Today is the day!
What were the last words of the country’s revered first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk?...
The final thoughts of the statesman, who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since, according to Czech public radio, which has set up a special section of its website to cover the opening of the envelope on Friday.
When Jan Masaryk died under suspicious circumstances just days after the Communist coup in 1948 he left the letter to his secretary, Antonín Sum. Sum smuggled it out of the country, which had become a Soviet satellite state in the aftermath of World War II.Sum and Lumír Soukup, another former personal secretary of Jan Masaryk, kept the letter safe for decades before donating it to the Czech National Archive in 2005 on the condition that it remain sealed for 20 years....
ADDED: The event:
UPDATE: From what I'm seeing right now the letter says: "If people are uneducated and foolish, you can't do much about it. People like to be foolish, but don't make it easy for them. Argue with them."
AND: I took the text of the letter from a Czech language X account, which has this interesting Czech description: "Nevtipný, satirický, sarkastický, cynický, parodický fakenews blogísek." That auto-translates to: "An unfunny, satirical, sarcastic, cynical, parody fakenews bloglet." That might suggest that the quote isn't really from the letter. I await further info.
Commenting on Masaryk's letter, that X account says, auto-translated: "Once the voters of SPD, ANO, and the communists chew through this quote, they will surely appropriate it and claim it speaks to their souls. Because they will never realize that they are precisely the uneducated fools, as evidenced by the graphs of electoral preferences based on the level of education attained, the absence of critical thinking, lack of empathy, minimal perspective, and their media illiteracy."
BUT: I love the word sarkastický.
ALSO: I love the phrase "Czechs agog." "Agog" is a wonderful word. It's appeared a handful of times in the 21-year history of this blog, mainly in quotes, but once from me. What was the one time this word — this word I love — sprang from me? It was January 8, 2024, and I was writing about the NYT article "Biden’s Christian ‘Persecution’? We Assess Trump’s Recent Claims. Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of criminalizing Christians, and Catholics in particular, for their faith." I wrote:
We're told Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said he was "appalled" and Christopher Wray said he was "aghast." And I'm astounded, amazed, and agog.
It was only because I was stretching for another "a" word that I came out with "agog." It's just not there among the words floating at the top of words I know. How can I make it come up more?
PLUS: For insight into that Czech account quoted above, consider that it also has this:
संदेश
44 टिप्पणियां:
He would not have been surprised by the CAGW scam.
Last night I told the Omaha Public Power District that their net zero policy was foolish.
Drink more Ovaltine.
The only clip of Charlie Kirk I've heard is him being unnecessarily mean. You'd think such a famous nice guy would at least be nicer than I am.
Robert Wright and Glenn Loury podcast
Drink more Ovaltine.
LOL!
rhhardin said...
The only clip of Charlie Kirk I've heard is him being unnecessarily mean. You'd think such a famous nice guy would at least be nicer than I am.
Robert Wright and Glenn Loury podcast
Are you saying Kirk should be nice to black women who were given opportunities nobody else got and who used those opportunities to trash people who were better than them in ever way who they took those opportunities from?
Kirk is nicer than you are.
If our new AI overlords toss out more words like agog I'm all for it.
It's not a moral failing on the womens' part. Offer instead that satisfaction in life comes from doing something for others in a job that you're good at and the trick is finding that job.
It's a fiduciary failing on the part of the bosses. Even then you can phrase it nicely.
Masaryk was an important guy outside of Czechoslovakia, among other things vis a vis the modern concept of sovereignty. He brought Herders "Volksgeist" to practical life, as a justification for national independence, or popularized it anyway. I think Sabino Arana got in earlier but got much less attention, and it took much longer for Aranas ideas to manifest. But in any case since 1918 dozens of countries have used this to justify their idependence from former empires.
The modern concept of sovereignty and legitimacy depends on the popular will, and that depends on the Volksgeist, the shared spirit or consensus regarding identity. One can characterize the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, for instance, as an attempt to suppress the Ukrainian Volksgeist, or the Chinese desire to conquer Taiwan likewise, vs the newly developed Taiwan Volksgeist.
The concept of the volksgeist is ubiquitous in US politics, though the term is never used. Thats why you have Black nationalists and Chicano nationalists, and the various white/conservative movements are soaked in it. Radical feminism is also very much a volksgeist thing, though more incoherent than most.
Leland beat me to it. Well played, Sir.
Made you look.
This whole thing reminds of Geraldo and Al Capone vault. Talk about a nothing burger. Its amazing how the Liberal/left never changes. In 1938, we were supposed to start WW 2 to protect "the poor Little Czechs", "Democracy was in peril".
Chamberlin has sold them out. Oh the humanity!
Then in 1948, the USSR took over, and it was "The Czechs will lose their Democracy. Yawn. So sad. Pass the marmalade".
Notice how the world savers and Democrats have stopped screeching about "Putin wants to conquer the world!!" and "Poor little Ukraine". What changed? Maybe October 7th, forced them to focus on what really matters. Or maybe they just got a new party line to squawk out.
20 years? "The final thoughts of the statesman, who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since"
That's 88 years.
Czechs agog? Zut Alors!
"Then in 1948, the USSR took over, and it was "The Czechs will lose their Democracy. Yawn. So sad. Pass the marmalade".
What a piece of shit you are.
For what its worth, I am not addressing the depraved animal known as RCOCEAN. The world is vast and there are peoples other than those mixed up in smelly US politics.
actually they did lose their democracy, there was a brief spring in 1968, that Andropov the future kgb chief, who Time magazine loved because he played jazz records, helped crush,it took 500,000 men half from other warsaw countries, and some three months to suppress the revolt
the Soviets used the catspaw of Slovak nationalist, a character named Durcanski, an associate of Tiso, to pull of the coup, Durcanski, conveniently defected to Argentina,
this bit came from John Loftus, a one time OSI investigator who was regarded with a gimlet eye by others in the office, like my friend clarice
He said "Epstein Didn't Kill Himself"
If they're anything like the Czechs I know, it's more like Czechs a-grog, because they've been working all day and they have a powerful thirst.
one can't understand the 1948 election in Italy, and subsequently the Soviet attempt to undermine the Republic through the Brigatte Rossi without the predicate of Czechoslovakia, they trained at Karlovy Var, along with Fatah
and Rote Armee Fraktion,
Yes, the word sarkastický is useful because it sounds exactly like what it means in any language. Very much like our favorite here on this blog, Kakastický, which describes a certain kind of persistent, malodorous posting that is also very difficult to avoid and to wipe off if one inadvertently steps in it.
That accent at the end is supposed to indicate a long vowel, that is to say a vowel stretched out for a longer duration, but the stress accent is (so far as I know) always on the first syllable. It's not easy for English mouths to get the hang of.
I have read that when the Soviets sent in Warsaw Pact troops in '68, one East German division was included.
That was a big mistake, and the Commie Krauts were withdrawn, pronto.
The Czechs are a remarkable people.
Assuming the translated quote is valid, we should hope that he meant the truly educated in contrast to the highly edu-medicated schooled.
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
====
The fading of the critical sense is a serious menace to the preservation of our civilization. It makes it easy for quacks to fool the people. It is remarkable that the educated strata are more gullible than the less educated. The most enthusiastic supporters of Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism were the intellectuals, not the boors. The intellectuals were never keen enough to see the manifest contradictions of their creeds. It did not in the least impair the popularity of Fascism that Mussolini in the same speech praised the Italians as the representatives of the oldest Western civilization and as the youngest among the civilized nations. No German nationalist minded it when dark-haired Hitler, corpulent Goering, and lame Goebbels were praised as the shining representatives of the tall, slim, fair-haired, heroic Aryan master race. Is it not amazing that many millions of non-Russians are firmly convinced that the Soviet regime is democratic, even more democratic than America?
-----von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy
Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are among the few European countries I have not visited. They're also among the few that I feel safe to visit, and by safe, I mean from violence and government harassment. I want to visit Poland because they've resisted the demands to let immigrants overrun their country and they're actively working to arm themselves. I want to visit the Czech Republic (they may have changed their name) and Slovakia because when they decided to spilt Czechoslovakia, the drew up the documents, signed them in a bar, shared drinks, and went their separate ways. That was perhaps the most intelligent and peaceful partitioning of a country in history.
Fair points, Larry J. I've only been a few days in Czechia but would happily go back there, and to visit the other countries also.
As for national divorces, let's give some credit to Sweden and Norway also.
In my working life I did come across more than few highly educated, highly credentialled fools. Dennis Prager said it best, "Some things are so stupid that only a college graduate could believe them."
Narr said...
As for national divorces, let's give some credit to Sweden and Norway also.
I've been to Sweden and Norway. I enjoyed my visits a great deal. I didn't know of their peaceful split, so I learned something today. Good on them. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no more civil wars (the worst oxymoron) or wars of independence?
1. Civil war: "I'm sorry, but I must bombard you now." "If you must." Spoken with a stuffy British accent, of course.
2. War of Independence: This is the type of war that took place in the US from 1861-65. The Confederate States of America wanted to split off and have their own country. A civil war is defined as two or more groups fighting for control of the same country.
"For what its worth, I am not addressing the depraved animal known as RCOCEAN. "
Thanks for the compliment. Please keep up not addressing me.
Methinks Prager was paraphrasing Orwell's observation that some things are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
Larry J, your distinction isn't universally recognized. My handy Random House dictionary, for instance, defines "civil war" as "a war between political factions or regions within a country." Wars of independence, whether successful or not, are subsumed in that--thus Russian Civil War (multiple parties pursuing different aims) and Nigerian Civil War (separatists vs the center).
Both the American Revolution/War of Independence and the ACWABAWS* had elements of civil war and of revolution.
*My own formula, to capture the range, depth, and messiness of what happened between 1861 and 1865.
American Civil War About Between Among and Within the States.
BTW, as usual I have no idea how your comments relate to anything I wrote. But hey, what else is new?
@Narr "...That was a big mistake, and the Commie Krauts were withdrawn, pronto...."
I was in the Czech Republic a few years ago. We toured an old Nazi concentration camp / ghetto there, and our guide was an old Czech lady who was a girl in WWII. Her dad (Aryan) was seized and made to work in a German factory as slave labor, nearly to the point of a starvation death, at which point he was turned loose. He made his way back eventually. She hated Germans viscerally. Her daughter, on the other hand, hated Russians in the same way.
From this source:
https://www.civil-war.net/what-is-the-definition-of-civil-war/
"What is the Definition of Civil War?
A civil war is a conflict between different factions, groups, or armies within a country or a society, typically involving violent actions and battles. This definition is broad and can apply to various forms of conflicts, but it provides a starting point for understanding what a civil war entails."
From this source:
https://ultimatelexicon.com/definitions/w/war-of-independence/
War of Independence: A conflict in which an oppressed or colonized community seeks to gain self-governance or sovereignty by revolting against a controlling power or colonizing country.
The Confederate States sought independence. They declared themselves a separate nation. They did not seek control of the greater United States. They failed (thankfully!), but the distinction remains. The American Revolutionary War was also a war of independence.
Another example was the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. There are many more examples across history.
https://fiveable.me/key-terms/ap-euro/greek-war-of-independence
BUMBLE BEE said...
"Czechs agog? Zut Alors!"
Aren't they the bands that opened for Iron Butterfly back in the day?
Nobody goes to Prague anymore. It's too crowded.
buyawa puto is back.
The great Czech runner Emil Zatopek worked in a boot factory first for the Nazis, then for the Communists. He won gold in the 5k, 10k, and marathon at the Helsinki Olympics. His biography Today We Die A Little is a great read.
"If people are uneducated and foolish, you can't do much about it. People like to be foolish, but don't make it easy for them. Argue with them."
That can be dangerous. Foolish people don’t like being made to feel foolish.
@rhhardin .
Theres this thing called the internet.
Maybe you should go flipping burgers for Schumer.
MadTownGuy said...
Aren't they the bands that opened for Iron Butterfly back in the day?
Good call there... partial credit awarded.
"Zoot Allures is the 22nd album by the American rock musician Frank Zappa, released in October 1976"
Curious George, that math threw me as well.until I noticed
"kept the letter safe for decades before donating it to the Czech National Archive in 2005 on the condition that it remain sealed for 20 years...."
So the 20 years reference is from when the current Czech authorities got it.
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