Sat - December 8, 2007
Folding the tent: Urschleim slouches on
So long, Lifli, and thanks for all the
bugs.
The latest iteration of the obscure blogging software used to create and
maintain "Slouching Toward Urschleim" has not worked out, and so with no hard
feelings I am moving today to a somewhat better-supported authoring environment.
This derelict site will remain here indefinitely, I suppose, but future entries
will appear in the Google-owned "blogspot" environment. The new
address:
http://urschleim.blogspot.com/
Leave a comment in the "Urschleim Reborn" entry of 120807 (happy sixty-sixth birthday to R. McCloud, now I think of it) if you should reach the new site through this last gasp of the old.
I'm outta here.
http://urschleim.blogspot.com/
Leave a comment in the "Urschleim Reborn" entry of 120807 (happy sixty-sixth birthday to R. McCloud, now I think of it) if you should reach the new site through this last gasp of the old.
I'm outta here.
Posted at 02:25 PM
Wed - October 17, 2007
Edna reborn!
Who indeed?
I have admired this poster for a long-defunct
North Beach fish & chips joint ever since I first saw it at the vacation
cabin of our friend G some years ago. The original measures approximately 14" x
22", and has been much knocked about in the years since it was printed (between
1963 and 1965 is my guess). I finally prevailed on G to part with the thing for
long enough to scan it and repair, four high-res square inches at a time, the
many creases, tears, stains and other blemishes that time had inflicted. I have
just retrieved the glossy printout of Edna's digital doppelgänger from the
service bureau, and I gotta tell you she hasn't looked this good in
decades:
—I would be remiss were I not to acknowledge photographer (and designer?) Jeffrey Blankfort, who is apparently still at large in the Bay Area. I have written to him asking after the backstory, but have yet to hear anything after a month.
Update 14 November 07: I have heard from photographer/designer Blankfort, who has graciously provided the following account:
It was, in fact, taken at Muir Beach, in early 1969, and that was Edna Wells (the Edna of the Fish and Chips) with the pitchfork and the quote was suggested by her son Peter who now lives in Mendocino. Edna is long gone. That was one of two posters, my actual favorite being another where I had her pose with two workers at a fish market at Fisherman's Wharf with a box of fish on the floor. The posters were printed by Lavon Masgofian of Tea Lautrec who printed ball the posters for the Fillmore and the Avalon during the 60s. I don't know what happened to the negs but I still have a copy of the originals. Edna closed the shop and went around the country teaching the cooks at H Salt how to do it. Hers were the best. She was born in Billingsgate in London.
—I would be remiss were I not to acknowledge photographer (and designer?) Jeffrey Blankfort, who is apparently still at large in the Bay Area. I have written to him asking after the backstory, but have yet to hear anything after a month.
Update 14 November 07: I have heard from photographer/designer Blankfort, who has graciously provided the following account:
It was, in fact, taken at Muir Beach, in early 1969, and that was Edna Wells (the Edna of the Fish and Chips) with the pitchfork and the quote was suggested by her son Peter who now lives in Mendocino. Edna is long gone. That was one of two posters, my actual favorite being another where I had her pose with two workers at a fish market at Fisherman's Wharf with a box of fish on the floor. The posters were printed by Lavon Masgofian of Tea Lautrec who printed ball the posters for the Fillmore and the Avalon during the 60s. I don't know what happened to the negs but I still have a copy of the originals. Edna closed the shop and went around the country teaching the cooks at H Salt how to do it. Hers were the best. She was born in Billingsgate in London.
Posted at 07:07 PM
Mon - October 15, 2007
Empire Falls
Lines from Larkin
They all imagine that they'll last forever (and
at the end they wallow in self-pity, wondering why the subject peoples don't
appreciate the Pax
Your-Predatory-Empire-Here their oppressors
have expended so much time and treasure to inflict), and exit ignobly, sometimes
violently. Better, I think, that we model our decline after the graceful
diminuendo of the Brits. Here's Philip
Larkin on the subject:
Homage to a Government
Next year we are to bring the soldiers
home
For lack of money, and it is all
right.
Places they guarded, or kept
orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves
orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at
home
Instead of working. And this is all
right.
It's hard to say who wanted it to
happen,
But now it's been decided nobody
minds.
The places are a long way off, not
here,
Which is all right, and from what we
hear
The soldiers there only made trouble
happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our
minds.
Next year we shall be living in a
country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of
money.
The statues will be standing in the
same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the
same.
Our children will not know it's a different
country.
All we can hope to leave them now is
money.
I yearn for the death (along British lines) of the American Empire. I'll piss cheerfully on its grave.
I yearn for the death (along British lines) of the American Empire. I'll piss cheerfully on its grave.
Posted at 07:28 PM
Wed - September 19, 2007
Autumn approaches
"Where will we be...when the summer's
gone?"
A largely clement summer, comfortably warm but
seldom intolerably hot, appears today to be packing its bags. As I crossed the
Bay Bridge eastbound this afternoon the waters were roiled with whitecaps, and
half an hour ago (lord, is it dark
already?)
there were clouds aplenty gathering north and west. There's the hint of a chill
in the air this evening, whereas a couple of weeks ago we were still leaving the
kitchen door open nights for the crossbreeze. All this suggests that the
autumnal equinox will arrive on
schedule.
At one time, fall was my favorite season. This was before I took fulltime employment. Once I was confined indoors from eight to five I came to cherish any daylight hour I could call my own, and clung to the summer months with a sun-dazzled passion for the illusion that I actually had a life after work. I still savor the crispness of the autumnal air, at least so far as this cuts through the dense and gritty particulate emissions that drift a dozen feet up from the urban thoroughfare outside my house before settling on the front porch, but it's those long summer days that have my heart. And at this point in my development, which comes to seem more like a folding, I greet each summer not with a sense of infinite possibility, but rather a speculation on the order of "How many of these remain in the jar?"
But I was ever one for a poignant glance backward. I swear, by 1960 I was already wistful about the vanished salad days of Fifty-seven.
At one time, fall was my favorite season. This was before I took fulltime employment. Once I was confined indoors from eight to five I came to cherish any daylight hour I could call my own, and clung to the summer months with a sun-dazzled passion for the illusion that I actually had a life after work. I still savor the crispness of the autumnal air, at least so far as this cuts through the dense and gritty particulate emissions that drift a dozen feet up from the urban thoroughfare outside my house before settling on the front porch, but it's those long summer days that have my heart. And at this point in my development, which comes to seem more like a folding, I greet each summer not with a sense of infinite possibility, but rather a speculation on the order of "How many of these remain in the jar?"
But I was ever one for a poignant glance backward. I swear, by 1960 I was already wistful about the vanished salad days of Fifty-seven.
Posted at 08:31 PM
Sat - August 11, 2007
The Five-Year Plan
1972-2007, divided by
five
Not as famous as The Brown
Sisters, nor as consistent as The Arrow of
Time, but my humble effort predates
them both.
Posted at 08:03 PM
Sun - July 8, 2007
Think I’m gonna be sad...
although she never drove me mad,
she’s going away
Cancer appears to be dancing all around me this
past year, and lately it’s doing a fandango on an old sweetheart—we
watched the television coverage of Nixon’s re-election together, and she
said "If there was justice in the world he'd be struck by lightning right about
now." If there was justice in the world V would not be dreadfully ill this
summer. A parent apart, I have never endured the death of anyone I loved, and
this gathering tragedy still does not seem quite real to me: denial trumps and
muffles emotion somehow. It is as though sorrow hangs frozen and suspended on
the steep slope of the near future, poised to roar down upon me—upon all
of us who have loved her—in an avalanche of grief.
Posted at 06:40 PM
Sun - April 8, 2007
The lady or the tiger?
A cruel conundrum for our GOP
friends
We have been treated these latter days to a
particularly high pitch of vituperation directed at the Speaker of the House not
merely from the usual suspects but from some of the gelded stars of the
allegedly "mainstream" media such as the
Washington
Post and CNN, who are back to their bulemic
ways with GOP talking points. Living as I do in my Northern California enclave I
can't claim to any special insight into the sentiments of lower-middle America,
but my gut, which has grown substantially over the past few years, tells me that
this campaign will fall short of its desired effect. I suspect that the Teeming
Millions have room in their collective political perception for one, and only
one, Castrating Feminazi Bitch, and that this position has been held for almost
fifteen years by one Hillary Rodham Clinton, former First Lady and present
Junior Senator from New York. She has not reached this position by accident, but
rather in consequence of a happy confluence of her own affect (visibly
calculating and ambitious, not conspicuously humorous, short on charm, decidedly
not the worshipful helpmeet), a long campaign of villification, and the fertile
ground of the Teeming Millions' own resentments, anxieties and misogyny, both
projected and internalized. Note that I do not claim there mighn't be other
reasons for disliking Mrs. Clinton, but to the extent she is loathed by a broad
swath of the Teeming Millions I maintain that this owes considerably more to a
decade-plus diet of propaganda than it does to a rigorous point-by-point
examination and analysis of her heath-care proposals in the early
nineties.
So there we are, with Vince Foster's lesbian murderess firmly lodged of set purpose in the throat of the Fox-watchin', Limbaugh-listenin' polyester proletariat demographic. Except—oh, no! We need that spot for Pelosi!—it's a tough job to replace one Castrating Feminazi Bitch with another at short notice. The Teeming Millions may not like Mrs. Pelosi, but they love to hate Mrs. Clinton, and will not readily yield up an old favorite to a newcomer of whose existence most of them were unaware half a year ago. And supposing this substitution could be accomplished? It would require a concerted effort, and no little time, to extract Hillary and replace her with Nancy as the focus and locus of resentment, anxiety, misogyny &c, and what have you accomplished at that point? Why, you've released Hillary to ravage a helpless Republic, its loyal citizenry distracted by Castrating Feminazi Bitch Pelosi. Alas, Orwell's public could be relied upon to switch from Eurasia to Eastasia overnight, but our slow, sturdy yeomen still require weeks of disinformation bombardment to make a like transition.
Bottom line: the effort to demonize Pelosi will fail with most citizens, and the imperative of maintaining Clinton as the reigning Castrating Feminazi Bitch will dominate GOP media offensives until she is eliminated from the race for the nomination or until the next general election.
So there we are, with Vince Foster's lesbian murderess firmly lodged of set purpose in the throat of the Fox-watchin', Limbaugh-listenin' polyester proletariat demographic. Except—oh, no! We need that spot for Pelosi!—it's a tough job to replace one Castrating Feminazi Bitch with another at short notice. The Teeming Millions may not like Mrs. Pelosi, but they love to hate Mrs. Clinton, and will not readily yield up an old favorite to a newcomer of whose existence most of them were unaware half a year ago. And supposing this substitution could be accomplished? It would require a concerted effort, and no little time, to extract Hillary and replace her with Nancy as the focus and locus of resentment, anxiety, misogyny &c, and what have you accomplished at that point? Why, you've released Hillary to ravage a helpless Republic, its loyal citizenry distracted by Castrating Feminazi Bitch Pelosi. Alas, Orwell's public could be relied upon to switch from Eurasia to Eastasia overnight, but our slow, sturdy yeomen still require weeks of disinformation bombardment to make a like transition.
Bottom line: the effort to demonize Pelosi will fail with most citizens, and the imperative of maintaining Clinton as the reigning Castrating Feminazi Bitch will dominate GOP media offensives until she is eliminated from the race for the nomination or until the next general election.
Posted at 12:19 PM
Tue - January 16, 2007
Just another Caudillo, alas
Hugo your way and I'll go
mine...
It's not that this country has
any
moral standing when it comes to Latin America, and I still am disposed to direct
my motor fuel dollars to Venezuela's Citgo rather than to the House of Saud, but it
must be observed that Hugo Chavez, after feasting on his own press clippings for
the past few years, is falling into the predictable pattern of the South
American strongman. I think we may take it as a given that before the next
election Venezuela's existing constitutional barriers to Hugo's continuing hold
on power will have been suitably modified. Pity, that. But the United States,
patron, sponsor, enabler and Onlie True Begetter of sundry sombrero'd horrors
South of the Border, must needs find itself short of breath when it comes time
to huff and to puff.
Nevertheless: bad move, Hugo. Bolívar you ain't. Our two continents must
each await a populist more concerned with reforming institutions over cementing
institutional power.
Posted at 04:39 PM
Mon - January 8, 2007
Ode to the Boss That Got Away
A good man down—but first this
disclaimer
(I don't know whether my employer has
a policy on employee blogging [probably not—the institution is old, staid,
and ever well behind the technological curve] and I'm not keen to find out the
hard way, so I've been at pains to leave the whole topic alone here. That's not
an option this evening, but prudence dictates a generous measure of
circumspection and a dollop of obfuscation in the following
tribute.)
JPL arrived from New York to take over our San Francisco branch about four years ago. He was only the fourth Head Honcho here since the 1950s, and the first in living memory to occupy that nice corner office without having previously served in some less exalted capacity here in The City (we are known within the company as a somewhat inbred lot).
He took up the reins on the eve of a merger and reorganization, billed, as these things always are, as a union of equals; in sordid practice, of course, nothing of the sort. Fortunately our side was the pitcher rather than the catcher, so most of the immediate collateral damage was taken by the two absorbed entities, but the situation was rather, ah, fraught, and my own position within the firm, notwithstanding three or four centuries of conscientious if not strictly loyal service, felt a little unsteady as the transition approached. Afterward JPL remarked that before the merger the SF assignment was the best job he'd ever had, and that a year later it had become the worst. One of the PR schlockmeisters at the Mothership back east came up with the inspirational tagline (I paraphrase) "One Team! One Goal!" which some (ahem) wag amended to "One Team! One Goal! Three Email Systems!"
Partly because he'd come to us as an unknown, partly because he was drafted, and was sundered from the personal and professional bonds he'd formed for thirty years in New York, where he was, I gather, well-beloved, JPL seemed somewhat guarded in affect when he arrived at the end of 2002, and for some reason he never quite connected with the workforce at large, accustomed as they were to his predecessors of the previous twenty years, both of whom, otherwise quite different in temperament, were press-the-flesh types. For the whole of his tenure he was seen, I'm afraid, as grave, formal, remote, baffling.
By contrast his first-level subordinates, our senior managers, adored him. First, he was not his immediate predecessor, who approached her duties in a style I can only describe as free-associative punctuated by fits of arbitrary rage. Second, he was funny, capable, brilliantly intelligent and hands-off in his management style, by which I mean that he sized up his deputies, concluded that they knew what they were doing, and let them function unimpeded. He was an imposing man, and I think all of us who worked directly under him would have dreaded his anger. More importantly, though, you wouldn't have wanted to disappoint him. He trusted you to get the job done, didn't look over your shoulder, and asked only that you'd deliver what you'd undertaken. I received an email reproach from him when I missed a deadline (for another division to which I'd been seconded). It began "Rand, you dilatory scoundrel..."
I'm not senior management, or any sort of management at all, but I occupy an odd niche in the firm, performing the duties of what amounts to the art director, and for twenty years I've reported directly to the Head Cheese. Since so far as I've ever been able to determine I have no equivalent in any of the other cities in which our globe-girdling enterprise is represented, I was a little uneasy when I was first presented to JPL. I needn't have worried: he liked having an art director. Early on a chance remark to him by his executive assistant established that he and I were both aficionados of "art house" films, and on this basis we became, oddly, friends. He extended me his protection from the vagaries of our office politics, alerted me to threats from elsewhere in the organization, and even called me from retirement last spring to warn me to "stay off the radar" of his acting replacement, who fortunately didn't get the permanent assignment.
We weren't so very far apart in age: he left college three months before I started, and although this wasn't the sort of thing one would discuss up the foodchain, I'm fairly certain that had our paths crossed in 1970 we might well have shared a relaxing doobie: I think I can tell an old stoner when I see one, and he let slip once that he attended Woodstock. Shaggy he might have been back in the day, but he came to San Francisco impeccably tailored and groomed. He was a big man, probably 6' 3" or more, and at the outset probably right at the limits of the weight his generous frame could carry gracefully—but he did carry it gracefully, and with vast elegance.
As you might guess from all this, he's been dead now for a week. Almost as soon as he arrived, it seemed, his health began to falter, and over the years the weight melted off so that toward the end of his tenure those splendid tailored suits seemed to hang off his shoulders. He retired quietly last March, and moved back east. On 30 December he fell and broke his neck, apparently paralyzing him, and died on Tuesday night.
I'd hoped to visit him this summer. Obviously this won't happen. I post this graphic, adapted from one his senior staff commissioned on his birthday a few years ago, as tribute to the best boss I'm likely ever to have. Here's to you, JPL—you were a class act.
Postscript — A dream last night: I am walking up an alpine path under leaden skies, patches of snow on the ground, and come to a paved highway through the mountains. JPL is there, waiting to cross (although there is no traffic in sight). Approaching, I say "I heard you were dead." JPL: "As you see, I am not." RC: "I had it on pretty good authority." JPL (airily): "Nevertheless, I'm fine." RC: "I'm very, very glad to learn this." (we cross the road) JPL (indicating the road): "That way down the mountain" (proceeds along alpine path and out of sight; dream ends).
JPL arrived from New York to take over our San Francisco branch about four years ago. He was only the fourth Head Honcho here since the 1950s, and the first in living memory to occupy that nice corner office without having previously served in some less exalted capacity here in The City (we are known within the company as a somewhat inbred lot).
He took up the reins on the eve of a merger and reorganization, billed, as these things always are, as a union of equals; in sordid practice, of course, nothing of the sort. Fortunately our side was the pitcher rather than the catcher, so most of the immediate collateral damage was taken by the two absorbed entities, but the situation was rather, ah, fraught, and my own position within the firm, notwithstanding three or four centuries of conscientious if not strictly loyal service, felt a little unsteady as the transition approached. Afterward JPL remarked that before the merger the SF assignment was the best job he'd ever had, and that a year later it had become the worst. One of the PR schlockmeisters at the Mothership back east came up with the inspirational tagline (I paraphrase) "One Team! One Goal!" which some (ahem) wag amended to "One Team! One Goal! Three Email Systems!"
Partly because he'd come to us as an unknown, partly because he was drafted, and was sundered from the personal and professional bonds he'd formed for thirty years in New York, where he was, I gather, well-beloved, JPL seemed somewhat guarded in affect when he arrived at the end of 2002, and for some reason he never quite connected with the workforce at large, accustomed as they were to his predecessors of the previous twenty years, both of whom, otherwise quite different in temperament, were press-the-flesh types. For the whole of his tenure he was seen, I'm afraid, as grave, formal, remote, baffling.
By contrast his first-level subordinates, our senior managers, adored him. First, he was not his immediate predecessor, who approached her duties in a style I can only describe as free-associative punctuated by fits of arbitrary rage. Second, he was funny, capable, brilliantly intelligent and hands-off in his management style, by which I mean that he sized up his deputies, concluded that they knew what they were doing, and let them function unimpeded. He was an imposing man, and I think all of us who worked directly under him would have dreaded his anger. More importantly, though, you wouldn't have wanted to disappoint him. He trusted you to get the job done, didn't look over your shoulder, and asked only that you'd deliver what you'd undertaken. I received an email reproach from him when I missed a deadline (for another division to which I'd been seconded). It began "Rand, you dilatory scoundrel..."
I'm not senior management, or any sort of management at all, but I occupy an odd niche in the firm, performing the duties of what amounts to the art director, and for twenty years I've reported directly to the Head Cheese. Since so far as I've ever been able to determine I have no equivalent in any of the other cities in which our globe-girdling enterprise is represented, I was a little uneasy when I was first presented to JPL. I needn't have worried: he liked having an art director. Early on a chance remark to him by his executive assistant established that he and I were both aficionados of "art house" films, and on this basis we became, oddly, friends. He extended me his protection from the vagaries of our office politics, alerted me to threats from elsewhere in the organization, and even called me from retirement last spring to warn me to "stay off the radar" of his acting replacement, who fortunately didn't get the permanent assignment.
We weren't so very far apart in age: he left college three months before I started, and although this wasn't the sort of thing one would discuss up the foodchain, I'm fairly certain that had our paths crossed in 1970 we might well have shared a relaxing doobie: I think I can tell an old stoner when I see one, and he let slip once that he attended Woodstock. Shaggy he might have been back in the day, but he came to San Francisco impeccably tailored and groomed. He was a big man, probably 6' 3" or more, and at the outset probably right at the limits of the weight his generous frame could carry gracefully—but he did carry it gracefully, and with vast elegance.
As you might guess from all this, he's been dead now for a week. Almost as soon as he arrived, it seemed, his health began to falter, and over the years the weight melted off so that toward the end of his tenure those splendid tailored suits seemed to hang off his shoulders. He retired quietly last March, and moved back east. On 30 December he fell and broke his neck, apparently paralyzing him, and died on Tuesday night.
I'd hoped to visit him this summer. Obviously this won't happen. I post this graphic, adapted from one his senior staff commissioned on his birthday a few years ago, as tribute to the best boss I'm likely ever to have. Here's to you, JPL—you were a class act.
Postscript — A dream last night: I am walking up an alpine path under leaden skies, patches of snow on the ground, and come to a paved highway through the mountains. JPL is there, waiting to cross (although there is no traffic in sight). Approaching, I say "I heard you were dead." JPL: "As you see, I am not." RC: "I had it on pretty good authority." JPL (airily): "Nevertheless, I'm fine." RC: "I'm very, very glad to learn this." (we cross the road) JPL (indicating the road): "That way down the mountain" (proceeds along alpine path and out of sight; dream ends).
Posted at 08:33 PM
Mon - November 20, 2006
Fri - November 10, 2006
Down the Memory Hole
Oceania has
always
been at war with Eastasia!
More evidence that the
Washington
Post identifies itself with the powers that
were: follow the link to find a bit of discreet
revisionism.
Lying. Sacks. Of. Shit.
Lying. Sacks. Of. Shit.
Posted at 03:27 PM
Wed - November 8, 2006
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Macaca
this,
motherfucker!
This morning marked the first post-election
Wednesday since 1998 that I rose from bed with a spring in my step. That the
Forces of Righteousness (OK, the Forces of Not as Bad as the Other Guys [Who
Are, However, Really,
Really
Bad]) would prevail in the House of People's Deputies was not altogether
unexpected; that they appear to have eked out a majority in the Senate is
gratifying; that this latter victory involves the destruction* of George Allen's
political career is icing
and
whipped cream on the cake. I've had my eye on the junior Senator from Virginia,
my approximate contemporary and the likely classmate of my 1970 college
roommate, for a few years now, and had monitored his career with some
foreboding: was
this
the future president who would make me yearn for the wise and enlightened rule
of Bush the Younger?
It now appears that at the very least a stick has been thrust into the spokes of this nasty Confederate wannabee sociopath's presidential ambitions. Life is good.
*It should be noted that 30 years ago, upon Ronald Reagan's failure to wrest the GOP presidential nomination away from Gerald Ford, I sighed in relief and said "Well, thank god we've seen the last of that clown."
It now appears that at the very least a stick has been thrust into the spokes of this nasty Confederate wannabee sociopath's presidential ambitions. Life is good.
*It should be noted that 30 years ago, upon Ronald Reagan's failure to wrest the GOP presidential nomination away from Gerald Ford, I sighed in relief and said "Well, thank god we've seen the last of that clown."
Posted at 06:07 PM
Thu - September 28, 2006
Peggy, we hardly knew ye
Chronicle of a grief unforeseen: Cue
"Fire and Rain"
Pictured above is Peggy Adams, a friend of my youth. I saw her last a few days before my twentieth birthday, stopping in at her home in Arcata CA, a small college town on California's remote northern coast. We spoke once or twice by telephone after that, the last time in 1990, when Nick and I attempted to lure her to our graduating cohort's 20-year reunion. She was in San Diego then, and begged off: she had a romantic tryst in Manhattan scheduled for the same weekend. We were unable to provide a persuasive alternative, and although that was the best of the reunions I've attended since graduation, I can't say that it would have been the better path for her.
And yet, and yet. I'd long taken it for granted that one day we'd get together to reminisce about auld times. A recent inquiry from Nick set me a-Googling without much hope ("Peggy Adams" yielded almost 36,000 hits), but to my surprise, and then dismay, the relevant entry appeared on the first screen. Alas, it was what amounted to an obituary: a piece marking her death in September 2002 of a brain tumor.
This is a tardy and inadequate tribute. I knew her in high school; she was whip-smart, funny, and cute as a bug. I will not say that a month has not gone by since then that I haven't thought of her, but she has probably flickered into my attention at least once in a quarter.
That beautiful, witty mind, all gone. As Nick said last night, rather mournfully, "I didn't feel a disturbance in the Force four years ago." Nor, of course, did I. I wish to god, though, that I hadn't trusted to chance these latter years to make contact again.
She was very fine. Four years after her death my grief is fresh.
Posted at 07:55 PM
Fri - September 1, 2006
An OASys of stability in a troubled world.
As long as the promiscuously-used term
"fascism" is being once again bandied about...
The other day on Talk of the Nation the subject
(too briefly considered—almost a sidebar) was "does the administration's
attempt to conflate the Iraqi insurgency, along with sundry other Islamic
movements that wish us ill, with mid-twentieth century fascism constitute a
historically apt analogy?" The consensus was that it did not. I will insert here
a bit from digby,
who tellingly cites a few features of fascism as described by one Benito
Mussolini, a man whose other well-documented sins cannot detract from
his claim to substantial authority on this
subject:
...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...
[...]
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State.......The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....
Ayup, fits the dead-enders in Iraq to a "T" if you ask me.
Anyway, one of the specialists asked responded that no, the pesky Muslim foes did not particularly resemble the Germans or the Italians of the war that began 67 years ago today. A followup question was: well, does the term "fascism" apply, as some of its blogger critics have suggested, to the Bush administration? The response went something like: "no, I think what we have now isn't fascism but an oligarchic authoritarian system."
Whereupon I went Whe-e-e-e-w! I sometimes thought, in my darkest moments, that we were edging toward fascism, but now I know that we're merely living under an Oligarchic Authoritarian System, for which I propose the extended acronym OASys. Henceforth, my good auditors, should I ever so far forget myself in the heat on online discourse as to use the term "fascism" I trust that you will understand that I meant merely "OASys," that worthy successor to Madison and Jefferson's vision of Constitutional democracy.
...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...
[...]
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State.......The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....
Ayup, fits the dead-enders in Iraq to a "T" if you ask me.
Anyway, one of the specialists asked responded that no, the pesky Muslim foes did not particularly resemble the Germans or the Italians of the war that began 67 years ago today. A followup question was: well, does the term "fascism" apply, as some of its blogger critics have suggested, to the Bush administration? The response went something like: "no, I think what we have now isn't fascism but an oligarchic authoritarian system."
Whereupon I went Whe-e-e-e-w! I sometimes thought, in my darkest moments, that we were edging toward fascism, but now I know that we're merely living under an Oligarchic Authoritarian System, for which I propose the extended acronym OASys. Henceforth, my good auditors, should I ever so far forget myself in the heat on online discourse as to use the term "fascism" I trust that you will understand that I meant merely "OASys," that worthy successor to Madison and Jefferson's vision of Constitutional democracy.
Posted at 02:44 PM
Tue - August 1, 2006
Semper Fidel!
He may be a sonuvabitch, but at least
he's not
our
sonuvabitch!
He been a bad dude. He put up against the wall more people than he oughta. As a reckless thirtysomething he was prepared to involve his Soviet sponsors and the Kennedy Administration in a thermonuclear war, which was very stupid of him. Against those debits he has contrived during his long rule to achieve for Cuba the highest longevity rate in Latin America, the highest literacy rate and the lowest infant mortality rate--the bastard! Clearly he has made these tickmarks to spite us. Clearly Cuba will be better off when he's gone.
Long life to you, Fidel, whatever your sins. You have contrived to stick your thumb into the deserving eyes of ten consecutive American presidents, and I hope that you survive either to treat with a realist or to gouge the optics of another sellout/ideologue. Get well soon, Jefe.
Posted at 08:44 PM
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Published On: Dec 08, 2007 02:28 PM
Published On: Dec 08, 2007 02:28 PM