What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
Category: Meaningful Labor
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Seen on Reddit
What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
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Here I Stand
What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
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Denunciation
What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?
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You Get Out
“It’s all almost too stereotypical,” Shore reflects. “A 1930s-style military parade as a performative assertion of the Führerprinzip,” she says, referring to the doctrine established by Adolf Hitler, locating all power in the dictator. “As for Los Angeles, my historian’s intuition is that sending in the national guard is a provocation that will be used to foment violence and justify martial law. The Russian word of the day here could be provokatsiia.”
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Everything Old is New Again
Williams Shirer on editing his college newspaper. We’re still experiencing the same stuff today.
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Nothing to Say
I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. It's my epitaph, along with "Yet Another Patron Saint of Mediocrity."
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Seen On Bluesky
“At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved.” American singer.Songwriter.Pianist.Composer.Civil rights activist.
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This. Is. Us. Part Two
We have ALWAYS been this. One example among countless: The Sand Creek Massacre: “An estimated 70 to 600 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho – about two-thirds of whom were women, children, and infants – were murdered and mutilated by Col. [John] Chivington [a Methodist minister] and the volunteer troops under his command. Chivington and his men...
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This. Is. Us.
The following quote so accurately pegs the U.S. of the 2020s as it did the U.S. of the 1890s. Shirer writes of Upton Sinclair’s famous and seminal work, The Jungle, regarding the Chicago and U.S. in which he was born and raised. This. Is. Us. More will follow.
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On Courage to Stand Your Ground
Regarding < this interview in the New Yorker>: A response. As I know from being a reporter (and as opposed to the myth we all had agendas), all I had to do was let someone talk and then print a transcript. They showed their moral bankruptcy or stupidity or cupidity themselves without help. This reporter...
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198 Methods of Non-Violent Action
Use < this > as a guide for the next years of the collapse of the American republic, the destruction of which is fully underway.
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Fatigue is Not Our Friend
We can’t afford it but it’s real. Don’t forget: Ignore outrages and DJT. Focus on Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, who remind me of Eichmann and Heydrich. Read the stories not only of Oskar Schindler and The Franks, but of Corrie ten Boom and the price of providing sanctuary for undesirables. Worth every penny. Corrie’s...
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What They Fought For is Not What’s Coming to us
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.
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Beginning of the End Day—Year 80
"Instead of "Thank you for your service," try, "We're sorry you had to expend your blood, sweat, tears and toil to clean up our monumental failings." Every time you meet one of the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans (and those of all the other magnificent little American wars we've fallen into), keep your mouth shut and your brain focused on peace. These "Greatest Generation" folks answered the bell and won the fight. We might not be as blessed next time."
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Faces of War II
A member of the Honour Guard stands next to a coffin with the body of Ukrainian Armed Forces member Valerii, who was killed during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, during a funeral ceremony in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 8, 2022.
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Faces of War I
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Ouch.
Overheard in the classroom: “I play Minecraft!” Kid One. “Of course you do!” Kid Two, rolling his eyes. My, these kindergarteners can be quite vicious, can’t they?
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Whatta Rush
It’s always fun to get a phone call during morning meeting from your oncologist, who you just met yesterday, and who says, “You know last night when we thought a few zaps of radiation of your cancerous lesion would be the way to go? “Well, after more consultations with other oncologists, it’s now the consensus...
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My Cancer Journey Begins
I called Monday morning and the news was what I thought—but with an unexpected twist
I have a malignant carcinoma on my toe…type is Kaposi’s Sarcoma.
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What a Tangled Tweet We Weave When First We Practice to Get Outraged
A "good job" according to whom? May I ask when exactly was the last time you were in an elementary school and sat through an entire school day with first graders? I ask because my mother makes this same argument frequently, yet has not been in an actual elementary school building since 1976. Her grandchildren were taught at home so she, therefore, has no experience either visiting a school or evaluating a public school education since 1976.
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#EmptyThePews
"FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS! AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE ALL THESE WOMEN IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!"
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It was a Cold and Boring Night
"To me, as a gay boy, hugging another boy was perfectly natural. It always has been, it always will be. I always felt instinctively somehow that people would disapprove and say I was naughty. And I always felt instinctively that I knew what I wanted and I was going to have it and all those disapproving people could just go suck eggs and pound sand. Even at the height of the worst spiritual and sexual repression that Oklahoma and its churches could dole out, my inner belief has always been the same. There's nothing wrong with me. I've known who I am and what I wanted since I was at least five. And everyone else who is not onboard with that can go over Niagra Falls without a barrel."
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Movie Night: Red Dust
"The attraction here isn't really the cultural relic/curiousity value, it's the variation of the old man meets woman, they hate each other, they clash with sparkling dialogue and then end up together 'til death they do part. This bit has been done to death in Hollywood's 100+ year run, but it can be freshened and redeemed if the scriptwriter is up to the job."
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American Civil War Casus Belli: African Negro Slavery.
Let's be clear: The war was about slavery, from first to last. And after the gun stopped firing, the war continued in multiple ways that all-too-often includes violence and murder.
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Movie Night: Born Yesterday
"Born Yesterday is pretty fabulous. At least until it sinks in that it's just as applicable today (especially today!) as it was in 1950. In that year, it could have been warning against the House Un-American Activities Committee, which ultimately wrecked lives, but failed. But today, the movie is depressing when you realize that Broderick Crawford's Harry Brock is in charge of the country, the Senate and the judiciary and is sitting in the White House tweeting."
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Donelson Renovates
Not much can be done about the traffic volume as long as Metro and the State are devoid of ideas or even the hint of wanting to think about possible solutions. Nashville is drowning in traffic, but no one has the will or money to do anything about it.
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The Indictment
"Senate Republicans are setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the republic itself. I'm not naive enough to think they would hold Democratic presidents to the low standard they've applied to Trump, but all future presidents will be able to point to Trump to justify ..."
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What We Hath Wrought
RIP Amara Renas and all the other unknown women and men and children. May you haunt our collective memory forever.
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Movie Night: The Big Clock
"Regardless of whether you saw it then as scandalous that such perversions were being exhibited in public theaters or whether you see it now as being stereotypical, offensive and overly focused on white, male, straight actors and queer panics and Italian stereotypes, to wit ... offensive!! ... there is much to actually be loved here."
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Movie Night: The Yellow Rolls Royce
"... this is probably the granddaddy of all product placement movies, far more egregious than even Joan Crawford's conspicuous scattering of Pepsi bottles in Strait Jacket ..."
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Movie Night: Sweet Charity
"The songs and dances, Shirley MacLaine and Cita Rivera, et al, were great; it's just the stuff in between that is less than satisfying."
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Movie Night: Strait Jacket
"The bonuses here are George Kennedy as a farmhand foreshadowing by 22 years Billy Bob Thornton in 1996's Swing Blade ("I like them French fried potaters."), all the Pepsi placement, and Lee Majors in pre-Six Million Dollar Man mode, along with his very hairy chest, fluffily rising and falling just before the axe falls."
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Movie Night: A Cry in the Night
"Whatever the novelty of seeing goodie two-shoes Perry Mason as a Peeping Tom/Kidnapper, it's Carol Veazie who is the standout."
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Movie Night: The Ritz
"Regardless of whether you saw it then as scandalous that such perversions were being exhibited in public theaters or whether you see it now as being stereotypical, offensive and overly focused on white, male, straight actors and queer panics and Italian stereotypes, to wit ... offensive!! ... there is much to actually be loved here."
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Movie Night: An American Tragedy
"Basically, amoral social climber from poor background seduces poor factory girl, gets her pregnant, wants to marry a rich socialite and so kills poor factory girl by smashing her in the head with his tennis racket and dumping her body in a lake, fakes a canoe accident, trips self up by being basically an idiot, dies in electric chair after mercy is refused by Governor Charles Evans Hughes."
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Movie Night: Thieves’ Highway
"Thieves' Highway is a classic Noir tale of truckers and apples and greed and sex and San Francisco and California and highways and death."
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Movie Night: Apollo 11
"It's a magnificent bit of cinema and well-worth watching, especially on this day. It freshly reminds you of just exactly how incredible the achievement of half-a-billion people, represented by three men, was, in an incredibly difficult decade."
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Movie Night: Desk Set
"Not only is it hilarious, it has fabulous midcentury (ugh, that word) interiors, jokes only librarian/book/research nerds understand, an awesome supporting cast including EMERAC and Kate gets to get blotto and talk about the "Mexican Avenue Bus" (the Lexington Avenue Bus, that is)."
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Movie Night: Hot Millions
"There's a lot more than just smiles to recommend this one–ts droll English humor, its glimpse at fashions and designs and trends of 1968, the fantastic acting of everyone, including the performance of Bob Newhart, whose movie outings are often forgotten, the sarcastic wit and the satire–it's a long list and will need a second viewing to get it all."
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Movie Night: Die Brücke
"It's hard to think of a better illustration of the end of the European theater of war free of the pernicious and ubiquitous American boo-yah of so many countless war films."
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On Crime and Punishment This Fourth of July
"It's well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone's part at this particular moment in the country and society."
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Movie Night: Ich War Neunzehn
"Konrad Wolf's 1968 feels like a real 1945; he takes us back to his youth and we're submerged in the fog that he had to navigate through once upon a time."
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Pocket Guide to France, or, Onward to Parisian Mademoiselles
"You are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating Army now on earth. You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language."
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Beginning of the End Day
"Instead of "Thank you for your service," try, "We're sorry you had to expend your blood, sweat, tears and toil to clean up our monumental failings." Every time you meet one of the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans (and those of all the other magnificent little American wars we've fallen into), keep your mouth shut and your brain focused on peace. These "Greatest Generation" folks answered the bell and won the fight. We might not be as blessed next time."
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Paranoia, Fear, Terror and Facebook, et al.
"Insane levels of fear and control and succumbing to terror. We are a nation which is perhaps the most fearful of all countries."