We've had very little Roxy Music at THC. Let's remedy that deficiency. This is Do The Strand from the band's second album, For Your Pleasure, released in 1973. With delightfully lunatic lyrics.
Arabs at oasis Eskimos and Chinese
If you feel blue Look through who's who See like guru And Nijinsky Do the strandsky!
Weary of the waltz And mashed potato schmaltz
Rhododendron Is a nice flower Evergreen It lasts forever But it can't beat strand power
The Sphinx and Mona Lisa Lolita and Guernica Did the strand
We are approaching the 50th anniversary of French director Claude Lalouch's insane, law-breaking, early morning drive through Paris, which became his short film, the title of which in English is "It was a date", a punchline you'll understand if you watch to the end of the film, which is less than nine minutes. Lalouch's exploit inspired generations of racing aficionados.
Lalouch is driving his Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 but the sound track is overdubbed using a Ferrari and isn't always synced to the action. In order to accomplish the drive the director attempted it during August, when Paris is most deserted, particularly back in the 70s, at 5:30 in the morning, and on a Sunday. It's August 15, 1976.
The drive is entirely on the Right Bank of Paris, starting at Port Dauphine, adjacent to the Bois de Boulogne, ending at Sacre-Coeur in Montmarte. Along the way we see the Arc de Triumphe, Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, and encounter the cobbled streets of Montmarte. Lalouch speeds the entire way and ignores red lights.
The first 3:15 are relatively calm. Though Lalouch is driving fast, the roads are mostly wide and straight. Then he makes a left turn into the Louvre, driving through a narrow tunnel ending in a blind-cross street and things get a lot more tense. He is nearly hit by a car, he narrowly misses pedestrians, at one point to avoid a collision he drives into oncoming traffic having to swerve to miss a bus, and runs into a flock of pigeons, all as the streets get narrower, with more frequent intersections.
You couldn't do this today. August is busier in Paris, the streets get crowded much earlier, and traffic monitoring by the police is much better. Too bad.
Here is the film, followed by a documentary explaining how it was done.
It may not have been the best played ball game but it sure was entertaining and exciting to watch. Last night the Red Sox beat the White Sox in 13 innings at Fenway and I viewed all 4 hours and 23 minutes.
Going into the game the Red Sox had won 30 of 35 games and seven in a row. By the top of the third they were down 4-0 and I was thinking "well, everything good has to end". They came back to tie it at 5-5 in the 4th, fell behind 7-5 in the 5th, narrowed it to 7-6 in the 7th, and then in the bottom of the 9th, with two outs and two strikes on Wilyer Abreu, he singled home the tying run and we went to extra innings.
The White Sox jumped out to a 9-7 lead in the 10th but the hometown team scored two to even it up. The White Sox jumped out to a 10-9 lead in the 11th but the hometown team scored in the bottom of the frame to even it up. The White Sox jumped out to a 11-10 lead in the 12th but the hometown team scored in the bottom of the frame to even it up and then, in the 13th after the White Sox finally failed to score, Caleb Durbin singled home Nick Sogard to win it for our boys.
The Red Sox had been disturbingly bad and even worse, boring, for most of this season, and on June 24 they stood at 32-46, 15 1/2 games behind the division leading Yankees. I had barely watched an inning all season. Things suddenly changed as the Sox swept a four game series against the Yanks, the start of a 15 game winning streak.
I followed the streak but hesitated to watch a game thinking that if I did so and the Sox lost, I would bear the responsibility (yes, I actually think that way). Couldn't resist anymore and watched the 14th game in the streak, a thrilling come from behind victory against the Orioles.
The Red Sox have now won 31 of 36 games, the best such streak in the 126 seasons of the franchise. They trail the division leading Rays by 5 games and are now only a 1/2 game behind the Yankees, and have the third best record in the American League. And they've done it against tough opposition. During these 36 games, the Sox have swept five series against four division leaders; the Rays, White Sox (twice), Dodgers, and Yankees.
The Sox have been doing this despite missing their best pitcher, Garrett Crochet, since April 25, and one of their best position players, shortstop Trevor Story, since May 14. In their absence of host of players have stepped up over the past 36 games, many of whom I did not know previously. Last night, seven different players had RBIs and ten scored runs.
THC has written on numerous occasions about his love for the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian, along with his admiration for the movie Master And Commander. First reading the twenty volume series between 1990 and 2000, completing a second voyage during 2020, and planning a third cruise for 2030, I recently ran across an engaging series of essays on the books by Joshua Corey. This one perfectly captures their essence and what has attracted me.
Corey hooked me with his opening:
Language is a writer’s preoccupation, but the language of Patrick
O’Brian preoccupies his readers to an uncommon degree. Every would-be
Aubrey-Maturin fan must quickly decide what their relationship is going
to be to passages like this one:
“Helm’s a-lee,”
he remarked—the cry usually echoed from one horizon to the other. Then
“Off tacks and sheets.” He heard the bare feet hurrying and the staysail
sheets rasping over the stays: he waited, waited, until the wind was
one point on her weather bow, and then a little louder, “Mainsail haul!”
She was in stays: and now she was paying off fast. The wind was well
round on his other cheek. “Let go and haul,” he said, “and the half-seen
waisters hauled on the starboard braces like veteran forecastlemen. The
weather bowlines tightened: the Sophie gathered way.
I’ll
be damned if I could paraphrase, even loosely, what’s going on, except
on the most brute and obvious level: the sloop and crew under Jack
Aubrey’s command is doing what he asked them to do, and they’re doing it
well, and the sloop is moving. Some readers set themselves up with
secondary sources or Google assiduously until they understand the
distinction between sheets and stays, halyards and braces. More readers,
I suspect, let the music of the sea-jargon wash over them, in the same
way in which one can enjoy a Bach fugue without knowing the first thing
about counterpoint. Still other potential readers find the sea-terms an
insurmountable barrier to their enjoyment, and they put the book
down—or, intimidated by the books’ reputation, never pick them up in the
first place.
I fall into the camp of those who let the sea-jargon wash over them.
And I agree with this assessment:
The friendship between Jack and Stephen is the core, the beating heart,
of a series of novels with much else to recommend them: derring-do, dry
humor, Thoreauvian natural history, a bit of romance, and a level of
nautical, military, and historical detail that achieves a degree of
apparent authenticity surpassing the effect created by any other
historical or fantasy novel that I have ever read. It is an unlikely
friendship, a friendship of opposites, and on that opposition rests its
appeal: the fantasy of harmonizing body and mind, social care and
solitary inwardness, intuition and erudition, openness and secrecy.
If Jack Aubrey is the ego ideal of many men—honest, decisive, a natural
leader, consistently courageous in the face of danger and hardship, and
tactically brilliant (at sea, anyway; his best qualities tend to desert
Jack ashore)—then Stephen Maturin is something closer to the reality—a
writer’s reality, anyway. Jack is a man of action, a man of intensely
physical life, touchingly ingenuous in many respects, true to his mentor
Nelson’s oft-repeated remark, “Never mind maneuvers; just go straight
at ‘em!” Stephen, on the other hand, is contemplative, withdrawn,
sometimes staggeringly awkward, self-conscious, and complex.
If you haven't read the novels, but enjoy Corey's essay, you will undoubtedly appreciate the O'Brian novels and should enlist for a voyage.
On this date in 1943, several hundred Jewish prisoners at Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Poland, rose in revolt and attempted escape. About three hundred avoided the gunfire from camp guards and made it to the surrounding woods. Somewhere between 50 and 70 were still alive at the end of the war in May 1945.
Treblinka was one of three major death camps, the others being Sobibor and Belzec, along with some smaller sites, built by the Nazis for the extermination of Jews living in the Government General of Poland, the area of that former country not absorbed into the Reich.
Unlike concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald, where prisoners were housed under horrible conditions, starved, used as forced labor, and subject to arbitrary violence, dying at terrible rates, the death camps were designed to receive and quickly kill as many people as possible, keeping alive only the bare minimum to help keep the camp running. In most cases, those arriving by train transport were dead within one to two hours of arriving. During just over a year in operation, approximately 800-850,000 were murdered at Treblinka, 450,000 at Belzec (with only two known survivors), and 170,000 at Sobibor (which had several dozen survivors after an uprising in September 1943).
Auschwitz was a mixed camp with an industrial side using forced labor, opened in 1940, as well as an area constructed in 1942 for the the murder of Jews. About 1.1 million Jews died at Auschwitz, along with more than 100,000 Poles, Gypsies, and Russian prisoners of war.
At Treblinka, in addition to Polish Jews, about 8,000 Jews from the former Czechoslovakia and 11,000 from Thrace and Macedonia, along with 2,000 Romani were also killed.
In addition to the German commanders and German and East European guards, each death camp also had a contingent of Jewish prisoners who were spared immediate death in order to keep the camp running. At Treblinka this amounted to between 600 and 1,000 men divided into three groups. The first to manage the unloading of those arriving on the train transports, including the undressing process before they were herded into the "showers". The second sorted through belongings left behind so they could be collected and sent to Germany for civilian use. The final group removed the dead from the gas chambers, burying them, and later, in 1943, digging up the corpses so they could be incinerated. Every few weeks those in the three groups, with a few exceptions needed for continuity, would be murdered and replaced by new prisoners.
In 1943 as the number of arrivals dwindled and the digging up and incineration of the dead accelerated the workers were aware that the day of their termination was approaching, leading to the planning for the breakout. They were also inspired by the news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April. Under very difficult circumstances planning proceeded and a key to the German arsenal was forged, allowing the group to access guns and grenades.
During the August 2 breakout, several guards were killed and the main gate and fences destroyed allowing about 300 to cross the antitank obstacles and ditches to reach the forest. Though many were hunted down by the Germans or died under other circumstances a few dozen were to survive and bear witness.
Fire set during the breakout. Photo by railway worker.
Treblinka was finally closed in September 1943.
Names of Some of the Survivors
Samuel Rajzman
Yankiel Weirnik
Abraham Kolski
Richard Glazar
Chaim Sztajer
Dov Freiburg
Kalman Teigman
Samuel Willenberg (the last survivor, died in 2016)
Grants from the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, the
Capital City of Warsaw and Wolf & Dora Rajcher Memorial Found have enabled a Book of Names database to be assembled of those who perished at Treblinka, many of whom had no surviving family to remember them. The database currently has 130,859 names.
From Russell Crowe, answering a question about which of his films young men should watch. His responses; Gladiator, Master and Commander, and Cinderella Man. Each one cited for specific reasons.
Gladiator has a pretty ridiculous plot but a very good film and the finest part is Crowe's embodiment of the stoic mentality. For more on the reality behind the movie read The Real Maximus. In Master and Commander he's the real Jack Aubrey. Cinderella Man is the tale of underdog James Braddock's, a down on his luck fighter, as he seeks the heavyweight title.
Crowe has a very positive, good-natured twitter feed.
Without a doubt, the most wholesome thing I’ve seen all month is @russellcrowe answering which of his films young men should watch.
It is such an earnest, thoughtful answer, framed around timeless virtues like honor, loyalty, family, and perseverance. pic.twitter.com/O0ndy7k3Xu
By the end of the 1920s, however, the Party was in a position
to enforce ideological conformity…the new technological intellectuals
were willing to be told, were willing to believe, that the task of speaking truth to power was now redundant, because truth was in power.
Red Plenty tells of the failure of economic development planning in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. The finest book on the twenty years after Stalin's death, described in the Sunday Times (UK) as "so weird and yet so wonderful".
Etta James is probably best known for At Last, but as good as she is on that record released in 1960, this live 1975 performance of I'd Rather Go Blind is peak. Her raspy voice and performance delivers an emotional wallop.
Herodotus: "I will proceed with my history, telling the story as I go along of small cities no less than great. Most of those which were great once are small today; and those which in my lifetime have grown to greatness were small enough in the old days. It makes no difference… pic.twitter.com/80WSHvzbyt
Mayor Mamdani gave a brief address denouncing Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal and genocide perpetrator but announced that, regretfully, he cannot order his arrest if he attends the annual UN meeting in New York City in September. However, he did encourage his followers to commit violent acts if Netanyahu shows his face.
Oddly, the Mayor and the Prime Minister have some interests in common regarding the upcoming UN meeting and Netanyahu's potential visit because of the upcoming Israeli elections in October. Current polling shows Netanyahu's coalition losing to the opposition. If Netanyahu comes to NYC in September and faces more outrage from Mamdani and protestors it will help his reelection chances. It is in the Prime Minister's interest that such demonstrations occur and the worse, the better for him.
For Mamdani, who knew all along he had no authority to arrest the PM, he gets to level a factually inaccurate but inflammatory set of accusations which pleases his supporters. It is also in his interest to foment unrest in the city if Netanyahu comes in September, precisely because his goal and the PMs are similar. They both want Netanyahu to be reelected. From Mamdani's perspective, Netanyahu is the perfect villain and having him continue in office advances the Mayor's objectives - the isolation and eventual destruction of Israel. Many of those who have taken the pro-Hamas side blame everything on Netanyahu, including experienced but delusional types like Tom Friedman and Chuck Schumer, thinking if only he were gone everything would be nice and calm. Mamdani knows the truth that when it comes to Hamas there is not a lot of difference between Netanyahu and his opposition. Mamdani and the groups that support him want Israel destroyed. They do not want a two-state solution. They recognize that continuing to personalize the enemy via Netanyahu is to their advantage.
The mayors of the two next largest American cities, Karen Bass in LA and Brandon Johnson in Chicago, are incompetent and not very smart (Johnson is downright stupid). Mamdani is an evil man but he is clever, charismatic, and dangerous. Mamdani claims it was his hatred for Israel that set him on the path to becoming a socialist.
My paternal grandfather Louis came to the U.S. in 1905 after deserting the Russian army. He promptly joined the U.S. army, serving two 3-year enlistments, being discharged as a sergeant and gaining his citizenship (we still have his discharge and citizenship papers). Louis spoke six languages but insisted that only English be spoken in his presence. As a Jew he encountered prejudice but he was proud to be an American. This was his country.
My maternal grandfather Nate was born in the U.S. three years after his parents emigrated from Russia. Unlike Louis, who passed before I was born, I had the opportunity to know Nate and learned his hero was Abraham Lincoln. As a Jew he encountered prejudice but was proud to be an American. This was his country.
My parents were the same. They taught me to be grateful for the opportunities we had in America. Yes, they had some criticisms of conditions but they were proud to be Americans which they considered the best country in the world.
What about Zohran Mamdani and his upbringing?
His father is Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian born Muslim who grew up in Uganda, but was educated in the United States, obtaining a doctorate from Harvard (the worst anti-Americans are created by Ivy League universities). Mamdani and his family were expelled from Uganda in 1973 by the crazy Idi Amin, returning in 1980 after Amin's overthrow. Since then Mamdani has spent most of his time in the United States and Uganda where he has a villa. He remains a citizen of Uganda and is not an American citizen.
After serving as director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies, in 1999 he became the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia, a position he still holds.(1) From 2010 to 2022 he was also executive director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research at Kampala University in Uganda.
Professor Mamdani's life work can best be summarized as blaming every problem in the Third World on Western Colonialism. In his work, people and institutions in the Third World have no agency or ability to influence events, even after colonialism ended. This requires tortuous convoluted "logic", leading to writing that the genocide in Darfur was not a genocide but whatever bad that did happen there was the fault of the U.S.
He's argued that America pioneered "settler-colonialism" and genocide and ethnic cleansing, which influenced later projects, including Nazi Germany. And who was the American figure most responsible for these atrocities? None other than my grandfather Nate's hero! Mamdani claimed:
"With the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln generalized the solution of reservations. they herded American Indians into separate territories. For the Nazis, this was the inspiration - Hitler realized two things: one, that genocide is doable. Second thing Hitler realized is that you don't have to have a common citizenship."
Mahmood married film maker Mira Nair in 1991 after they met in Uganda. Zohran is their only child. Born and raised in India, Nair attended (surprise!) Harvard in the mid-70s and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. She's had a very successful career making theatrical (we enjoyed Mississippi Marsala) and TV films as well as documentaries. She opposes the existence of Israel.
A very affluent, privileged couple given education, refuge, and acclamation in America, a country they despise. In their view both Israel and America are settler-colonialist societies which deserve to be destroyed.
Regarding her son, Nair gave an interview in 2013 in which she stated:
"He is a total desi [South Asian]. Completely. We are not firangs [Westerners] at all. He is very much us. He is not an Uhmericcan [American] at all. He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He is at home in many places. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian."
Until 8th grade Zohran attended the expensive tuition Bank Street School for Children, which proudly announces its progressive bona fides on its website. After attending the Bronx High School for Science, Zohran went to Bowdoin College, a small progressive liberal arts school in Maine where he majored in Africana Studies (one of those new majors that is about indoctrination) and founded the college's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter. SJP calls for the dissolution of Israel and celebrated Hamas' October 7 attack as a "historic win for the Palestinian resistance".
Zohran was designed from birth by his parents as a weapon against Israel and the United States. His purpose is to gain the political power that allows him to accomplish those goals. He's learned to be slicker than his parents about how he shows his contempt for America but it shines through when he speaks about Israel.(2)
Zohran Mamdani became a naturalized American citizen in 2018. He should never have been allowed to become a citizen with this background and he perjured himself by taking the oath of citizenship requiring him to defend the Constitution. This points out the importance of this country becoming more diligent and responsible in deciding who is granted the privilege of citizenship. Screening is essential because once citizenship is granted, the person is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and due process of his fellow citizens. Zohran makes a powerful case for enhanced immigration and naturalization restrictions.
(1) That Mahmood Mamdani holds an endowed chair from the family of Herbert Lehman is an insult to a real American and a sign of how degraded Columbia University has become. Lehman served as Governor and Senator of the state of New York. The Jewish Lehman also served on the boards of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti Defamation League.
(2) Mamdani plays a word game in which he always refers to Judaism as a religion but not to Jews as a people. We are both. From his perspective a religion should not have a country; I know that is inconsistent with the 22 Arab Muslim states and the 50+ state members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation but never mind. In his world view, Jews would be fine practicing their religion as long as they are subordinate to his politics and would be tolerated as long as they follow his rules. It is a rejection of the idea of toleration as not something bestowed, but that which we owe to each other, as George Washington expressed in his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. Just another aspect of Mamdani's reject of American ideals.
Let's go beyond mellow and laid-back and sluggishly stumble our
way to the almost comatose. Get your favorite drink, relax in a comfortable big chair, and listen to theThe Notting Hillbillies performing Your Own Sweet Way. FeaturingMark Knopfler of Dire Straits on guitar and vocals (he also wrote the song). Mark doesn't play a lot of notes but every one he plays is just right.
And remember:
It doesn't matter what I say What I do or what I think You can lead a horse to water You can't make him drink You'll go your own sweet Your own sweet way
President Trump gave an address on election security. Why? He made two points. First, that China had "interfered" in the 2020 election and had obtained voter information but he presented no evidence that China had actually manipulated voting. No big surprise there. And did he announce any new actions against China in response? No.
Secondly, that the intelligence community suppressed that information and prevented it from reaching President Trump as part of its collusion against his administration. Certainly possible given the IC's involvement in the Russia Collusion Hoax. However, a few excerpts from emails aren't the proof. After all, former DNI Tulsi Gabbard (thank goodness, she's gone) released a report and emails purporting to show IC collusion from the first Trump administration but, on close examination, the report and the documents were overhyped.
The speech was a waste. If the President was going to speak to the American people it should be on whatever we are up to with Iran. We seem to have entered yet another phase in the Iran War, which started in 1979 with the regime's declaration of war on the United States. We deserve some clarification about what the goals are here, instead of speculation. It could have also possibly helped him with the mid-terms coming up if he could effectively make the case for what he is doing.
What this shows is Trump's continued obsession with the 2020 election. The truth is the Democrats outmaneuvered the Trump administration. They may have played dirty, but not illegally.
"The Deep State and Democrats colluded to sabotage Trump, spread disinformation, and loosen voting laws so that Dems could mass harvest ballots and engage in various legal but unprecedented methods of collecting votes" is a valid argument.
"10 million votes were fake" is not.
— Everybody is Insane (@colorblindk1d) July 17, 2026
And the truth is that in 2020 Donald Trump "spit the bit" as George Steinbrenner once said of Ken Clay, a moment later to be immortalized on Seinfeld.
He was played for a fool with the Covid relief bill that allowed changes to the election process for 2020 that were taken full advantage of by the Democrats. Meanwhile his campaign was completely unprepared to capitalize on those changes or to monitor what the Democrats were up to. Maybe it would not have made a difference because his entire campaign was a shambles.
At the beginning of the year it was widely accepted that Trump would win reelection, but starting with Covid everything fell apart as it highlighted Trump's weaknesses, beginning with his daily press conferences where he was out of control, easily baited by the press, and allowed himself to be manipulated by Anthony Fauci, the 21st century version of J Edgar Hoover.
Then came his pathetic response to the George Floyd riots when his response amounted to tweeting "law and order" on a daily basis but doing nothing to try to halt the orgy of violence and destruction.
What happened after the election was worse. Despite the fact that his campaign's own polling accurately predicted the outcome in the battleground states, with the exception of Georgia they thought would go for Trump, the president immediately claimed the election was rigged, tossing out an ever changing crop of allegations to keep his most fervent supporters at fever pitch.
I thought Trump would give it up after the electoral college met on December 14, and confirmed Biden's victory. I was wrong. Instead he doubled down, leading to the disgraceful events of January 6. No, he did not plan an insurrection; Donald Trump does not do planning. Instead he is always improvising to see what happens and then makes his next move. But his rhetoric and actions are responsible for stirring up his supporters to the point that they got out of control on the 6th.
Those events also showed that Trump's top priority is always Trump. On January 5, Georgia held its runoff election for its two senate seats. Winning those seats was critical to the Republicans controlling the Senate. Trump spoke at multiple rallies, ostensibly to support the Republican candidates. But after briefly telling audiences they should vote for the R's he would go on extended rants about how the election was rigged and how his supporters votes wouldn't count. He successfully suppressed R turnout and the Democrats won both seats. It's not hard to see how Trump knew, whether consciously or unconsciously, that if the Republican candidates won it would undercut his claim that the November election was stolen. He needed the R's to lose.
Trump's neediness and ego nearly resulted in the end of democracy, from which we were only spared by Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to whom we owe thanks.
Trump's priorities can also be seen in the fate of the J6 defendants, most of whom entered the Capitol through open doors, committed no violence or acts of destruction, and after wandering around peaceably left the building, yet were prosecuted nonetheless.(1) Trump raised somewhere between $150 million and $250 million based on the plight of the J6 defendants and his "stop the steal" campaign, yet none of that was spend on providing legal or other assistance to the defendants. The result is many of the defendants had to rely on unsympathetic public defenders or fell prey to inexperienced grifter lawyers who did not know what they were doing. Its quite a contrast with how the Democrats effectively provided support to their violent supporters during the George Floyd summer.
Trump's destructive obsessions can be seen in the damage he's done in Arizona where I live. Trump and his MAGA supporters in the state insist the 2020 election was stolen in Maricopa County. It wasn't stolen. If you compare the 2020 results with 2016 on a precinct by precinct basis, you discover that Trump picked up some votes in Hispanic and poorer White precincts while losing more in the wealthier White areas. Yet Trump's claims led to the ridiculous Cyber Ninja audit and the descent into insanity of many of the state's Republicans.
It also likely had some knock on effects nationally. Arizona's governor in 2020 was Doug Ducey, the very popular (he won reelection in 2018 by 15 points) and capable Republican who defied Trump's instructions not to certify the state's election results as valid, enraging the president. The term limited Ducey left office in 2022, with the lunatic MAGA acolyte Kari Lake losing the governor's race. There was speculation Ducey would run for Senate in 2022 but he decided not to. The reason many informed observers gave is that while Ducey would have easily won in the general election against Mark Kelly, he would have had to go through a grueling primary battle in which he would run against a MAGA candidate supported by Trump, who called Ducey a "weak RINO" who he would never endorse, and that "MAGA would never accept" him running. Instead we had the bizarre candidacy of Blake Masters who got stomped by Kelly. Yet another Senate seat lost to the Democrats in order to satisfy Trump's ego. Thanks a lot.
MAGA is simply whatever Donald Trump does at any point in time. It is not a philosophy, it is not a movement, it is not an organization. When he leaves office in January 2029 he will leave a shambles behind. I pity whoever is the R candidate in 2028 because they will have to live with Trump incessantly commenting on the campaign, unwilling to leave the scene and the starring role in his reality show.
(1) I supported the pardon of those who peaceably entered and left the building and did not engage in violence or destruction. I opposed the pardon of those who did engage in violent acts.
A couple of things I noticed in the past few days, which seem related.
Minnesota attempted to avoid the deportation of a immigrant from Laos who had been convicted of raping, on multiple occasions, a 10-year old girl, and had lost his legal status as a result of the conviction. In a final desperate attempt to thwart deportation, the state's Board of Pardons, consisting of Governor Tim Walz, AG Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Hudson voted to pardon the rapist. Despite this, Secretary of State Rubio properly ordered his deportation.
Commenting on Rubio's decision, Governor Walz protested that "we can't all be judged on our worst day". Since there were multiple rapes it's too bad no one asked Walz which was the rapist's "worst day". Probably were some pretty bad days for the victim also.
Just another example of the privileged status of those here illegally and of the moral obtuseness of their defenders. For more, see Footnote 1 in The Death of Compromise.
--------------------------------------------
From Jeff Giesa, with the legend "This is what the panel that sends you to the gulag will look like." In the Gulag, the "professional" violent criminals, called Urki or Blatyne, were used by those running the camps as enforcers against the political prisoners (called Zeks).
In preparation for this future, SS (Smarmy Smile) Zohran Mamdani went to Rikers Prison to build some loyalty to him by watching the World Cup semifinals with inmates While enjoying the match Mamdani sat next to an inmate who had strangled his wife to death. I'm pretty confident the mayor didn't waste any time thinking about the woman.
After Lonesome Dove last year, the finest novel I've read in a while, recent fiction reading pales in comparison.
A Murder in Springtime
by Martin Walker, is the 19th in his series about Bruno, Chief of
Police, in the Vezere Valley of Dordogne, our favorite spot in France.
It continues the decline in quality of his more recent work with poor
plotting, a lot of lecturing, and lazy characterizations. As much as I
enjoy the region, that's it for me - no more Bruno.
Philip Kerr
has a series about Bernie Guenther, a Berlin police detective during the
Third Reich. Bernie is opposed to the Nazis but keeps getting roped
into situations that require him to cooperate to some extent, while
simultaneously trying to expose them. A Man Without Breathe, the
second Bernie book I've read, is set around the 1943 discovery by the
Germans of Stalin's Katyn massacre of thousands of captured Polish
officers. While the situation is intriguing and I keep wanting to like
these books, I don't think they are well written or plotted.
In Los Angeles, Michael Connelly is still trying to find a lead character as compelling as Harry Bosch, who has aged out. Ironwood,
set on Catalina Island, is his latest attempt. A good, but not
compelling read. At this point, I prefer Robert Crais' series with Joe
Pike and Elvis Cole when it comes to LA crime stories.
I am looking forward to the release of Robert Harris' next historical novel in August which is about Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.
A
couple of weeks ago Mrs THC and I watched the Lonesome Dove
miniseries. While it could never match the novel it was still quite the
experience; enjoyable, funny, moving. Tommy Lee Jones is excellent
while Robert Duvall is just astonishing. Followed the book very closely,
taking much of the dialogue directly. The only significant deviation
was the final scene. I can understand why the change was made as the
novel ends on an ambiguous and abrupt note, which I preferred but it
would not work on TV.
Non-Fiction
The first three attempts to climb Mount Everest in 1921, 1922, and 1924 are the subject of Wade Davis in Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.
All were British expeditions. At the time Everest was inaccessible via
Nepal, so the three British led expeditions, all went from Sikkim into
Tibet, which at the time was an independent country, to approach the
mountain from the north. Most of the climbers were World War One
veterans, most of whom were fully immersed in the horrors of that
conflict, and Davis does an excellent job tying their experiences into
the attitudes they brought to the expeditions.
The expeditions
were permitted by the Dalai Lama and supported by Tibetan porters and
Sherpas and Davis spends considerable time explaining their culture and
religious beliefs. The first expedition traveled hundreds of miles and
had to find out how to get to Everest in a way that would allow for a
climb to be attempted. Given the lack of equipment and clothing that is
common today for climbing, along with the lack of oxygen, it is
surprising so much was accomplished on that first try. The second
expedition saw six Tibetan porters die in an avalanche, while the third
climaxed with the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine near
the peak of Everest. Mallory's body was found in 1999 while part of
Irvine's was discovered in 2021. An incredible tale, well told.
The tale of Coronado's expedition (1540-42) into what is now the American Southwest and Great Plains is the subject of The Lost Cities of El Norte
by Peter Stark. While I've read other accounts of this exploration,
this is the best, in part due to Stark being a fine writer.
I read Julian Jackson's biography of Charles De Gaulle in 2024 and just finished France on Trial,
his account of the trial of Marshal Petain in 1945 at which the 89 year
old head of the Vichy Regime was convicted of high treason and
conspiracy to overthrow the Republic and sentenced to death, a sentence
commuted by De Gaulle. Jackson explores the complex factors behind the
trial as well as the day to day details. Interesting probably to a very
limited audience.
The Witches by Stacy Schiff covers what
is known as the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which resulted in the
hanging of 19 convicted witches, but which actually grew to engulf more
than twenty Massachusetts communities with more than 700 people accused
in those months. My interest was triggered by the recent discovery that
Mrs THC is not only descended from John and Priscilla Alden of the
Mayflower voyagers but from individuals who were accused of being
witches in 1692 as well as others who were accusers. Before reading
Schiff's book I only knew about the events of 1692 at a very general
level. She does a good job laying out how the hysteria erupted and grew
and I had no idea of the extent to which it infected the colony.
Palestine 1936 by Oren Kessler and Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel 1917-47 by
Bruce Hoffman deal with aspects of the struggle over the fate of the
Palestinian Mandate held by Britain from 1922 to 1948. Although there
were outbreaks of Arab violence against Jews in 1921 and 1929, it was
only with the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 that the British became seriously
entangled in the disputes over the Mandate. The Arab Revolt, the
subject of Kessler's even-handed account, while initially directed
toward Jews eventually focused on the British, triggering massive
crackdowns and reprisals. Though the revolt was eventually crushed it
had longer consequences, prompting the British to propose a partition of
the Mandate, a plan reluctantly accepted by the Jews and rejected by
the Arabs, and, in an attempt to pacify the Arabs, for the British to
radically restrict the number of Jewish immigrants it would allow into
Palestine, at a time when many European Jews were trying to flee Hitler.
Hoffman
writes of the Arab resistance to the Jews and even more so, on the
eventual emergence of Jewish groups, primarily Irgun and Lehi, which
actively sought retaliation against Arabs, including at times innocent
civilians, and against the British military. He explores the sometimes
murky connections between the Irgun and the
Haganah, the mainline Jewish military organization which eschewed the tactics of Irgun and Lehi, in which they sometimes
cooperated and sometimes fought each other. Hoffman judges
Irgun's approach, under the direction of Menachem Begin, who proved to
be a brilliant strategist, to be the critical element in getting Britain
to surrender its Mandate. Palestine 1936 was very good but I found
Anonymous Soldiers to be particularly informative.
An Abundance of Caution
by David Zweig was an infuriating read. Not that it was a bad book.
In fact, I highly recommend it. It is a detailed, well-researched, and
accurate account of the decisions to close schools and keep them closed
during Covid. Zweig, living in suburban New York with his young children
and grew increasing frustrated with the actions of authorities at the
local, state, and federal level, prompting him to dive into the
available data. What is infuriating about the book is reading how
available information was repeatedly ignored by American authorities,
even though by the spring of 2020 European data showed school posed no
greater risk than staying at home. I'd been aware of some of the
research Zweig references but he pulled together a lot of additional
information I'd not been familiar with. What America did with children
and Covid is a disgrace and resulted in both short and long-term
damage. I will definitely write a longer account on this topic.
From Revolver on, John Lennon, who disliked his voice, insisted it be processed or altered, primarily through compression (called ADT), most famously on Tomorrow Never Knows when he instructed George Martin to make him sound like the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop. As someone who appreciated Lennon's vocals on the early Beatles albums, I did not like the production treatment of his vocals on the later records, which stripped out the fullness and warmth in his voice. Cry Baby Cry is from the White Album in 1968, a song I liked on a double album of uneven quality. However, this is Take 1 before Lennon's voice was altered and additional instruments added to the track and the vocal is superior to the final version.
We spend summers in Maine, returning to Arizona in October Last September I started seeing lots of posts in my Facebook feed from a guy named Graham Platner, mostly yelling about genocide in Gaza and using the usual code phrases regarding Jewish influence. Seems he was running for the Democratic nomination for Senate. I thought he was just some nut who'd get wiped out in the primary. Instead he drove the incumbent Democratic governor, a solid progressive, out of the race and won the nomination.
That's despite:
- the Jew bashing
- the Commie loving
- the Nazi tattoo wearing(1)
- the phony background story
- enlisting in the Army, not because of patriotism or a sense of duty, but because he liked killing people
- mocking the death of his fellow soldiers
- the rape fantasies (to be fair he said he'd only rape to establish dominance not as a sexual thing)
- sexually assaulting a Republican woman
No, what it took to finally drive him out of the race was sexually assaulting a Democratic woman. Tells you a lot about the state of the Democratic party in Maine. None of the other stuff mattered - and the Jew bashing was seen as a positive by D voters. You could also already tell how bad Platner was just by looking at the Senators endorsing him early on - The Bum (Sanders), The Cherokee Princess (Warren), The Dirtbag (Gallego), and The Callow Youth (Murphy).
Actually, it's a bit misleading to say it was the sexual assault on the D lady that did it. The truth is that a week ago, polls in Maine showed Susan Collins (R) edging ahead of Platner in the Senate race. Usually, Collins trails the D challenger, only pulling ahead in the final couple of weeks of the campaign, but here she was beginning to open a lead on Platner in early July, spelling his doom. Time for the D's to pull the plug in time to insert another candidate, so time to come forward with the sexual assault claim.
Platner is a strong indicator of where the Democratic party is headed in Maine but there was another story, under covered in the media, that really tells you about the danger Maine Democrats (and those similarly situated elsewhere) pose to our democracy.
In early 2025, a Republican State Representative, Laurel Libby, posted a photo of a local high school track meet on Facebook. One of the winners in the girl's competition was a boy who claimed he was a girl. The representative stated in her post that this was wrong and boys should not be allowed to compete in girls competitions.
The Maine House of Representatives is narrowly controlled by Democrats, 75 to 72. The House voted on party lines to censure the Republican representative and, until she apologized, banned her from speaking and voting in the House. Not even one Democrat representative saw anything wrong with this action.(2)
Rep. Libby filed a federal court action seeking an injunction against the House for stripping her constituents of representation in the legislature. In the District Court, a Biden appointed judge saw nothing wrong with the silencing of Rep. Libby and refused to grant the injunction. Libby appealed to the First Circuit but a three judge panel of Biden appointees saw nothing wrong and declined to grant the injunction.
It finally took an appeal to the United State Supreme Court to get Libby's request granted (Sotomayor and Jackson dissenting). After the Supreme Court action, the legislature lifted the sanctions.
What happened to Rep Libby is as much an indicator as Platner's primary win, of how radical Maine Democrats have become. Libby was opining on a public issue, taking a position that all polling shows is the majority position of all Americans nationwide. Yet every Maine representative voted to silence her, and Democratic appointees at the District and Appellate Court levels refused to intervene.
What has become ever more evident over the last few years is that Democrats have convinced themselves they are entitled to use all measures to suppress dissent, and will use any excuse to do so. To them, democracy is when they win everything. They oppose diversity in viewpoints. Look at their hysteria over losing control of just one social media platform - twitter when Elon Musk purchased it. They have an insatiable need to control every avenue of opinion, every institution, every organ of government. What happened in the Maine state legislature in 2025 is just the front of the new wave of repression. If the Democrats attain a trifecta at the federal level and stuff the Supreme Court with radical justices, a plan they have adopted as their goal, in the future elected opposition figures like Rep. Libby will be successfully suppressed. There is no "moderate" wing of the Democratic Party left.
Taken together, the path forward for Maine Democrats is to find a new candidate who is Jew-bashing, Commie loving, and thinks boys should play on girl's teams and be allowed in their bathroom, but does not sexually assault Democratic women.
- ----------------------------------------------
(1) Best quip I saw on this was that Platner's autobiography is called Maine Kampf.
(2) The nominal justification for the sanctions was that Rep Libby included a photo and name of the boy in question. Here's how the game is played; whatever a Democrat says or does is free speech, whatever their opponents do is, even it is speech, is the equivalent of an action and deemed harmful or unsafe and thus justifies suppression. Here's how it works if your actions break the law but are in support of a Democratic favored cause. Recently, several members of Antifa were convicted and sentence to prison for violent acts in Dallas as part of their anti-ICE activites, including shooting a law enforcement officer in the neck. In Democratic circles this was reported as being sentenced because of "protests", so it becomes another example of Trump's "fascism".
Time we had a little zydeco music (a fusion of Cajun and rhythm & blues) here. It's a cousin to Dr John's style of music. This is Buckwheat Zydeco from 1985, a cover of Lee Dorsey's 1961 original. Buckwheat Zydeco (aka Stanley Dural Jr) had a long career, winning five Grammy's between 1985 and 2010.
On this date in 1969 the initial withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam began as ordered by President Nixon a few weeks earlier. This first phase involved 25,000 troops from the approximately 540,000 currently in that country. By the fall of 1971 troop levels were down to about 190,000. The last American forces left by early 1973. South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnam communists in April 1975, ending a thirty year civil war.
After completing my July 4 post on President Coolidge's speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I went on to read and listen to a couple of other historic speeches celebrating America's independence. One of these was Frederick Douglass' magnificent 1852 oration What To The Slave is The Fourth of July? While doing so I came across on YouTube an NPR presentation of the speech, produced in 2020 and recited by descendants of Douglass. It is highly edited to be deliberately simplistic and misleading in order to ensure NPR listeners miss the point more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor. As a reminder, at the time, NPR still received taxpayer funding so you paid for this piece of agitprop. Since then NPR has continued its descent into madness, naming authoritarian Katherine Maher as its CEO (for more on Maher read The "Real Trouble").
I've written of Douglass several times over the years; about his relationship with President Lincoln as well as the misuse to which he's been subjected to by our current educational system (Lincoln Douglass); on his Freedman's Monument Speech in 1876; as part of a prior July 4 post (citing to his 1852 speech); after reading his first autobiography (see Readings On Slavery). Douglass was a courageous and thoughtful man who could eloquently express complex and provocative ideas. His story should be known to all Americans.
The 1852 speech had two purposes. One is a lengthy, searing, and accurate indictment of American slavery and the complicity of white American society in its horror. It is to this topic that the NPR edited version of the speech, which has 1.6 million views and 2,700 comments, is exclusively devoted to (the NPR version also contains a coda, the reflections of Douglass' descendants regarding today's America, a topic to which I will return to after discussing the speech). The second, ignored by NPR, is Douglass' case that the Constitution is a "glorious liberty document . . . entirely hostile to the existence of slavery". The reverence with which Douglass regards the Constitution (and the Declaration, as he states elsewhere in the speech) would undermine what NPR is trying to accomplish. It also decontextualizes the speech though it is important to understand why Douglass is making this argument. And it adds a false contextualization placing it as somehow linked to the death of George Floyd and the riots and protests that occurred in its aftermath.
The speech was given on July 5, 1852 at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, the city Douglass moved to in 1847, an event organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. Two years before, slavery became "nationalized" with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850, heightening sectional disputes over slavery, as many in the free states who had not been engaged in the slavery issue now felt they had been made complicit by the passage of the Act. More importantly for purposes of the 1852 speech, Douglass had split with the mainstream of the abolition movement and its leader and his former mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, over the interpretation of the Constitution. Garrison's organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society, the leading abolitionist group, had taken the view that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document and the only solution was to dissolve the Union and for the free states to form a New Union under a new Constitution. In 1851 the Anti-Slavery Society passed a resolution denouncing any paper opposing this belief.
After escaping slavery Douglass initially agreed with Garrison but as he studied the Constitution and the Declaration came to the conclusion they were anti-slavery documents and had broken with Garrison and started his own newspaper the North Star to promote his views. It was to address this controversial dispute within the abolitionist movement that Douglass spent so much of his speech on this topic. In the Coda to the NPR version one of the young people asserts that Douglass was speaking to those who already agreed with him but, in fact, the purpose of the Constitutional argument was to persuade a divided audience. For more on contemporaneous views of the Constitution consistent with Douglass' reading see Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States 1861-1865 by James Oakes and Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition by Justin Buckley Dyer.
Douglass' speech can be broken into three parts.
The first section expresses hope that America, as a young nation, can find the correct course of action and to express admiration for the Founding generation.
The second to highlight contradictions and hypocrisy regarding white Americans and slavery. The excerpts in the YouTube video are only a sampling of the examples given by Douglass.
The final section expresses his belief that the Constitution is a glorious liberty document that provides the blueprint for the end of slavery.
At the end of the post you will find excerpts from the first and third sections.
As you can see all of the excerpts in the NPR video are from the second section with the exception of one passage from the conclusion of the speech; "Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have
this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this
country". The following sentences are not included; "There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall
of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of
slavery is certain." The video contains nothing from Douglass' conclusion explaining why he does not despair, because it would undercut what NPR is trying to sell you.
And that brings me to the context in which the video was made and the significance of the coda portion.
The video was posted on YouTube on July 3, 2020 and it was specifically linked to the death of George Floyd several weeks before. NPR's description reads:
In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide protests for racial justice and systemic reforms in the wake of George Floyd’s death. That June, we asked five young descendants of Frederick Douglass to read and respond to excerpts of his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”. It's a powerful, historical text that reminds us of the ongoing work of liberation.
The description notes that the video consists of excerpts but the title of the video and the description if you do a Google search implies it is the full text. The description also pulls a sleight of hand. Douglass' speech is about slavery and its relation to the Constitution but NPR links it to the "ongoing work of liberation". Like the video, NPR never directly states what that work is, nor its relation to Douglass' speech and the propositions set forth there. Instead the description and the video artfully avoids any discussion of Douglass' proposition as it must because NPR's viewpoint is that the U.S. was defective from its founding. The video is edited and put together in support of the thesis of the infamous 1619 Project, while the opening and closing of Douglass' speech are a refutation of its thesis. That Douglass' argument is both a refutation of the argument of the 1619 Project as well as of the similar historical arguments of John C Calhoun and Alexander Stephens, Southern politicians who argued that slavery was a "positive good", illustrates that we have entered into a world of strange ideological alliances in 21st century America.(1)
The video was released in the midst of not just "protests" but also in the midst of riots and violence that resulted in thirty deaths in the short term and the most property damage (much of it to minority owned businesses) of any riots in American history.(2) The impacts were worse longer term. As it turned out that large cities governed for decades by NPR-type Progressives were hotbeds of racism, those mayors and city councils withdrew police and let loose their paramilitary wings. Prosecutors resisted filing charges or reduced charges against those causing violence and destruction and leftist groups raised bail and paid for lawyers to defend the perpetrators. One result was a massive increase in violence in minority areas. The increase in black homicide victims of violence over baseline of recent years for the period from May 2020 to the end of 2022 amounted to more than the total number of black lynching victims from 1882 to 1968 (for more on that tragic history read Strange Fruit). In what way was that liberation? How did the protests and violence contribution to any positive solutions? In what way is the current situation of Black Americans similar to that of the slaves Frederick Douglass was discussing? None of that is addressed. It is simply implied that they are the same.(3)
And that is the saddest thing in the video - the coda. These young people seem to believe nothing has changed since Douglass' speech. But why? They've clearly absorbed in their upbringing and education the notion of oppression, one even saying "pessimism is a tool of white oppression". We have a 20 year old claiming he is "exhausted" and near the end another says "we are still slaves to the notion that it will never get better". That last remark is double-edged. In the context of the video I think he's saying it has not gotten any better since Douglass's speech but we shouldn't lose hope it will get better. I also see it as a warning to everyone in that video that they have been slaves to that notion even though objectively things are much better than 1852.
For decades we've lived in a country where opportunities for minorities are plentiful and, in fact, privileged in education, government employment and contracts, and the corporate world. The "system" which did once work to maintain white supremacy is gone and had been for many years. The "system" now works the other way. Yet the very education system which is part of those growing opportunities, teaches the opposite - that things haven't changed and further, those same educational system at the K-12 levels in cities with large minority populations is failing those populations, failing to generate the pipeline of students who can take advantage of those opportunities. More than 40 years ago, Eddie Murphy parodied this attitude on Saturday Night Live:
But what use is it to teach children that the deck is stacked against
them, when they, in fact, have opportunities if they can seize them?
In doing research for this post, I came across a 2014 article by a history professor who has studied Frederick Douglass in which he complains that the version of What To A Slave Is the Fourth of July? being used to teach in our schools is the same as that presented by NPR. In other words, a deliberately truncated version, omitting Douglass' context and view of the Constitution. It is part of an effort to undermine the very foundations of this country and to indoctrinate the next generation that an end to the U.S. as we know it is the only solution. Knowing that Douglass held the Declaration and Constitution and those who wrote those documents in such high regard is too dangerous for students. They might draw incorrect conclusions.
The technique here is to keep everything vague, except to instill the feeling of massive racism and oppression. The discussions we need are "what are the specific problems we are trying to solve" and "how would proposed solutions specifically help to solve them". And that is always avoided, instead we are flooded with generalities and statements built upon false assumptions.
Excerpts from opening section of the speech:
The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought, that America is young.
To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems un fashionable in our day.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times
[Douglass begins the transition to the present day and the plight of slaves.]
How unlike the politicians of an hour!
My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.
Closing section of speech:
And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe.
Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.
Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single proslavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain.
I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up, from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other.
(1) The 1619 Project essentially wrote Douglass out of history and most of the time the only excerpt from his speeches and writings that we hear is the misleading section of his 1852 speech. Martin Luther King also gets downplayed becausehe's too positive about the American Founding in 1776 instead of 1619. In the 1963 March on Washington Speech he echoes Douglass in calling for America to cash the promissory note issued in the Declaration and Constitution.
(2) An example from Nellie Bowles, recounting her time at the New York Times:
(3) The cluelessness of white progressives can be seen in the interview given by Tim Walz's wife to a Minneapolis TV station in the wake of the riots. She is sitting on her back porch proudly telling the interviewer of how her family left their windows open during the rioting so they could smell the burning and the rightousness of it all, oblivious to the fact it was minority owned businesses primarily being burned and innocent people killed and injured.
Excerpts from address by President Calvin Coolidge, Address on the Celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 5, 1926.
It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new
theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but
rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles
which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be
sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter
of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation
to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters
of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear,
whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge
that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an
adequate defense and protection.
But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a
new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and
more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that
which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had
aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A
separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by
the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable
desire to be the master of his own destiny.
But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took
on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held
toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in
no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum
to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no
scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but
they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the
hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that
marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the
informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty
loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the
courage to dare to maintain them.
It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but
because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that
July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in
history.
This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration
of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its
preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government.
These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source
of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the
governed.
A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will
wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of
Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of
material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular
sovereignty, the rights of man - these are not elements which we can see
and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in
the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the
faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to
endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not
continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.
It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress
since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have
given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may
therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.
But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men
are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable
rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be
made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or
their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically
is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no
equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who
wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They
are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than
those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its
officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for
criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the
American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from
that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that
cause that we must ascribe all our results.
It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made
their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a
free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the
unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a
mere influential few. They undertook to balance these interests against
each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the
executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the
Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one
might encroach upon the other. These are our guarantees of liberty. As a
result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from
confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever-broadening and deepening of the humanities of life.
No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of
Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people.
We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material
things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created
them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all
our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to
a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage
which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers
who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must
cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We
must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We
must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame,
the altar fires before which they worshiped.
Is there any prominent 21st century national political leader whose reputation has fallen as far, and as fast, as Angela Merkel's?
Merkel, Germany's Chancellor from 2005 to 2021, was often referred to as "The Leader of the Free World". Though this started during the second Obama administration, the use of the phrase accelerated during the subsequent Trump presidency, intended both as boost to Merkel and a slap at Trump.
Merkel, born in East Germany, and trained in theoretical physics and mathematics, became politically active with the fall of the Berlin Wall, rising quickly in the politics of the reunified country as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, becoming a government minister by 1991.
This photo is from a 2017 Politico article titled The New Leader of the Free World, praising the Chancellor:
Today, not only is Merkel, as the leader of the world’s fourth-largest
economy, the most powerful woman on the planet, she’s also a bulwark of
stability in a time of global turmoil. Merkel is often dubbed “the
leader of the free world” in a dig at Donald Trump, an American
president she has greeted with eye-rolls s in person and firm rebukes on issues from climate change to refugees to Neo-Nazis. And the label seems to fit: As populism rises in Western countries and
the United States retreats from the world, it’s Merkel who is offering
the steady, strong leadership that once emanated from Washington.
Let's look back on her major initiatives from the perspective of 2026.
On foreign policy, she advocated a closer relationship with Russia, supporting the construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, despite warnings, including from Donald Trump, that the pipeline would make Germany more dependent on Russia and more susceptible to its influence.
At the same time, Merkel oversaw the degradation of the German military from the formidable fighting force of the Cold War era to a shadow of itself. Again, she was warned against this in light of the growing threat by others, including Donald Trump. Instead, Germany, like other NATO members, reduced spending knowing they could count upon the U.S. in a pinch.
When an emboldened Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 those warnings proved prescient with Germany left in a weakened military posture and embarrassingly dependent on Russia energy supplies.
Which brings us to her failed energy policy. An emphasis on climate change combined with the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011, somehow resulted in Merkel's decision to close and demolish all German nuclear plants, resulting in increased coal use and significantly higher energy costs. The closure of the nuclear plants is simply one of the most idiotic energy policy decisions of any country in this century.
And that energy policy brings us to Merkel's economic policy. In the early 21st century, Germany's economy was a powerhouse. It no longer is due to the combined impact of two of Merkel's initiatives. Encouraging closer relationships with, and investments in, China, along with dramatically higher energy costs reducing the competitiveness of German industry, reducing exports and driving reduction or relocation of energy-intensive industries. Germany is now one of the worst performing economies of the major producing countries.
Finally, we come to immigration. Merkel's decision in 2015 to suspend EU regulations and allow over one million Muslim refugees into Germany, which with knock-on effects resulted in more than six million refugees from these countries over the decade. The result is increased societal turmoil, increases in crime, and failures in assimilation, leading to political instability, particularly in the countries of central and western Europe. Merkel took these actions despite stating in a 2010 speech that Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society had "utterly failed".
The problems with all of these policies were identified at the time but most attempts at neutral analysis were derailed by ideology, anti-Americanism, and then by the ascendance of Donald Trump. None of the accolades Merkel received look good today.
The 2015 post, Belisarius Enters Rome, discussed the decline and slow rise of the city of Rome from the 4th to the 19th centuries. Most prominent of the sources cited for the late Empire and early Medieval periods was Richard Krautheimer's Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308, published in 1980. Krautheimer's work is still highly regarded but over the past 40+ years a great deal of new archeological work in Rome on its formerly neglected medieval period has been conducted, along with a reanalysis of the written sources, and the findings change some of the picture we'd previously had, and which is reflected in my earlier post. In particular, the timing of the key periods of transition from the city of the Caesar's to today's city has changed from the "traditional" explanation of why when looking at the ancient monuments, a visitor is often looking down into an excavated area ten or more feet below street level.
I prefer the cover of Krautheimer's book!
I find it fascinating when reading, or visiting Rome, to realize how many layers of history are present both visible and below our feet.
The Making of Medieval Rome and Belisarius Enters Rome have the same starting place. Dey reminds us that from the 2nd century BC through the 4th century AD, Rome "was the most populous city outside of China that the world had ever seen" and that until the 18th century no European city would rival it in size and population. He then notes that a Roman from 200 AD would, in 600 AD, see "a place transformed beyond recognition, and wept to see it".
For centuries the city was dominated by ruins, its inhabitants living, around, within, and on top. New buildings, including churches, were built from recycled stones, bricks, columns, and fragmented marble. The lime for the mortar needed for construction was created by melting marble and limestone blocks from the imperial era.
The inhabitants, who for a thousand years never amounted to more than 5-10% of the number during the imperial era, were scattered across the landscape within the Aurelian Walls.
Although the city's population had begun to decline in the 4th century and further after its sack by the Goths in 410, there was some rebound after the sack with the population by mid-5th century at perhaps 350,000. Dey dates the tipping point of steep decline to the aftermath of the Vandal sack of 455, after which there is evidence of an accelerated pace of building abandonment and decay. The ability to recover was also degraded as the inflow of taxes from the rest of the Empire, along with grain from North Africa and the steady flow of immigrants into the city all ceased. By the end of the century the population may have been reduced to 50,000. From then, until at least the 15th century, Dey estimates the population never exceeded 50-60,000 and may, at times, have been a low as 20-30,000.
Though the situation was somewhat stabilized during the reign of Theodoric the Great (489-526) there was awareness that the days of glory were past. Theodoric's chancellor Cassiodorus marveled:
It is clear how great Rome's population must have been, the vast enclosure of the city walls, the sprawling embrace of the spectacle buildings, the marvelous size of the baths, the numerousness of the grain mills specifically dedicated to feeding the people.
But, as Krautheimer noted in his book;
Try as Cassiodorus might, his efforts to halt the erosion were in vain.
Sewers were in need of repairs. So were aqueducts . . . The public
granaries had 'collapsed through old age'. . . Bronze statues all over
were being looted '. . nor are they mute; the ringing sound they give
forth under the blows of thieves . . . wakes the dozing watchman.'
Marble, lead, and brass were looted from public buildings . . . Temples,
Cassiodorus complains, 'have been handed over to spoliation and ruin' .
. . Many of the great mansions, too, had been abandoned . . .
In the wake of the Gothic Wars of 535-554, which saw the Byzantine reconquest of Italy, Dey disagrees with Krautheimer, about the strength of the role of the papacy in governing the city. According to Dey, it was the Byzantine civil administration which controlled the city, though the papacy was becoming stronger during that period. The Byzantine state owned the city's public architecture and was responsible for its maintenance and that of the public works, including the aqueducts.
While the pace of construction, reconstruction, and maintenance was less than that of earlier centuries, the quality of the work by a still functioning building industry continued until the last decades of Byzantine rule in the mid-8th century.
In Belisarius Enters Rome I wrote:
A transformed city emerged from the wreckage of the Gothic Wars in the
later 6th century, with a much diminished population concentrated along
the Tiber River, particularly on the former Campus Martius on the east
bank, and in the Travestere and the area that later became the Vatican
on the west bank, where water was more readily available (referred to as
the abitato). Large tracts of the ancient city,
including the Forums, the hills (including the Palatine on which the
Imperial Palace was sited), and the area around the Colosseum, were
mostly abandoned except for the farms and vineyards that had sprung up
among the ruins and for the churches and monasteries scattered among the
ruins, most prominently the Lateran in the far southeast of the walled
city, which until the 15th century was the seat of the Papacy; an area
known as the disabitato.
In contrast, Dey reports the concentration of population within what Krautheimer referred to as the abitato occurred no earlier than the 11th century. For the five hundred years after the Gothic Wars, the much diminished population was scattered more broadly across the city's landscape. Dey writes:
There is now broad consensus that Rome's remaining tens of thousands of inhabitants tended to collect in settled 'islands" scattered across much of the intramural area and separated by more or less vacant stretches of abandoned buildings and ruins, some of which sprouted gardens and orchards and pastures. . . . Proximity to main roads was desirable . . . Running water from surviving aqueducts was also important.
Dey goes on to note that the excavations of the past forty years have revealed that during the Byzantine period the population was not as impoverished as previously thought. Mediterranean trade routes still operated, there is significant evidence of imported tableware and ceramic, and of still-existing local manufacturing capabilities.
The significant change came in the 8th century with Byzantine support reduced as the empire came under more pressure from the Arab onslaught and the end of the Mediterreanan trade with the Arab conquest of North Africa. It was only that then Rome became a state ruled by the popes, and the papacy began investing more in public buildings and infrastructure.
Later in the 8th century, wealth began to flow back into the city, much from donations from the Frankish kingdom and from the agricultural lands and cities outside Rome acquired by the papacy. With these resources the papacy, between 772 and 816, undertook infrastructure improvements including repairing the Aurelian Wall and restoring four aqueducts to working condition. This revival continued into the mid-9th century. Even with these activities new surfaces for roadbeds consisted of poorer and less stable materials than the pavers used in antiquity and the drains and sewers ceased to be cleaned and maintained over the course of the century. Two large earthquakes hit the city during the 9th century destroying more of the ancient structures.
It was also during this period that the structures in the imperial forum area began to be demolished for reuse in Church-sponsored building projects. According to Dey, the travertine pavement in the Forum of Caesar was removedf as while as the white marble revetment from the walls in the Forums of Trajan and Peace. The white marble from Trajan's was burned to produce 7,000 tons of lime to be used in construction elsewhere. The pavements of the Trajan, Augustus, and Nerva forum were removed during this period, as small structures, buildings, and animal pens began to appear within.
Such dwellings are basically urban farmhouses that resemble actual rural residences . . . such that even members of the nobility lived among domestic animals, and gardens and orchards.
It was during this time of Papal supremacy that once building materials were removed from the imperial forum area, the Church opened the area to private landowners.
Despite this, Dey claims the central forum area well into the 9th century still looked, from a distance, much as it had at the end of the Empire. However, from late in that century into the mid-11th, the power of the papacy declined and that of local families rose, resulting in a loss of central authority within the city.
The restoration of the Aurelian Wall around 850 would be the last for three centuries. No significant civic monument or infrastructure was built for two centuries. The last repair of the aqueducts was carried out around 860 and by the 11th century, all but one had gone out of service. The failure of the aqueducts would have led to the abandonment of the neighborhoods dependent on their water supply.
Indicators across the city point to the 11th century as the inflection point when Rome's previously diffuse settlement landscape began to contract into a denser nucleus in the low-lying plains between the slopes of the Capitoline Hill and the Tiber in the west, leaving the hills in the eastern half of the intramural area mostly uninhabited.
It was during this period that dirt, rubbish, and sediment began to accumulate in the area of the Forum, as well as the Pantheon.
But it is the period from the mid-11th century to the 13th century that Dey dates the real visible and topographic transformation from ancient to medieval Rome. It is during this era that we see Roman nobles living in fortified complexes with walls and towers; the population clusters in the lower lands of the Campus Martius, and when;
. . . thick deposits of soil and rubble covered widely separated areas of low-lying terrain raising the ground across parts of the [Forums and Colosseum areas], the southern Campus Martius, Trastevere, and elsewhere several meters above late ancient and early medieval levels.
Until the excavations of recent decades it had been thought the submersion of ancient Rome's low-lying areas by fifteen feet or more below current street levels had incurred incrementally over centuries due to soil washed from the hills, Tiber floods, and disposed wastes. It now appears to have occurred in a matter of decades in;
. . . a coordinated series of interventions on a massive scale, involving the systematic infilling of low-lying areas with vast quantities of earth and rubble . . .
New religious and domestic architecture would no longer take shape in and among the blasted wrecks of a bygone age, but rather safely atop them. The thousand-year-old ruins that until then had threatened collapse, damaged buildings and blocked streets when they did collapse, and trapped swampy pools of muck undrained by long-blocked sewers, became the solution to the problem. By razing and/or leveling off ruins and spreading the rubble evenly, the masterminds behind this feat of urban engineering created a solid base for future urban development. Atop the fill, new roads and churches and residential neighborhoods took shape, less exposed to flooding and, for the first time, largely independent of the contours of the ancient city now buried beneath them.
This topographical transformation were lasting. Since the 12th century, ground levels have increased by less than 0.5 meters (1.5 feet) in Rome. This project appears to have been undertaken by a revitalized Papacy.
In preparation for this future, SS (Smarmy Smile) Zohran Mamdani went to Rikers Prison to build some loyalty to him by watching the World Cup semifinals with inmates While enjoying the match Mamdani sat next to an inmate who had strangled his wife to death. I'm pretty confident the mayor didn't waste any time thinking about the woman. 
