Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, June 15, 2021
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103 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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I declare okay with Palestinian vibe is also okay with Israeli vibe. One of these has way more pull and vibe. I have to soft walk around tbe fact that Palestinian land and people are not okay to advocate for. The game is fucking rigged.
Possssesion or disposession, folks locked into an Israeli or Palestinian interpretation of truth.. I hate this. It assumes someone does something bad and egregious. The whole enterprise is rightly fucked.
But we shouldn’t talk about how the institutional racism of the past has beget institutional racism now because it hurts white people’s precious feefees.
If I heard it correctly on the radio yesterday, vaccination rates in rural MO 17-37%. It’s going to be an interesting summer. Speaking of interesting summers, it’s already begun:
My neighbors are gonna be the death of us all.
I was speaking yesterday of Trump’s claim that he’d rejected offers for his presidential memoir from major publishers. This appears to be much closer to the truth:
http://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/15/trump-book-publishers-494559
Even Regnery, which picked up Josh Hawley’s book, appears reluctant to deal with Trump.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Do not hurt white fee-fees. Those folks demand retribution we cannot provide. Suck it, truth is truth, you were party to disposession and slavery.
Three tenths of The US Education system cannot accomodate systemic racism reaction, but I can. Bring it. Bring the hypocricy.
Effing morons. Truth is truth and fudging do no
make that more real.
The notion that pledging that anti-real makes it real is stupid. Q-Anon is a a bigger threat than serious people reckon. It is a belief system that cannot be defied or denied. It is.
That is scary as fuck.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Clarification: rates by county.
Insomnia sucks.
I suspect that we’re going to see more of this type of thing. Not necessarily related to mask use, but just “I got annoyed and so I shot someone” type of behavior.
Customer Fatally Shoots Cashier in Argument Over Mask at Georgia Supermarket
I see that Gov. Parsons has signed a bill that basically says no federal gun laws apply in Missouri. I would love one of the resident legal experts here to explain to me how this squares with the Supremacy Clause…
@Jen: Performative art for the rubes, enshrining their new religion in Misery state law.
Amazon brings its cashierless tech to a full-size grocery store for the first time
Don’t ever change Misery: St. Clair man removed from storm drain
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just being vaccinated is not enough reason to stop mask wearing.
Just found this over at BJ:
also this:
At least the kiddies are not in school or they would be efficient little disease vectors.
In the late 80’s, I was a very young teenager, I had a friend who was an intolerant jerk who would mock people for not understanding that The Lord of the Rings was the best book ever written.
I was a much more laid-back and silly kid and my favorite book in the world was the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I probably read that book 7 or 8 times, watched the BBC series, listened to the radio shows, etc. I had the book checked out from the library for months at a time, and the librarians didn’t much care because at least some kids liked to read in this godforsaken hillbilly county.
20 years ago when the first Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie came out, my friend was livid, because some parts had been changed. He couldn’t *fucking stand* that. Myself, some of the Hitchhiker books contradicted others, then a fifth book in the trilogy came out and contradicted more things, and the radio series was different and then when the movie came out it was different still. And I loved it all. It was all just having fun with the premises and characters. it didn’t take itself too seriously.
I’m even considering maybe getting something from the book as my first tattoo in a few weeks.
All this is inspired by the fact that I just read that Kat Demmings carries a copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy with her everywhere, because she loves it more than any other book EVAR. It’s just a nice thing to know that there’s somebody else out there like that in the world.
42?
@OzarkHillbilly: no, just one to start.
@Jen: You’ll probably like this Ray Hartmann piece: Hartmann: The Breakaway Republic of Missouri
@Teve: Slacker. If you’re gonna get in harmony with the universe…
@Teve: If you’re gonna get an H2G2 tattoo, it should be a towel.
@Teve:
I know from previous engagement that we’re roughly the same age–I was born Jan. 1977. My first encounter with Hitchhikers was the Infocom text adventure when I was 9. I then read the book, which marked the beginning of my lifelong interest in sci-fi.
The thing I remember most about the game was a segment where there’s an object on the ground called “tea” and another object called “no tea.” You can pick up each of those objects and add it to your inventory. But you can’t hold both “tea” and “no tea” at the same time–because that would be illogical. The problem is, you have to do just that to access the ship’s computer. So in order for it to happen, you first have to become a microscopic agent inside your own brain, and then remove the Common Sense particle. Once your brain no longer holds the Common Sense particle, you are then able to hold “tea” and “no tea” simultaneously.
According to what I’ve read, every incarnation of Hitchhikers–the radio play, the TV series, the books, the game, the movie–is different in some way, and Adams intended it that way.
I must be in a strange headspace today, this made me giggle.
@Jen: The joke is self-referenced by the book itself–its subtitle is “The Fifth Book in the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhikers Trilogy.”
@Kylopod: AH! Gotcha.
I’ve read the original, but have not read any of the sequels so I didn’t catch the reference, but it makes (im)perfect sense now, thank you!
@Mikey: oh a towel is definitely on the list. I consider myself a pretty hoppy frood. 😛
Test
Goddam autocorrect and no edit button.
@Teve:
All in my opinion of course (these things are completely subjective), but Hitchhiker’s Guide (well, the first two books) are among the best things ever written. Same for Lord of the Rings. Jackson did an excellent job with the first movie (I’ve re-watched it several times and never gotten bored), an okay one with the second (re-watched it once), and I barely made it through the third the first time.
I suspect the same is true for most movie adaption of any book I’ve liked though — for instance The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books but I’ve yet to find a movie adaption I liked. Same for Ivanhoe. On the other hand I liked the adaption of Cannery Row, though I suspect I may have seen the movie before I read the book.
@Kylopod: you are 7 months younger than me.
@Jen: the sequels are good, but the first book is incandescent.
@Teve:
Still got Hitchhikers Guide double LP from 1979.
@Teve: Perhaps a tat of a digital watch or Agrajag’s statue of Arthur, or a couple of mice.
However, re. Jackson’s Lord of the Rings:
Denethor should definitely sue for libel.
Christopher Tolkein said: “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie”
Granted they had to make an action movie, cut stuff out etc; but Jackson changed some things without real dramatic need at all.
Not to mention completely buggering the geography in Two Towers.
Faramir is on the fighting orcs crossing the river from the east; Frodo and Sam leg it towards Mordor: but Mordor is to the east!
They are on the wrong side of the damn river!
Also Fellowship…
Bilbo: “I want to see mountains again, Gandalf…”
And a couple of scenes later, Frodo and Sam are walking not far from Bag End with bloody mountains in the background! Aargh!
Gandalf: *smacks Bilbo upside the head* “Just look out your front door, y’ hairy footed nebbish!”
@Mr. Prosser: don’t think I didn’t notice your name, btw.
@Teve, Mr. Prosser:
@Mr. Prosser: I’ve been searching the internet for related tattoos, and one person has on their right calf, a falling whale, and on their left calf, a falling bowl of petunias 😀
@Teve:
Hey, he’s “only human.”
@JohnSF: I can accept that stuff like that matters to you, but it doesn’t matter to me very much. I mean, we could go through this stuff point by point with my responses, but that’s gonna just seem like me scolding you. I know other people who have similar complaints. Some love the film anyway, others reject it. That’s life I guess.
And please don’t assume that this means you love LotR more than me. It’s a very influential book in my life. (Also much love for HHGTG here, too).
@Teve: Not a fan of tats, myself, but if you gotta, why not go for a more obscure reference? If you find someone who understands it you’ll know you have a friend for life…
@OzarkHillbilly: But if you have to choose between hurting poor people or investors who would you…
Well sure. But if you were an investor…
@Jay L Gischer:
Oh, I like the films.
The cinematography is stunning, other visuals pretty spot on, actors are damn good and pretty well cast (though Aragorn is extremely spry for even a Numenorean 87-year old, LOL), whole thing just works.
And pretty clearly from film POV Bombadil and Glorfindel had to go.
Jackson gets the atmosphere, somehow; and that’s perhaps the most important thing of all.
I just can’t help wishing that Jackson had been a bit less, well, sloppy about some things. Like, where the damn mountains and rivers were 🙂
Though in a few things he actually improves on the book IMHO: e.g. making more of the death of Theodred for its effect on Theoden. (I seem to recall something about Tolkien writing it up more but not including it in the finished version)
@CSK: The article noted that
Which caused me to be curious about what the issue is. Certainly, publishers want accuracy, but I can’t imagine that inaccuracy would outweigh the opportunity to make millions of dollars. It the problem fear of litigation over whatever those inaccuracies might be?
If the Covid vaccines cause you to turn into a human magnet (among other dire consequences), why have 96% of practicing medical doctors in the U.S. been fully vaccinated?
I posted this on my CRT thread, but it is worth sharing here as well:
Item #1 on this from Jonathan V. Last at the Bulwark is worth your time.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It might be fear of litigation–for a number of reasons, one of which would be that the Son of Sam Law is still on the books in Florida, where Trump is legally resident now, although not New York.
Another fear–justifiable–would be of mockery. Can you imagine the hailstorm of really bad reviews in all the major papers? The scornful laughter of all the commentators?
Also, I think of a lot of their employees would walk out in protest.
Donald should self-publish.
@Teve: I loved the HHG, having first heard it as the radio series.
The radio series and the books don’t quite match up, nor the TV series, the albums, nor the movie.
It’s all cool, man.
If you are unaware: they made additional radio series with almost all of the original cast based on the later books. I got it via Audible.
@JohnSF: I had those, but sadly no longer.
@CSK:
So they can do MMR scans without investing in all that expensive gear. Duh!
@JohnSF:
Well, damn. Why didn’t I think of that?
Perhaps of interest to some folks hereabouts: The Lord of the Rings Expert Answers More Tolkien Questions From Twitter.
Teve: If you’re still in touch with your friend, maybe send him a copy of Bored of the Rings … and hear his head explode.
@sam:
We are no longer friends. Despite growing up together and going through a lot of things together and helping each other out on several occasions, at some point about 10 years ago I was confronted with some situations where it was just starkly apparent to me that he was an actual, factual, psychopath. Not a serial killer, or a guy who had done anything violent as far as I know, but a guy completely lacking in empathy or human emotions. For years I had been unwilling to see it, or self-absorbed, but it was undeniable one afternoon. And I left his house in Tampa and drove back home and we will probably never talk again.
Re yesterday’s discussion of CRT – Kevin Drum has a post up describing it as just the latest round of standard issue FOX race baiting. He has a chart of rate of mentions of CRT on FOX. (I’m surprised he hasn’t found a way to work charts into Friday Cat Blogging.)
Sounds about right to me.
@sam:
Plus the ultimate words of wisdom: The Rules of Fergus!
@CSK: One would think that that many magnetized doctors would be a significant problem around MRIs and other sensitive medical equipment and electronics.
Speaking of Tolkien, Guy Davenport in his book of essays, The Geography of the Imagination, has an essay entitled “Hobbitry”:
“The closest to the secret and inner Tolkien I ever came was in a casual conversation on a snowy day in Shelbyville, Kentucky. I forgot how in the world we came to talk of Tolkien at all, but I began plying questions as soon as I knew that I was talking to a man who had been at Oxford as a classmate of Ronald Tolkien’s. He was a history teacher, Allen Barnett. He had never read The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. Indeed, he was astonished and pleased to know that his friend of so many years ago had made a name for himself as a writer.
“‘Imagine that! You know, he used to have the most extraordinary interest in the people here in Kentucky. He would never get enough of my tales of Kentucky folk. He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins and good country names like that.’
“And out the window I could see tobacco farms. The charming anachronism of the hobbits’ pipes suddenly made sense in a new way….
“Practically all the names of Tolkien’s hobbits are listed in my Lexington phone book, and those that aren’t can be found over in Shelbyville. Like as not, they grow and cure pipe-weed for a living. Talk with them, and their turns of phrase are pure hobbit: “I hear tell”, “right agin”, “so, Mr. Frodo is his first and second cousin, once removed either way”, “this very month as is.” These are English locutions, of course, but ones that are heard oftener now in Kentucky than in England.
“I despaired of trying to tell Barnett what his talk of Kentucky folk became in Tolkien’s imagination. I urged him to read The Lord of the Rings but as our paths have never crossed again, I don’t know that he did. Nor if he knew that he created by an Oxford fire and in walks along the Cherwell and Isis the Bagginses, Boffins, Tooks, Brandybucks, Grubbs, Burrowes, Goodbodies, and Proudfoots (or Proudfeet, as a branch of the family will have it) who were, we are told, the special study of Gandalf the Grey, the only wizard who was interested in their bashful and countrified ways.”
Remember how Newsom was destroying CA with his lockdowns, he was creating a huge budget hole, and everybody is moving out because he’s turned it into a socialist hell hole? Digby extensively quotes a Bloomberg article. CA is doing OK. In fact they’re booming.
And they’re reopening. Oh, population did drop, by like 1.5 x 10^-13%. Not quite a mass exodus.
@sam: Fascinating to read of KY inspiring parts of LOTR. But I suppose that was too long ago for McConnell to have been the inspiration for Saruman.
@Jen:
Yes, I was musing about that earlier today. It’s interesting that the person who made this claim, Sherri Tenpenny, is a doctor of osteopathic medicine.
2620946″>gVOR08:
Gollum, surely?
Just finished reading a hilarious review in last Saturday’s Times by David Aarononovitch of Laura Dodsworth’s A State of Fear.
(Summary from subtitles: “A covidiots guide to paranoia”; “An outrageously dumb book selling conspiracy hooey”.)
Best para:
Giggle-snorting of wine occurred, LOL.
@JohnSF:
That is funny.
While HHG is much more well known, my favorite Adams book is “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” because it’s a giant brick joke combined with that magical sort of twist ending where it seems to come completely out of nowhere at first, but then after a few minutes of consideration seems like it should have been obvious the whole time.
In UK news our lovely Home Secretary Patel says England team “playing gesture politics” by taking the knee and says fans have a right to boo.
In fact, the booing minority were drowned out by applause at Wembley on Sunday.
I can think of some gesture politics I’d like to make in the direction of Ms. Patel.
Oh, and so she don’t feel alone, Leader of the House, Rees-Mogg the ludicrous, also defended booing.
Tory idiots mad keen for “Culture Wars: the UK Edition!.”
Silly of them; we don’t have the US background required for “culture war” to become a dominant political framework: Guns? No. Abortion? No. Evangelicalism? Nope. etc.
It’s a pig that ain’t gonna fly.
Thread:
more at the link
@OzarkHillbilly:
And then there’s the other side of the story…
@Mu Yixiao:
Discounted over how many years?
@JohnSF:
You mean growing by how much each year.
@Mu Yixiao:
4% of personal income?
UK debt hit 250% of GDP in c. 1820.
Worth keeping under review, but hardly “sky is falling” territory.
If growth plus inflation keeps repayments over time manageable, then it should be OK.
Of course, California, like all (US terminology) states is constrained by not being a fiat issuer, let alone a reserve fiat issuer.
Course, if I were a Californian or a Cal. debt investor my concerns might be greater.
But it’s within bounds, at first glance, as long as you don’t start getting daft with paying non-emergency current spending out of extra debt.
@JohnSF:
I have to ask then… in the bit about the very worst poetry in the universe, what name does it apply to the worstest?
The radio series came first; the books were a later adaptation. When I recorded the radio show off the airwaves c. 1981 (PBS rebroadcasts of BBC originals), the worst poetry in the universe was due to one Paul Neil Milne Johnston. Alas, it turns out that Mr. Johnston was a real person — a classmate of Adams at Oxford — and was Not Amused. He sued, and won. The name in the books and recordings and such was changed. The notes to episode 1 (“Fit the First”) of the Original Radio Series scripts say the following:
@George:
It’s extraordinarily rare to take a really good book and make a really good movie out of it. A few examples I can think of are:
The Princess Bride
The Hunt for Red October
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Wilder, not Depp)
The Grapes of Wrath
I’m told that the animated Watership Down is quite good, though I’ve never seen it. I’ve never read Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” and I don’t think I want to, so I don’t know if that’s another example.
It’s not that uncommon, though, to take a really awful book and make a really good film out of it. I’m thinking here of:
Jaws
Six Days of the Condor (3 in the film)
The Hunger (David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve…)
I’m sure you can all think of other examples in both categories.
No place is perfect, but we’d better hope they don’t secede from the union.
@JohnSF:
The book as it was written is entirely uncinematic; they were going to have to show instead of tell. The problem for me is not just what they decided to show and what they left out. It’s that they fundamentally changed the personalities and motivations of some of the main characters.
The biggest change (IMHO) was Aragorn. “Doesn’t want to be king” is pretty much the opposite of his personality and motivation in the book. (The hilarious Secret Diaries of Aragorn, Son of Arathorn got that part spot-on.) But Peter Jackson (and his Commonwealth audience) have had it up to here with aristocrats, and cannot imagine portraying a character as sympathetic who not only wants to be king but thinks everyone would be better off if he were king and that it’s his right anyway.
Denethor was mentioned above as another example. Merry got a serious downgrade as well, mostly because Merry’s finest qualities aren’t action qualities. Faramir likewise.
@sam:
I insist that the only living person entitled to be called “The Lord of the Rings expert” (or for that matter “The Tolkien professor”) is Tom Shippey. I am familiar with Corey Olson and his writings and podcasts, and he’s not an idiot by any means, but he’s not anywhere near the same league as Professor Shippey.
@sam:
Interesting.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find Tolkien being interested in southern US names, as a philologist.
The survival of rather archaic English forms in the south is fairly well known.
IIRC some variants of “Tidewater” accent are thought to be perhaps the closest surviving to 17th Century English.
But I’m still rather inclined to the more local inspiration.
“Bag End” and “Baggins” are actually a linguistic joke on the English suburban cod-French term “cul-de-sac” for a “dead end”.
Also Sackville-Baggins are “frenchified” and “anglicised” variants of the same word.
Took is very definitely an English name, albeit a rather unusual one.
Lots of other similarities: Bredon Hill is not far from here and similarly means “Hill Hill”. Lol lol.
Tolkien’s mother is buried in St Peters, about ten minutes walk from my front door.
@DrDaveT:
Dunno.
Can’t play to check, ’cause at mo’ my hi-fi amplifier is out of action.
Need to take it in once time/covid allows and I have funds to get it fixed.
(It’s a Marantz class-A and I really want to get it fixed, if affordable)
@Teve: Yes, I took the name of a tubby put upon minor bureaucrat who dreamed of retiring to a place in the country. There are no axes over my door but I keep an axe handle handy because the rural place I live in is full of RWNJ’s.
@DrDaveT:
I said earlier: Jackson “gets the atmosphere”
On second thoughts, he sort-of does; the atmosphere of marvels of the wider world beyond the Shire, the great struggle against evil etc.
But he rather misses a basic element: the underlying theme of loss and regret.
And perhaps that’s only really apparent once you’ve read the book several times and know the “backstory” at least a bit.
For instance when you realise that Celeborn ends up losing almost everything he’s spend thousands of years trying to defend, including his only grandchild.
And Tolkien’s own preoccupation, as a historical philologist: the almost total loss of Old English high culture after the Viking ravages and the Norman Conquest.
“…the obliteration of Anglo-Saxon and earlier cultures from English life has meant that much of what survives of these societies only does so in the woods and hills and rivers, in their names…”
The theme of the failure of collective memory; see the hobbits ignorance of history etc.
@JohnSF:
One could argument that there’s a proto-fascist element to LotR given it shares their irredentist worldview (the idea that the world previously existed in a purer form and that modernity is an inherently corrupting force that can only make the world less than it once was). The primary difference between Tolkein and actual Fascists is that Fascists think the right “Big Man” can restore the world to its previous glory and Tolkein seems to think it’s an unstoppable process.
@JohnSF:
Further on LOTR:
Jackson left out the real ending of the story, and the saddest part of all.
The “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” which was the only part of the appendices that Tolkien insisted be included in the shortened version.
One hundred and twenty years after the departure of the White Ship, Arwen, knowing that Aragorn is resigned to death, but herself not feeling aged:
And herself dies, alone, in abandoned Lorien, because she cannot go on without him.
@DrDaveT:
That’s a very good point. I wonder if short stories have a better record of being turned into films than longer novels? Plays of course are often turned into excellent films, though that’s to be expected. Rock Opera’s too (Rocky Horror Picture Show and Jesus Christ Superstar for instance).
I agree the Wilder version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Princess Bride are excellent films based on a good books, and there are probably a few more that I’ve simply forgotten about.
@Stormy Dragon:
Arguable.
And some of Tolkiens circle (though not him, AFAIK) were supporters of the Spanish Nationalists.
But at the time a sizable minority of the Labour Party (mainly Catholics, but not exclusively) favoured the Nationalists. Especially after the Republicans effectively allied with the Soviets.
Hatred of the Bolsheviks by old comrades of the Mensheviks they slaughtered was a real thing.
And IIRC about a thousand Fine Gael supporters from Ireland also rocked up in Spain on the Nationalist side.
: And some of other persuasions of an accelerationist persuasion think a “Big Man” can immantize the eschaton and advance the world to future glory.
Mao.
Pol Pot.
etc.
@DrDaveT:
Nothing Lasts Forever comes to mind, but it isn’t an awful book, just pulpy.
@Stormy Dragon:
I think Tolkien did regard some aspects of modernity as “corrupt” and “corrupting”.
He was, after all, a Catholic, and that was official Catholic politics until post-WW2.
And probably a conservative one (there are no reports AFAIK,of any links to e.g. the anglo-catholic Christian socialist groups, or even German style “Christian social”).
But then there are wholly non-fascistic groups that are profoundly anti-modernist: off the top of my head, some schools of Greens, and quite a few non-western religious based politics: Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu.
And Italian Fascism at least was marked by being profoundly linked to modernizing concepts.
See the links of some “right” futurists to fascism.
Also, it was probably difficult for some to serve on the Western Front in 1916 and not come out a tad skeptical re. the wonders of modernity.
On the whole, conservatives more likely to be past-oriented than fascists IMUHO; and European conservatives more than American conservatives, who very often aren’t conservatives at all.
@Stormy Dragon:
I tend to re-read books that I like. DGHDA is, by far, the book that improved the most on second reading over the first.
.@JohnSF:
Part of point being: the actual politics of the 1930’s (when Tolkien actually wrote LOTR) was a lot messier than a lot of people think in retrospect re. alignments.
It was possible that the UK and France could have ended up in an alliance with fascist Italy against Nazi Germany.
Again: some on the right in UK were incredibly naive about the relative strategic threats of Nazi Germany in that time; as were some left pacifists, in a very different way.
And some views were utterly warped by fear of the USSR; not an entirely misplaced fear, TBF.
Ask the Poles.
Thank heavens for that old right wing war-monger, Winston Churchill. 🙂
And some “neutrals” never could decide either: for some Irish nationalists the choice between Germany and Britain was less than obvious. Similarly for some Indian and Arab nationalists.
@Stormy Dragon:
I tend to think of Tolkien as someone who might well have been a fascist if not for his genuine empathy and unfashionably sincere religion. All of his reflexes were conservative and nostalgic, but his anti-authoritarian and fraternal impulses were strong enough to counteract that.
I just looked up Pew research numbers, and 3/4 of Americans were watching cable TV six years ago, and half of them are now.
At what point does FoxNews become unsustainable?
@DrDaveT:
Conservatism and fascism have very different psycho-political bases.
One short summation of fascism is as “Trying to be revolutionary without being socialist”.
Conservatives and fascists have sometime been political allies; but then so have fascists and communists.
And once again, disentangling the mergings of liberalism, conservatism and at some varieties of
socialisms is like untangling computer cables.
@DrDaveT: @Stormy Dragon: 25 years ago I went through a period where I was reading prodigiously but also drinking prodigiously. In that period I read both Dirk Gently‘s Holistic Detective Agency, and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, and they fused in my head such that I cannot distinguish one book from the other. A few years later I went back, sober, and read them both to try to separate them in my mind, and it didn’t work any better than pulling two magnets apart a centimeter and then letting them go.
@Teve:
Next week?
Oh hear me, gods.
In related: UK “GB News TV” has just launched.
Apparently backed by Liberty Global, chairman John C. Malone: libertarian, on board of Cato Institute, donated US$250,000 to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
And fronted by the increasingly ludicrous Andrew Neil.
Oh, happy happy joy joy 🙁
OTOH sounds a bit like torpedoes in the water already? Brands pull ads from GB News TV channel over content concerns
I have my doubts over how well “Kulturkampf TV” will play in the UK.
I suspect not as well as some sponsors hope due to basic UK/US social differences.
There’s a reason “Koala Kong” (aka R. Murdoch) has never tried running a “Fox UK”; Sky news is a very different beastie indeed.
Now, if GB-TV could monopolize football or dodgy soaps, that would be a different matter, but Sky forestalled that option decades back.
I may be wrong, but IMO the UK head-banging right-base is simply not big enough and manic enough to sustain a “FoxUK”
@Teve:
Next week?
Oh hear me, gods.
In related: UK “GB News TV” has just launched.
Apparently backed by Liberty Global, chairman John C. Malone: libertarian, on board of Cato Institute, donated US$250,000 to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
And fronted by the increasingly ludicrous Andrew Neil.
Oh, happy happy joy joy 🙁
OTOH sounds a bit like torpedoes in the water already? Brands pull ads from GB News TV channel over content concerns
I have my doubts over how well “Kulturkampf TV” will play in the UK.
I suspect not as well as some sponsors hope due to basic UK/US social differences.
There’s a reason “Koala Kong” (aka R. Murdoch) has never tried running a “Fox UK”; Sky news is a very different beastie indeed.
Now, if GB-TV could monopolize football or dodgy soaps, that would be a different matter, but Sky forestalled that option decades back.
I may be wrong, but IMO the UK head-banging right-base is simply not big enough and manic enough to sustain a “FoxUK”
@Teve:
Next week?
Oh hear me, gods.
In UK “GB News TV” has just launched.
Apparently backed by Liberty Global, chairman John C. Malone: libertarian, on board of Cato Institute, donated US$250,000 to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
And fronted by the increasingly ludicrous Andrew Neil.
Oh, happy happy joy joy 🙁
OTOH sounds a bit like torpedoes in the water already? Brands pull ads from GB News TV channel over content concerns
I have my doubts over how well “Kulturkampf TV” will play in the UK.
I suspect not as well as some sponsors hope due to basic UK/US social differences.
There’s a reason “Koala Kong” (aka R. Murdoch) has never tried running a “Fox UK”; Sky news is a very different beastie indeed.
Now, if GB-TV could monopolize football or dodgy soaps, that would be a different matter, but Sky forestalled that decades back.
I may be wrong, but IMO the UK head-banging right-base is simply not big enough and manic enough to sustain a “FoxUK”@JohnSF:
On Twitter, some nitwit asked, “what is even the purpose of Juneteenth?” And if you thought, well, surely most of the responses won’t be white people telling Black people that Juneteenth is the wrong date and if they wanted to celebrate Emancipation Day they should celebrate such and such date instead, YOU ARE RONG Cause that’s exactly what happened.
@JohnSF:
I’m going to defer to Umberto Eco here and point out that there’s a distinction between anti-modernism and the rejection of “superficial technological advancement”. A fascist regime can put a lot of effort into industrial potency while still rejecting the whole post-enlightenment worldview.
@Stormy Dragon:
Yup.
That’s the essence of fascism: anti-enlightenment modernism.
And why the whole insane shambles falls flat on it’s face.
@JohnSF:
He did more than think SOME aspects of modernity are corrupting. He saw the world as a purely one way street where each civilization gets replaced by a more barbaric one. Valinor was a shadow of Almaren, Numenor was a shadow of Valinor, Gondor was a shadow of Numenor, etc. in LotR, mankind is literally reduced to living in the ruins of a previous civilization because they’re no longer capable of building what they once were, and even defeating Sauron doesn’t make anything better, it just allows them to hold the status quo a bit longer, because things will inevitably get worse.
@Teve: Never, because even though Fox News may fail, thanks to iPad’s, grandma’s/grandpa’s and the easy accessibility, OAN and Newsmax will continue to carry the Big Lie flag.
Difference from “reactionary conservatism” (Euro-Catholic variant) being that it was anti-enlightenment and ant-modernist, which was at least sort-of consistent, if wholly impractical.
That’s why the a big chunk of catholic/conservative continental politics evolved (apart from some fringe loons) into modern “Christian Democrat” and “Christian Social” politics.
Which ends up with US Republicans calling Angela Merkel a socialist, LOL.
While in France the “monarchist” catholic reactionary conservatism just died of shame as a mainstream politics post-Vichy, and it’s constituency got scooped up by the heirs of the “right-liberals” or “modernizing conservatives”, including Gaullists and Macron’s LREM.
@Stormy Dragon:
I mean personally, not in the fictional world.
I’m thinking about what I’ve read (years back) in biographical accounts, his letters, and implications of notes on the fictions.
He’s on record as being unhappy with some of the implications of early decisions in his fictional world; notably the whole “flat earth” bit for early Arda.
I don’t think the implications of his fictional world are necessarily indicative of his politics; any more than they are his theology.
I’m pretty sure some aspects of the implied divine order of Middle Earth are flat-out heretical.
But to Tolkien they were just a legendarium, not truth.
As to whether Catholic politics of the pre-Vatican 2 period was inherently “degenerationist”: I don’t think so, but best check with a specialist.
Seems to me it was neutral: improvement was possible, but post-enlightenment secular modernity was inherently flawed.
As a conservative Catholic, I’d suspect Tolkien believed that. He’s certainly recorded as viewing the British government as little more than a gang of cronies, and it’s ploicies, include war strategies, as morally dubious.
But also as loathing the Nazis.
And the Communists, of course.
@Jax: there’s just not much money in online advertising. Google and Facebook hoover up most of the $$$ in a duopoly situation. I don’t know that a subscription model is gonna keep Mike Lindell and Greg Gutfeld in Arby’s roast beefs.
@Stormy Dragon:
It’s true that Tolkien’s fictional world is very pessimistic.
In that regard it derives a bit from the flavour of the “old epics” of Scandinavia etc.
See Galadriel: “…together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”
That is, knowing they are going to lose whatever happens, but going to fight anyway.
A Nordic epic POV if ever I heard one.
Also, Tolkien was very influenced IMO by the historical fact of the almost total obliteration of the pre-Norman literary culture of of England; that the failure of collective memory was a real possibility, and so a whole civilization might be lost almost without trace.
Though Numenor was not really a shadow of Valinor or Gondolin or whatever, because in the ME system those were not human polities at all. Its the first genuinely independent human realm in the ME timeline, and fails due to greed and hubris.
And civilizational collapse is hardly unknown in actual history, either.
List as long as your arm for that.
@Teve: Not from folks like you and I. We know better. I, for one, have parents that believe EVERY hearing aid commercial, Trump email, every single ad that says they’re not getting enough from their Medicare and Social Security, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to make them knock that shit off….unless I cut their internet line.