BROOKS WESTERN CIV CRISIS CONTD III WHIG AND FAUX TORIES

Whiggish Brooks implies a cause: suddenly unnamed enemies here and abroad of Western civ values of limitless liberty and democracy have emerged, and nobody has stepped up to defend them.

 

The implication of course is that this march in triumph of Western civ toward world civ has been interrupted by both internal and external forces indifferent or antagonistic to its call.

 

Brooks says: rise of illiberals.

How did they arise in the first place, if Whig liberalism had been lifting all boats?

 

Are they new rival Tory civilizations, spawn of Western liberalism, biting the hand that fed their rising boats?

He says we have entered the age of strong men. He does not want to get into a clash of civilizations account. Too much truth in it for him. The strong men story helps him stay away from that clash of civilizations tar baby.

Let's just call it Brooks' The Rise of the Tories account. Actually, now, all we have are faux tories. We got rid of almost all our aristocracies and monarchs in the flurry of Globalist Whiggism.

How about, The Rise of the New Napoleons? After all, the new whiggism of The age of the Democratic Revolution gave Napoleon his opening.

Napoleon has been the faux tory icon, par excellence, for 200 years now!

 

SEE RANDALL COLLINS' OTHER BLOG CREATIVITY VIA SOCIOLOGY

THE GLOBALIZATION TRAP SOME RECENT POSTS

COMBINE ENLIGHTENED GLOBALISM WITH ENLIGHTENMENT SKEPTICISM (HUME)

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION ETHNICITY GENDER CIVILIZATION

LET ME EXPLAIN THIS FURTHER RACE RELIGION CIVILIZATION

RE MARKETS CIVILIZATIONS RACES MINDS PERCEPTIONS EXPERTS PICKING WINNERS

GLOBALIST POLICIES HAVE BASICALLY SLOWLY BLOWN YOUR COUNTRY UP

RE BROOKS' EXODUS THEME IMMIGRATION REFUGEES TRANSHUMANCE SLAVERY JEWS GUEST WORKERS ISRAEL

THE GLOBALIZATION TRAP

OLD 2014 POST RE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES SOMEONE SAW SO HERE IT IS AGAIN

RUFUS FEARS THE MIDDLE EAST THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES RUPERT CHAPMAN COMMENT

"Stimulating and thought provoking as per usual! I have only one comment, which is on the Middle East, which is my own specialization. The situation today in the Middle East is precisely the same as it has been for the last 5,000 years. I have, for many years, referred to it as either 'the 5,000 year war', or as 'stable instability'. To explain what I mean, some 5,000 years ago the Stela of the Vultures is the earliest record of a war - between the Sumerians, in what is today southern Iraq, and the Elamites, in what is today southern Iran. In Iraq itself, for the last 5,000 years there has been tension, and frequently open warfare, between the south, Sumer/Babylonia, and the north, Assyria. The mountains of the northeast have always been a separate culture area, as they are with the Kurds (known there since at least the 4th century A.D.) today, at war with the powers in the plains. The second great enemy of the Assyrians, after the Elamites and the Persians, was the kingdom of Urartu in what is now eastern Turkey, later the independent kingdom of Armenia. In the heyday of Sumerian culture, between 3500 and 2000 B.C., the Sumerians had colonies along the Middle Euphrates in what is today Syria. The Syrians and the Mesopotamians traded and intermittently fought wars against each other. Syria itself has been a single culture, east of the mountains which mark the northern extension of the Great Rift Valley along the Mediterranean Coast, but never a unified country until the French created one. War between the Syrian city-states was endemic throughout all periods of antiquity when they were not under the control of some external power. The Mediterranean Coastal Region was always culturally separate from Inland Syria, and always an economic trading culture between the great powers which surrounded it. Further south, what is today Israel and the West Bank was always either at war with Transjordan, or in an uneasy peace, and likewise in relation to Syria and what is now Lebanon, and to Egypt, the nearest great power, and the dominant culture. What keeps all of these relations of conflict and limited co-operation in place is, to me, one of the most interesting unasked, and, therefore, unanswered questions of historical studies."

MISHRA FROM EXCEPTIONALISM TO NIHILISM THE LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TRAP

Our roots were always there, really.

The Age of the Democratic Revolution really set the ball rolling.

If you believe in the liberal unification of everything, you believe in nothing.

Don't kid yourself.

COMBINE ENLIGHTENED GLOBALISM WITH ENLIGHTENMENT SKEPTICISM (HUME)

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION ETHNICITY GENDER CIVILIZATION

LET ME EXPLAIN THIS FURTHER RACE RELIGION CIVILIZATION

RE MARKETS CIVILIZATIONS RACES MINDS PERCEPTIONS EXPERTS PICKING WINNERS

GLOBALIST POLICIES HAVE BASICALLY SLOWLY BLOWN YOUR COUNTRY UP

RE BROOKS' EXODUS THEME IMMIGRATION REFUGEES TRANSHUMANCE SLAVERY JEWS GUEST WORKERS ISRAEL

THE GLOBALIZATION TRAP

TRUMP SEAN SPICER SNL CARTOON

Sean Spicer comes out only in flesh colored underwear.

 

The conference proceeds as usual.

 

Other jokes are told, fake news, climate change hoax.

 

The news conference proceeds as usual to the end.

 

Then the question: "Sir, are you wearing clothes or not?'

 

Spicer's response will deny the accusation, one way or another...and accuse the questioner of being an idiot.

 

He may, then, order the interrogator to strip, to confirm that he/ she, too, is wearing something.

WHY THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW IS NOT WRITTEN MAITLAND'S INAUGURAL LECTURE

One can think of this as an example of 'problems in the philosophy of the social science', perhaps a dead subspecialty, really.

"...That process by which old principles and old phrases are charged with a new content, is from the lawyer's point of view an evolution of the true intent and meaning of the old law; from the historian's point of view it is almost of necessity a process of perversion and misunderstanding...." Maitland

I think of the founding fathers, certainly of the lawyers among them...did we even have any historians here, back then?

BROOKS WESTERN CIV CONTINUED II

Brooks opines that a prevailing wind 'powering all ships' suddenly ceased to blow...

 

Was that wind laissez faire, LIEO?

The underlying question, which Brooks' account begs, is really whether Western civ is reducible to laissez faire, LIEO, as his account really implies? He doesn't want to get into all that.

Laissez faire has been going on since the 18th Century, (actually since the beginning of time in the forms of smuggling and piracy, under what was called mercantilism), gathered strength in the early 19th, and has dominated Western intellectual thinking and the international political and economic landscape ever since. 

But no 'prevailing wind' ever powered all ships, certainly not a political military cultural civilizational or diplomatic wind.

 

That is only one huge problem with his account. If such a wind had long been made to blow, then why, now, should it ever have ceased? Has it really ceased?

 

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TRUMP'S SAD FACE NOW HE MISSES HIS OLD LIFE

See Randall Collins' site, the post referred to here, a while back.

Randall Collins called it, really.

I have no objection to Trump resigning. No problem. A monarch can do it, why not Trump?

BROOKS WESTERN CIV CRISIS CONTINUED

Brooks points out that many academicians began teaching, only a few short decades ago, that Western civ is really a history of oppression.

 

I would augment the account he criticizes as follows: the West started out oppressing Western lower classes, then eventually, with the age of discovery and colonization on into the 20th Century, oppressing all of mankind, a story of ever gathering oppression which the US, as the heir of Western straight white male hegemony, perpetuates to the present day.

 

It is the opposite of  the history of progressive improvement for all mankind to which the Whiggish Brooks, and most of his readers, including perhaps Professor Kaiser, subscribe.

The Whiggish interpretation sees Protestantism as the progressive Reformation movement, the only proper heir to the Renaissance, that threw off the regressive medieval Catholic yoke, followed by the Enlightenment as a protestant inspired movement that then finally threw off Monarchic despotic Popish and aristocratic yokes in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and then by the Democratic Revolution of the 18th, but was thrown back somewhat in the 19th when a retrograde restoration temporarily permitted the imperialism and slavery run by white men since the Renaissance to continue, but then ultimately triumphed in the wars of the 20th Century, making the world finally safe for a colorless, antireligious, and race blind single democratic market capitalist world civilization.

 

Let's put it this way, then: the story of Western civ as an oppressive political civilization, either way, goes much farther back than a few decades of American academic history ago. 

 

DAVID BROOKS THE CRISIS OF WESTERN CIV ARTICLE APRIL 21

Why not just go almost line by line?

 

His first few lines, Will and Ariel Durant...

I read parts of it when a kid. This is a classic of the Whig Interpretation of History, which I have discussed recently here, the theory of confident and progressive Western history which Brooks likes, and which he laments is dying in America and elsewhere in the West. More on that issue later.

 

Next, he says this story of civilization came with certain values, such as reasoned discourse...

 Well, what does reasoned discourse really mean; presumably a multitude of diverse and inconsistent things and disciplines, notoriously difficult to get a handle on, bleeds over into ethics, logic, mathematics, history, politics, you name it.

Well, what else did reasoned discourse itself also come with, one might ask? I will tell you: it came with a gnawing sense of skepticism about the powers of reason and perception themselves to see or understand reality in itself.

In other words it reiterated an ancient tradition from the Greek Fifth Century Enlightenment about the elusiveness of knowledge asserted the relativity of all values, traditions, factual truths, and religions. 

 

He claims Western Civ set a standard for great statesmanship.

What can he mean? Moral statesmanship, whatever that means? Does he mean ancient Greek and Roman statesmen, Pericles, Alcibiades, Cicero, the Gracchi, Caesar, the ones he likes; good practitioners of raison d'etat; balance of power expertise; Machiavelli, perhaps Bismarck, Richelieu, Hitler? He doesn't say. Wouldn't it also however have correspondingly set a standard for terrible statesmanship? Otherwise, how would one know what great was? So, let's just say that maybe the West set both kinds of standards and all degrees in between.

 

He next mentions a town square, and religion, in passing.

Under Brooks' whig interpretation, the Reformation and Counter Reformation were milestones in this Whig narrative of the confident march toward the progress of today. Butterfield described it very well.  

 

Next, he mentions giving diverse people a sense of shared mission, common vocabulary, common goals.

This started out as an aspiration only intended within and among diverse peoples of only the West itself. Even other countries within the West were viewed by each as in a sense barbarians, even into the 19th Century; how much more so, denizens of other civilizations. but this sense of shared mission, common vocabulary and goals, eventually became, by the force of Western ideology itself sua sponte, the dream of some Western liberals in the 18th and 19th centuries to include all people of the world.

 

It had seldom been part of the Western civ concept before that time, except perhaps in terms of early Christianity being spread as a Jewish mission to the gentiles, presumably ultimately to all the gentiles in the world regardless of race religion or civilization. The idea of course had become popular among all religions which sought to convert infidels in conquered lands rather than to kill, enslave, or exile them.

Brooks then explains how this crisis of Western Civ began. It only began several decades ago he says.

I may come back to that point directly at some point below in discussing other points here.

He blames this relatively sudden civilizational crisis on academia, an institution conveniently other than journalism.

He can't very well blame journalism, too, can he?

Journalism's mission, apparently, after all, is presumably not to try to weigh in on such issues with scholarly authority in the first place anyway. Although, isn't that rather what Brooks does here himself in blaming academia, or am I missing something?

Remember that Brooks himself assured us a while back that we had finally, for several decades now (coincidentally, the ostensible length of the evolving civilizational crisis he decries), reached the stage of a meritocracy here in America.

Presumably, however, the emerging meritocracy here would also have some things to do, at some points, with academic excellence and standards, and be somehow connected with a concept of Western civ as itself a meritocratic concept, no?

So, how according to Brooks, are we both finally a meritocracy founded on mainly academic excellence and expertise, and also in a sudden crisis of Western civ brought on by academic waywardness and incompetence? How?

Maybe that is enough for one post, call it chapter one of my remarks on Brooks The Crisis of Western civ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JAMES GRANT SEVERAL MONTHS AGO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dlXD-oISk

IVORY TOWER ATHEISTIC GLOBALIST RADICAL LEFT

against an anti intellectual and anarchist religious radical right.

 

As my father in law once well put it, we have normally resembled Germany before Bismarck.

 

I would just add, lately it looks increasingly also like Weimar now, here, all over again...

 

The radical European socialist intellectuals were mostly all internationalists, deplored the capitalist imperialist nation states of Europe.

 

The conservative religious often rural peasant agrarian right, the conservative and aristocratic right, and the urban anarchist right, also detested the nation state for their own quite different reasons as well.

RE FACEBOOK KILLINGS MAYBE ACLU SHOULD STEP IN PROTECT FREEDOM SPEECH PRESS ETC

Take an example: What if filmed by a reporter?

Does it make a difference? How much?

What if the person claims whistleblowing of some type connected with the scene? Make a difference? Ridenour issue?

What about by a prominent journalist? Does it matter?

Is then a decision not to publish mainly an editorial one?

What if it is filtered for adults only like porn sites? Make a difference?
 
What other criteria could there be? Decency? That is long gone.

Privacy? Waived.

Think of others.

Public killings usually were once used to set a good exam;le for others.

Why not private illegal killings be used as bad examples, abhorent examples for the average person to see and learn from?

Not a good idea? Then maybe you don't trust the average person to be deterred thereby? Why not? Food for thought.

Pulling such material is certainly inconsistent with Facebook stockholders' vested interests.

Giving up voluntarily, for no return, such wildly profitable viral material surely must nag many of the holders of the stock...Zuckerberg, and his stockholders, stand to make killings on material like this! 

Maybe they can start a stockholder rebellion against Zuckerberg's rule if this kind of shenanigans continues.

RE NYT DAVID LEONHARDT FAILURE OF THE LEFT IN THE WEST

Why do you suppose this state of affairs exists, only a couple of hundred years after the Age of the Democratic Revolutions, the small American one, a rebellion really,  and then the big French Revolution?

 

How did these liberal initiatives, with their strong inclinations toward leftist populistic goals, and universalist ideals, end up at this sad impotent impasse, in Western Civilization, up against the wall of rightist populist initiatives everywhere?

Because liberal middle class scalawag carpetbagger elites, defined strictly by wealth, found it possible to screw both erstwhile upper and lower class power elites, king, aristocracy, the old European Order, and also rising leftist leaders, of all stripes, from nationalist leftists to internationalist leftists, and finally to screw their own liberal middle class itself, everywhere, better than the upper and lower class elites had ever been able, in history, to screw the other classes before them.

The liberal, but now disenfranchised, middle classes in Western states thought that the democratic revolution was their ticket to permanent (at least middle class) prosperity.

How sadly, and quickly, that assumption has been undermined from within by the inherent workings of their own system.

Middle class liberalism's back is now to the wall in the West, against its own erstwhile middle class elites, who, eventually, when they got powerful enough, did not hesitate to bite the very middle class hand that had fed them, and now make the naked appeal to their domestic, miserable, disenfranchised, disorganized, and bewildered, lower class, rightist, mobs to maintain their fragile, culturally baseless, corrupt, and degenerate, hold on power.

Meanwhile, they still in fact cater to their actual economic power base, the global marketplace (hardly a rightist oriented concept) in which these money elites must breathe to live.

In this sense, the President is a quite special marionette, a man not chosen, but who both knows the real score and can pander to the rabble.

THE MENU CURRY IMPROV

I ordered another copy of a book I once had in London in the 70s, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, Jaffrey.

 

Yesterday, I made curried leftover sauerbraten slop and wild rice. Delicious. For something like this, there really is no recipe as such...

 

I did saute onions, added curry powder and cumin, a little tomato sauce or crushed tomato, leftover wild rice, garlic powder this time, a crushed sweet pickled cherry pepper...

 

I let it rest for a day or so, it gets better... You can top this with additional tomato sauce and or yogurt, or even sour cream! Of course if you have chutneys (pickles) you can do that too.

This is organic produce coop day, downstairs, back yard. My wife manages it... Every fortnight, a lorry pulls up in the alley...

RE EASY PICKINGS

Ed Boyle says it all in his way. I especially liked his conclusion:

"I believe it is termed cultural maxism. Leading feminists here in Germany are becoming right wingers while others support islam and the right of women to wear full body chador/burkga, etc. The left, in its pursuit of fredom, is suppressing free speech(facebook) and using antifa mobs to attack politically opposing groups. This has come full circle. 'Normal' has become oppressed. In the 50s one told ethnic jokes to relieve emotional pressure betwen immigrant groups(italian, irish, etc.). This became in bad taste, then tabu. Dumb blonde jokes were normal, nowadays male pupils are heavily disadvantaged academically and professionally. Things are coming full circle. Oppressed groups are becoming oppressors. Ideology of logic (greek invention) is being replaced by group identity politics. As Greek society dissolved it became a chaotic fight between interest groups, city states and fell prey to foreign powers. Eventually the same occurred to Roman republic. In effect this is the leading wedge of a civil war which will leave The West open to conquest by whoever wishes. A black female lesbian jewish or muslim disabled president is a sort of joke of the average white guy. Assimilation, not integration is the only long term solution. I saw a film a couple days ago where a main character got married. He was obviously jewish and ceremony was so. Girl was not. 71% of non orthodox jews marry non jews in USA. Blacks also increasingly where they are more in contact with whites(effective segregation in older urban centres of east, midwest prevent contact for example except when they go to colege, facilitating cultural marxist theory.) My wife and I each have two ethnic, religious backgrounds which were traditionally enemies, my kids have four with 3 languages fluency(irish died out). I work now, since the economic crisis, in janitorial, mostly with foreign, muslim, black, asian people and have become much more practical, flexible, open to non european, non christian peoples. Contact, friendship between individuals, not ghettoization, confrontation is the only way forward. However we see in France for example a similarity in living condtions of blacks/muslims to USA ghettoization of blacks. This can only lead, in economic crisis times to lines of extremist opinion and civil war, genocide, ethnic cleansing. USA has divided itself voluntarily ideologically, sorted out. This enables civil war as well. The West will be easy pickings for unified Chinese or Russian nationalist cultures." EB

EMPIRES AND THEIR WAKES

The Mongol Empire, the largest by far ever in the world (China was a conquered vassal territory), left behind Russia, the largest state ever, except for the Mongol Empire, in its wake.

The Mongols were virtually illiterate, having only a spoken language apparently. Their written languages, such as the scant evidence is, came from the Middle East, and from Buddhist sources originally from India.

 

The Roman Empire left the Eastern Empire, ultimately the Eastern Orthodox Empire, until 1453, I believe, in its wake.  The Holy Roman Empire, also as it emerged, was not very large, by contrast.

 

Russia, throwing off the Mongol yoke, adopted Orthodoxy, but that was not, after all, why it was large. 

PACE IN CINEMA A NEW TOPIC

http://www.scriptmag.com/features/pacing-your-script

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2233986

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/2x34hv/what_do_you_define_as_good_or_bad_pacing_in_a_film/

SKIMMED THE LAST OF THE UNDOING PROJECT

I liked his other books better...

 

It seems he is gradually groping his way toward philosophy....

 

It has been a torturous journey, through art history, literature, finance investment banking and trading, sports theory, statistics, psychology, economics, and history.

Enjoyed the quote from Max Black. Amen.

The same sorts of mathematico psychologistic logico linguistic thinking had, of course, infested philosophy too, for decades, by then, especially after WWI.

Kripke came over and did a talk, when I was at Kings, in the 70s. Ugh. American philosophy has long been besotted with the stuff...

At least someone like Ryle, The Concept of Mind, put some of this nonsense into a broader historical perspective and context.

What is logic really? Inference? Whose? A branch of statistics? Why? Mathematics itself? Not really. Then what? Pictorial representation? Grammar? Syntax? Kind of a joke. Intuition? Well...
 

BBC SCIENCE WARS TURN VIRAL

Wish I could say, surprised by this. But no, not at all.

 

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." Neil DeGrasse Tyson

 

Nice idea. That is not, however, how knowledge or belief have evolved, even in the West, unfortunately. I wish it had been otherwise. Just think about what it is like elsewhere.

 

For Anna

Terms search: physics.

COUNCIL OF PHILOSOPHICAL ADVISORS

If have a Council of Psychological Advisors, why not go for the gold?

(Addendum: Of course, one would not select a group from the contributors to, say, The Stone! Eg: "What Snow Flakes Get Right about Free Speech")

 

Say, what about a Council of Historical Advisors?

 

Why not have dueling Councils, with a meta council officiating?

 

That might actually move, some day, in the distant future, toward a way to do public and strategic policy in a useful way, for a change, rather than the nonsense going on now on campuses, pitting blind left and right radical thugs against all fragmented and warring academic and political authority.

Why abandon to, say, a serving for life Supreme Court, or a newly elected President and his meagerly informed new Cabinet, (never mind Congress, and the 50 governments of the several states) de facto authority over decisions of that scope and complexity, as we do under our present system?

THE UNDOING PROJECT ECONOMICS PSYCHOLOGY DOOMSDAY CONJUNCTION

p 340 their work ... awakened economists and policy makers to the importance of psychology....

 

Rather like two rival gangs, thrown into prison, each learning the other's modus operandi...

 

One can see what an unmitigated disaster expected utility theory was, for example, for Western society at large.

UNDOING WESTERN CIVILIZATION ONE THEORY AT A TIME

Expected utility theory...Amos (Tversky) made it clear that it had been accepted as psychologically true... the entire economics profession accepted it as how ordinary people made risky choices...that leap of faith had at least one obvious implication...

 

..the advice economists gave politicians it tilted everything in the direction of giving people the freedom to choose and leaving markets alone... after all, if people could be counted on to be basically rational, markets could, too. p 255

QUESTION END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT POLITICS

Who was the big winner, or were the big winners, of the Napoleonic Wars, at what seemed to be the end of the long aftermath, so to speak, of the French Revolution?

THE UNDOING PROJECT BLUNDER THREE CATEGORY ERROR TRUISM

"Human judgments are distorted by the memorable."

 

This is supposed to be a big experimental conclusion...

 

Any idiot can tell you something like this, without even knowing what the experimental method is supposed to be.

It is something like what an old Jewish wife might call, all dolled up, a truism.

Of course one can do an experiment to 'confirm' it, so to speak, but then why bother?

THE UNDOING PROJECT NEXT ASSUMPTION BLUNDER FAILS SMELL TEST

"When people make judgments, they compare whatever they are judging to some model in their minds."

 

There are a lot of things I could say about this assumption, or hypothesis, and it would bore you more than me (a conclusion I doubt based on their hypothesis, say, modelling relative boredom, relative interest, etc.) to go over it. But let's just leave it at this: it, also, fails to pass the smell test.

Same test, in its way, as that used by a chimp, bonobo, dog, cat, or blind squirrel!

S KOREA SUDDENLY TURNED HUGE LAST DAY OR SO PAGE VIEWS

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RE SUBJECTIVE PROBABILITY THE UNDOING PROJECT

"The decisions we make, the conclusions we reach, and the explanations we offer are usually based on our judgments of the likelihood of uncertain events..."

 

This assumption, being generous call it even a hypothesis, going in, is, of course, utterly untrue of the decisions, conclusions, or explanations of most people. (Who knows or cares how many "most' is, either real numbers or statistics, in the real world: it's a really big number.)

The assumption itself fails to pass my smell test...

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RE THE UNDOING PROJECT DANNY WOODY ALLEN THOMAS FRIEDMAN

"...He was like Woody Allen without the humor...."

 

From my perspective, being without Woody's humor would, itself, be a very good thing.

For me, Woody's jokes are as flat as Thomas Friedman's world!

(Or Carole King's singing voice. At least Gigi can carry a tune.)

RE THE UNDOING PROJECT ETC THE BLIND SIDE

What has been striking, for me, for about the past 30 years, is to have seen that the liberal globalist West, with only a few notable exceptions, failed to see the clash of civilizations and its own relative decline coming at all, and has steadfastly refused to believe it even now.

 

The decline of the West and the clash of civilizations have been on the West's blind side. The whitewashing of the outcome of WWII remains a locus classicus of the 20th Century. The 'fall' of the Soviet Union, ditto.

Re psychologists and psychoanalists, 'what interested him was their inability to face the evidence of their own folly'. p 148

One can generalize this, as I am sure Lewis will to continue to do, to, for example, economists (a biggie), political leaders and scientists, pundits, pollsters, sociologists, exact scientists, and many other fields, in fact all.

THE PATTON SOLUTION FOR THE MIDDLE EAST NOT MINE BUT RATHER AMUSING

https://youtu.be/INfZPrVFky4

RE MARKETS CIVILIZATIONS RACES MINDS PERCEPTIONS EXPERTS PICKING WINNERS

Re p 51, The Undoing Project

 

So, what is it, about the transformation, as he says, re how to see or not to see, pick or not pick, Lin, Gasol, O'Neal?

 

Is it racial bias, sexual or aesthetic aversion, aea civilizationalism, culture, what?

 

Lewis says it is about the human mind and uncertainty. There may also be an element of truth in that, but how far do you go with bad choices, which also happen to be racialist, culturalist, civilizationalist, being features of individual minds, or even of individuals' unreflective perceptions themselves?

THE UNDOING PROJECT

"Why has so much conventional wisdom been bullshit?" Michael Lewis p 51

Good question.

HUMANS DO NOT HAVE A MORE WORKABLE FUNDAMENTAL UNIT THAN THAT OF A NATION STATE

At least for the foreseeable future.

 

Nation states, in turn, are based, for better or for worse, on their underlying civilizations.

 

These civilizations, in turn, have racial, ethnic, political, economic, geographic, and religious features which endure over relatively long periods of time.

FEW HISTORIANS OR PUNDITS HAVE TOUCHED THE REAL STORY OF WWII HOW IT WASN'T REALLY WON AFTER ALL

because for anyone here, either in a public position, or one requiring establishment patronage of any kind, it's rather like a tar baby!

Time Magazine:
"Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is taking flak this week for his use of the term "tar baby" while addressing a group of Iowa Republicans on July 29 in a reference to Boston's troubled Big Dig highway project. Was he offensive in doing so? The head of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon, believes the governor "made a bad choice" in using such a term, the civil-rights leader told the Boston Herald. But Romney has his defenders as well, among them a minister in the Nation of Islam. Romney's spokesman apologized on his behalf, saying the governor simply meant to refer to "a sticky situation."
In wandering into that territory, Romney has plenty of company. In May, rookie White House spokesman Tony Snow was asked about the government covertly collecting phone records. "I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program...," Snow replied, which brought him an instant round of static. Two years ago, TIME used the phrase, reporting that John Kerry's presidential advisers were telling him to get away from "the Iraq tar baby." Is tar baby a racist term? Like most elements of language, that depends on context. Calling the Big Dig a tar baby is a lot different than calling a person one. But sensitivity is not unwarranted. Among etymologists, a slur's validity hangs heavily on history. The concept of tar baby goes way back, according to Words@Random from Random House: "The tar baby is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax or other sticky material is used to trap a person." The term itself was popularized by the 19th-century Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, in which the character Br'er Fox makes a doll out of tar to ensnare his nemesis Br'er Rabbit. The Oxford American Dictionary defines tar baby much like Romney used it, "a difficult problem, that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it." But the term also has had racial implications. In his book Coup, John Updike says of a white woman who prefers the company of black men, "some questing chromosome within holds her sexually fast to the tar baby." The Oxford English Dictionary (but not the print version of its American counterpart) says that tar baby is a derogatory term used for "a black or a Maori." So, is use of the term today a case of insensitivity? Or is the controversy caused by political correctness gone amok? The dictionary writers point out that a word's origins and its popular perception can be divergent. Current examples include the detoxification of the words suck and slut, both of which have slipped into mainstream usage. "All words have life cycles," says Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the Oxford American Dictionary "What's really important is not etymologically what it means, but the effect it has." And that is a constantly evolving standard. Witness the debate over who can and can't use the N-word. McKean says that the next print version of the Oxford American Dictionary will note that tar baby can have derogatory connotations. Which may help public figures avoid becoming ensnared by Br'er Fox more than a century after he set his little trap."
 

THE RIDENOUR AWARDS

Tomorrow.

RE NYT CASEY WILLIAMS THE STONE WHAT HAS TRUMP STOLEN FROM PHILOSOPHY

Casey is a literature major...

RE LIBERTY FANATICISM ST PAUL LUTHER CHRISTIANITY

One might put it this way:

 

Liberalism is the late globalization of one of the Reformation's ultimate results, the separation of church and state in the West. It is a separation Luther would not have welcomed, a milestone on the way to the disintegration of the West, even before it had really been more fully integrated into a coherent civilization.

 

Luther stands at the opposite end, that of disintegration, from that other, Jewish, fanatic, Paul of Tarsus, the great integrator of gentiles into what became no longer Jewry, Christianity. 

 

 

LIBERTY FANATICISM LUTHER GANDHI WHIGGISM

One might say that our age is another age of Luther, or of many Luthers, around the world.

 

I have occasionally referred to the Reformation, as having been an unmitigated disaster for Western Civilization. I stand by that assessment. 

 

I recognize that I myself perhaps commit a sort of Whig fallacy by making such a statement. Fair enough. Call me a Contra Whig. In the old days, I would have been called a Tory.

 

Professor Kaiser is rather a Whig historian. He probably thinks the Reformation was a good thing, a natural result and continuation of the Renaissance, and led on to the Enlightenment, etc. This is classic Whiggish history. 

 

His Whiggism is modulated by the cyclicality of S & H, what one might call a generational boom and bust Whiggism, moving in generational crisis cycles, according to the theory, to ever higher ground, eventually, in the fullness of time.

 

Most Americans, and indeed most Europeans now, take a Whiggish view of one stripe or another.

 

Let's just call their view, generally, the Whig Interpretation of History.

 

I consider that I am in quite good, if relatively scarce, Contra Whig company, nonetheless.

 

Whiggism did not start out, moreover, in spite of what you read, in a liberal, tolerant, enlightened, reasoned refutation of oppressive ignorant despotic conservative intolerant Dark Ages Catholicism...

 

"One might say that the very action which precipitated the break with Rome was prompted by Luther's own intolerance of what he deemed wrong religion in other people. It might be argued that what Luther rebelled against was not the severity but the laxity of the Popes." The Whig Interpretation of History, pb, p 79

Rome had started out coddling Luther, in a way similar to how the British, 400 years later, coddled Gandhi, and then Hitler. Of course FDR coddled Stalin.... 

Both Rome, and the best in Britain, lived to deeply regret these things. So do I....
 

 

 

 

 

 

BEAUTIFUL UGLY PHILOSOPHERS SYMPOSIUM 5 THE UNDOING PROJECT

Callias now said, “Critobulus, are you going to refuse to enter the lists in the beauty contest with Socrates?”

“Undoubtedly!” said Socrates; “for probably he notices that the procurer stands high in the favour of the judges.” [2]

“But yet in spite of that,” retorted Critobulus, “I do not shun the contest. So make your plea, if you can produce any profound reason, and prove that you are more handsome than I. Only,” he added, “let some one bring the light close to him.”

“The first step, then, in my suit,” said Socrates, “is to summon you to the preliminary hearing; be so kind as to answer my questions.”

“And you proceed to put them.” [3]

“Do you hold, then, that beauty is to be found only in man, or is it also in other objects?”

Crit. “In faith, my opinion is that beauty is to be found quite as well in a horse or an ox or in any number of inanimate things. I know, at any rate, that a shield may be beautiful, or a sword, or a spear.” [4]

Soc. “How can it be that all these things are beautiful when they are entirely dissimilar?”

“Why, they are beautiful and fine,”¹ answered Critobulus, “if they are well made for the respective functions for which we obtain them, or if they are naturally well constituted to serve our needs.” [5]

Soc. “Do you know the reason why we need eyes?”

Crit. “Obviously to see with.”

“In that case, it would appear without further 9ado that my eyes are finer ones than yours.”

“How so?”

“Because, while yours see only straight ahead, mine, by bulging out as they do, see also to the sides.”

Crit. “Do you mean to say that a crab is better equipped visually than any other creature?”

Soc. “Absolutely; for its eyes are also better set to insure strength.” [6]

Crit. “Well, let that pass; but whose nose is finer, yours or mine?”

Soc. “Mine, I consider, granting that Providence made us noses to smell with. For your nostrils look down toward the ground, but mine are wide open and turned outward so that I can catch scents from all about.”

“But how do you make a snub nose handsomer than a straight one?”

Soc. “For the reason that it does not put a barricade between the eyes but allows them unobstructed vision of whatever they desire to see; whereas a high nose, as if in despite, has walled the eyes off one from the other.” [7]

“As for the mouth,” said Critobulus, “I concede that point. For if it is created for the purpose of biting off food, you could bite off a far bigger mouthful than I could. And don't you think that your kiss is also the more tender because you have thick lips?”

Soc. “According to your argument, it would seem that I have a mouth more ugly even than an ass's. But do you not reckon it a proof of my superior beauty that the River Nymphs, goddesses as they are, bear as their offspring the Seileni, who resemble me more closely than they do you?” [8]

“I cannot argue any longer with you,” answered Critobulus; “let them distribute the ballots, so that I may know without suspense what fine or punishment I must undergo. Only,” he continued, “let the balloting be secret, for I am afraid that the ‘wealth' you and Antisthenes possess will overmaster me.” [9]

So the maiden and the lad turned in the ballots secretly. While this was going on, Socrates saw to it that the light should be brought in front of Critobulus, so that the judges might not be misled, and stipulated that the prize given by the judges to crown the victor should be kisses and not ribbons. [10] When the ballots were turned out of the urn and proved to be a unanimous verdict in favour of Critobulus, “Faugh!” exclaimed Socrates; “your money, Critobulus, does not appear to resemble Callias's. For his makes people more honest, while yours is about the most potent to corrupt men, whether members of a jury or judges of a contest.” Symposium 5

You might want to glance at The Undoing Project 

AMERICAN ANARCHO INDIVIDUALISM

dovetails nicely with Protagorean moral and factual individualist relativism.

 

Protagoras cannot subscribe to a will of a majority, because it would override individual judgments of various kinds, not just a minority. The minority is subject, of course, to the same criticism.

RE ENLIGHTENMENT EXPERTS FAKE FACTS NEWS APPEARANCES REALITIES

ENLIGHTENMENT MORALS FACTS TRUTH BEAUTY

See the above summary of Protagoras' view.

 

Plato discussed one weakness, among others, in Protagoras' account, from a practical point of view: On the thesis so far propounded, no man can be wiser than another, and there could be no sense in Protagoras or anyone else setting himself up as a teacher (expert).

 

Theaet. 161 c ff.

 

 

 

ENLIGHTENMENT MORALS FACTS TRUTH BEAUTY

Protagoras said that man is the measure...what appears to each man assuredly also in...it follows that the same thing both is and is not, good and bad, or both right and wrong, since often a particular thing appears either the one or the other, also beautirul or ugly to some, and the opposite to others. See Aristotle, Metaph. 1062b 13.

CIVILIZATION MATTERS

Originally, it seems, the term race meant civilization, and culture, not color, and perhaps not so much even distinctive modern concepts of racial physical features.

The modern concept of race as color and physical features still matters a lot, but it matters less...

It is an important criterion, either whether you are an American, a Russian, an Arab, a Chinese, or a Hindu, or were an ancient Greek.

RACE COLOR AND CIVILIZATION

"If slavery was accepted, there was a general feeling against enslaving Greeks, and most slaves were obtained, by war or raids, fron non-Greek countries. In this way the question of slavery was connected in the Greek mind, as in the American, with that of racial inferiority." Guthrie, III, p 156

 

There are several things about this passage, and about this account, to note.

 

One thing to note is that the Greeks tended to equate nationalism, or civilizationalism, not just city-statism, with race, although it seems that Greeks could and did enslave other Greeks, I guess. It was frowned upon.

 

Another thing to note is that the concept of race itself, for the ancient Greeks, had nothing to do with skin color, much less physical differences which modern people also consider racial characteristics.

Guthrie's comparison, between ancient Greeks amd modern Americans' views of the meaning of race, is troubling, because although as he means that slaves were also mostly foreigners among Americans, they were also identified, most crucially, by the skin color and physical features, criteria absent from the ancient Greeks' criteria:

"The complaint of the Old Oligarch is well known: slaves at Athens are an insolent lot who will not get out of your way in the street, and you are not allowed to strike them for the simple reason that there is nothing in their dress and general appearance to deistinguish them from free Athenians." Guthrie, III p. 156  

 

For the Greeks, race was a civilizational criterion, since they considered even white non-Greeks as members of a different race, as barbarians. Non-Greek whites were a different race because they were barbarians, not because their skin color was different, or because their physical features differed from Greek ones. 

 

Language, customs, dress, and religion presumably identified someone, racially, as Greek or non-Greek, not skin color or physical features, but the slaves in Athens apparently dressed and looked like Greeks.

 

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION WHERE DID NORTH KOREA'S CAPABILITY COME FROM

If you look at this topic, Wikipedia does not even get into the prior history. I am not an authority on this highly involved and technical subject.

See Time article referred to in DK article:
http://time.com/4692045/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-history/

Wikipedia starts out with Bernard Baruch, and trying to dismantle all nuclear weapons capability, in the name of a liberal international economic order.
 

The Time article on Korean nuclear history, even though it refers to 1848, the year the russians finally made a bomb, also, utterly fails to discuss how the liberal West originally had allowed Russia to not only get but keep nuclear weapons technology, and to develop it, unhindered, behind the iron curtain after WWII.

 

That really is the big big story about Korean nuclear history, but so embarrassing that no American historian, it seems, certainly no one at Time, will touch it.

 

A journalist and a spy wrote a good book about the espionage background, The Haunted Wood, and a CIA book review exists, of which this is the last paragraph:

"Postmodernists will reject the very idea of truth, but new generations of historians may discover that its pursuit and even its imperfect image have value beyond the nihilism current in so much contemporary historical typing. When that generational change occurs, Allen Weinstein will be recognized as a hero of his profession, pursuing its highest standards with tenacity, integrity, and courage. Readers will find this a haunting book, evoking still-painful memories of controversies imbedded in basic moral issues, truth and loyalty prominent among them. In the end, it is truth that sets us free of the dualism that has clouded American discussion of these issues for so much of this century. For too long, the demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy has been used to argue the innocence of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. The truth, in the end, is more complex and even more interesting: McCarthy was a demagogue, and Hiss and his colleagues were traitors." CIA book review

but that is all I know about in print. Maybe someone can enlighten me...

If you read The Haunted Wood, it seems that the OSS was a sort of very liberal branch of the KGB, or whatever it had been called back then.

If one believes the Target Patton account, they cooperated with them in Europe, even more fully than Eisenhower and co did on the ground, during WWII.  Maybe I exaggerate here, but that is how the account read to me.

Of course, the CIA position had to change, with the late 40s situation. Call it the great awakening....

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

I don't frequent zombie malls.

I go straight for bonobos!

Terms search: bonobos

RE NUCLEAR WEAPONS KOREA ETC LOOSE CANNON BLIND SQUIRREL

There are a lot of things one could say. There will be counter assertions for all of them no doubt.

 

We were in a position to prevent Russia from getting the bomb, as well as getting Eastern and Central Europe. We failed.

 

We hated Japan and promoted China relentlessly until it suddenly turned Communist on us. Surprise.

 

Now N Korea is said to threaten Korea and Japan. Wonder why they don't say threatening China too?

 

North Korea has been a client state of Russia and of China for a very long time. North Korea cannot take a crap wrong if China is watching. N Korea is what is called a vassal state.

 

This crisis is manufactured by China, and by us, pretending otherwise. Don't kid yourself. If it ends up as a war, it will be because it has been agreed, gentleman's agreement, to fight such a proxy war in Korea, not elsewhere. That might then give China an opening to come in later and annex the remains, a thing it had long had on the drawing board I suppose anyway. The better to then go down and menace Japan, Philippines,  next.

 

Read Professor Kaiser's article, but what about these things?

He writes like N Korea acts in a sort of political and civilizational vacuum. That has never been the case. That is how our pundits have been trained to think, or at least to talk out of school. 'N Korea is sui generis', to read their stuff...

In his defense, I suspect Professor Kaiser may also know relevant things which he can't discuss, even if he wanted to. I sympathize deeply with that.

I, on the other hand, know nothing I can't discuss, and so am rather a loose cannon on such topics.

However, even a loose cannon, similarly to a blind squirrel, may occasionally find a nut.

Terms search: Playing Three Sides, fattening things up, Nixon Shock, yuan trading, poker, etc.

RE SDW COMMENT ON DK'S SITE

SDW:

"Theodore Postol, emeritus Prof at MIT and an expert on military rocketry shows convincing evidence that sarin was spread by an explosion originating on the ground, not by an air to ground device. He believes this was a false flag operation. There is a link on following post to addendum by Postol giving further evidence."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-13/top-missile-and-chemical-weapons-expert-debunks-trump’s-claims-about-syrian-chemic-0

 

So, who has a motive to do a false flag chemical weapon attack in Syria to pin it on Assad? Take some guesses.

LAW HUMAN RIGHTS CIVILIZATION

It required nothing less than a certain distinctive kind of civilization, Western Civiization, (not a Western European village, or a town, or even a nation state, alone) to even so much as conceive of or imagine or bring into being such a notion, and a corresponding state of affairs, as the rule of law; or of such a notion as human rights, right or wrong, and aside from what else, positive or negative, one might say about such terms.

THE MENU THE HAMBURGER

I tried to replicate the McDonald burger recently.

 

This is merely a version of the American hamburger. It is better than McDonalds.

 

Use organic and grassfed ground beef. Drain it, since most of this somehow now contains a large quantity of water!

 

Knead into the drained ground beef some minced raw cooking onion. I use rather a lot. Add rendered room temp bacon fat or other fatty pan drippings, to taste. Add a piece of stale white sourdough or French or Italian type bread. Mush all this together. 

 

I leave out garlic for this. The American hamburger seems not to emphasize garlic, but rather onion. Of course, you can daub it with garlic flavored mayonnaise later.

 

Lightly brown the flat side of hamburger buns, sized for the size burgers you are planning, in a skillet. I suggest substituting high quality rolls, French, Italian, or healthfood store ones, or even a good quality bagel, plain, onion, rye, pumpernickel,  etc. You can use various oils for this. Set them aside.

 

Shape the meat mixture into patties however thick or large you want. Cook, timing them accordingly, in a skillet or in a hot roasting oven. You could also broil them.

 

Serve these with whatever condiments you favor. The traditional American hamburger usually included lettuce tomato, mustard, catsup, and dill pickle on the side. I like mustard, and mayonnaise rather than catsup.