People who still believe that the news media tell them the truth and that their nation and their world work pretty much the way they were taught in school are just as brainwashed and deluded as any QAnon cultist. Caitlin Johnson
Of course, it's nearly 90 minutes long, but that's ideal if you're not going to be able to fiddle with your phone, like if you're on a drive or engaged in romance. Concerning the latter, I've assured myself that my velvet voice is an aphrodisiac, so there's that too, but I have laughably little lifetime evidence to support my assurance.
This thing took a shockingly long time to produce, especially considering that I had written the substance of it a few years ago. Tons of revisions, work on the narration, etc. I started to add a handful of funny memes to each post, but finally determined I just needed to pull the trigger on it.
I hope you enjoy it. As mentioned in the post below, TDE subscribers read free. Just take out a free subscription to Eric Scheske's Outside the Modern Limits Substack publication and I'll send you a one-year complimentary paid subscription.
"Presidential hologram." Ho man. I couldn't stop laughing.
James Howard Kuntsler, who, IMHO, is establishing himself as the finest essayist on the web. He's not cultured like, say, Joseph Epstein, or urbane like Joan Didion, but he's funny, knowledgeable, and a fine stylist whose prose fits well with the online format.
I appreciate any effort to rescue the neglected noble: those little things that are good but nobody notices. It could be a person, it could be a garden.
Closley-related: “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.” Frank Herbert
I'm just returning from a short vacation (extended weekend). Blogging is light and, I'm afraid, will remain light until late July due to a variety of family commitments.
Today, I continue to experiment with Substack and the Apple Notes feature. I'm afraid it's not going very well.
This nascent essay needs work, but it's a decent blog post.
The essay could take a few directions.
E.g., Fantasy role-playing is fun, but now take your character into the real world. You're Kick-Ass, coming to beat that inner-city thug, only to find yourself on the cusp of getting throttled by him and his gang because, well, you're not a superhero. You're a white suburbanite who can't hang with hardened criminals from the hood. You're LARPing at playing a superhero, and you better leave that superhero where he belongs: in the fictional, play regions of your mind.
E.g., Thomas Sowell might be the best living public intellectual who adamantly refuses to let abstract ideals beat reality. (I've been working on a Sowell-Hemisphere essay for a year now . . . just so much to condense/capture . . . some day, some day.)
Bill Kauffman says we simply need to give Young a mulligan on his Covid tantrum against Joe Rogan and Spotify. It conflicts with my idea of Neil Young, but I don't know nearly as much about Neil Young--or North American history, including cultural history, over the past 75 years--as Bill Kauffman, so I defer.
Politically, Young is nothing if not Whitmanesque, containing multitudes. Elliot Roberts, his late manager, explained: “Neil is more American than anyone, even though he’s Canadian….Neil’s an isolationist. I mean, if it were up to him, we’d have no foreign aid, we’d talk to no one, we’d really deal with no one else—‘If they can’t cut it, f— ‘em.’ Neil is extreme….One minute he’s a leftist Democrat, and the next minute he’s a conservative.”
I got through the Tucker Carlson's interview on the Shawn Ryan Show. It was nothing momentous. I'm glad I got a lot of garden weeding done while listening to it.
He didn't offer much more insight into aliens than he did on Joe Rogan: he thinks alien sightings are supernatural phenomenon that are here for dark purposes and there's possibly a supernatural war brewing. He seems to be saying, "the World War III being courted by poking Russia in the face is the manifestation on the natural level of the Supernatural World War that's taking place." That's kinda how I read him.
In any event, he emphasizes that he doesn't know and it's just a gut feeling, but one emanating from very solid evidence that the government is covering up. I remain agnostic.
The end of the interview, veers pretty strongly, if circumspectly, anti-Catholic. After a brief exchange about the priestly abuse scandal, Ryan left-hemispherically (dogmatically) insisted Christ's church isn't "brick and mortar," which I'm pretty sure is simply his metaphor for "an earthly institution." I suspect he used the metaphor instead of the literal because he didn't want to alienate any Catholic listeners. I hasten to add that I know nothing about Ryan except what I heard on this podcast, so it's entirely possibly I entirely misread him, but I doubt it.
Rod Dreher publishes a diary at Substack. I read it for the first time this morning. It's very good and, it appears, free.
Keep in mind, Dreher left the Catholic Church, traumatized by the priestly abuse scandal (understandable) and justified by his conclusion that Catholic doctrine is wrong (I forget the specifics; I remember rolling my eyes and thinking he should've simply left off at the buggery . . . that woulda sufficed for me).
Anyway, on display is a dose of the anti-Catholic serum that flows through every former Catholic's veins. I think the serum is unavoidable because there's a broken metaphysic involved, but I'm obviously just concocting that notion in my head (I also hunch the same when it comes to couples who divorce even though the original marriage was valid). Regardless, the animus in the diary entry seems fair, just, and on display for a reason.
My apologies for the abbreviated posts lately. Summer is tough on everyone's time. On top of that, I've been working on a few lengthy essays for submission to various magazines.
It is time that the European left grew up. Prattling on about Mussolini and Marshal Pétain is passé.
Voters have eyes and ears, they are aware of what has unfolded in Europe in recent months. It is not far-right students calling for the destruction of Israel; it was not members from Marine Le Pen’s party who were questioned by police on charges of “apology for [Hamas] terrorism;” it was not a right-wing Spanish member who tweeted soon after the October 7 attack: “Today and always with Palestine;” it was not a right -wing mayor in Brussels trying to prevent democratically elected politicians speaking at a conference because he objected to their views; it was not a Swedish right-wing member who recently attended a conference linked with Hamas.
It's for TDE members only. If you're not a member, consider it. My big project right now is to re-launch my Substack, with a short history series that will be available to paid subscribers only. TDE members will receive a free one-month subscription through the TDE newsletter (during that month, you can download the history series if you like them and cancel your subscription).
Substack
Eric Scheske
Substack
Morgan Marietta
Tyler Durden
Substack
Ted Diadiun, cleveland.com
Rod Dreher
Peter Suderman
Cindy Carcamo
