Mad Dog Becomes Obsolete: Hitchens Returns!

"People who say they don't care about what others think of what they write are fooling themselves, or just dishonest," a friend, once told me. People write because they want to be read; there can be no other reason.

But then, how to explain diaries? Those, at least putatively, are meant NOT to be read, except by the writer himself (or herself.) One can argue that diarist secretly hopes to be discovered, or that the diarist wants to go back, some day, for a glimpse of what they were like in years past, at some forgotten, lost time of development.

Personally, Mad Dog, has always been with Joan Didion on this: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means."

So, for years, Mad Dog's blogs have served that purpose and he has paddled onward, against the current, undaunted by an indifferent world. This blog has two followers, and a typical blog post may garner 2,000 views, most of which are likely robots from Brazil, Vietnam and India. 

So why bother? Simply to organize and examine one's own thoughts?

In the past, Mad Dog has rationalized his output by recognizing that he is not seeing his positions adequately presented in The New York Times, The Atlantic or the New Yorker--three wonderful platforms hosting, for the most part, thoughtful, insightful writers, but writers, nevertheless, who are only writers, who--with some exceptions--are not doctors, lawyers, engineers, i.e., they are not people who have come to their ideas by personal struggle, but only by reading and talking with other people. 

But now, an occult phenomenon has changed things: Somebody has managed to simulate Christopher Hitchens' voice, his written voice, and to address a slate of important topics as Hitchens would have done, had he lived. (Just to make it fun, whoever it is has simulated Hitchens' spoken voice as well.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHkN9GUaFJU&t=213s

Mad Dog has been unable to ascertain who has managed this youtube Channel feat, "Hitchens Resurrected," and it is likely the final product has had some help from artificial intelligence, but, in the end, Mad Dog has realized, with this channel going strong, there is really nothing left to say, at least, for the moment.

It is all said so much better on this youtube thing, by whoever it is, speaking in the style of Hitchens, but,  more importantly, saying what needs to be said, what Mad Dog has not come close to organizing as well.

So, for now, Mad Dog will retire, sit back and simply read the Hitch, only to return if Mad Dog needs to add something Resurrected missed.

The Threat From Within

 He orchestrates a conclave of his most senior and powerful generals and admirals, knowing that power, or at least the kind of power he seeks, flows from the muzzle of a gun.

There have been some intimations that the military leadership may not be entirely loyal to the man, but to another idea of leadership and power.

He touches on the threat of encroachment from without, from invasion across borders, but that is not where he focuses his attention.

It is the threat from within which concerns him most. The nation has been infested, is rife with disloyal, self serving, money hungry hordes who are not true, clean, real countrymen. They threaten to bring down the country from within.

He explains there are some places where his support is very strong and these places will be rewarded, but where his support has been sparse, he will invade and he will use the armed forces to pacify these areas of resistance, disloyalty and perfidy.

He exhorts his generals to focus on aiming their weapons at the threat inside, in cities which are festering with this unwholesome, repugnant element.

He has cowed, coerced and reshaped the judiciary, which is now not a counter measure to his power, but an ally in his consolidation of power.

On the street, people are arrested for their appearance, or because of overheard conversations, and troops storm into workplaces, public spaces and even homes and are hauled away and often families cannot even ascertain where they have been sent.

Longstanding processes are dismissed as weak and needless impediments to the vital work which demands immediate action for the safety of the nation.

He speaks of returning the nation to the dominance and rightful exalted status among nations and all humanity it deserves and once enjoyed.

Public officials are dismissed because they are perceived as antagonistic or disloyal to him personally, and to oppose him is to oppose the nation, the brotherhood of those who share the will toward greatness.

Words like "unprecedented" and "not normal" are used so often they are no longer even noticed.

He is, the press and media explain, something so different and new we have only old words to describe a new phenomenon.

But, they are wrong. He is not something new. 

He is something returned from the past, playing, openly and unabashed, by an old playbook, published and sold widely, a copy in every home. It has simply been unread and forgotten, but it is not new. 

It is a zombie, returned from the past which is no longer the past, but simply an echo coming back around.

Following Court Order? A Firing Offense

 

Just in case you missed it: a U.S. Attorney in California was fired by President Trump because she notified a lawless ICE official a court order forbid him from arresting people because they looked Hispanic.

She was following a court order to the letter. 

Beckwith: The Temerity of Obeying the Law

Michele Beckwith told Gregory Bonvino, head of the Border Patrol's El Centro region, to stop arresting people for walking while Brown, and liceity split, she got fired directly by the Oval Office.

Just Look At This Toadie 

Mr. Bonvino apparently responded that the Supreme Court had already ruled arresting people for speaking Spanish, looking Mexican or working in jobs frequented by immigrants is perfectly alright.

So, this is where we are: the 3 branches of government has collapsed into one: The Executive branch, or some would say the Royal branch--"Le droit, c'est moi," meaning "I am the state," which is Louis XIV. After XIV came Louis XV, who said, "Apres moi, le deluge," after me the deluge. And he was surely correct about that.

Have youtube and AI conquered death?

 Mad Dog ponders this question:  If you die, but your deep fake image shows up on youtube saying stuff you would have said about something that happened after your death, in your voice, with your phrasing and distinguishable cadence, phrasing and beliefs, are you actually alive somewhere in cyberspace?

You have now entered the Twilight Zone, dear Mad Dog readers.

You all know how I loved Christopher Hitchens and was bereft when he died.

But has he?

Died?

There are now several choice visits from the seance room, author (s) unknown.  (Much speculation, but thus far not even Professor Google knows.)

How often have I said, "I wish we could ask Pop about that?  Or, Mom would have just launched over that." So, one thing about death, is you cannot have conversations about things which happened after someone's death with that dead person.

But here, it feels like we are...having a conversation...or at least hearing from that individual from beyond.

Creepy? 

Perhaps.

Worth engaging? 

Absolutely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGdJQuooPF4

The Bully from Humiliation

 

Arguments about the wisdom, morality and folly of dropping atomic bombs on Japan have been ongoing for 80 years.

It is now widely understood that the fire bombings of Japanese cities had already killed and destroyed in greater magnitude than the two bombs, but the detailed reporting on the destruction and the destructive potential of these weapons changed things.

Before these weapons, there were still  pervasive notions of national and personal glory and humiliation connected to war. The "German people" felt humiliated and cheated after World War I, and people in nations world wide thrilled to the sight of marching columns of glorious soldiers and waving flags, even as they saw disfigured soldiers return home, evidence that modern warfare nearly eliminated the possibility of personal glory--you no longer had men with swords or lances charging at each other--artillery, guns and bombs made small, weak men the equal of big strong men. But there were still stories of Private York, the Red Baron and other heroes who braved the steel curtain to undying glory. 

But the atomic bombs, for all the horror they wrought, at least convinced people around the world that armed conflict had reached a point where there could be no glory on an atomic battlefield only annihilation and mutually assured destruction. Where could the glory be in that?

Hitler, of course, used the notion of humiliation to great effect--the strong, brave, suffering German soldier, never beaten on the battlefield, was betrayed and stabbed in the back by the cunning, stealthy villains--bankers, international businessmen, and most of all, "the Jews," who forced a humiliating treaty on an unbeaten army and nation at Versailles. 

Hitler himself was forged in the experience of humiliation. Seething with resentment, he knew he was a talented, likely great artist, unjustly rejected by the academic faculties of Viennese art schools, and he lived essentially a homeless life for years in Vienna, the sort of prototype of today's "guy who lives in his parents' basement." The first World War gave him employment and a group to belong to, and most important, audiences, more or less captive audiences, on whom he could try out his material.

For the Nazis, as for the current MAGA crowd, the undercurrent of humiliation is palpable. The Nazis appealed to the resentment of people who felt rejected, who thought themselves failures by emphasizing their willingness to bring rich (Jews) to their knees, scrubbing sidewalks with toothbrushes. 

Humiliation 1

Humiliation 2

Humiliation 3

Reading William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" there is an intriguing interlude, leading up to Hitler's invasion of Poland which reveals Hitler's cunning and adroit use of history to convince his own countrymen of the rightness of his reign.

Shirer sets up the two hour speech which became the culmination of Hitler's persuasive powers and his last big gambit before he invaded Poland, started World War II and all the talk ceased to really matter.  

I'm Really Good At This Stuff

In the run up to the speech before Poland, Hitler had seized Czechoslovakia, Austria and a few select smaller countries, all justified by the suffering of German speaking people who lived in these places at the hands of despicable thugs who terrorized their ethnic German populations--much the same thing as those darked skinned invaders across our Southern borders have victimized their white American prey--someone had to act on behalf of the Aryans!

He also pointed to the western democracies (which is how he referred to them, "democracies" as if that were a bad word) as trying to encircle Germany.  

England had tacitly said it wasn't worth another world war to defend the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia (the Ukraine of its day) and that meant that Britain, France and Russia might feel the same way about Poland.

So everyone knew Poland was probably next. 

Franklin Roosevelt, facing his own very strong America First movement, was constrained from acting.  The number of Americans of German origin actually exceeded those from Ireland and Scandinavia and Nazi Bund rallies in American cities and, most memorably, at Madison Square Garden, meant Germany was not an automatic target, even after World War One. 

So Roosevelt sent Hitler a telegram asking that Hitler definitively assure that he had no intention of invading a list of countries, including Poland, Latvia, Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Romania--basically all of Germany's neighbors (which he later invaded). 

Goering laughed this off, saying Roosevelt must be demented. Mussolini said Roosevelt's mind had been rotted by infantile paralysis--the strutting Italian rooster who bragged about his virility and his female conquests taunting the half paralyzed Roosevelt. It was, as it so often is with autocrats, all about their own personal hang ups.

Hitler replied with his longest ever speech, two hours, at the Reichstag, eerily echoing Trump's recent speech at the United Nations. Like Trump, he claimed to be the greatest leader in the world.  "I'm really good at this stuff." He claimed he had eliminated unemployment in Germany, had saved it from humiliation and restored it to affluence, saved his countrymen from the abyss of globalism. 

And he had sent his ambassadors to each of the nations mentioned by Roosevelt to ask if they felt threatened and then he listed each of them (save one) with the "Answer: No!" with Goering seated above and behind him roaring with laughter at each answer, slapping his desktop. 

Because there were 15 names and answers, nobody seemed to notice that the name "Poland" had been omitted.

But then he turned to America's own history of acquiring safety and greatness for itself by attacking established nations, particularly the Sioux, who he pointed to as a subjugated nation which might look at Roosevelt much as Germany's neighbors might look at Hitler. Then he added the entire American south, the former confederacy as an example of a conquered nation which had been brought only by force of arms into a vast American nation.

He then pointed to Ireland, a nation subjugated by England and to Palestine, also occupied and subjugated by the British.

Reading his speech, Mad Dog could not help but smiling--how Hitler pointed to the glass houses in which American and British and French colonizers lived. When the ship St. Louis, carrying German Jewish refugees to the United States was denied entry to America and it's passengers sent back to die in concentration camps, Hitler pointed to that and said, "See! America does not want these Jews! Why should we?"

Faulkner, speaking of another war, once remarked that for the Southerner the past is not dead; it is not even past.

And Mad Dog had the sinking feeling, reading this history that there are problems from the 20th century which should be past, but are not even past.

The most obvious, now are Ukraine and Palestine.

Big Man, Lots of Gold

Russia, or at least Putin, never accepted the humiliation of the fall of the Soviet empire. For him, having neighbors on his western flank who are not controlled by himself constitutes "encirclement." So he has begun picking them off, one by one. He's got Byelorussia, and Georgia and now he's after Ukraine, and why should he stop there, once successful?

And America has said, quite honestly, as President Biden did say, Ukraine is not worth starting World War III.

As always, it is tough trying to get the Russian side of all this. Clearly, Russia threw the first punch and is the bad actor here. But Mad Dog would love some source, like William Shirer reporting from Germany in the run up to war, but someone in Russia reporting what Putin is saying and what Russians are thinking. So far, even in the internet age, Mad Dog has struck out.

And there is still Palestine. That is a history of which Mad Dog is not full apprised, apart from having read Leon Uris's "Exodus" when Mad Dog was twelve years old.

In that telling, the surviving, starving, barely alive Jews streamed out of the hellholes of European Holocaust, unwanted by the Europeans from the Dutch coast, to France, to Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia and said, "Fine, you all hate us, we'll find our ancestral home and for once, we'll cut the cake in our own favor, even if we have to fight and die for it." And they made the desert bloom.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp

The history Mad Dog came to accept was that once enough Jews arrived in the wasteland deserts of Palestine, Jerusalem and the middle east and "reclaimed" their own land, there were enough Americans, Europeans and even Asians who sympathized, who felt guilty about their own complicity in the Holocaust,  to vote recognition for the state of Israel in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War and everyone was supposed to live in justice, happily ever after.

Gaza

But this turns out to be yet another instance of a problem which festered at the end of a war. The Second World War is now understood as simply a continuation of whatever started the First World War, treaties and arrangements which were unjust, and which only provide for a hiatus of peace, in the case of the First World War, 20 years, but now after the Second World War, 80 years, but now we have war conflagrations flaring up again, from the unstaunched embers.

Mad Dog has a friend from middle school, who has both American and Israeli citizenship, who lives half the year in Jerusalem, who tells him that Israel has changed dramatically over the years. When he first went there, the overwhelming majority of Israelis were from Europe, but now 75% of the Israeli population were born in the Middle East. And although there are Arab members of the legislature, the Knesset, if Palestinians (non Jews) were allowed representation to reflect their percentage of the population, the Jews would be in the minority and Israel would cease to be a "Jewish state." 

He also says he believes the majority of Israelis may not be completely sympathetic with the Palestinians, but the majority of Israelis he knows abhor Netanyahu, believe this whole "Hamas thing" is simply a ploy to keep himself in power because he is headed for jail as soon as the emergency is over.

Mad Dog hears all this with interest, but he does not have confirmatory sources.

Mad Dog has no solutions.

"Defeat Hamas!" sounds unpersuasive. Doesn't matter what you call it, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Resistance--the names may change but the etiologic agent remains the same. 

That violence, however, clearly begets violence, seems an operative truth.

And as for Vengeance: if you go out to seek revenge, first dig two graves. 

In the case of local conflicts like Palestine, the solutions may prove to be local, but in the case of Europe, Ukraine and Russia, after a nuclear war, there will be nobody around to attend the funeral.

Trump: Promises Made, Promises Forgotten

 

In George Orwell's 1984 three warring states, Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia were constantly at war, but alliances and opponents kept shifting. If you lived in Oceania, one year you might see messages about the perfidy and evil of East Asia, but a few months later you saw that East Asia was a wonderful state, and now it was Eurasia which was bad. 

Memory was short in 1984.

In Animal Farm, the messages were written in chalk on a blackboard, which was convenient because it was easy to erase memory and change the message, and so "Four legs good, two legs bad" became "Four legs good, two legs better," when the ruling pigs learned to walk on two legs.

For the dystopian Orwell, memory manipulation was the sine qua non of dystopia, if you could control (change) the past, you could control the present and the future.

Nowhere is memory control more obvious and important than in our current dysptopic America, D.J. Trump has mastered memory control by the simple expedient of throwing so much up on the blackboard and changing it so often, nobody can really be sure what was true or how it changed.

Even in the information age, it's hard for the average citizen who does not have a research staff to dredge up Trump saying one thing and then just the opposite a little later.

"I will end the war in Ukraine Day One! I'm the only one who can do it!"

Mad Dog remembers it, and online "Facts First" shows 21 times Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. But somehow that promise, not kept, does not stick. The blackboard has been erased.

It was obvious it wasn't Trump who was the one man who could end the war in Ukraine; it was Putin who was the only one who could do this. What wasn't obvious is whether Trump could even remember what he had promised on Ukraine--he makes so many promises they all tend to wind up in some huge dumpster of history.

But, for a few moments at least, it did look pretty obvious Trump did have a  grand strategy for ending the war in Ukraine: to bludgeon Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into surrendering to Russia. "You don't hold any cards!" Trump shouted at Zelensky, who never asked for cards, or for a ride out of Kiev, only for "ammunition."

 

And, like most bullies, Trump arranged for his sidekicks to surround Zelensky in the Oval Office, to gang up on him and catcall insults about Zelensky's clothes--no Armani suit for Zelensky--and to shout him down for not thanking America for all it had done for him. The classic playground bullies. Let's all gang up on the little guy and none of us will get hurt. So Marjorie Taylor Greene's newest squeeze, Brian Glenn, who was present as a White House correspondent for Real America's Voice, got his line off on cue, "Hey why don't you wear a suit?" You see, Zelensky had disrespected the Oval Office, which Trump had done up in gold like a Parisian brothel.

One wonders whether Mr. Glenn would have had the balls to call out  Joseph Stalin for not wearing a suit. Actually, we don't have to wonder. We know. We can know a great deal about Mr. Glenn just from that incident. He is beyond an empty suit. He's clearly a coward, hiding behind a couch and group of playground bullies, lobbing his insults safely protected. He is not fit to carry Mr. Zelensky's shoes.

Zelensky, amazingly, had the presence of mind to reply, "I will wear a costume when this war will finish. Maybe after the war I will buy a suit, maybe better than yours."

Of course, we could all see this diminutive and besieged Ukrainian president was wearing battle fatigues, and was a giant among pygmies in that office. 

It was as revealing a video moment as Dr. Fauci slapping his head when Trump suggested from the podium that intravenous bleach might be the best way to kill COVID virus.

Playing Soldier

All those empty suits, with short memories, with heel spurs and not a one of them had ever faced a bullet fired in anger. Even Trump, who eventually did have a bullet fired in anger at him did not face that knowingly. He required no courage to be shot at because he couldn't be aware of the danger that day. So only Zelensky in that room had been in peril for his life and acted boldly in the face of violence aimed at him. J.D. Vance was in the Marines and he sat on a golden couch taunting Zelensky, but he was a military correspondent and he admitted in his book he never saw any real fighting.

So alone, among the boys in their splendid expensive suits, Zelensky had faced lethal fire and he never flinched. When he was offered a way out of Ukraine during the early onslaught, he famously replied, "I don't need a ride. I need ammunition."

Mad Dog cannot imagine Marco Rubio, Brian Glenn, J.D. Vance or Trump reacting that way. Trump has said soldiers are saps and fools. They work for peanuts and risk their lives for small salaries. "I don't like guys who get captured. I like the guys who don't get captured." That's Trump invoking the old Japanese bushido ethic, as if he ever would have the courage to even put himself in the position where he could be captured. 

But if he did get captured, he would deny it the next week and he would sue any newspaper which dared publish an account of his capture and he would direct the FCC to remove any TV news program and network from the airwaves which reported on it.

She Wears No Suit; She is Better Than That

So, now we have Mr. Trump, yesterday, saying maybe Ukraine should continue to fight on. Maybe the US will arrange a loan they will have to pay back, for new drones and missiles. But that is only the current line; tomorrow neither he nor his MAGA millions will remember whose side he is on this week.

Trump Goes All MAGA Weird at the UN

 It's All Trump, All the Time now. He's all anybody talks about, and what he talks about is all we talk about.

Here are some gems from Donald J. Trump to the world, extracted from his 90 minutes of world wide fame in the UN spotlight:

1/ He is the greatest peace maker in world history and has personally stopped 7 wars including wars you probably never heard of in places you never heard of. But he also ended Iran's war against Israel, which must have come to a great surprise to Iran, because last we heard, they had not surrendered to Israel.

And he deserves a Nobel Peace prize for that.

Everyone is saying so, Trump says. Well, at least he is saying so, so that's one person saying so, for sure.

And he deserves another Nobel prize in medicine for his Warp Speed program which brought you the COVID vaccine, which RFKJR says is the most dangerous vaccine ever made and which kills more people than it saves, but anyway, it saved millions, even before the government got around to giving intravenous bleach or Ivermectin, which was such a great idea, and which proved Mr. Trump knew more than all the doctors, but it never got a fair chance, because you know, Biden. Or maybe it was leftist ideology. Never mind--Trump deserves that gold medal. You know how he loves gold.

2/ London has a terrible mayor, who has a Middle Eastern name and London now looks like downtown Tehran or Beirut  and is home to a lot of Arabs who have replaced real Englishmen and that is just sad. "Now they want to go to Sharia law, but you're in a different country now and you can't do that."

3/ Migration is destroying the world by changing things and mixing races and only the United States has stopped it by arresting people for speaking Spanish or looking like they might speak Spanish, which is perfectly legal as the Supreme Court has said, but anyway, Spanish speaking people replacing English speakers is very bad, and we could really use some immigrants from Norway, which, for some reason nobody can understand, seems to send very few blond immigrants our way. Sure, Norway has healthcare for all, and the highest per Capita income in the world, or close to, and great tuition free university education, where they have not purged the faculties of professors who disagree with Mr. Trump, but hey, USA is #1!

4/ The global warming hoax is killing economies world wide, and clean coal and oil are the answer.  Strangely, having said this, he claims America is the "hottest country anywhere in the world," which is not exactly what you'd want to lay claim to if you don't believe in global warning, but he likely meant we are "hot" the way Melania is hot, or the way his daughter Ivanka is hot, so hot in fact he would date her if he weren't her father, which was another weird remark, but must have been reassuring to Ivanka

Hottest First Lady EVER!

One can only imagine the delegates eating at New York City restaurants, drinking their cocktails and saying, "It took two world wars to bring Britain down, but America has done it in just eight months, with free an fair elections."

Hottest Country Anywhere!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTTiuJZeS0Q&t=335shange the “greatest con job” ever perpetrated on the world.Advertisement