I figure with all the doom and gloom, maybe I should bring you a story that elevates your opinion of humans a little bit.
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I figure with all the doom and gloom, maybe I should bring you a story that elevates your opinion of humans a little bit.
I feel as if all the point of progressivism has just served to use it as a target. Every place where there has been an attempt to move forward, it turns out that the forces of moving back are more motivated, more powerful, and they play dirty.
It’s a scary moment, when you realize that nationalism is a pack of lies, like religion and being a sports fan. For me, it was slow-dawning but got a strong boost when I was in the army (1983-9, basic and reserve) the wastage and stupidity began to sink in on me and I was reading a lot of the history of other countries. It’s hard not to read stuff like The Best and The Brightest [worldcat] and start to realize that the author is not just pointing out that the emperor’s new clothes show a lot of skin, but so do all of his wise senior advisors. So, how did such a bunch of idiots accomplish this? Then, you realize that behind every Bonaparte is a Talleyrand. Behind every Trump is a Miller. And they create the sweet-smelling bullshit we are all fed as we grow up. What really did it for me was reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History, [worldcat] which – my offer still stands – I will give anyone a copy of if they ask for it politely.
Reading Zinn caused me to shift my interest in history a few points to the side of where it had been focused straight on military history, and I began re-reading my favorite military histories and thinking about the political context. And/or wondering how it was pitched at the time.
I’m going to shovel out some opinions, here, and I will not be bothering (entirely) to support them with references and argumentation. Let me put that out front, since I am going to make some very negative assumptions about some people, and may even vent my spleen. Or, air it out, anyway.
In an earlier posting about my osoraku dagger, I made a comment to the effect that rocks are pretty yawn-riffic. “Ha ha ha,” laughed the fates and fired up their favorite app: “Comeuppance”
Imagine how odd it would look if all the heavenly bodies we see are more or less round-ish, and only Earth was flat?
Back in 2022, I made a dagger blade, when I was out at Dragonfly Forge in Oregon. I posted about it [here] when I got home with it.
I’m publishing some of this so it gets in the search engines. [Read more…]
I have been watching, with some horror, the spiraling descent of facebook and instagram, etc. The whole situation reminds me of an historical event that bore some similarity.
I started this thought-stream in 2016. Since then, it’s interesting to watch how my interests have changed focus. I think my interests have changed in ways that reflect the changes in the internet, politics, and how society decides who and what is important, when.