Rush yesterday described a futile attempt by Ted Cruz in Indiana to reason with a “brain-dead” Trump supporter.
I cringed when I saw Cruz cross the street, ’cause I knew exactly what was gonna happen. And the reason I called the guy brain-dead is cause that’s how he acted. “Trump! Trump! Trump! Lyin’ Ted! Lyin’ Ted!”
He had no desire to engage Cruz. Cruz was being polite. He crossed the street, wanted to engage the guy in conversation about issues. I literally was cringing when it happened; I cringed when it was over. Because it wasn’t gonna work. And the audio was such that even if Cruz was trying to create something viral that could be on social media that would show him politely and graciously encountering a Trump supporter and explaining the issues (and hoping that that would go viral), it didn’t have much of a chance ’cause the audio wasn’t good enough for that to happen.
All the Trump people were shouting this or that, encouraging this guy. “Trump! Trump! Trump! Lyin’ Ted! Lyin’ Ted!” You know, Cruz was polite. He was everything that you would want somebody to be, and he’s being mocked and laughed at and made fun of as a square, as a nerd, as a loser or what have you, which is exactly right in line with what’s happening in our culture today. It is the renegades, and it’s been this way for a long time. The renegades and the — well, however you want to characterize them.
The people that do not stay within the guard rails of reality, they’re the ones that are celebrated and praised. They get rich. They’re made heroes. We’ve made celebrities out of them, and people that don’t do that are just dull and boring and dryballs and usually tagged as conservatives or what have you. So I was not calling all Trump supporters brain-dead. You’ve heard me talk about the Trump people. You’ve heard me lionize the Trump people. You’ve heard me, on this program, celebrate the Trump people and explain to people why certain people behind Trump support him.
This guy was no different than a Code Pink protester, and so that’s that. I’m sorry. I wasn’t able to separate the personal experiences I’ve had just like that over the course of my career, and I knew it was gonna work when I watched it happening and I watched the replay. I knew it wasn’t gonna work, and frankly there’s a part of me that still — even though I know the drill and I know the lay of the land and I know the reality and I’m the mayor of Realville.
It still bugs me when doofuses like that end up the winner in a circumstance like that. But welcome to America 2016, or whatever it is.
Trigglypuff is the nickname given to a Hampshire College student who was recorded loudly protesting in the audience of a University of Massachusetts Amherst event titled “The Triggering,†which featured a discussion criticizing politically correct movements on campus hosted by conservative blogger Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Christina Hoff Sommers.
Jam Matejko, Adoption of the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, 1891, Royal Castle, Warsaw.
The painting depicts King Stanislaus Augustus together with members of the Grand Sejm and inhabitants of Warsaw entering St John’s Cathedral in order to swear in the new national constitution just after it had been adopted by the Grand Sejm in the Royal Castle visible in the background.
Below is a short film celebrating the passage of the first liberal constitution in Europe by the Polish senate, May 3, 1791, the passage of which provoked treason by magnatial aristocrats (The Confederacy of Targowica) followed by intervention and partition of the country by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Tadeusz Kosciuszko led the national resistance to the partition. The final defeat of Kosciuszko’s forces was followed in 1795 by the Third and final Partition of Poland-Lithuania. The actual document wound up locked in an iron box under guard in Moscow’s Kremlin, so much terror did it strike in the hearts of despots. Poles and Lithuanians still sing the praises of the Constitution of the 3rd of May which extended the rights enjoyed by the nobility to the entire country. The Third of May is today a national holiday in both countries.
“A revolver made in Spain [Italy], probably as a single piece because none of my friends and I remember ever seeing one, nor did I find something in the literature. To load the 6.35mm/.25 ACP pistol cartridge the cylinder has two connected rings in which one can insert the cartridges and closing the second ring, the cartridges are safely stored – similar today’s speed-loader. On the back of the strap is a switch, center position will hit the inner circle, left position six hits skipping one in the outer circle and after pushing to the right the firing pin will hit the remaining six cartridges. Under the switch is additional a safety blocking the hammer. It is a tip-down or break-open system similar the Smith & Wesson models. The 3″ barrel has a fixed front sight and the above pictured description. The cylinder and barrels are blued, the frame is nickel plated, the checkered hard rubber grips are crisp. The former owner doesn’t know about the background, only he claims it is an unique revolver. In good working order and fine condition.”
Captain Cook’s famous ship has seemingly been discovered in the US 230 years since it was sold, sunk and forgotten.
The Endeavour is one of the most famous ships in naval history and was used by Captain James Cook to discover the East Coast of Australia in 1770.
The last sighting of the Endeavour was around 1778 when it is believed the ship was sold, renamed the Lord Sandwich, and then used to transport British troops during the American Revolution.
Archaeologists believe they have found the scuttled remains of the Endeavour in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island.
The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project made the discovery, saying the ship was scuttled in the harbour by British forces in the lead up to the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778.
RIMAP said it was ’80 to 100 per cent certain’ that the remains it has discovered belonged to the Endeavour.
Plato, copy of a bust by Silanion, Musei Capitolini.
Andrew Sullivan is back, in New York magazine, telling us that the current election reminds him of something.
As this dystopian election campaign has unfolded, my mind keeps being tugged by a passage in Plato’s Republic. It has unsettled — even surprised — me from the moment I first read it in graduate school. The passage is from the part of the dialogue where Socrates and his friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another. And Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.†What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.â€
This rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,†you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.
The very rich come under attack, as inequality becomes increasingly intolerable. Patriarchy is also dismantled: “We almost forgot to mention the extent of the law of equality and of freedom in the relations of women with men and men with women.†Family hierarchies are inverted: “A father habituates himself to be like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates himself to be like his father and to have no shame before or fear of his parents.†In classrooms, “as the teacher … is frightened of the pupils and fawns on them, so the students make light of their teachers.†Animals are regarded as equal to humans; the rich mingle freely with the poor in the streets and try to blend in. The foreigner is equal to the citizen.
And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.
He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob†and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. If not stopped quickly, his appetite for attacking the rich on behalf of the people swells further. He is a traitor to his class — and soon, his elite enemies, shorn of popular legitimacy, find a way to appease him or are forced to flee. Eventually, he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery†— and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.
