical styles of Patton, Montgomery and Rommel is fascinating reading. A few years ago I binged on this topic. One must set aside one's own national pride and close old wounds and be utterly objective to really enjoy this. An often overlooked factor in the judging of military leaders is the material they had to work with. Cromwell, for example, had a quickly-assembled rag-tag bunch of untrained peasants but he made the most of them.
Eisenhower had quite an assemblage of worthy but headstrong talent in his orchestra. That he was able to keep such men as Montgomery, Patton, DeGaulle and others working in harmony with each other and towards a common goal speaks to a talent beyond mere genius. Like Wellington, he doesn't get the credit he deserves........Churchill has taken on the official role of The Hero of WWII. He certainly deserved that appellation in 1940, but I think It was Eisenhower more than Churchill who approved the winning strategies and successfully managed the war.
William, I agree about Eisenhower. But the reason he was more or less drafted for the Presidency post-war is that people at that time were aware of his value and accomplishments.
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