Requie-um for a God-King

Ah, gee whilikers, Bobo, you’re going to ruin your reputation at the Applebee’s Salad Bar with this one.

Bobo* Brooks, the Motherfucking New York Times:
The Follower Problem

If there’s anything that has defined the right-wing, not just in our current age of paint-huffing and crying to mommy, but for all time, it is that they are drop to their knees, boot-licking authoritarians.

And that’s not a joke, it’s definitional. As you get more right-wing you get more authoritarian, worshipping power for its own sake, and thinking entirely in hierarchies, downward power struggles, and received wisdom from singular sources.

In fact, much of the comedy of the right-wing is when they take their IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION styles of writing and try and understand the actions of anti-authoritarians. Biology entirely rests on what one 19th century Brit thought, right? Wanting to give people equal rights is just code right to shifting the pre-existing hierarchy to put your peeps on top? Obviously liberals never criticize their leaders despite the reams of liberals criticizing their leaders we’re simultaneously using to prove that liberal leaders are having their support collapse from underneath them.

But I’ll give wingnuts one thing. They generally try and hide their authoritarian natures. By which I mean they don’t write posts just openly declaring themselves authoritarian and whining about how we don’t grovel in the dust in front of our God-Kings anymore.

Every fiber of my being is rejecting this as I type it, but… w-w-… wingnuts are smarter than that. Ugh.

But as this long-winded intro suggests, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an overpaid hack getting more per article than I’ll ever earn in my life willing to demonstrate an awareness beneath even the most deranged of Birther.

Enter Bobo* Brooks.

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

  • All our problems are caused by the fact that the miserable peons don’t worship their leaders as Gods anymore.

Oh yeah, there be some fine shit mangos on our cruise tonight!

If you go to the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials in Washington, you are invited to look up in admiration. Lincoln and Jefferson are presented as the embodiments of just authority. They are strong and powerful but also humanized.

I’m not sure it’s possible to be more turned on by one’s subservience to power without actually being in a D&S scene.

On that note, I think Brooks needs to just go to a play party, find himself a leather daddy, and leave the rest of us out of his fetishes from now on. Cause, ew.

Jefferson is a graceful aristocratic democrat. Lincoln is sober and enduring.

Jefferson was sexy and only wanted the vote to go to rich, white, men and talked about fictional freedom while owning slaves. Lincoln extended citizenship to black impoverished slaves, but he’s a “Great Person”, so I’ll include him as well but make the contrast in turn-on so stark people can see my white hood through the internet.

Both used power in the service of higher ideas, which are engraved nearby on the walls.

Yeah, blah blah blah, power in service to ideals, whatever, the point of the matter is the power. Oh god, yes, the power! You can tell because I don’t even care what the ideals are. What ideals did they fight for? Who cares?!? As long as you have some rubbish for the rubes, it doesn’t matter, cause as we all know all that matters is how much more powerful and therefore more important they were than us.

So yeah, we’re one paragraph in and he’s supporting such a steel hard incher for authority that he’s in danger of punching through his iPad as he writes this.

The monuments that get built these days are mostly duds. That’s because they say nothing about just authority.

You can tell that his editor, rising up from a drunk stupor caused by having to edit faux-centrist op-eds from shit-stains like this, took one look at this orgasmic worship of authority and search and replaced all mentions of authority with “just authority” in the desperate attempt to cover up his paper’s allegiances.

You can tell this, because at no point does Bobo* even think about trying to make an argument that authority needs to be just to be good.

The World War II memorial is a nullity. It tells you nothing about the war or why American power was mobilized to fight it.

Possibly because having a memorial to “we deliberately ignored the current greatest example of pure evil as he conquered most of Europe, only entering the war when his allies attacked us, then went on a racist war against all Japanese people, only entering on the ‘heroic side’ when it looked like those dirty commies were in danger of becoming Europe’s greatest heroes” would have been a bad thing.

Better to just leave it as a “great heroes making great sacrifices” thing and call it a day, really.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial brutally simplifies its subject’s nuanced and biblical understanding of power.

Uh…

You mean his complete rejection of your definition of power and his subversive attempt to replace it with a synonym for effort and struggle?

But hey, in Bobo’s world, as long as we’re forced to pretend some nigger matters, then their anti-authoritarian protest against unthinking authority is just a celebration of the All-Sainted Bootheel, praised be its name.

It gives him an imperious and self-enclosed character completely out of keeping with his complex nature.

No, based on the google image searches and the website for the memorial, it gives an impression that the crew hired for it couldn’t be arsed to actually finish his statue on time.

Also, great job showing that you aren’t just about worshiping white mythology. What with your rejection of the statue looking too militant compared with the white fantasy that MLK was all about hugging out the differences between white and black people against those mean Black Panthers and their angry Mandingos led by Malcolm X.

Really shows that this rant has nothing to do with the cracks in the hierarchy starting to spread along the tightly clenched fist of the 1%.

As Michael J. Lewis of Williams College has noted, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial transforms a jaunty cavalier into a “differently abled and rather prim nonsmoker.” Instead of a crafty wielder of supreme power, Roosevelt is a kindly grandpa you would want to put your arm around for a vacation photo.

I want to frame this paragraph on my refrigerator, it is that perfect a reveal.

I urge you to read it again. Go on, I’ll wait… (We’re the cowboys from He~ll)… Back? All right then.

Yeah, that’s right, he’s actually complaining that a memorial acknowledged the totally bad-ass fact that FDR did all his awesome genuine leadership while being a disabled person (which in his time might as well have made him a nigger or an Eye-talian).

Wah wah, bu-but in his fantasy, you can’t be a God-King unless you can stand rock rigid hard up into the sky. This memorial makes him look… flaccid. Couldn’t they have just ignored the reality and made him an able-bodied macho man with iron pecs and a flamethrower so that closeted pervs like me can rub against it while we’re in the park…admiring the statues?

I could stop this post right here, because this says it all. The complete inability to accept any authority outside expected views of authority, the inability to reconcile being “down on the hierarchy” with his desire to fellate our invented royalty and his pants-creaming desire for real authority for his lick-spittle authoritarian mind to pant over.

But sadly, we’re only half-way through this Hindenberg.

The proposed Eisenhower memorial shifts attention from his moments of power to his moments of innocent boyhood. The design has been widely criticized, and last week the commission in charge agreed to push back the approval hearing until September.

Is that so? Hmm. One side seems to be him as a general, another has him as president. Not seeing the pedobear segment that made Brooks feel all catholic.

And I love how he assumes any critique that would arise to any of these structures is entirely in agreement with his worry that they don’t suck off power enough rather than because they look like lazy piles of crap designed and built by the lowest bidder.

Uh, Bobo*, I know you spend your days breaking into CEO washrooms to kneel naked in the stalls, but that’s not everyone’s normal.

Even the more successful recent monuments evade the thorny subjects of strength and power. The Vietnam memorial is about tragedy. The Korean memorial is about vulnerability.

The Vietnam war was about strength and power… The Vietnam war was about strength and power…

Okay, yeah, of course, in a whole Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky sense… and okay, yeah, technically.

But somehow I think a monument that was literally to the fact that a bunch of assholes spent thousands of lives all in service to prolonging a longer fail erection in front of the Russians so we wouldn’t look “weak” would be even less acceptable to Dummkopf Brooks.

And with his whining response to the War Memorials honoring the dead, I’m wondering if the only acceptable war memorial to him would have been a giant cock missile penetrating the anus shaped compounds of our wheelchair bound enemies.

Why can’t today’s memorial designers think straight about just authority?

I want my cock missile statue, damn you!!! Why won’t you give it to me-e-e-e-e!!!

Some of the reasons are well-known. We live in a culture that finds it easier to assign moral status to victims of power than to those who wield power. Most of the stories we tell ourselves are about victims who have endured oppression, racism and cruelty.

Well, yes, because the people who have “wielded power” tended to be assholes like you who made life miserable for those with less power. Maybe if those God-kings really did spend more of their time giving everyone free rainbows and riding unicorns instead of using their power to rape everyone’s wife and take all the food, then we wouldn’t be viewing them today like the trumped-up asshole exploiters they were.

Sorry if actions had consequences and that’s affecting your ability to get it up. I guess you’ll just have to complain to history.

Then there is our fervent devotion to equality, to the notion that all people are equal and deserve equal recognition and respect.

He views this as a bad thing. He is disgusted by this.

Sure, that’s par for the course for conservatives and is indeed what conservatives have fought against since the first asshole decided he wasn’t going to be in this tribe unless he could send everyone to bring home some meat while he fucked whoever was left behind.

But still, they aren’t usually this fucking blatant about it.

Hey, with all the voter suppression efforts, why bother pretending anymore? Fuck Equality, that poxied whore! And fuck her sapphic sister Empathy too!

It’s hard in this frame of mind to define and celebrate greatness, to hold up others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves.

Not really. Triumph over adversary, those who fight on when none would join them in their time, not to mention those that are able to remain calm while resisting oppression. There are many heroes and heroines.

But see, that ending is what gave you away. It isn’t so much that we’re not celebrating “greatness” that has your ass puckering into your esophagus. It’s that we aren’t overly worshipping our aristocrats because they are richer, whiter, and healthier than we are.

You know, if you need a bootheel against your neck that badly, there are men in San Francisco who are more than willing to fulfill that for very reasonable rates.

But the main problem is our inability to think properly about how power should be used to bind and build. Legitimate power is built on a series of paradoxes: that leaders have to wield power while knowing they are corrupted by it; that great leaders are superior to their followers while also being of them; that the higher they rise, the more they feel like instruments in larger designs. The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials are about how to navigate those paradoxes.

Blah blah, psuedo-intellectual blather to disguise the fact that I spent the last 8 paragraphs stroking myself to how awesome it would be if we were medieval Europe.

But given that it’s caloric intake is zero, what with it being nothing but hot air, feel free to take your own comedic spin on it in the comment thread.

These days many Americans seem incapable of thinking about these paradoxes. Those “Question Authority” bumper stickers no longer symbolize an attempt to distinguish just and unjust authority. They symbolize an attitude of opposing authority.

It’s almost like liberals, instead of being authoritarians towards different darker Gods, are actually anti-authoritarians and thus are heavily suspicious of authority and power and always want to check that its just and good before claiming it as so.

Bu-But that can’t be!

Fuck, I want to introduce him to a real anarchist just to see his head explode. If “Question Authority” gives him vapors, I want to see his reaction to “No Gods, No Masters!”

The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.

I smell a set-up for a both-sides do it false equivalence.

Hmm, liberals turn against certain braindead “elites” who have been caught trying to bring the country to its knees? Let’s just jam it into the “I durn like dem egghead scientists what think dey better dan me” culture of my fellow authoritarians of the lower strata.

You end up with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Parties that try to dispense with authority altogether. They reject hierarchies and leaders because they don’t believe in the concepts. The whole world should be like the Internet — a disbursed semianarchy in which authority is suspect and each individual is king.

Both sides do it! Where apparently both sides are anarchy. Cause a critique of financial abuses and the aching gap between rich and poor and how that effects our society is exactly the same as a manufactured puppet show by said “elites” designed to delay the legitimate protest by dominating the air waves with KKK members wearing different hats.

Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following.

You know, it’s not every day you see someone literally say the problem of these kids today is that they aren’t groveling peons kneeling in fear of their king.

I also love the trade-off.

Okay, in exchange for your complete subservience and a guilt complex about not being enough of a worthless unthinking slave for your glorious masters, we will give to you… slightly better statues to ourselves.

Fuck, even Satan has better deals than that shit.

Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.

An invented paradox consists of paradoxes?

You don’t say!

Also, yeah, if it wasn’t clear enough that our current “elites” really want to restart that whole “democracy debate” by now…

Yeah, turns out racist, sexist, authoritarian rich assholes don’t really like democracy very much. Who knew?

I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem.

The problem isn’t that the people supposed to be leading the country, creating jobs, or working in our best interests have repeatedly abandoned those tasks in favor of working entirely on behalf of a few dozen rich assholes, it’s that you rube fuckers are starting to clue into the con.

So stop that! Good followers don’t notice when they are being screwed, they just learn how to arch their backs and call that micropenis flailing wildly into them the best ride of their life.

At least, they do if they want enough food to survive the night.

Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions.

Which institutions? Financial? Political? Social? EROTIC?!?

Ha! Why would we bother getting specific when we’re trying to argue that conservative anti-government knee-jerk reactions are the same as liberal critiques of abuses of power?

That’d be a rookie mistake, right there.

That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted.

Said “institutions” rewarded said trust by completely collapsing in 1929 revealing that the past few decades of lies about conservative financial models were nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

And someone forgot that they worship 1955 for the Ozzy and Harriet delusions rather than the economic policy, seeing as how 1955 saw our nation with about as leftist of an economy as we ever allowed ourselves to get. Turned out to be the middle of a nearly 3 decade sustainable boom until we started fiddling with the nobs because “eek, the wimmins and the brown people think they are real human beings”.

It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more to do with rising distrust than anything else.

Yeah, you filthy peons going around thinking you are real people who deserve basic human respect. If there was ever a greater example of trumped up vanity than that, I don’t know what it is!

I mean, can’t you see that you are naught but worthless slaves compared to the fine sculpted features of our lords and masters. Hold me in those bony arms, daddy, yes!

Yeah, Bobo* is Smithers. No joke.

In his memoir, “At Ease,” Eisenhower delivered the following advice: “Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.” Ike slowly mastered the art of leadership by becoming a superb apprentice.

Ike is despised by current conservatives for being a… (one sec, let me get out the list) tax-raising nigger-lover who used federal troops! in a simple case of state rights that the South totally would have resolved on its own if the federal government had butted out (end scene)… So yeah, there’s that.

Also, your hard-on for the last Republican president that was legitimately praise-worthy aside, what does that quote have to do with anything?

I mean, you’ve basically spent your entire post whining about how the slovenly masses don’t lick enough boots and aren’t cringing at their own worthlessness.

But then, here you quote someone who thinks everyone should strive to improve. That we shouldn’t wait for some “great person” to ride in on their white horse, Fabio hair blowing in the wind, and sweep us away from all this. But that we should find those even better at something than us and learn from them and grow.

I guess you stopped reading at “better than you” because you needed to attend to some business in your bunk, Jayne style.

To have good leaders you have to have good followers — able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it. Those skills are required for good monument building, too.

It’s worth repeating.

The deal he’s offering is for everyone to abandon their free will and become as slaves for the self-appointed aristocrats in exchange for slightly better statues.

Yeah…

No.

I don’t think we’ll be accepting that deal. Guess you’re stuck with the revolution. Don’t worry, you’re still first against the wall (/Obligatory Hitchhiker Guide’s Reference).


‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. Over-referencing cult pop-culture references in your work is invented by Generation X, but used in this post by me. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


*There is a law requiring that all references to David Brooks use his earned name “Bobo” and that all references to him must cite this definitive piece on all things Bobo. And that’s my civil obligation dispensed with. Back to the roast.

 

Comments: 295

 
 
 

B-but, I’m still pontificating on the last thread!!

 
 

Also, frist.

 
 

The World War II memorial is a nullity. It tells you nothing about the war or why American power was mobilized to fight it.

Kinda hard to condense the complex history of the war into an inscription…

 
 

Kinda hard to condense the complex history of the war into an inscription…

See, this is why you’ll never make it as a right-winger.

 
 

To have good leaders you have to have good followers — able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it. Those skills are required for good monument building, too.

The pharaohs had good followers, and look at the monuments they left behind!

No weeping in the books at home a David Brooks column.

 
 

RESPECT MAH AUTHORATEH!!!

 
 

Oh, I’m sure we will all be building pyramids in a few years…

 
 

IT SAYS “SOCIALIST” RIGHT IN THE NAME

 
 

Of course, that would be socialism.

 
 

These days many Americans seem incapable of thinking about these paradoxes. Those “Question Authority” bumper stickers no longer symbolize an attempt to distinguish just and unjust authority. They symbolize an attitude of opposing authority.

Which authority should we NOT be opposing? Given that just about any “authority” you can name – political, corporate, religious – has shown over the space of the last 10 years if not much longer that they don’t grok the “responsibility” part of “with great power comes great responsibility,” the other party to the contract is under no obligation to adhere to former agreements. Respect isn’t owed; it’s earned, and right now all of those who whine that their asses aren’t being sufficiently kissed have racked up huge deficits in the respect column.

Even fucking CHILDREN know the reason why – it’s because kids generally don’t have a lot of respect for schoolyard bullies. They have fear – fear of how the bully might fuck them over – but not respect. If the fucking “authorities” that we are so deficient in showing proper deference to hadn’t commited themselves to a policy of terrorizing a plurality of us via means legal, financial, and spiritual for the past decade, we might have a shred of respect for them. As it is, nada.

Also: you know who ELSE people feared rather than respected?

 
 

So, to sum up, the message of the Vietnam War Memorial should have been “Vietnam: American Power Deployed Wisely and Well” and the message of the MLK memorial should’ve been “Know when to be quiet and follow the orders of your betters.”

What the fuck.

Also, the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial portrays the man as a scowling, refrigerator-shaped giant hewn from living rock. He looks like a Pharoah or one of those giant Olmec heads. Surely, if there’s a wise yet flawed leader for us to give our trust to in the MLK story, it’s MLK himself? Because I don’t think it was “Bull” Connor.

And what should the Vietnam war memorial have been? An enormous statue of Nixon, LBJ and JFK, sitting together, brows furrowed as they contemplate the enormous burden of being so incredibly right about Vietnam?

Also, you know, when can we get past this “Durr, equality of opportunity, not equality of results!” bullshit? Yes, I have more respect for MLK than I do for Charles Manson. Congratulations on uncovering the hidden flaw at the heart of modern politics! Now how about we stop talking in advertising slogans, and actually discuss politics?

I say this as a bona fide follower.

 
 

Nice fisking Cerberus! This from Tiny Revolution (found @ LGM) could serve as an alternate shorter.

And one tiny little quibble:

with his desire to felatte our invented royalty

I think you mean “fellate” — although I may have to order a “fe latte” next time I visit a Starbucks.

 
 

The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.

Also, too: I can remember a time, not all that long ago, that you and yours were on about “the cultural elite,” Bobo, and your take on it then was that they had no real authoritah, and we shouldn’t treat them as if they did. I can remember a time when you and yours, Bobo, spent a couple of years telling us all that we didn’t owe the president any respect because of the revelations from ginned-up investigations into his private life, and I can remember a time, which seems like only yesterday because it was, when you and yours were telling us that no respect is due to any duly elected official if they happen to not be a Republican.

You baked the bread, Little Red Hen, so now you get to eat the shit sandwich.

 
 

Nice job, Cerberus.

I merely put up a Carly Simon youtuber and called it a day.
~

 
 

Jesus Christ, who is Bobo of all fucking people to whine about how the culture he inhabits doesn’t trust elites acting in what they perceive to be the collective better interest?

 
 

But I’ll give wingnuts one thing. They generally try and hide their authoritarian natures. By which I mean they don’t write posts just openly declaring themselves authoritarian and whining about how we don’t grovel in the dust in front of our God-Kings anymore.

I believe you’re forgetting the period in which it was traditional for warbloggers to gas on about how Good King Dubya was a new philosopher-king, fulsome in wisdom and shapely of thigh.

 
 

The World War II memorial is a nullity. It tells you nothing about the war or why American power was mobilized to fight it.

Plus it looks like something Albert Speer would have come up with.

I actually like the Korean War memorial.

 
 

As Michael J. Lewis of Williams College has noted, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial transforms a jaunty cavalier into a “differently abled and rather prim nonsmoker.” Instead of a crafty wielder of supreme power, Roosevelt is a kindly grandpa you would want to put your arm around for a vacation photo.

Jesus Christ he found the worst fucking person in the whole fucking world to quote. Have either of them seen the FDR Memorial? Because for fuck’s sake, “prim” and “differently abled” aren’t the first things that come to mind. Admittedly the first thing that comes to mind is the weird prominence of his fluffy little dog, but the next thing is an apposite quote belonging to FDR in the historical record and our longest-serving President, who fought Hitler and won an election in what amounted to his deathbed, in the classic attitude of command – a king holding court, speaking to us but looking through us.

What the fuck else could either of these hideous honkies have possibly wanted?

 
 

Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following.

There there, Bobo. There there. You just watch a few movies featuring shouty men who wear armor like it was lingerie and you’ll start to feel better. Submit yourself and leave us out of it, m’kay?

 
 

Some of the reasons are well-known. We live in a culture that finds it easier to assign moral status to victims of power than to those who wield power. Most of the stories we tell ourselves are about victims who have endured oppression, racism and cruelty.
Then there is our fervent devotion to equality, to the notion that all people are equal and deserve equal recognition and respect.
It’s hard in this frame of mind to define and celebrate greatness, to hold up others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves.

Funny how something that happened to us seems to have permanently made the concept of plenary, absolute power turn to ashes in our mouth and remind us of people being destroyed by the state for bigoted or racist reasons. Sometime around 1944-1945, too. What could have possibly happened in 1944 and 1945 to which American infantrymen gave witness which lent permanent prominence to the narrative of the innocent victim, and permanently tainted the idea of the superior – or “super” – man?

Must have been hippies. Lousy hippies!

 
 

It’s hard in this frame of mind to define and celebrate greatness, to hold up others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves.

But! But! Wouldn’t that make them, you know, elitist?

 
 

Also, whenever kindly old Ike comes up I am obliged to quote Ursula K. Le Guin, in much the same way it’s necessary to turn to Gore Vidal for proof positive that Teddy Roosevelt was a giant girl’s blouse.

 
 

What could have possibly happened in 1944 and 1945 to which American infantrymen gave witness which lent permanent prominence to the narrative of the innocent victim, and permanently tainted the idea of the superior – or “super” – man?

The GI’s who beat the Nazi “super men” proudly called themselves “dogfaces”. I doubt very many viewed themselves as “great” or would have considered it a compliment.

 
 

I believe you’re forgetting the period in which it was traditional for warbloggers to gas on about how Good King Dubya was a new philosopher-king, fulsome in wisdom and shapely of thigh.

Relevant to your interests.

 
 

It crossed my mind that there might be a pragmatic reason for not showing FDR smoking in his memorial statue. He favored a jaunty cigarette holder, and if that statue is life-sized (or not much larger), that’s a thin piece of metal just begging to be bent/broken off/cut off by some vandalizing asshole.

 
 

Well, here I am, again. I got to hear half of a 45-minute heated exchange between a rich, privileged person trying to justify defiance of The Law, and my blue collar supervisor who outlined the options: a.) We test it; b.) someone we (and the state) approve tests it; c.) you remove it, or; d.) you buy your water from somewhere else. And that is that. I fully expect this person to file a (n ultimately unsuccessful) lawsuit within 24 hours of having their water cut off.

This person called the mayor, even.

The mayor called us and said, “Jeez, what an asshole.” 😆
.

 
 

Relevant to your interests.
From the lonk:
“It’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around.”

What a coincidence! I used exactly the same excuse at my last court appearance!

 
 

If “Question Authority” gives him vapors, I want to see his reaction to “No Gods, No Masters!”

A froggy said it best: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

 
 

The comments on the Le Guin piece are also worth a look.

 
 

I know this has been noted elsewhere…but the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was that I was pretty sure he thinks of himself as someone who should be revered and followed.

 
 

I was pretty sure he thinks

You so funny.

 
 

REQUIEM, Cerberus. “Requieum” sounds like a new variety of floor wax. Or possibly a dessert topping.

 
 

I quieted them and now I’ll have to requiem.

 
 

[…] David Brooks blames not the Elite but their victims for their ills.  It seems we have a follower problem, not leadership.  Sensible Conservative? Sadly, No! […]

 
Illuminati Repton
 

This human you call Bobo amuses me. I shall keep him as a pet.

 
 

You end up with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Parties that try to dispense with authority altogether.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

 
 

I am obliged to quote Ursula K. Le Guin,

Thanks for that. I keep forgetting whether we did Guatemala for United Fruit Co. or 1910 Fruitgum Co.

 
 

REQUIEM, Cerberus. “Requieum” sounds like a new variety of floor wax. Or possibly a dessert topping.

What, no love for Retsupurae?

I know this has been noted elsewhere…but the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was that I was pretty sure he thinks of himself as someone who should be revered and followed.

Naturally so. He’s a Very Serious Person and an Opinion Former and why has no one built him his platinum pyramid yet??

 
 

A commenter notes that she missed Lumumba, but it’s kind of understandable in so much as Lumumba was not especially in the thoughts of the people voting then – whereas Ike using the US government to bully a democratic government out of power for private US interests was a stink in the world’s nostrils.

Mostly it’s worth remembering that there are people now alive on the left who thought Ike was a fascist dingbat when it mattered (i.e. 1952) and think he’s a fascist dingbat now. He was very much the pioneer of the Republican con game of presenting a genial face for the VSPs and then privately accepting rich Nazi assholes’ money to do their dirt with taxpayer money, and then turning around when it no longer mattered worth a damn and blubbering about radicalism and division.

I’m sure in twenty years, when Sarah Palin (elder stateswoman of the GOP) steals the election and nukes Finland by mistake, Dubya will glorp on out and sigh about how in his day we had compassion for those people he had killed and everyone will tut-tut about how much more liberal he is than those hippies give him credit for.

 
 

Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following.

Whattaya mean “we,” white man?

 
 

Before I go farther,

If you go to the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials in Washington, you are invited to look up in admiration. Lincoln and Jefferson are presented as the embodiments of just authority. They are strong and powerful but also humanized.

Yeah. As a Washingtonian who’s done the monuments a number of times, that’s exactly why my favorite presidential one has always been the FDR, and not Lincoln, Jefferson or Washington: it’s the only presidential monument that feels human-sized. The other three, much as I like the people they’re dedicated to, you walk up to them and you feel like you’re entering some kind of temple to the Olympian gods. I like to think FDR, given everything he did to change the government’s relationship with common people, would be proud of the fact that he’s represented on a scale that’s more… accessible, I guess is the word. At least that’s how I feel.

 
 

If you go to the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials in Washington, you are invited to look up in admiration.

One of my favorite pics was taken by Teh Ho. It’s me, standing at the back of the Lincoln Memorial, pointing up at where the bullet entered. People were scandalized. That was long before digital cameras and i dont have a scanner these days so i can’t present it to you.

 
 

Jefferson is a graceful aristocratic democrat.

Um, really? “Aristocratic democrat?” I suppose in a world where people take “liberal fascism” seriously, I really shouldn’t be that surprised.

The proposed Eisenhower memorial shifts attention from his moments of power to his moments of innocent boyhood. The design has been widely criticized, and last week the commission in charge agreed to push back the approval hearing until September.

There’s a proposed Eisenhower memorial? Man, I really must live under a rock. Right in my city too [hangs head in shame]

Um, not sure how I feel about it. I respect the hell out of his war service, he definitely deserves recognition for it. As a President, though? He’s probably the best Republican we had in the last century, on balance (TR being his only competitor), but I have a hard time thinking of anything remarkable that happened on his watch. Washington and Jefferson, well, were founding fathers; Lincoln prevented the destruction of the country and ended one of its worst sins; FDR guided the country through the greatest depression in human history and the greatest war in human history. What the hell did Ike do to put him in the same ballpark?

Even the more successful recent monuments evade the thorny subjects of strength and power. The Vietnam memorial is about tragedy. The Korean memorial is about vulnerability.

The memorials reflect the way the country feels about the wars. Korea was a war where we effectively ended up right where we started: in the context of the Red Scare, and the broader sentiment of “how can this be? We just fought and won a world war, how could we fail to regain a shitty little country like this?” of course the country felt vulnerable. Vietnam tragedy… well, ’nuff said.

I’ll add that Vietnam’s the best of the war memorials, for my money. It captures the essence of war (not just that war, all wars) soberly – quite unlike the triumphalist WW2 memorial – while honoring the name of every last serviceman who died in that war.

 
 

People were scandalized

What? Too soon??

 
 

Also and such as, I take exception to your WWII “shorter,” Cerberus. Everything else is spot on but that paragraph misses the mark. By a mile. Or ten.

 
 

I am once again in awe of Teh Ho. When I mentioned my 1910 Fruitgum Co. line – Tony Franciosa or James Franciscus? , F. Murray Abraham or Ben Kingsley? – he immediately asked if Yummy Yimmy Yummy I got love in my Tummy was about oral sex. Wuttaguy.

 
 

Favorite money quote: “Fuck Equality, that poxied whore! And fuck her sapphic sister Empathy too!” Because that so describes the Mittbot. Bobo consistently tries to be the kindly face of conservatism to the point that, being well within the actual Beltway, physically and mentally, he literally doesn’t know what’s going in the minds of the vast majority of the right-wing crazies and their political prostitutes. It’s a deliberate cognitive dissonance.

 
 

Chris sed…

One of my long standing complaints / criticisms. They aren’t memorials to the fucking goddamn war but to the fucking people who fought the war. Pisses me right off, it does. Don’t even get me started on “fighting for the flag” bullshit.

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

Requiem? Damn near killed ’em!

 
 

What has been seen can never be unseen: http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/06/13/we-could-be-heroes/

 
 

Pup, I am convinced that “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” *is* in fact about oral sex, except that I’m also pretty sure it’s about cunnilingus. Sorry about that.

As a Canadian, I actually *do* more or less agree with Cerb’s description of WWII. I mean, where *were* you guys in 1939, anyway? Oh yeah, that’s right, getting rich off selling materiel to both sides, and having a vast number of your leading Job Creators™ (Henry Ford, Thomas Watson, to name 2 off the top) sucking up to the Nazis. Sorry about *that*, too.

And if I hear *one more* American bragging about how they saved the world’s asses in WWII (whereas maybe more of the credit should go to, you know, nations that actually sustained a real number of casualties, like, say, the Soviets and the Canadians, kaff kaff), Imma hafta cut a bastard.

 
 

What has been seen can never be unseen:

What…do any of those women have to do with the characters they’re mashed-up with?

Ann Coulter is Superman’s teenaged cousin trying to find her own way in the world?

Pamela Geller is a devout Catholic, a dedicated schoolteacher and the black sheep of the Batman family?

I mean, what is even the hell?

 
 

Can’t “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” be about oral sex AND donuts?

 
 

Bavarian Cream, maybe.

 
 

Don’t get me wrong please. I ain’t one of them rah rah we de best but the situation was a tad more complicated. Where were we in ’39? Isolationist, that’s where. Henry Ford was a total tool for Hitler. Watson was just opportunistic, unit for the money, not for politics (to the best of my admittedly dim recollection of historical reading). There was zero political will to enter the war. *cue FDR needed Pearl Harbor theories* thing is, we weren’t a commonwealth country. The King wasn’t *our* king. *We* weren’t under direct attack.

Not to diminish anyone’s contributions, it wasn’t US soldiers or anyone’s soldiers who won the war so much as the industrial output of the US that did it. We armed the Brits, the Soviets, ourselves and every one else on our side. Then too, the US Army Air Corps took _very_ heavy losses in the precision daylight bombing campaign. You _have_ seen 12 O’clock High, yes?

It’s not a competition, friend. Besides, dinchoo toque wearin poodle walkers get enough glory with the “Canadian built robotic arm” on the space shuttle? Sheesh, it’s all anyone ever heard about!

 
 

FYautocorrect.

 
 

And if I hear *one more* American bragging about how they saved the world’s asses in WWII (whereas maybe more of the credit should go to, you know, nations that actually sustained a real number of casualties, like, say, the Soviets and the Canadians, kaff kaff), Imma hafta cut a bastard.

For my money, if you take either the Soviet Union, the United States or the British Commonwealth out of the picture, the outcome of the war becomes seriously in doubt.

The British fought on all by their lonesome for an entire year from 1940 to 1941. If they hadn’t hung on by their fingernails, the Soviets would have had to face the full force of the Wehrmacht when Operation Barbarossa started, whereas the Americans wouldn’t have been able to use the British Isles or the British territory in North Africa as an advanced base with which to drive into Europe. That would’ve made things a good deal more awkward for both parties.

The Soviets, of course, tied down the biggest chunk of the German Army, inflicted the largest amount of German casualties, and suffered the largest amount of dead out of any of those three nations, and deserve mad props for that alone (the shortage of books in the WW2 section of Barnes and Noble about the Eastern Front, even now, twenty years after the end of the Cold War, is disgraceful). I’d like to see how the Normandy Invasion would’ve gone if three quarters of the German Army hadn’t been tied up fighting the Russians.

And the Americans, well, the industrial support they gave to both the British and the Russians did a hell of a lot to allow both nations to keep fighting. In addition, the arrival of American troops on the Western Front allowed the Allies to go on the offensive (it’s doubtful if the British could’ve driven all the way to Germany all by themselves), and also helped to alleviate the amount of German resources going to the Eastern Front, which made life easier for the Soviets.*

So… yeah. I would say America is definitely one of the countries that saved the world’s asses from Nazism, but only one of three. (Not counting the Asian Front and the Japanese Empire here, I don’t know them as well).

*Just, you know, not too much easier, because while the British and Americans didn’t want Hitler to win, they sure didn’t mind him bleeding the Red Army fucking white on his way out. To be honest, I can’t say I blame them.

 
 

It’s easy to lead people right off a cliff when you’ve got a fucking hang-glider strapped to your back.

Lots of folks left, right & centre followed Dubya after 9/11 … how did that work out?

I will happily follow when our wise & benevolent leaders show the way – as the passengers in the tumbrils they have so richly earned.

This = an ill omen for Willard.

 
 

As a Canadian, I actually *do* more or less agree with Cerb’s description of WWII. I mean, where *were* you guys in 1939, anyway? Oh yeah, that’s right, getting rich off selling materiel to both sides, and having a vast number of your leading Job Creators™ (Henry Ford, Thomas Watson, to name 2 off the top) sucking up to the Nazis. Sorry about *that*, too.

Well, I’ll grant that we lacked an imperial master to drag us by the nose to the good fight against the better judgement of our literally fascist legislators or our seance-ridden leader, but I’ll give you this much: it took you like five days longer to imprison native nationals of Japanese ancestry by executive order.

 
 

OK, all you literary types have to go over and read Cole’s post here and what the commentariat does to it. An example:

Cole’s post rewritten by Cormac McCarthy:

It’s a hard world for a slim flower. The pansies lay in the dust their petals dessicated by a raw wind and a deadly sun. The weight of feline lassitude broke their flowery camel’s backs. When the gate opened the critter bolted and the fat man gave no chase this day.

And yet he did chase in his own way, through modes of hesitation and aggression learned from Uncle Sam’s armed mass. His thinner days came back to him like a felt kiss and he nearly wept but remembered the cat and his many, many sins.

more here, scroll through to the end and add your own: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/06/13/open-thread-1349/

 
 

World War II would have been much less bloody if John Rambo had an adequate supply of exploding arrows.

 
 

Because someone else suggested it, I should point out I was being semi-facetious about the relationship between the UK and Canada – “imperial master” isn’t exactly right. But it’s not exactly wrong either; the institutional role of Canada transitioned from British auxiliary 1936-1939 (hence the expensive and time-consuming mandate to use British equipment, as domestic equipment would have to be produced from factories run or capitalized by American firms to significantly incompatible specifications) to self-defense 1940-1941 (King took the idea of Canada being invaded very seriously, and in retrospect if America had never entered the war and Britain had capitulated that left a handful of destroyers to stop the Germans from trying) to Anglo-American auxiliary 1941-1945.

It’s worth noting that the internment of Japanese nationals in Canada had significantly more craven and sinister overtones than the internment of Japanese nationals in America – the US had been subject to a sneak attack on its own soil and the official diplomatic grounds for Canadian suspicion of Japanese nationals was the sinking of the HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales – not nothing, but neither the sort of unprecedented outrage that fuelled American overreaction in 1942.

And it was to the enormous economic benefit of white BC fishermen and timbermen, and that’s not even to mention the horrific human rights issue – unlike the US internment it was not legally a state of exception, simply a result of acts in council which barred the Japanese from living and working outside of the camps. And under the direct instruction of the aforementioned ghost hunter slash war premier King, Japanese nationals, lead to believe their property was being held against their conduct, saw everything they owned liquidated at under market rates.

Counting the war years as Canada’s proudest hour is problematic for a barrage of reasons, and at bottom a lot of why so many more Canadians than Americans proportionately were killed by the war had to do with the frankly inferior strategic-level leadership of the Canadian military – Churchill gave a good speech but had some staggeringly dumb ideas about war.

 
 

Smut-

REQUIEM, Cerberus. “Requieum” sounds like a new variety of floor wax. Or possibly a dessert topping.

Actually intentional, but turns out, way too subtle to be funny. Would it work better with a dash before the “um”?

 
 

Canadian casualties, WWII: 45,400 (0.4% of population)
US casualties: 418,500 (0.32%)

What am I missing here?

 
 

OTOH-
Soviet Union: 23,400,000 (13.9%)

BTW, can any of you guys explain to me why the hell Hitler decided to turn on Russia in the first place? Never could figure out what he was thinking.

 
 

As a Canadian, I actually *do* more or less agree with Cerb’s description of WWII. I mean, where *were* you guys in 1939, anyway?

You mean Haig didn’t use enough of you guys as cannon fodder in WWI that you were that eager for a second go-around?

 
 

Pup-

Part of it is my response to the hagiography. We did pretty much show up late to WWII and spent most of our time on the “wrong theatre” of the war based on the legitimate fact that that was the side that attack occurred (less legitimate is the fact that said attack was entirely avoidable if we hadn’t been such dicks before hand with regards to resources, not to mention our cough cough questionable acquisition of Hawaii). And we only entered into Europe militarily when the Soviets started actually winning and gaining ground back.

Now, on the flip side, oh hell yeah, FDR followed the will of the people (towards isolation based on nasty memories of WWI and who could blame them) and had to navigate the strong support for the nazis among the money class who already hated him for thinking that poor people should be allowed to live. And despite that, he did a lot to try and funnel money, material, and support towards the allies. And our arrival at the end did do a lot to help.

But I do bristle a little at the sanitized school house version where we single-handedly saved everyone while France surrendered due to being pussies (and not because they got completely militarily beaten and had their government replaced with collaborators while a bunch of socialists became one of the most effective resistance fighter groups in any conflict), the Soviets did evil plotty things (instead of being the main bullet sponge for the Nazis and the main reason they eventually lost), and the British just were really brave and Winston Churchill (did a bit more than that, especially in terms of Surface to Air, Air to Air, and that whole first ground conflict). Not to mention the way the other countries were entirely forgotten, proxy wars in the “colonies” that led to the last breakaways of said countries from their European masters, Finland’s stand against both Russian and German troops, Spain’s continuation of their civil war and the alliance between Franco and Hitler, and so on…

 
 

John Revolta-

Prolly that those faggy commies would buckle and fall to the superior German war machine.

Much the same as the psycho power fantasies of modern wingnuts who think that if they were to rebel Wolverines style, their bloodthirsty commie neighbors would fall without a fight to their superior manhoods and what not.

 
 

Also let me know if the new post title looks more or less awkward or if I should switch it back.

 
 

But I do bristle a little at the sanitized school house version where we single-handedly saved everyone while France surrendered due to being pussies (and not because they got completely militarily beaten and had their government replaced with collaborators while a bunch of socialists became one of the most effective resistance fighter groups in any conflict)

Sadly, nice, clean and sanitized versions of history are about all the general public ever gets.

As for the “French surrender” myth, I agree and thank you for pointing it out. Not that I’m trying to make my other country sound better than it actually was (lot of sins in collaboration, and plenty of French people would rather whitewash that from their memories too), the difference between France (and most other European countries) and Britain/Russia was one single thing: geography. The British had an English channel they could regroup behind safely which was difficult to the extreme for the Germans to cross; the Russians had such a huge country that they could simply keep retreating, retreating and retreating until they got their chance to strike back. Give either of these countries the strategic situation of France in 1940 – no body of water between them and the Germans and no continent-sized country to keep retreating into – and they’d both have been just as fucked.

The “surrender” myth is worthless chest-thumping from people dumb enough to think it’s a credit to their moral virtue that they live in countries without the shitty strategic situation of France (or God forbid, Belgium or Poland). In other words, your garden variety “American Exceptionalists.”

 
 

FDR followed the will of the people (towards isolation […] ) and had to navigate the strong support for the nazis among the money class

That CANNOT BE, for Brooks has assured us that Roosevelt was “a crafty wielder of supreme power”, for whom the resistance from Congress would be nugatory.

Actually intentional, but turns out, way too subtle to be funny.
I do not get the joke so therefore NOT FUNNY.

[The Brist] did a bit more than that, especially in terms of Surface to Air, Air to Air, and that whole first ground conflict
Do not forget the Arctic convoys or I shall be forced to start drinking.

 
 

So, Cerb, you reckon he was just full-on delusional at that point? Did anyone try and talk him out of it?

 
 

can any of you guys explain to me why the hell Hitler decided to turn on Russia in the first place?

He was living inside a Wagner opera as far as he was concerned, & his real name was Sigfried. It was part of his master plan to have a “Drive To The East” for shitloads of delicious real estate – I imagine any mention of Napoleon was strictly verboten at the Wolf’s Lair.

Hitler was the best thing that ever happened to the Allies: he literally fucked up everything he touched throughout the war. Early on he let his General Staff do their jobs & everything went great – countries fell like dominoes – but then he decided to let Goering prove how awesome the Luftwaffe was by letting him try to bomb Britain into submission via terror-bombing, rather than the obvious strategic assaults on airfields that would’ve decapitated the RAF & given them total air supremacy … result: the world’s best air force toasted, never to recover. Let legions of troops escape at Dunkirk to fight another day because he seriously thought the Windsors could be appeased into joining him in an assault on the Bolsheviks. Pissed nearly all of his elite paratroops away conquering Crete from the air (!!!!!) when a conventional D-Day-style invasion probably would’ve done just as well. Let Rommel languish in North Africa while Monty regrouped. Buggered away a LOT of panzer divisions in Yugoslavia for absolutely nothing when his generals knew it was a quagmire. D-Day went as well as it did because ol’ Adolf had strict orders never to be woken from his beauty sleep, thus giving the Allies precious time to press their assault … & when he woke up & learned about the landings, he kept buying into the carefully planted Allied disinformation that claimed the REAL landing would take place at Calais. Never met a primo weapon he couldn’t fuck up royally, from the Me-262 (the first jet fighter) to theStG 44, the world’s first assault rifle (which had to be developed & issued in secret because Der Fuhrer thought it was a dumb gimmick).

Dude gave a great speech, but oh my did he ever suck hard at war.

 
 

Also, you gotta check out Pammy’s latest blottoblog:

How else culd an unqualfied, bitter Ameria hater hold the eat in the Obama office

 
 

Jim, that was just excellent. Very good historical analysis. Only two things to add:

Hitler only had one testicle.

He was an artist.

Not sure if those two things enter into the Hitler War Fail scenario easily, but they should be noted.

Do not trust one-balled artists. They might try to conquer the world.

 
 

Dude gave a great speech, but oh my did he ever suck hard at war.

Much like Churchill, then – if he had gotten half of what he wanted out of the Allied war effort he probably could have wrestled Hitler up to a drawl, not to mention the whole “let’s you and the Soviets fight” routine he tried post-1944.

I don’t want to get all WW2 nerd on this topic (again! Why does the topic keep coming up? I swear to God, I’m never the one who fucking starts it!) but long story short, it’s been suggested part of why Hitler invaded Russia was that the capitulation of France and friendly neutrality of the remaining non-Axis countries on the Continent left him with literally nothing else to go after, and one of the ways the Nazis maintained their domestic popularity was by running fairly staggering secret deficits – basically any popular programme that went away after the war started (Strength through Joy, the autobahns, etc) would have run out of funds before 1942 anyway, and without some unforeseen improvement of German credit or tax base (remember that at that time the Depression was largely over in Germany) the Nazis would have had to either drastically change their domestic policies one way or the other or face a humiliating second default, and this time not one blameable on Versailles.

This is called the “flight to the East” thesis, and it’s controversial in part because it’s been advanced by historians who, long story short, I would not trust on the second World War if they told me Hitler wore a little moustache on his lip.

It’s also worth noting that conquering the western Slavic territories and funding the redevelopment of one or both of the little Prussian townships and vast Junker estates that existed there before WW1 was literally the only precisely shared objective of every “faction” of the Nazi leadership. For Goering et al it was basically an exit condition (return to Wilhelmine glory) and for the others it was either Liebesraum or kicking the door in such that the whole rotten Judeo-Bolshevik house would fall down.

Things didn’t work out so well, in the long run, but how Hitler could have survived peacetime or extended stalemate is hard to suss out.

TL, DR: Invading Russia made good short-term economic and political sense, and surprisingly good short-term military sense (I mean, they conquered an area most of the size of western Europe). In the long term it didn’t work out well, but all of Hitler’s other long-term options were equally or almost equally bad.

The moral of this story is that the Tomorrow Belongs To Me picture of Germany is history’s most successful propaganda. The actual Nazi state was pretty shambolic and doomed, as any wingnut regime without powerful friends tends to be.

 
One Balled Artist
 

Hey! I only want a little bit of the world, you guys can keep the entire southeastern U.S.

Sheesh.

 
 

Huh. I knew about a lot of that stuff but I didn’t think it was as bad as all that. Makes you wonder how they got as far as they did. Was it just that they got off to a great early start? Plus the appeasement and all.

My wife’s grandfather was a watchman at the benzol plant on the Thames in east London during the war. Apparently this was one of the prime targets for the Luftwaffe but they never managed to hit it. Lucky for me!

 
 

Up to a draw, but cowboy Hitler is a fun scenario to contemplate as well. (O give me a home / where the Poles do not roam / and the land has been made judenfrei / where you can’t go a mile / without getting a heil / and the 1918 traitors pay / Home, home in the Reich / &c.)

 
Oregon Beer Snob
 

Didn’t we fill our entire annual quota of war pron threads just last week?

 
 

Huh. I knew about a lot of that stuff but I didn’t think it was as bad as all that. Makes you wonder how they got as far as they did. Was it just that they got off to a great early start? Plus the appeasement and all.

Excellent generals, enemies mostly unprepared for combined arms operations, Belgian perfidy. (It’s not that the French didn’t see the Ardennes offensive as possible, it’s that the interbellum Belgian government basically made defending against one politically impossible.)

Once combined arms went from the way the Germans did things to the way war was fought now, the Germans sort of ground to a halt and suffered significant reversals.

Basically, the less their role was to smash everything and demand humiliating terms from a recently defeated enemy, the less well they did, and the political geography of Europe meant there were only so many times they could actually do that.

 
 

Thank you Alec, lovely nutshell that. Sorry I dragged you into another one of these.

OBS- weren’t you telling us about some fine Belgian Perfidy you’d quaffed the other day?

 
 

I actually didn’t realize until I said it, but that probably explains why conventional history sees the rest of the (western) Axis as useless. The UK/FR/PL and USSR officers had rudimentary combined arms tactics beaten into them by the enemy and had to adapt to survive; the Italians and Hungarians and Romanians and Bulgarians didn’t.

Belgians!

 
 

I’ve just about had it w/ this ilk.

When I get the job w/ Kraphammer I’m going to wheel him over to Brooks’ new mansion, chain Brooks to Kraut’s chair, & push them both into Brooksie’s fucking pool.

Last words for both of the bastards: “Glub glub glub.”
No jury, &c.

 
 

Brooks is coming back to the idea that the Leaders should dissolve the people and appoint a new one, with better followership skills.

 
 

Today in gibberish.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/40475_A_Pamela_Geller_Classic-_How_Else_Culd_an_Unqualfied_Bitter_Ameria_Hater_Hold_the_Eat_in_Obama_Office/comments/#ctop

Decades ago we cringed when any news story of corruption and collusion broke about our long venerated trusted newsmen We trusted those powerful subversive like Walter Cronkite, Dan Wallace, etc, These men with enormous power weilded it, abused it, and disseminated one of th =e world’s great campaigns of anti0merican disiinformation and propaganda. We remember Walter Chronkite, as a grandfather figure trusted iconclast when in fact he wa a red and did the country incalculable harm.

 
 

I would like to ask the panel what changes they would make if they were Hitler?

 
 

I believe something very like Bobo’s theory was put forward by a Ms Lucy van Pelt back in the fifties…

 
Professor Illuminati
 

I wonder if Bobo has ever been to Dublin, city of statues to anti-authoritarian leaders of the people’s revolt if ever there was one. There, in the middle of one of the main avenues of the city, O’Connell St., near the GPO, is a statue of Big Jim Larkin — founder of the Labour party, union leader and *gasp* socialist — with his arms upraised. Below him, on the plinth, are the words of his battle cry:

“The great appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.”
Right out there in the open, where everyone can read it. Deary me. (Not that anyone’s paying attention to the sentiment in Ireland, any more than they are here, which is why they’re f*cked.)

 
 

Dublin, city of statues to anti-authoritarian leaders

All I know of the statues in Dublin is that there is one of Cuchulain in the GPO, where Neary beats his head against its buttocks, somewhere in Murphy.

 
 

KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!¹

¹ …but since Zod isn’t around, I’ll take his place.

 
 

Excellent analysis by Jim. The only thing I’ll add is, Hitler turned on the Soviet Union simply because the two baddest dudes on the block will always find a reason to fight. Plus the Soviets kept pushing for more European spoils (Bessarabia, the Baltic countries, etc.)

 
 

The voice of Sweden:

Not content to kick off her week-long stint manning Sweden’s twitter feed with Hitler jokes, Sonja Abrahamsson, the 27-year-old mother of two currently running the feed, decided to try a new line inquiry:

Whats the fuzz with jews. You can’t even see if a person is a jew, unless you see their penises, and even if you do, you can’t be sure!?
— @sweden / Sonja (@sweden) June 12, 2012

 
 

‘“Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.’

—emphases mine: I have no trouble with that statement, because at no point does it say ‘are better than you’. I in fact agree with Brooks that modern Teabaggish ‘anti-élitism’, beside being unsubtly coded anti-Semitism (or its alcohol-free substitute), is in fact a reflexion of people who are unable to tell the difference between arbitrary power seized by people who think they’re fundamentally better than the rest, and the CPU cycles due those who are actually better at something than you are when they’re advising you on it…if you’re smart.

So Paul Krugman’s coming out in favour of sane spending to extricate us from the liquidity trap must be rejected because he is a {Nobel Prize}-winning economist—as opposed to Glen Beck, who isn’t, though he satisfies the authority fetiche with his tweed jacket and Glasses of Understanding and chalkboards.

But your basic point is a good one: we’d be better off if people left the S&M games in the dungeon*; unfortunately they are the basis of all primary, most secondary, and some university education, most governance, and all workplaces.

*No offence if given: I might be insensitive, as my aspergity both makes it likely that I will be uncivil when I’m not careful enough and also completely unable to understand authority or S&M—I tried a roller-coaster once, it frightened me and nowt else, so I didn’t do it again.

 
 

Heh. The Aristocrats. Good one.

 
 

I urge you to read it again. Go on, I’ll wait… (We’re the cowboys from He~ll)… Back? All right then.

Find me a Stallone!

 
 

There is no one who makes me more willing to set up a guillotine in DuPont Circle than David Brooks. Seriously, I’d settle for Bolsheviks seizing the White House as long as they let me watch Bobo get shot before they shot me.

 
 

For the WWII geekery discussion, it’s never clear what weird obsessions drove Hitler to throw his army at the steppes in 1941, but the documents suggest that he believed defeating the Soviets would bring Britain to the table. It was a weird set of logic. Basically going like this.
1. Britain is shit-fucked currently (1940). They have no hope of beating us as things stand.
2. Mean old Winston thinks he can win if he can bring either the U.S. or the USSR into the war.
3. We can’t do anything about the Americans. (pout)
4. When we beat the USSR, Winnie will have to agree to our terms.
QED bitches.
There are some tiny logic holes in this reasoning and probably this was just a cover to the non-sycophants in the Foreign Office and General Staff for other motives. Still they stuck with the argument into 1942, when the always astute Count Ciano all but laughed at the assertions (along with the idea that America was a paper tiger).

 
 

How bad did Hitler suck at war?
He knew Stalin wasn’t anywhere near ready to defend the USSR, but kept putting off Barbarossa until June (!!!) of 1941 … because his personal astrologer said the stars weren’t in line yet. Yep – for the single biggest decision of his life, Hitler went with the Nancy Reagan strategy.

Speaking of unfortunate choices …

Keep in mind that the proposed change in the law isn’t retroactive. Thus the Catholic Church is now fighting for the right of FUTURE child-abusers to avoid prosecution, & dioceses to avoid paying compensation for crimes not yet committed.

Franchise loyalty: they’re doing it a little TOO well.

 
 

Speaking of which, I am wondering what the fuck kind of defense Jerry Sandusky’s attorney is hoping to put up. The victim testimony is fucking devastating. I also not it now more likely that Gary Schultz and that other guy whose name escapes me will be prosecuted successfully for hiding the pedo. Even Graham Spanier might see trial – serves him right.

Update : JoePa is still rotting in hell.

 
 

http://www.thelookingspoon.com/index.php/73-may-2012/3416-conservative-superheroines
Don’t click on the above link. (via TBogg)

???

I thought the Schlafely one was faked by TBogg. No, the dipshit “conservative artist” (I wonder if he has only one ball?) actually made that and posted it to his page.

Wow. Just, wow. I got nothin’ — I need to go pour bleach in my burned-out eye sockets now.

 
 

From jim’s link:

Patrick Brannigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference asked:

“How can an institution conceivably defend itself against a claim that is 40, 50 or 60 years old?”

This from an institution that defends claims made 1600, 1700, 1800 years ago.

 
 

Not that the other ones there are all that much better than the Schlafely one or anything, the other ones are horrid. Schlafely is just the worst.

And the shadows are all wrong.

 
 

I can’t watch videos at work. Does someone want to check out this and tell me if it’s as funny as it sounds?

 
 

This from an institution that defends claims made 1600, 1700, 1800 years ago.

Dear sir,

We at the Franklin Mint wish to give you a commemorative Internet, complete with gold-leaf filigree. Expect it by post in 6-8 weeks.

 
 

Bitter Scribe said,
June 14, 2012 at 18:47

It is. Gretchen may have a small spark of self-respect left. Expect Roger Ailes (teh bad one) to bring in a dunk tank later today.

 
 

I wonder if all those Catholic bishops who are shilling for strict victim statutes of limitation ever look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves how they got to this place. Is this what God’s ministry now means to them? Advocating that victims be silenced forever?

 
 

I can’t watch videos at work. Does someone want to check out this and tell me if it’s as funny as it sounds?

Meh. She doesn’t seem all that pissed. She should’ve punched him in the balls and then stormed off. She kinda just stands up, makes a brief comment and sorta laughs it off as she goes away.

Granted, this is Fox, so that’s a major insurrection — expect an on-air apology for her hysterical outburst tomorrow.

 
 

He who is without sin, cast the first stone, unless the statute of limitations is up. Then eh, what can you do?

 
Marion in Savannah
 

All our problems are caused by the fact that the miserable peons don’t worship their leaders as Gods anymore.

That’s probably the best, finest, and most accurate shorter ever produced. Brilliant, Cerb, just brilliant.

 
 

“It’s hard in this frame of mind to define and celebrate greatness, to hold up others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves.”

Let’s be fair here. This is hard for David Brooks because the category of “others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves” includes, in his case, just about everyone on earth. That’s a lot holding up, even for a celebrated New York Times columnist.

 
 

Thank you, paleo. I hope the USPS is still around in 6-8 weeks.

 
 

Actually, it’s simpler than that. Adolf always intended to go after the hated Bolshies; it was his game pland even before he got power – when he was merely one of many freikorp-y guys in post-apocalyptic Weimar. The funny thing is, Stalin knew that, but had no problems cooperating, partly because he figured he’d get in the first punch when the time came. He was really stunned when Adolf got in there first; he thought the Germans wouldn’t do anything until after they finished off England.

 
 

Kinda hard to condense the complex history of the war into an inscription…

I’ve seen tons of bumper stickers that summarize that war and it’s roots (going back to the Treaty of Westphalia) in 10 words or less. I disagree with you, sir!

USA USA USA

 
 

Attention Oregon Sadlies!

http://pdxpipeline.com/2012/06/14/portland-beer-cheese-fest-pdx-beer-week/

Nice! I wish I was able to get up there. Too much shit going on.

You should cross the river and go to the Belmont Station thing with Block 15 tomorrow night. Nick (the owner of Block 15) is a very nice guy and they’re pouring some limited release big beers. And Belmont Station is just generally an awesome place with a ridiculous selection of beers.

 
 

elites acting in what they perceive to be the collective better interest?

The “collective” aspect of their behavior doesn’t fit the definition of collective. Considering that 47% PAY NO TAXES AND THE JOB CREATORS NEED A TAX CUT OR ELSE SATAN WINS…I’d say that there is a definite selfish better interest going on here.

Bobo is merely reinforcing the idea that sucking richy rich penis and carrying their tax burden for them is good for people who work for a living. The lords and ladies have deemed it so.

 
 

(along with the idea that America was a paper tiger).

I thought this assertion continued until after D Day, when the Germans were unable to stop the advance.

 
 

Speaking of which, I am wondering what the fuck kind of defense Jerry Sandusky’s attorney is hoping to put up.

Supposedly, “the victims are unreliable/mentally ill/making it up.”

 
 

One of my favorite pics was taken by Teh Ho. It’s me, standing at the back of the Lincoln Memorial, pointing up at where the bullet entered. People were scandalized. That was long before digital cameras and i dont have a scanner these days so i can’t present it to you.

SOMEBODY should hop up there with a red Sharpie and draw the bullet hole…That would be rude. But sorta funny.

 
 

Nym: Actually, your link is to a story saying Sandusky’s lawyer wants to establish that he wrote love letters to 11-year-old boys because he has “histrionic personality disorder.” This supposedly will contradict the assertion that he wrote the letters to groom his victims, although I don’t see why a histrionic personality wouldn’t want to groom victims.

Isn’t this the same lawyer who thought it would be a good idea for Sandusky to do that interview with Bob Costas?

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

I know Joe Amendola, the lawyer. He never struck me as being the sharpest knife in the drawer. To be fair, he doesn’t have much to work with in this case.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

OK, all you literary types have to hear this.

 
 

Scribe: Whoops. I think I read the description of histrionic personality disorder and confabulated it with the all-too-common victim-blame defense approach.

Thanks for correcting me.

 
 

PM: I’m still more partial to Bill Bailey’s Kraftwerk version.

 
 

Nym: Actually, you weren’t really off the mark. The lawyer has said before that the victims are money-hungry, which is the same line the Catholic Church uses over and over in its pushback against victims’ rights.

Pup: Granted, but neither do most defense lawyers. Prosecutors have many fine crimes to choose from, and generally, if they’re willing to take your client to trial, it means they have him by the balls. I just wonder if the defense lawyer will be able to keep Sandusky, who strikes me as a really dull knife, off the stand.

 
 

Attn OBS and Pupienus. Beware the plague!

Oh noes! And I’ll be in Bend soon too. I’ll try to avoid plague-ridden cats.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

PM: I’m still more partial to Bill Bailey’s Kraftwerk version.

Having seen that now I am too.

 
 

When I get the job w/ Kraphammer I’m going to wheel him over to Brooks’ new mansion, chain Brooks to Kraut’s chair, & push them both into Brooksie’s fucking pool.

I STILL would kill to watch one (and only one) reality show, where these right wing aristocrats are forced to live on minimum wage, with no health coverage, no plausible hope of ever improving their station in life. Sure, they would be all stoicism and tough-guy and “look how smart I am for pouring boiling water over cheese and noodles–fuckin gourmet, bro!” at first, but eventually the day-to-day hell of poverty would start to kick in. Let the SchadenFUN begin!

 
 

On the other, drowning them together seems cool.

Whatchu wanna bet Bobo tries to stand on Shithammer to keep his nose above the water?

 
 

Whatchu wanna bet Bobo tries to stand on Shithammer to keep his nose above the water?

It would be the most useful thing Krauthammer has ever done.

 
John "Ivan" Demjanjuk
 

“How can an institution conceivably defend itself against a claim that is 40, 50 or 60 years old?”

What Patrick said.

 
 

Yes, CK needs the “Kiss of Death” treatment.

 
 

When I get the job w/ Kraphammer I’m going to wheel him over to Brooks’ new mansion, chain Brooks to Kraut’s chair, & push them both into Brooksie’s fucking pool.

That’s really evil. Can I watch?

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Another present for Substance McBubba (IF that is his real name). http://i.imgur.com/RT65B.jpg

 
 

Kind people have already pointed me at that particular ass-opening atrocity.

But THANK YOU.

 
 

HA HA some of us read Boing Boing before Pupienus.

 
UK and US governments vs. Chagos Islanders
 

How can an institution conceivably defend itself against a claim that is 40, 50 or 60 years old?

 
 

How can an institution conceivably defend itself against a claim that is 40, 50 or 60 years old?

 
 

Say, who here’s actually been to the Chagos Archipelago?

(waves hand – pick me! pick me!)

 
 

Believe me – I’d have gladly given it back to them.

 
 

Say, who here’s actually been to the Chagos Archipelago?

But there weren’t any Islanders there, were there?
This proves conclusively that the court case is just a money-grab.

 
 

For the WWII geekery discussion, it’s never clear what weird obsessions drove Hitler to throw his army at the steppes in 1941, but the documents suggest that he believed defeating the Soviets would bring Britain to the table.

This. Because diplomatic history has deservedly fallen out of fashion (a particularly dire school of early WW1 historiography basically spends the whole time picking through powerless Eastern despots’ mash notes to each other) the study of WW2 misses a lot of the weird diplomatic logic that produced otherwise unaccountable situations.

The Japanese basically maneuvered themselves into an unwinnable position in 1945 in the vain hope that the Soviets would somehow be able to broker a peace with the US, and up until the minute Stalin declared war they still held out a vain, absurd hope that he would rescue them.

The problem is that diplomacy is a crapshoot at the best of times, so these decisions always seem way stupider in hindsight – in part because we don’t really get to see the stupid diplomatic gambles that bear fruit.

The “collective” aspect of their behavior doesn’t fit the definition of collective. Considering that 47% PAY NO TAXES AND THE JOB CREATORS NEED A TAX CUT OR ELSE SATAN WINS…I’d say that there is a definite selfish better interest going on here.

Bobo is merely reinforcing the idea that sucking richy rich penis and carrying their tax burden for them is good for people who work for a living. The lords and ladies have deemed it so.

I wouldn’t argue that the people running America have anyone’s interests at heart except their own, but a lot of the Brooksian mindset is dismissing the very idea of expertise. The built-in knee-jerk critique is “you’re just elitists who think they know what’s best for everyone”. Which is a good way to sum up what Bobo actually thinks his role vis-a-vis the proles at the Applebee’s salad bar is, so he’s sure that Paul Krugman equally tears out his hair in impotent fury over deficit hawkery the better to look down his big hebey-jebey nose at real Americans without an econ degree or a Nobel Prize who have been convinced by the passionate sincerity of that Amity Shlaes lady on the teevee.

Bobo is part of a class of elitist shits who poison the well for technocracy in an incompetently-managed country and pretend what they’re standing against is elitism, so that when they foist their cloistered, incomprehensible dogma on the unthinking masses, no one will be the wiser.

 
 

During my just completed nap the line “resistance is feudal” popped into my head and I think it had something to do with Bobo. Alas, I can eject recall the details with these things.

PS – I rarely read Boingboingsproing. I suppose I should get out more often.

 
 

Also FYautocorrect. And such as.

 
 

It was dead when I got here! I swear!

 
 

It’s just pining for the fiords.

 
 

Re Hitler and Soviet Union:

but the documents suggest that he believed defeating the Soviets would bring Britain to the table.

Bullshit on a motherfucking stick. How does that even make any fucking sense? Defeating the Soviet Union is a stepping stone to defeating Britain? So what’s the endgame, ruling Britain? And then what?
I think the answer Snyder provides in “Bloodlands” (which echoes what Eastern-European historians have been saying for decades) is as close as one can get to the truth: it was a combination of ideology (racial purity, Deutschland über alles) and economy: Hitler needed the plains of Poland, Ukraine and Russia to feed the expansion of the Reich eastwards. Nobody’s saying it was a realistic plan – hell, Himmler came up with the original version and it relied heavily on the replication of the success of blitzkrieg tactics in the West, which obviously did not happen.

Because diplomatic history has deservedly fallen out of fashion

And deservedly so, because it leads to conclusions like the one above. How about actually reading what the guy said? Snyder did, that’s why on p. 158 he can quote Hitler saying that what he wants are the immense riches of the Soviet Union, because having them would make Germany undefeatable and “the most autarkic state in the world”.

 
 

I don’t want to shit down the neck-stump of a decapitated David Brooks.

‘Cause then he couldn’t taste it.
.

 
 

I figure Brooks’ dominatrix is probably one of the happiest people in DC. As for this loathsome “It is the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation” column, thanks mondo, Cerberus, for slicin’ and dicing.

 
 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that David Brooks is in want of brains, a spine, and ethics.

 
 

“Defeating” and “bringing to terms” are two separate things. From the fall of France on, the Nazi leadership considered the direct military subjugation of Britain either more effort than it was worth or impossible, yet continuing war with the UK a serious threat to long-term Nazi strategy.

Posing it as “defeating the Soviet Union is a stepping stone to defeating Britain” suggests an absurd chain of causality, but is a straw man. The contention was that after significant victories over the Soviet Union a ceasefire could be obtained from the UK, and the dismantling of the British as a military threat left to a later time.

The question isn’t “why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union”, because I don’t think it’s easy to imagine a history with Hitler in power where he didn’t invade the Soviet Union sooner or later – ideology and economics demanded it. The question is why he chose to invade the USSR at the specific time he did – and like all great blunders whose participants are now dead, it’s hard to say there’s any one answer.

 
 

I figure Brooks’ dominatrix is probably one of the happiest people in DC.

I see where you’re going with it, but it’s hardly Serious to be dominated by a woman, now is it? One must imagine his old balls being trod on by a Michael Bloomberg lookalike.

 
 

Wow, this isn’t even off-topic, given it’s a BoBo thread:

Just had Nice Polite Republicans on and Megs McCabe was on On Point talking about finding common ground between Ds and Rs and being a RINO (so, apparently in Sorority Gal Says What? today, Megs is best buds with One L Michele and deeply regrets calling her a Parah Salin, whereas Laura Ingraham is the wicked witch of the RWNJ radio dial, hisssss).

So, Meghan starting talking about why she supports Rmoney and the hilarity needs to be streamed to be believed. First the unendorsement, “I could have a rockstar, young, sexy president,” then the enthusiastic show of support, “I agree with 75% of Mitt Romney’s platform.”

So vote Romney. Over-the-hill, fuddy-duddy, bland and 75% endorsed by Meghan McCain.

 
 

“One must imagine his old balls being trod on by a Michael Bloomberg lookalike.”

Heh–a Reagan/Dubya lookalike. Could be he keeps a stable of manly-historical-action-figures on-call…

 
 

“I could have a rockstar, young, sexy president,”

Get that President super sexy!!!

 
 

Big favor: could somebody here get me a screenshot of a dating site profile page? I need it for a humorous blog entry I’m planning. Tried to get some, but they make you sign up; which since I’m married feels kinda weird to me.

 
 

Sign up Dudeskull. The name alone will get him dates.

 
 

hearted for the Jayne reference. Clearly you are a very brave man to wear that hat.

 
 

Hey, bulbul, is Bloodlands as good as the reviews say? it’s on my list but I haven’t bought it yet.

 
 

The actual Nazi state was pretty shambolic and doomed, as any wingnut regime without powerful friends tends to be.

Exactly. They were colossal fuck-ups, albeit fuckups with some scary rockets and shit. Their close neighbors knew intimately how much they sucked, but an ocean away Americans bought into their PR.

Some of the Nazi’s top leader’s incompetence at just about everything is, well, legendary. (I guess Hitler was lucky* that his conservative allies, who plotted to assassinate him, were even more useless and incompetent than his inner circle. Fucking toffs.)

*lol

 
 

shambolic is an awesome werd, also too

 
 

Got nuttin’.

Shut off my first water service, today. You always remember your first, eh?
.

 
 

Also, remind me I cannot afford a GOOD Bluetooth helmet, if you would.
.

 
 

is Bloodlands as good as the reviews say?

Call me a sparty obscurantist but something about an American whose books are pretty much exclusively about Polish subjects, including a rip-roaring yarn about the wise benevolence of the Volhynia Experiment, is suspect from the word go. Add that to the list of awards he’s received from a who’s who of establishment historians in Poland, a thesis that compares collectivization (laudable intentions, execution marred by stupidity and cold-hearted dogmatism) with ethnic cleansing and German resettlement (one of history’s worst crimes even in its incomplete state), and top all that with a glowing review by professional neo-Prometheist Anne Applebaum and my admittedly knee-jerk reaction is “I don’t have to pay $17.69 to hear Radio Free Europe”.

 
 

Shut off my first water service, today.

You used binocs to time the shut-off with a shower, yes?

 
 

I should specify I’m intrinsically suspicious of the Polish point of view on the war because they were in the more or less unique position of being fucked equally by the lesser and greater of two evils, and their modern nationalism evolved from people spraypainting “Katyn” on Holocaust memorials. Admittedly the Soviets had basically selfish and sinister reasons for putting those memorials up in the first place, but that doesn’t entitle Polish historiography to special dispensation on the Big Dictator Question – let alone Polonophiles from the West, who have far murkier and more sinister reasons for pretending ambivalence to it.

 
 

Shut off my first water service, today. You always remember your first, eh?

i guess they felt your ball-cock when you rammed it home

 
 

The fuck, alec? I still have a living relative who has a prisoner (death camp slave) number tattooed on her arm from her little holiday in Auschwitz. Do you have any notion how many Poles died in the Holocaust? What is this sinister Pole shit, anyway?

 
 

Also, considering how mixed the reviews on the subject tend to be in identifying Snyder’s thesis – I have heard him complimented on both his refusal to simplify the war into “communism and fascism were morally equivalent” and on his magisterial work in simplifying the war into “communism and fascism were morally equivalent” – I’m not 100% sure what to make of it, besides it being against dictatorial hubris. Which is fresh new ground in the historiography of eastern Europe.

(Also, one reviewer suggests that ‘the bloodlands’ as a conceit refers to eastern Europe being the place where modernist omelette-makers went to impose their grand vision on human beings… which is a fucking ironic thing for a hagiographer of Henryk Jozewski and generalized Intermarium nostalgic to moot, to be brutally honest.)

 
 

Republicans: miraculously winning on a 600, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 to 1 long-shot!

Wall Street can only dream of beating odds like that.

 
 

The fuck, alec? I still have a living relative who has a prisoner (death camp slave) number tattooed on her arm from her little holiday in Auschwitz. Do you have any notion how many Poles died in the Holocaust? What is this sinister Pole shit, anyway?

Even if you restrict it to non-Jews and non-combatants the answer is still ‘a shitload of people’. This is something the Soviets and the People’s Republic of Poland hammered on fairly brutally in the Cold War years as part of a general campaign to equate the West with the Nazis, and the last twenty years have seen a substantial and disquieting amount of rebound against that viewpoint, significantly backed by neoliberals, neoconservatives, and other Anglo-American culture warriors whose main interest is sticking a thumb in the eye of Russia or the left.

I don’t know what got you so exercised. I didn’t claim that nothing bad happened to Poland or the Polish people – horrible, horrible things happened to them, for six solid years, on a scale without equal in human history.

But the historiography of modern Poland has favored an interpretation of the war years which emerged as a reaction to the official history of the PRL, and I do mean “reaction”. This isn’t just a historical concern, either – the Institute of National Rememberance has been a political weapon wielded with expert skill by right-wing politicians. The context of “Bloodlands” is not the 1940s but the 2000s.

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

So, assume I know nothing about the historiography (a word of whose definition of which I have only a slippery grasp) of 20th century Poland. Are you saying Communists held up the Holocaust as an example of how terrible the entire west was? And are you further saying that right wing elements in Poland and abroad are now downplaying this interpretation up to the point of trying to minimize the Holocaust and pointing at the crimes of communism as equivalent?
I am only asking because I want to untangle the academic jargon a little bit, and because as I stated earlier, I don’t know Polish historiography, or even history all that well.

 
 

TBH I’m never quite sure if I have the meaning of the word “historiography” right either. Fairly sure it’s the history of history / study of the study of history, and it gets used as a synonym for “meta-history” anyway.

Are you saying Communists held up the Holocaust as an example of how terrible the entire west was?

Yeah, and the Soviets were pretty free and easy with accusations of “fascism”. (Amusingly, there’ve been suggestions that, via the ex-Trotskyites, that’s where the modern GOP got it from.)

But that’s only part of it. There was definitely some attempt to deliberately obstruct the crimes of the Soviets by talking up the crimes of the Nazis – to the point of setting up memorials to the Khatyn Massacre (an actual war crime, but not a big one in the scale of eastern Europe) to help bury Katyn (even by the scale of eastern Europe a pretty big deal) in history.

And are you further saying that right wing elements in Poland and abroad are now downplaying this interpretation up to the point of trying to minimize the Holocaust and pointing at the crimes of communism as equivalent?

The first part of that goes before the second part – it’s extremely prevalent to claim the crimes of Communism and Nazism are equivalent – emotionally equivalent, equivalent in scale, or even close to numerically equivalent – and in fact this is the ur-counterclaim to the left’s drubbing the right with the Nazis. This doesn’t necessarily lead to Holocaust denial, but has always been kissing cousins with it.

It’s also very prevalent in eastern Europe, especially the more western parts of eastern Europe, whose center-right elites have to court support by hardline nationalists under the West’s radar. The game goes like this:

1) Center-right elites change existing ceremonialization of victims of fascism / Nazism to ceremonialization of “victims of fascism and communism”.

2) August Western and local historians parachute in to provide protective cover to the equivalence of the two totalitarianisms.

3) The “moderate” nationalists, who have historical complaints against both the Communists and the fascists, consider the matter settled.

4) The dethroning of Hitler and his lackeys as a special category of nonpareil evil erodes the prestige of “fascist!” as a conversation-ender.

5) What was once a social pressure against the brackish waters of the extreme right becomes a muddy, unsettled terrain, full of tu-quoquism and appeals to modernity.

6) Suddenly, the extreme right is open and visible in national politics.

7) The center-right elites gain support from frightened centrists and newly socially acceptable rightists alike.

And in the long term:

8) Tacitly, it is accepted that not only were the Nazis and Communists equally bad, but the Communists were worse, as after all their regime lasted decades.

9) Organized haranguing of leftist parties, which often have vestigial organizational ties to the old regime, as part of the legacy of Stalinism – first in the court of public opinion, then in the actual courts.

Hungary provides a pretty clear example.

 
 

Incidentally, this is the same Victor Orban claiming indifference to history who, after being swept into power by the Socialists’ lies and mismanagement, proceeded to justify foisting a new constitution on the country on the basis of the Socialists being a relic of communism and treasonous collaborators.

Hungary is fucking horrifying these days.

 
 

The second part of that goes before the first part, duh. “Communism and fascism are equivalent” is nearly universal in the central European academy, whereas “the Holocaust is overemphasized” or “the Holocaust is a myth” is a fringe view that flourishes in an equivalence-based environment.

 
 

Once I got into an online discussion with some Romanians who were astonished that I thought Antonescu was a bad guy. I pointed out that he led Romania into an alliance with Hitler, and they basically replied, well, it was him or Stalin, and we hated Stalin worse.

They were polite, so I tried to be too, which is why I didn’t come back with, “So you sent tens of thousands of your soldiers as fodder to be chewed up by the Red Army for Hitler’s benefit. Smooth.”

 
 

And now for something completely different – Michigan gets the vapors: http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/06/14/michigan-lawmakers-not-all-that-vajazzed-about-your-slutty-vagina-talk/

 
 

Hasn’t Michigan gotten the message in Wisconsin? The American people have. Our corporate masters have made it clear that in today’s wintry economic climate there is simply no budget for vaginas.

 
 

“Yes! We Have No Vaginas” etc

I don’t want to be a hero…. But this time, I don’t know why, I didn’t give in. […] I stared back.

Where’s that triumphant music from The Shawshank Redemption when you need it?

 
 

For pure insanity it’s hard to top the birthers: http://badfiction.typepad.com/badfiction/2012/06/dispatches-from-birtherstan-12-13-june-2012.html

…You don’t speak for me as swipe. And NO it’s not over, by any stretch of the imagination. My/our resolution is stronger than ever to see this criminal stand trial for crimes against America. Hawaii’s DHOH is going down for providing cover for him, too. Just wait until Sheriff Joe’s next press conference. It’s so ON!!!

 
Oregon Beer Snob
 

Wow, that’s some stinky mango S. c.

Not as bad as the stench rolling out of alec’s death camps though.

 
 

“Leaders” is a misnomer; they are public servants and elected officials, nothing more and sometimes a whole lot less. One may or may not have respect for them either way, but “leaders” is an illusion; unless the lunies have taken over the bin. They can then be our Perfect Magnificent Wonderous Spectacular Excellent Above and Beyond Anyone On Earth Great Leaders. The Spectral Light from their presence blinds our shadowy souls with their brilliance, so that we must always “act” like their servants because we are but little more than miserable mortal sinners. Basque in their egos, dance with their biorhythms, be astonished when they are being important, lick boots, fall under the heels, behave like a trained animal and thank goodness your days of complete misery and shame will end as whatever stupid thing you did kills you. Amen. Command us Oh dear leaders, for you are never wrong and always for the right reasons. May I was your feet? May I wipe your ass? May my vote not count so you will win no matter what I do. May they be free of consequence for all the harm they cause, because they are special in ways that the rest of us can only imagine. Contributions of one-hundred dollars or more can be made at the table on your way out. Introduce yourself, and whatever you do, don’t be a cheapskate; it will be noted. Remember, first impressions are forever.

“There! That oughta’ hold those little bastards.”

 
 

Sheriff Joe? I mean, I know but… still. Sheriff Joe?

 
 

Sheriff Joe? I mean, I know but… still. Sheriff Joe?

He’s achieved a level of distinction and fame wherein he is identified and universally beloved under only one name.

Like Teh Unabomber, or p’raps Jack the Ripper.

 
 

You used binocs to time the shut-off with a shower, yes?

Har! Nothing quite so interesting or dramatic. It was an irrigation unit in an industrial park.
.

 
 

sorry vs, looks like you’ll have to bite the bullet and sign up for nolongerlonely.com

 
 

This is just astounding. via think progress :

In response to concerns by pro-life evangelical Christians that part of being pro-life means protecting the unborn from the brain and nerve damage caused by neurotoxic mercury pollution, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) retorted that “[t]he life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself.”

fetuses loves them some mercury. I can remember rocking out to “Somebody to Love” in the womb. good times.

 
 

the life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself

You’d have a tough time finding a single sentence that better sums up the entire GOP ideology.

 
 

You’d have a tough time finding a single sentence that better sums up the entire GOP ideology

“I got mine.”

Higher assholishness to word ratio.

 
 

“[t]he life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself.”

Which is why they objected strenuously to the practice of invading Iraq and in so doing replacing a shitty existence with (for thousands and thousands of people) no existence at all.

 
 

Kg, no worries. I finally removed my head from my ass and found stuff on google images.

 
 

My dad was constitutional monarchist because he thought a figurehead king or queen could (using my words) help block the authoritarian receptor sites and let the rest of the personality see our public servants as, well, servants.

It’s often occurred to me that Big Sky Daddy could fill much the same function, except that He’s generally been such an hot property that men love to get power by claiming to be His agent.

But face it: the need to lick boots is so strong for so many that we have to find a way to tame it—as with any other recreational drug, some people will get some, so it’s a matter of minimising the harm they’ll do others and themselves… ‘Authoritarians Anonymous’

 
 

[damned tablet]
…? Maybe a good idea, but the Higher Power part might be problematic.

 
 

I can remember rocking out to “Somebody to Love” in the womb.

I was trying to figure out what Grace Slick had to do with it but I figgered it out.

 
 

vs – would a Grindr screen cap do?

 
 

My dad was constitutional monarchist because he thought a figurehead king or queen could (using my words) help block the authoritarian receptor sites and let the rest of the personality see our public servants as, well, servants.

Son?

 
 

Holy shiznit, the prez actually did someting useful.

The right-wing freakout is gonna be hilarious!

 
 

Nothing to add. just re-cookification related program activities.

 
 

Check out http://www.douchebagsofgrindr.com/

It’s awesome.

 
 

Check out http://www.douchebagsofgrindr.com/

It’s awesome.

It screams for a venn diagram with People of Walmart.

 
 

It screams for a venn diagram with People of Walmart.

Judging from that first page, there’d be no overlap at all. Their body-fat percentage is way too low for People of Walmart.

 
 

We Will Not Mock This Pamela Gellar Post Until A Doctor Assures Us She Did Not Have A Stroke.

http://wonkette.com/475342/we-will-not-make-fun-of-this-pamela-gellar-post-until-a-doctor-assures-us-she-did-not-have-a-stroke?tw_p=twt

 
 

“Pam Gellar” and “stroke” do not belong in the same sentence, ever.

 
 

Back on topic: This sentence from Driftglass is awesome.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/06/david-fucking-brooks.html

But his perfunctory dusting of whiny pecksniffery fools no one but the noobs: just under the skin you will always find the same, sniveling, bootlicking, authoritarian-worshipping “Shut up and obey me you ignorant proles!” attitude that has been Mr. Brooks’ stock-in-tirade since his salad days huffing George Will’s toupee glue and playing Neocon Stratego with Bloody Bill Kristol back at “The Weekly Standard”.

 
 

Thanks gocart, I hadn’t wanted to click the LGF link from before because, well, LGF. The Wonkette comments are great, my favorite among the first few I saw:

She was trying to emulate Ayn Rand’s writing style. And I think she nailed it.

 
 

Check out http://www.douchebagsofgrindr.com/

Although I am not on grindr I feel very much like a douchebag for not getting some of these.

Oh wait, I just don’t know how to look at them. I somehow didn’t spot the giant “Gook Free Zone” title.

 
 

And back on topic, the whole internets should just start deferring to d r i f t g l a s s for their Brooks takedown needs. They are things of beauty. The latest is simply grand.

 
 

wow, y’all have been exceptionally chatting while i was gone learnin’ all about running a capital campaign…interesting note: the workshop on financing was not nearly as boring as i thought it would be, and indeed after they were done, one of the male duo of presenters (an older guy) gave the young hot banker guy a butt-pat when they were done…

 
 

Pup, douchebagsofgrindr is great. Been there before. FOR A FRIEND.

 
 

And back on topic, the whole internets should just start deferring to d r i f t g l a s s for their Brooks takedown needs. They are things of beauty. The latest is simply grand.

If you go to his latest column, the commenters did pretty well themselves. Not one defender of his lunacy that I can see.

 
 

Oh wow. Second guy I click on douchesofgrindr is a racist. Lovely.

BTW, what the fuck did they do their website? The whole thing is set up like a mobile site now. I’m baffled.

 
 

BTW, I have started my own food blog.

 
 

The lastest Brooks column reminds me a whole lot of that Jonathan Haidt article I link to on my blog. They’re basically really long, tortured ways to make conservatives seem less horrible than they really are.

 
 

Wow. It looks like Gellar has moved from box wine to meth and now on to bath salts. I suppose we should just be grateful that there wasn’t any homeless guy at hand when she wrote this; otherwise, we’d have another guy missing a face right about now.

 
 

Been there before. FOR A FRIEND.

This “friend.” Was he a man in a boat?

 
 

Wow. It looks like Gellar has moved from box wine to meth and now on to bath salts. I suppose we should just be grateful that there wasn’t any homeless guy at hand when she wrote this; otherwise, we’d have another guy missing a face right about now.

Um, wow. It looks like some Janus Node misspelling thing at work. Geesh.

 
 

BTW, I have started my own food blog.

Some of us can’t even be arsed to update our one blahg and then there’s you overachievers that go and make us feel bad. Nice.

 
 

BTW, I have started my own food blog.

You had me at Swiss Chard.

 
 

Still going through B. Some hits, some Bee Gees.

There's A Tear In My Beer |||||||||||||| Big Bill Lister
Part Time Suckers |||||||||||||| Boogie Down Productions
Jive Talkin' |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bee Gees
Dem Neyem Sher ||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Barry Sisters
Population Override ||||||||||||||||||||||||| Buckethead
Paranoid ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Black Sabbath
Lean on Me |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bill Withers
Cornershop ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Baby Bird
Slipstream |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Béla Fleck
Sweet Song |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Blur
Holiday ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bee Gees
John Hardy ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Buell Kazee
Another Pearl |||||||||||||||||||||||||| Badly Drawn Boy
With Tears In My Eyes | Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
To Love Somebody |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bee Gees
Easter Parade |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bing Crosby
Sinful Love ||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Blue Öyster Cult
Railroad Blues |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Beastie Boys
Embrace ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bee Gees
You & Me ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Baby Bird

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Meh. Needs MOAR 1910 Fruitgum Co.

 
 

Guess who the guy who interupted the pres. works for?

Answer:
Heckler identified himself as Neil Monroe (sp?) with the Daily Caller. Says he’s an immigrant himself. Then walked off.
— @brianbeutler via Echofon

 
 

B! B!

Needs moar Banana Splits

 
 

This may be the cutest* thing evar. And it’s even edumacational!

*Note: cuteness value may vary especially by gender and mechanical aptitude/geekery.

 
 

Oh, and that was another thing I found at d r i f t g l a s s’s place. Credit where credit’s due and all that.

 
 

OBS, I’m going mango hunting for the Great White Freakout Over the Messicans. Should be epic.

 
 

OBS, I’m going mango hunting for the Great White Freakout Over the Messicans. Should be epic.

You are either brave or masochistic. Good luck!

 
 

oh, goddammit! this looks like an exceptionally intriguing thread…and i have to kick some butt here at work so i can bring luci the wonderdog over to visit at the nursing home and then go home and enjoy my weekend WHEREIN I DO NOT HAVE TO WORK AT THE CLUB AND I AM GOING TO ENJOY MYSELF DAMMIT!!! and i’m going to enjoy it with a martini and catching up on this thread this evening before watching some town ball…which is not to be confused with clown hall…

 
 

also too, this is where hubbkf is going tomorrow…the son is volunteering at the summit brewing beer garden and was able to score his faja a ticket…lucky sob…

 
 

“resistance is feudal”

Winz.

 
 

I’ve got Beat the Devil’s Tattoo covered but nothing else.

 
 

B! B!

needs more butthole surfers and baby animals…

 
 

Re the Alec and bulbul discussion: I think there is merit in both interpretations; indeed, I think it was compounded of several things. But who insists that a person has only ONE motive for an action?

 
 

Shut off my first water service, today.

A red-letter day! Was it the rich lady who was too cheep to buy reliable equipment? Or was it the apopeleptic dude who harangued your boss and called the mayor?

 
 

Admittedly the first thing that comes to mind is the weird prominence of his fluffy little dog,

FALA LIBEL!!

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

OBS that was AWESOME! There were ring grooves but I couldn’t see if he had piston rings. Could anyone else tell?

 
 

Okay, of that bunch, out goes BÖC, Buckethead and “Embrace”.

I can’t understand how a guy who wears a fried-chicken bucket on his head can be so goddamned boring.

 
 

Damn, I’m finding crazy but not ALLCAPS CRAZY!!11!!! Sorry but I’m not going to freeperville because my hazmat suit is at the cleaners.

 
 

OBS: The link at 20:42 is phenomenol. Goes beyond ‘cute’. Must end up in a museum someday. Thanks for this! Sending it a mechanically inclined friend who lurves engines.

 
 

OBS that was AWESOME! There were ring grooves but I couldn’t see if he had piston rings. Could anyone else tell?

Thanks Pup (and Fenwick). As to the rings, I couldn’t tell either. The lack of an ignition system indicates it must run on diesel, and you’d think to get the compression level high enough it’d have to have rings, but maybe the tolerance is just tight enough?

 
 

I can’t understand how a guy who wears a fried-chicken bucket on his head can be so goddamned boring.

SHRINER LIBEL!

 
 

Why was Chandler from Friends being such a dick?
http://dailycaller.com/

 
 

First comment is:

Our government has been overthrown in a bloodless coup and we are now living under a defacto dictatorship.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/15/munro-obama-ignores-questions-about-controversial-de-facto-amnesty-decision/#ixzz1xtjMPWRO

I’m going in! I’ll report back from the fetid swamp.

 
 

Mich McConnel is an asshole.

“Democrats in the House and Senate recently proposed the so-called, ‘People’s Rights Amendment’ which basically repeals the First Amendment and just this week, citing Citizens United, the president’s top political adviser — this is not some back-bench member of the House of Representatives — the president’s top political adviser, David Axelrod, told an audience in Manhattan that, quote, ‘When we win, we will use whatever tools are out there, including a constitutional amendment, to turn it back,’” McConnell said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Friday.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/15/mcconnell-obama-seeking-to-change-first-amendment-an-act-of-radicalism-video/#ixzz1xtlCoWLA

 
 

The stupid was uninteresting. Oh well.

 
 

Looking at my friend’s new hideously expensive McMansion in Memphis. I found the backflow preventer.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

, David Axelrod, told an audience in Manhattan that, quote, ‘When we win, we will use whatever tools are out there, including a constitutional amendment, to turn it back

Well that makes me a bit more comfortable voting for Obama.

 
 

I found the backflow preventer.

They’re almost always in the last place you look.
.

 
 

They’re almost always in the last place you look.
.

Under the bed?

 
 

Random Friday night funnies…if you hire a killer through ads, make sure you know what you’re getting.

 
 

I dunno…people were talking about backflow… Although I guess that’s more of a frontflow thing.

 
 

You put your front flow in
You take your back flow out
You do the sewage dewage
And you PLEASE GOD NO DONT SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT

 
 

They’re almost always in the last place you look.
Have you checked behind the sofa cushions?

 
 

OR IN YOUR TROUSERS!!

 
 

No, gin is not in your trousers, hopefully as it gets all diluted. Maybe backflow prevention could be in trousers that have gin in them

 
 

Was it the rich lady who was too cheep to buy reliable equipment? Or was it the apopeleptic dude who harangued your boss and called the mayor?

Neither… their 14 days are yet to pass, each. The rich lady is having hers replaced, btw, with the Good Stuff. The other one will likely have their water cut off next week, ’cause WE HAVE NO RIGHT!

The one I cut off was an irrigation unit in an industrial park. No big whoop, really. We tested over a dozen in there 30+ days ago, and the property manager had all the other failed units fixed immediately. This one may have fallen off the list, or may have been deemed insufficiently vital to worry with.
.

 
 

WE HAVE NO RIGHT, I say!

(long, boring PDF file)
.

 
 

Who gives a fat flying Philadelpia fiddler’s fuck about RIGHTS when we have gin?

Not I, good sir, I assure you not I.

 
 

Gin is a wonderful summer drink. Gimme a Tanq and tonic (or a Saph) and I will get silly (but not as much as wine).

 
 

Shorter Mitchiepoo McConnel (who is said to be hung like a hamster and also Elaine Cow er, Chao has or is a beard): We shouldn’t have to reveal our donors masters because the liebruls will BULLY THEM !

 
 

Who gives a fat flying Philadelpia fiddler’s fuck about RIGHTS when we have gin?

Who’s this “we,” Kimosabe?

I haz cheap beer. Remember, I’m prioritizing. Landlord gets half of every paycheck for a while.

Oh — and the cheap equipment person and the mayor-caller? They’re neighbors. The cheap equipment person asked that the neighbor’s device be tested first, and we thought that was a fair-ask, and did so.
.

 
 

JP, quality over quantity, or do what I did when I was hurtin’ for cash. Buy one half decent beer (For this purpose I liked to buy a big can of Foster’s Bitter) (I know, I know upside down folks, up here Labatt’s brews it and for a couple of bucks for a big can it beats the shit out of Bud) and then switch to the PBR (or whatever cheap shit you have). When all else fails you have this: http://bumwine.com/

 
 

I don’t mind cheap beer — and I get a sixer of the good stuff on payday, and meter it out over the two weeks. That said, Icehouse is perfectly acceptable buzz material.
.

 
 

If I win Megamillions tonight, I probably won’t buy nearly as much Busch, Icehouse and Nasty Ice… but I will still buy it. Sometimes, it’s just what I want.

 
 

I have decided that gin is good.

Hogarth agrees.

 
 

I learned from Hogarth that gin is the drink for dieters.

 
 

New post.

 
 

If your institution has site license access, enter here.

Yeah VS, that one sucked quite a bit and I never got past the paywall. Before I was aware of its existence I thought there might be something other than suck discussed.

I woul probably be wrong.

 
 

Fresh from reading Twilight of the Elites, I enjoyed the juice in this one right down to the last drop, than I ate the pulp and rind, too.

cerberus, you are my god. 3 heads on the statue, right? And how many stories high? Giant bursts of flame can erupt from the mouths, right? that would be cool. Brooks pinned under one paw, little blue flames shooting from his ass?

 
 

Fucking Brooks.

How I wish for one day he had to use the level of thinking he displays in his articles, for the task of cashing the weekly check he gets for soiling the public discourse.

He wouldn’t even be able to find the bank. Sadly, I’m sure he gets direct deposit anyway.

 
 

I can’t believe monkey-fighting Gawker of all sites beat you to the punch on this:

David Brookspringsteen: Everybody’s Got a Global Heart

The nearsighted Mr. McBobo flies all the way to Spain to see the Boss in concert and draws some sort of life lesson (for values of “life” and “lesson”). Green grow the mangoes, O: The Power of the Particular.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll puke your pants over yet another reminder that people pay him, in actual money, to write this shit.

 
 

Who is Abdul Basit Sieda?
Kurdfientliga och arabfientliga judekonvert horrunge heter klanen CIAidea; ligaledaren är Abdulbajs skìt. SIEDA clan members are the child murderers and therefore they been imported to the EU by the Jewish financial sects. And SIEDA A$$ Abdul is convert Jew.
Abdulbaset Sieda är importerad BEHRING BREIVIK så att begå brott mot mänskligheten helt under lite olika masker… Uppdrag och kontraktet är exakta likadana

 
 

A. ASET CIAidea clan terrorists placed in Uppsala Knutby sect facades
Abdulbaset SAIDA, född 19560622, Kamomillgatan 21 lgh 1101, 754 47 Uppsala
– Maybe they are thinking it’s impossible demolishing this suité in Sweden…
– Don’t make me laugh! This clan is already in the mousetrap like brainless cloakrats; and here is other shìteater members of SIEDA

 
 

Piroz SAIDA, född 19571015, Kamomillgatan 21 lgh 1101, 754 47 Uppsala

Jin SAIDA, född 19910512, Kamomillgatan 21 lgh 1101, 754 47 Uppsala

Gulnaz SAIDA, född 19941108, Kamomillgatan 21 lgh 1101, 754 47 Uppsala
http://www.friatider.se/uppsalabo-leder-syriska-terrorister
Spik Harry: Skít in i munnen av Abdulbajs och hennes värdelösa valpar! Bosse EJNERMARK: Ge mig verktyg, jag som frivilligt spikar deras kistor och slänger allihop förrädare rakt in i Baltiska havet!

 
 

[…] other better known characters for his Shakespeare analogy. Oh, Bobo, your endless erection for the return of the monarchy is truly a delight for both young and old! First, Henry would withdraw. He’d decide that the […]

 
 

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