Stephen Roney's Blog, page 264

Gervais at the Golden Globes

It seems to me Ricky Gervais’s monologue at the Golden Globe Awards marks an important new stage in the ongoing popular revolution against entrenched “elites.”

The protest has now moved from the streets into the halls of the palace.

We saw perhaps the same thing too when JK Rowlings recently fell afoul of the far left. And then did not apologize. We have seen it in the recent politically incorrect grumblings of ex-Pythons John Cleese and Terry Gilliam.

And all have been, perhaps, emboldened by the prior example of Jordan Peterson, an academic who bucked the academic speech codes, and prospered instead of being ruined.

It is a critical point; as when, during the French Revolution, members of the First and Second Estate began defecting to the National Assembly. For these are members of the elite defecting.

Gervais is himself a card-carrying member of the glitterati. Nor is he any right-winger. He aggressively advocated for the Corbyn Labour Party as recently as the 2017 UK election; this year, he was neutral.

It is important that Gervais was mocking them. That is extreme: he is saying they do not deserve to be taken seriously. This means that, very suddenly, it may be UNCOOL to be leftist. The peer pressure to conform to leftist ideology may be flipped.

His criticisms through humour were not political, either. They were on moral grounds.

That is the crucial point. The current elite no longer holds the moral high ground, as they must to justify their status and their privilege. They are beginning, belatedly, to see this themselves, just as the nobles and clergy did in the French Revolution.

Gervais almost said this in so many words: “You have no standing to preach to anyone. Just take your award, thank your agent and your God, and --.”

Tellingly, I see news sources transcribing that would “God” as “guard.” Which makes no sense, but to acknowledge a God might be, to them, too traumatic. They fear judgement now too much.

This is not the point at which the house of cards, or the Bastille, comes down; that is when the order is given to fire on the crowd, and the ordinary soldiers will not muster, or will not obey. But this is the point at which the collapse is inevitable.

The mandate of heaven, as the Chinese would put it, has moved on.


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Twelfth Night

Tonight is Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas. My last chance this year to post the ultimate Canadian Christmas carol.


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Christmas in Newfoundland

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Donald Trump Is Not a Real Person

Someone has put up a video compilation of Donald Trump cameos from various movies and TV shows on YouTube. Probably in response to the CBC cutting him out of their version of Home Alone 2.

Watching them makes it obvious that Trump is a good actor.

Granted, he always plays the same part.

So did Jimmy Stewart.

But he says his lines naturally. Usually, when a non-actor is featured on TV or in film, the delivery is wooden.

Some will no doubt claim this means he is a good liar.

But I think good acting is very different from lying. A liar must say something that is, for them, highly emotionally charged, without revealing emotion. An actor must say something that is, for them, of no emotional significance, as though they feel some emotion.

It is actually an opposite talent.

It is this latter talent Trump displays.

Seeing it in his cameos, I can now see it everywhere else. Trump has deliberately crafted a role, a public persona, that he plays. Notice that he always wears the same blue suit and red tie. It is a costume. Why does he comb his hair in that odd way? Why does he dye his face orange? It is a trademark; it is establishing a distinctive character. Like Colonel Sanders, or Santa Claus. 


A great actor is able to feign emotion as needed, while actually being careful and calculating. This gives Trump a huge advantage.

His trademark insults for opponents, for example, are carefully thought out and tested beforehand: “Pocahontas,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Little Marco,” and so on. They look like expressions of distain; they are actually strategic marketing moves. And often show considerable creative imagination; the imagination of a true artist. Pete Buttigieg looks like Alfred E. Neuman? Once he’s said it, you can’t stop seeing it. Reputedly, he has advised White House staff to treat each new week as a new episode in a reality show. He makes sure there is some little drama there to keep the public interested.

He uses this acting ability to provoke his opponents into doing what he wants. This is his negotiating talent. This is his art of the deal. This is how he is always playing “4-D chess.”

Hence the now-notorious “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” By pretending emotions himself, he is able to drive opponents to do crazy things in a fit of real emotion. Like the drive for impeachment in the House, which can only make them look foolish and boost his re-election chances.

We are seeing it currently with Iran. By talking and acting extravagantly, Trump seems to have provoked the Iranians into a suicidal path. They now have no good choices.

We see it again and again.

It is not that complicated. It is amazing how so few are picking up on it. That shows what a fine actor Trump it.

Great acting talent, great artistic talent, may be a key to effective leadership. Who else do you immediately think of?

Ronald Reagan. Same talent; he created an amiable, unthreatening persona, that disarmed opponents.

John Paul II was also a skilled actor in his youth.

Benjamin Disraeli was a writer, not an actor, but he had the same talent. He created a public character for himself to inhabit, with trademark elements.

Winston Churchill—a writer. Again with a distinctive crafted public persona.

Douglas MacArthur, George Patton.

I see a pattern.

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Usually Funny

..but unusually funny this week.

The Powerline Week in Pictures.




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There Is No El?

We love to complain of lame modern church music, but surely if there were a reward for the worst lyric in a religious song, it should be won by "The First Noel," traditional and time-honoured as it is.

Besides being trite and repetitious, and grammatically awkward, the words need to be positively tortured to get then to scan.

Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
The First Noel, the Angels did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay
In fields where they lay keeping their sheep
On a cold winter's night that was so deep
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel
Born is the King of Israel! 

Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
They looked up and saw a star
Shining in the East beyond them far
And to the earth it gave great light
And so it continued both day and night 

Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
Noel, Noel
Born is the King of Israel! 

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel
Born is the King of Israel!
Born is the King of Israel!
Noel, Noel

While it is true there is no longer an El in New York City, there still is one in Chicago.
Making thew whole song a lie in any case.'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

Coyote

I find this clip entrancing.

It is not just for the song, a brilliant piece of lyric poetry.

It is not just for the historical interest: Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Roger McGuinn at Gordon Lightfoot's home.

It is also because Joni Mitchell's singing voice eerily reminds me of my grandmother's.

And even her face in movement reminds me of my grandmother's.

It's the Irish in her.

Lots of coyotes in my part of Canada.




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Wait for it ...

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Nowt So Queer as Marxist Folk

A leftist columnist friend of mine who shall remain nameless, but whose name begins with an “X,” has raised the alarm. Apparently “Amerika” is an empire seeking to control regimes around the world.

I guess I agree with the general premise. It is no secret to anyone that the US government has sought to change the regimes of many countries, and seeks to influence their politics as a matter of course.

After all, that is what a diplomatic service, let alone an intelligence service, is for. What nation, by this definition, is not an empire? What nation has ever not been?

Granted, the matter is given false currency by the recent furor about Russia “interfering” in the 2016 US election. As if this were some new or surprising thing.

You cannot do business with the American government without setting up a lobbying and PR operation.

Seeing such things as too significant itself promotes an imperialist/colonialist mentality. If, say, Evo Morales is driven to resign in Bolivia, after serving only four of a constitutionally limited two terms (irony alert), and you blame it on the Americans, as the mysterious Mr. X_ does, that is in effect denying all agency to the Bolivian people, or Evo Morales, and denying all legitimacy to the Bolivian institutions that forced him out. When you blame the CIA for Ghaddafi’s fall, you are denying that the Libyan people could have wanted or done such a thing for themselves. You are seeing the Americans as equivalent to a parent dealing with very young children.

In other words, assuming American control of everything is implicitly saying it is proper for America to control everything. It is demanding American control. Nobody, after all, can do anything without the Americans.

On to details: X repeats the shopworn claim that the US “invented stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear ‘weapons of mass destruction’” in Iraq. But a variety of intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had WMDs. So, apparently, did Saddam. The fact that he mostly did not does not prove that the US had secret knowledge of this fact. You can only assume this if you begin by assuming America is omniscient. Again, if they really are all knowing, they know best. You are justifying American control.
How did we miss this? It's right on the US dollar bill. America sees all. American knows all.
“A matching falsehood “ Xerxes says, again repeating a leftist commonplace, “was the claim that Hussein had links to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, which -- at least according to official reports -- engineered the World Trade Centre bombings on September 11, 2001.”

What the Bush administration actually said at the time, according to Wikipedia, was “there might have been a cooperative relationship, but that Saddam was not supportive of the 9/11 attacks.”

That is no more than expressing a reasonable suspicion.

Yet Xerxes—oops, did I just Doxx someone?--seems in the same sentence to be expressing the suspicion that Al Qaeda was not responsible for the WTC bombings. This seems a far less reasonable premise, given that Al Qaeda and Bin Laden publicly claimed responsibility.

But this is not the end of Amerika’s accomplishments worldwide. Xerxes blames the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 for the rise of ISIS. But the founding of ISIS happened a decade later, in 2013. If you are going to blame it on any American action, it seems more plausible to blame it on the American pullout, which occurred only two years before, than on the American invasion.

But then Amerika is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. It is again odd to suppose that the Iraqis had no control over their own actions—that it was up to the Americans to cause or prevent an Iraqi uprising.
These damned puppets keep tangling their strings!
And speaking of damned if you do, or damned if you don’t, Xerxes even blames the US for seeking to overthrow Assad in Syria—where they have made a supreme effort to stay out, leaving it all, for better or worse, to the Russians, Iranians, and Turks.

All of whom, along with the Syrians, seem to have no capacity for independent thought or action.

Of course, Ghaddafi comes up:

“Read the CIA’s own Fact Book -- under Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year rule, Libya had improved gender equality, education, life expectancy, literacy, and health services. It had reduced poverty. It was debt-free. All had access to safe drinking water.”

I checked the World Fact Book. None of this information is there, so far as I can see. There is mention that the economic situation in Libya has declined since Ghaddafi was overthrown; no more. But isn’t it interesting that Xerxes relies on the CIA as his ultimate authority?

I don’t think any of the NATO countries imposed their no-fly zone because they thought Ghaddafi had been mismanaging the Libyan economy. It had to do with ending the carnage during an ongoing civil war; and perhaps his financing of terrorism abroad. And his aborted attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

Actually, Xerxes himself suggests that the reason the US overthrew Ghaddafi—denying any agency to the Libyan people who actually fought, let alone the Europeans—is that he nationalized the oil industry.

This is not credible. Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Canada have also nationalized their oil industry, and their governments have not similarly been overthrown. Most of the world’s oil has been nationalized.

And he then gets to Chile’s Allende. One begins to think Amerika’s record of regime change must be fairly sparse, if he is relying on an example from Nixon’s regime, almost 50 years ago. But then, he also complains of the overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953. Under Eisenhower. 
 Breaking News: Chile's Allende commits suicide with a machine gun round to the back.
East German commemorative stamp.
Xerxes writes that “Allende sealed his fate by nationalizing U.S.-owned copper mines.”

This seems unlikely to have been the critical factor, since the nationalization of the copper industry began under the previous administration. And in the election Allende won, all three candidates supported nationalization of the copper industry. Yet the US had been heavily subsidizing the previous administration and Allende’s opponents.

Obviously, Xerxes is working from a tiresome, wildly ahistorical, list of Marxist talking points that has somehow outlasted the Soviet Union.

He also blames the Americans for the fall of the Shah of Iran, despite the fact that he was a US ally—and the regime that replaced him held American diplomats in Iran hostage.

Still, he finds the overthrow of the Shah mostly a good thing, because he was “corrupt” and “ruthless.”

“Ruthless”? Reza Pahlavi is not above criticism, but he arguably fell because he was not ruthless. He refused to give the order to fire on protesters, and resigned instead.

The current Iranian regime is firing on protesters. They remain in power.

As are other autocratic leaders around the world: China, Syria, Venezuela.

The more obvious cause for the Shah’s fall is that he offended traditionalist Muslims with his drive for modernization and Westernization. Who led the opposition that eventually replaced him?

I recall Iranian fellow grad students at the time claiming, improbably, that the Shah planned to eliminate Islam and revive Zoroastrianism.

The world is indeed mad. People in groups can apparently believe impossible things.

But few are as crazy as Marxists.


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In the Bleak Midwinter

A musical setting of a poem by Christina Rossetti.



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