Get Used To It

I can't even say we're getting dangerously close to fascism, because... We're there.

Thus one Gregory Locke, confirming the stereotype of Americans as the sort who, for instance, supported the invasion of Iraq because they thought it was a bad place just off Florida and thus a direct threat to the citizens of Knucklehead GA.

Are these shit-for-brains too ignorant to be even faintly aware of the possibility of their own ignorance?

Readers: Yes.

Shite Shock

Unlike your average eruption, tornado or all-out nuclear war, the Trumpy McHitlerBrexitface tsunami'o'effluent shows no signs of abating.

I have given up thinking for instance "another BBC news story? well, that'll be another sluicing of slurry; better find out what, if anything, is really at the bottom lol of this."

Now seems a good time to take up the sousaphone.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

 









Hope you're all making the most of the last day or two of Saturnalia but saving a libation for Sol Invictus on the 25th.

May Marduk tame all but your entertaining monsters.

It's the End of the World. Again.

Yes indeedy doody, the end of the world... at least according to one A. Chakrabortty writing in the Guardian on Friday.

Tim Worstall restricts himself to pointing out that Wolfgang Streeck, the subject of the piece, is an (economic) sociologist, not - as claimed -  a (political) economist.

But I think it is much shittier than that. AC is visiting a Caravaggio exhibition with WS on the morning of Trump's election, indeed an apocalyptic moment as any wag and many a Hillarista will tell you, if they haven't already

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1 Corinthians 15:52

Apparently

You don’t merely look at a Caravaggio; you square up to one

and

At a scene of cardsharps he [WS] exclaims, “Feel the decadence! The threat of violence!” He notes how many paintings date from just before the thirty years’ war: “They’re full of the anticipation that the world is about to fall apart.”

Caravaggio started his apprenticeship in 1584 and died in 1610, so in fact all of his paintings inevitably date from between 34 and 8 years before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618. He was an Italian working in Italy. How his work might relate to events in Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony &c eight years after his death is a mystery to me.

I might note that the world did not fall apart in 1618, observe that WS and AC are not art historians or any sort of historians at all, and suggest that AC furthermore appears bereft of anything resembling common sense or honesty.

Unkind?

This summer, Britons mutinied against their government, their experts and the EU – and consigned themselves to a poorer, angrier future. Such frenzies of collective self-harm were explained by Streeck in the [book you're all crying out to read]

Mutinied! Against their Government (who were unanimous in their opposition to any referendum on EU membership or the possibility of Brexit)! Their experts (who are always and undisputedly right)! And against.........................omfg...................... the EU!

I am not a Guardian reader, having no appreciation of the art of the post-truth, post-fact, post-reality newspaper hack. I doubt, on this showing, the mental capacity of those who are and do.

In the Courts

Serious as the point is, this from the Secret Barrister

We now know that the principal nature of this fresh evidence was as follows:

1. A man, O, gave evidence that, two weeks after 29 May 2011, he had been out drinking with X, and had engaged in consensual sexual intercourse, during which she instructed him to penetrate her vaginally from behind, shouting, “Fuck me harder”. 
2. A second man, S, gave evidence that, on 28 May 2011, X had engaged him in a night of drunken sexual activity, in which she adopted the same sexual position and used words, “Go harder”.

Evans’ case at trial was that X had acted in the same way on the 29 May 2011, encouraging him to penetrate her “doggy style” and using the words “fuck me harder”. This, it was argued, demonstrated that she was consenting, and also supported the reasonableness of his belief that she was consenting.

reminded me of Cocklecarrot's chaotic cases with the twelve red-bearded dwarves.

Nothing like a good hearty laugh to chase the clouds away, eh chums?

Peaceful Happy Useful

   

Brexit: the Narratives Roll On

The electorate are conservative, as any fule kno. The majority keep voting for the status quo until the existing dispensation is very obviously broken.

So the first Thatcher administration of 1979 eventually dies under John Major in 1997. Blair's creation fails when the voters are asked to endorse Gordon Brown in 2010. The Lib Dems lose the 2015 election but the Conservatives keep going.

That 52% of a high turnout rejected the status quo and the EU on Thursday 23rd June, and with placid political and economic conditions prevailing, is a remarkable thing; a thing almost unremarked in the aftermath.

Instead there is a tidal wave of "divided Britain" sewage from the reactionaries, seeking to explain the outcome in spurious characterisations always disparaging of the Leave vote (have education / haven't; have money / haven't; young and bright / senile coffin-dodger; enlightened überbeing / racist troglodyte; etc).

To half the electorate, the EU appeared so defective even in calm weather that they turned against it.

Kindly explain that, o pundits.