"The men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims. There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it." G. K. Chesterton

The good news (perhaps) is that Donald is so evidently simian.

And many people want -- perhaps even need -- something more than pussy grabbing, animal posturing and pretending bourgeoise religion is more than a jejune strategy to guarantee the essential egotism of "personal salvation."

Of course, lunacy -- particularly in its collective forms -- has an unpredictable logic all its own.

Note this difference...

When individuals go crazy, it's the same tedious thing, day after day, year after year - often, decade after decade.

Personal madness is characterized by sameness, by repetition, by same old same old.

But when societies go crazy, it's just friggin' weird.

Hundred year wars.

Nuclear wars.

Flying planes into sky scrapers.

Burning children with napalm, an incendiary glue that cannot be scraped off one's frying flesh.

Driving trucks into Christmas markets, little kids waiting to see Santa.

Byzantine intrigue in the heart of the Vatican.

What's most bizarre is that - mostly - we can't even talk about it.

Families hunker down in twin trenches on opposite sides of the barbed wire.

And The Holiday Host carves The Roast Beast when in his heart-of-hearts he would like to carve the people who are not like him and his kin.

Fork their eyeballs as hors d'oeuvres.

Maybe Donald will do the forking for us!

And then! The most splendid of all possible outcomes!

Someone else does the dirty work -- some young buck, testy with testosterone, undertakes the drumbeat, the invasion, the carnage.

The climax.

The release.

The return to normalcy.

But no one really believes "the good Germans" didn't know.

Until we look back...

... and see...

that we...

were the good Germans.

Who?

Me?

I didn't know!

Of course, this time we don't know if there will be anyone left to look back?

Or, what's more likely, will there be anyone not so consumed by the needs of survival to undertake the civilized act of writing history.

Conservatives are desparate for the good ol' days of male dominance and female submission.

And by God, they might just get them... even if we must conjure The Neolithic to insure their return.

Love

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 3:55 PM, FV wrote:

Dear A
There is a news tape on msnbc today with Francis saying he is meeting with severe resistance as he tries to reform the bureaucracy of the Vatican. Prelates who work for him must undergo a permanent purification to serve the Catholic Church since they are under the influence of the Devil.
Alan, what is going on? What happened to the vow of obedience? How can we expect world order when we can't even have Church order? I hope he can clean out and strip power from the possessed.
Love

F

↧

Father Christmas - Santa Claus

December 22, 2016, 10:08 pm

≫ Next: Michael Moore Predicted Trump Would Win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio And The Presidency

≪ Previous: Conservative Christianity, Armageddon As Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, And Return To The Neolithic

Father Christmas is not an allegory of snow and holly; he is not merely the stuff called snow afterwards artificially given a human form, like a snow man. He is something that gives a new meaning to the white world and the evergreens, so that the snow itself seems to be warm rather than cold. The test -therefore is purely imaginative. But imaginative does not mean imaginary. It does not follow that it is all what the moderns call subjective, when they mean false. I Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there; something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man; Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925

↧

Michael Moore Predicted Trump Would Win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio And The Presidency

December 23, 2016, 6:57 am

≫ Next: Bruce Springsteen Reveals Eight 'Desert Island' Songs

≪ Previous: Father Christmas - Santa Claus

Image result for michael moore trump victory

Michael Moore Makes A New Trump Prediction

http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/12/08/michael-moore-makes-a-new-trump-prediction-he-may-quit-before/21623492/?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_1335825&ncid=txtlnkusaolp00001361

Michael Moore Predicted Trump's Victory On July 23, 2016. Rust Belt Politics Was Reason #1

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/11/michael-moore-predicted-trumps-victory.html

↧

Bruce Springsteen Reveals Eight 'Desert Island' Songs

December 23, 2016, 7:40 am

≫ Next: Patti Scialfa's "Play Around," Recorded After Husband Bruce Springsteen's Alleged Affair

≪ Previous: Michael Moore Predicted Trump Would Win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio And The Presidency

Bruce Springsteen Reveals Eight 'Desert Island' Songs

Bruce Springsteen revealed his eight "desert island" song choices – including tracks by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Marvin Gaye – during an hour-long conversation with the BBC Radio 4.

"It's songs that a lot of people are going to be familiar with and affected many others," Springsteen said of his choices. "But this was the music that electrified me and galvanized me into changing my life in some way."

Among Springsteen's picks is Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog," a track that still inspires the way the E Street Band capture their snare drum sound.

"When I heard it, it just shot straight through to my brain," Springsteen said of the 1956 single. "And I realized, suddenly, that there was more to life than what I'd been living. I was then in pursuit of something and there'd been a vision laid out before me. You were dealing with the pure thrust, the pure energy of the music itself. I was so very young but it still hit me like a thunderbolt."

Also on Springsteen's list of essentials are the Four Tops'"Baby I Need Your Loving," James Brown's "Out of Sight," the Rolling Stones'"It's All Over Now" and the Beatles'"I Want to Hold Your Hand."

"This was another song that changed the course of my life," Springsteen said of the Meet the Beatles classic. "It was a very raucous sounding record when it came out of the radio. It really was the song that inspired me to play rock and roll music - to get a small band and start doing some small gigs around town. It was life changing. It's still a beautiful record."

Springsteen added of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone,""This could be at the top of the list."

"'Like a Rolling Stone' feels like a torrent that comes rushing towards you," he said. "Floods your soul, floods your mind. Alerts and wakes you up instantaneously to other worlds, other lives. Other ways of being. It's perhaps one of the most powerful records ever made and it still means a great deal to me along with all of Dylan's work."

Springsteen also praised a pair of albums as being highly influential on his work: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks ("It made me trust in beauty, it gave me a sense of the divine") and Gaye's "masterpiece" What's Going On ("It was sultry and sexual while at the same time dealing with street level politics. That had a big influence on me.")

Check out Springsteen's full hour-long interview with Desert Island Discs at the BBC Radio 4 site.

Bruce Springsteen's Family Roots Go Back To County Kildare
http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/genealogy/bruce-springsteens-family-roots-go-back-to-co-kildare

Patti Scialfa's "Play Around," Recorded After Husband Bruce Springsteen's Alleged Affair
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/12/patti-scialfas-play-around-recorded.html

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Patti Scialfa's "Play Around," Recorded After Husband Bruce Springsteen's Alleged Affair

December 23, 2016, 7:46 am

≫ Next: "The Latest" From The Mad Man: "Let It Be An Arms Race," The Wall Street Journal

≪ Previous: Bruce Springsteen Reveals Eight 'Desert Island' Songs

"Play Around"
From Patti Scialfa's 2007 Album "Play It As It Lays"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haekf6eKOO8

Related image

↧

"The Latest" From The Mad Man: "Let It Be An Arms Race," The Wall Street Journal

December 23, 2016, 10:14 am

≫ Next: China Tells Trump: Want A Trade War? We'll Start By Targeting Republican States

≪ Previous: Patti Scialfa's "Play Around," Recorded After Husband Bruce Springsteen's Alleged Affair

"Let It Be An Arms Race,’ Trump Says

Trump spokesman plays down threat of nuclear showdown; Putin: "We will never get dragged into an arms race"

http://www.wsj.com/articles/let-it-be-an-arms-race-trump-says-1482507844

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Alan: Is Trump mad enough to provoke a war as the only way he can conceive to actually improve the economy.

If so, he should ponder Bush's Whimsy War in Iraq.

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↧

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http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/09/60-minutes-new-cold-war-who-has.htmlAlan: Is Trump mad enough to provoke a war as the only way he can conceive to actually improve the economy. If so, he should ponder Bush's Whimsy War in Iraq.

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Alan: Is Trump mad enough to provoke a war as the only way he can conceive to actually improve the economy.

If so, he should ponder Bush's Whimsy War in Iraq.

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http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/terrorism-and-other-religions-juan-cole.html