Art

Open Thread

Mark Noonan10 Comments

The Democrat establishment wants Platner out. And, lo, how the mighty have fallen. When Franken became a liability they found some relatively minor dirt on him and he was gone fast…whats coming out on Platner is quite bad and so far the man isn’t budging. A DNC to MSM hitjob just ain’t what it used to be.

What’s the dirt? Well, the rumored dirt the GOP has on him is supposedly hideous…I won’t repeat what I’ve heard (and, of course, the rumors can be wrong, but they come to be via people who’s integrity I respect) but it would be very bad for Platner and the Democrats if such stories were to drop in October. So, different dirt was called up – this time an accusation that Platner broke into a lady’s home and sexually assaulted her (this being less objectionable than what the GOP has on him!). As is typical with these sorts of thing, no apparent eye witnesses nor any contemporary police report. But, believe all women, right? Well, not the Republican woman who came out with similar accusations ages ago…you don’t believe them! But when a properly Democrat lady comes out, it is five alarm fire time. The reality is that Collins is surging, Platner is flat-lining and at least some of the dirt the GOP has is credible and, so, he’s become a liability…Democrats got their Uber-Dirts order filled and that was supposed to do the trick by July 13th (the deadline for replacing Platner with someone else).

Will it? I hope it doesn’t. Not that I like Platner: even if the accusations are false he’s a complete creep, anti-American, anti-Israel dripping sack of…well, you know. But the Democrats dug this grave all by themselves. They were warned in advance – including by some voices on the Left – that Platner was not the guy. But he hates Trump and Israel so all the upper class, liberal white women flocked to him. Now, they got him. I want them stuck with him. I want them sick at heart from now to November trying to decide if they vote for the Nazi rapist or the Republican.

Mitch McConnell seems…not totally alive. Which is not surprising given his age and overall health…but the Senate GOP is locking arms and pretending he’s fine. Fearful, I guess, that we’d get a GOP Senator who didn’t hate Trump if McConnell were forced to resign. While our prayers are for recovery (or a holy death) for Mitch, his condition is emblematic of the old GOP…rigid, dying, but still clinging to power. The sooner he’s out of office, the better.

The Odyssey flick is getting a huge number of puff pieces in the MSM…which tends to confirm its going to be lousy.

[The Iliad] might well be the last word as well as the first word spoken by man about his mortal lot, as seen by merely mortal vision. If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.

— GK Chesterton

He goes on:

The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, The Odyssey because all life is a journey, The Book of Job because all life is a riddle.

The reviews are telling us it is a fresh and subversive look…with, I guess, their not understanding that to subvert is to destroy. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of ways to play out the story. Illiad, Odyssey and Job can be mined 10,000 times and you wouldn’t exhaust the source material (and I do wonder why we don’t get more books and movies on Job? I put a bit of into Book X…but it is so central to a true understanding of our position in the Universe). But they are their stories. You can’t alter them without wrecking them. The reason you can mine them endlessly is because all three – as Chesterton noted – deal with some major aspect of the human condition. What are we do to? Where do we go? Why are we here? The problem with modern literature, movies, etc is that they shy away from these questions…they deal with our animal appetites. That we don’t want bad. We do want good. But nothing about what is bad, or good, or why we should prefer one to the other. Some ancient, Bronze Age authors (one we assume Divinely inspired) wrote it out for us in three books. It is all there. All your questions are answered. Often with another question, but that is of the nature of things…because just where were you when the foundations of the world were laid?

It isn’t that they cast a black woman as Helen of Troy (absurd – stupid – as that is), it is that they don’t understand the story…they’ve probably created a technical marvel which will be forgotten in a decade…while Homer will be read to the end of human existence.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

China Joe announced that we’ll be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine – this, apparently, is what the Kraut’s demanded before they would agree to send Leopard tanks. Ukraine is getting a hodge-podge of military equipment which they have no training or maintenance facilities for. This will get interesting.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to push forward in certain areas, likely to prep for an offensive after the Spring rains. We’ll see how this comes out – but I suspect, long term, that Russia will have some Abrams tanks to sell on the international arms market. The bottom line, absent a collapse of Russian will to win, is that Russia has vastly superior numbers over Ukraine and the outcome is only a matter of time.

New York City erected a Medusa-looking statue on their courthouse – in honor of RBG and abortion, so at least kinda appropriate. Very ugly, though. But that is the point of modern art: to be ugly. To be something you hate but can’t get rid of.

Also in New York City – for ages they had de-facto segregation in their schools. This was to allow New York’s rich progressives to have high quality public schools while proclaiming their allegiance to diversity without, you know, the diversity. There merely skimmed the cream of the crop of minority students to put into class with the kids of rich, white Progressives. Former Mayor DeBlasio, true to his Leninism, put an end to that – rather than have test scores determine who got into the swanky, Manhattan public schools, they created a supposedly scientific algorithm which would decide…naturally, it really just managed to shove into these schools kids who were in no way prepared for high education achievement. There is a bit of poetic justice here in that rich, white liberals lost their little education plantation…but the bad news is that now all of New York’s public schools suck. This is considered fine by the upper end of the Ruling Class because they send their kids to private schools and, hey, who wants to take the time and effort to improve all schools? Better to just score some DEI brownie points by wrecking the few remaining good schools.

Surrounded by armed guards, California Governor Newsom proclaimed in the streets that “weapons of war” have no place there. Make no mistake about it: Newsom will be hard for the GOP to beat. He’s good looking, sounds good on TV and, of course, the MSM will cover up his crimes and puff him up as the Second Coming. But he can be beat – his State is a complete disaster outside a few, rich coastal enclaves. The way to handle him in debate is to simply get truthful about him: “Governor, you hate the people of California. You want them to suffer. You talk about ‘weapons of war’ but what you really are trying to do is make honest citizens into criminals while you deliberately and maliciously allow real criminals to run amok.” Words like that – 100% true – will put that arrogant ass into a defensive mode and he won’t know how to deal with it as he’s never had a hostile question asked of him.

What do to about rising egg prices and people suddenly dying? Claim that the eggs are causing sudden death. I’m serious: it is what they are trying to assert. This after they tried to assert that all the sudden deaths are due to climate change.