My main takeaway so far from the book The Witness by Whittaker Chambers is that, for a hundred years, enemies of our country have been sending propagandists all over the world to convince everybody that America is racist, colonialist, and the source of everything bad in the world.
This worked so well that now Americans are sending propagandists and large sums of money around the world to convince everybody that America is racist, colonialist, and a source of everything bad in the world.
Do you guys cook stewed cabbage with chicken? It’s very easy to make and cheap.
You stew the cabbage and a bit of shredded carrot in some chicken stock or even water. It’s just as good stewed in water. Add a bit of tomato paste. You can spice it up if you want. Put in some chili peppers for a bit of heat.
Dice a ripe tomato, if you have one, but again, it’s going to be good without it. While the cabbage is stewing, fry up some bits of chicken in oil. Just raw chicken, nothing else. Definitely don’t coat it in flour or any sort of breading. Once the chicken is golden, add it to the cabbage, mix it all up, and you have a great dish.
I talked to the colleague who was the last person I hired. I stepped down as department chair before she arrived on campus to start her appointment. She told me she loves the university, adores the students, and cannot believe her luck in getting the job of her dreams.
And now I’m racked with curiosity as to whether she knows the battle of the Somme I had to wage to get her hired (over an unqualified candidate that was almost foisted on us by somebody who wanted a friend and a puppet in this position and was not ashamed of using DEI to achieve their goal).
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A kind person in the Q&A asked which books by the great Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa I would recommend.
I have waited for years for an opportunity to scream into the void that everybody should immediately read The War of the End of the World (1981).
It’s a story about modernity’s war on religious faith and the horrors that the rejection of religion by modern society brings. It’s about how attempts at religious faith can be lost in the depths of human hubris and how the machinery of the modern state is terrified of any religious feeling.
This novel is very dark and quite different from the rest of Vargas Llosa’s writing that normally has a lot of humor to it.
I don’t recommend anything Vargas Llosa wrote after The Feast of the Goat (2000). I read all of that, and none of it is good. His gift abandoned the author in the last 20 years of his life. But almost everything before that is wonderful. If you want something really crazy hardcore Latin American postmodern, read The Green House (1965). That’s my second favorite by Vargas Llosa.
For an easier, more enjoyable read, go with The Feast of the Goat. When I say “enjoyable,” I mean, of course, to the extent that reading about an endless succession of Latin American atrocities can be enjoyable.
I’m sorry for a longish quote, but it is too good for me not to share. This is Whittaker Chambers talking about the people who will be able to defeat the evil of the leftist dream:
No one knows so well as the ex-communist the character of the conflict and of the enemy, or shares so deeply the same power of faith and willingness to stake his life on his beliefs. For no other has seen so deeply into the total nature of the evil with which communism threatens mankind.
Counter-revolution and conservatism have little in common. In the struggle against communism, the conservative is almost helpless, for that struggle cannot be fought, much less won or even understood, except in terms of total sacrifice, and the conservative is suspicious of sacrifice. He wishes first to conserve above all what he is and what he has. You cannot fight against revolutions so. . .
The final conflict will be between the communists and the ex-communists.
-Whittaker Chambers, The Witness
Today, my husband and I are celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary. One downside to being married is that I no longer can eat as much raw garlic as I want unless my husband agrees to eat just as much at the same time.
I have discovered no other downside to the married state.
One thing that I observed in New York that I still don’t fully understand is that African Americans there are very different from the African Americans here in the Midwest. Our African Americans are nice, smiley, chatty, and sociable. You can strike up a conversation anywhere. People are open and receptive.
In New York, I continued engaging with African Americans like I do around here, but it didn’t go over well at all. Whenever I would open with “Oh, what a cute puppy. What is his name?” or “I love your outfit. It’s so pretty,” people would give me a stink eye. The guy with the puppy literally shrank back from me like I was threatening to attack him with a samurai sword.
I went to the New York Macy’s, which is a store that always employs black women. Our local Macy’s is a feast of sociability. The black store attendants are always, “Oh, hello, Miss Clarissa. These are such pretty outfits that you found. They’re going to look so amazing on you.” And I respond with, “You look pretty fantastic yourself, Miss Tenisha. Look at those shoes. They are a dream.”
At the New York Macy’s store, I wandered around the store floor for 15 minutes, trying to find the checkout counter where the store attendant would not look like she hated the very concept of human contact.
Before you tell me that all New Yorkers are like that, it’s not true. Hispanics in New York are exactly the same as Hispanics everywhere. I don’t know about white people because I didn’t come across any in New York who were not tourists. There was one very chatty white Uber driver, but he was Ukrainian.
People are hating this article, but it points to something very important.
Not only the Greeks, of course, but everybody in the past had a completely different type of consciousness than we do. The title of the article is formulated in this shocking way on purpose because, yes, ancient Greeks did have some form of an inner life, but it was so different from ours that it doesn’t even make sense to call it by the same name.
The reason why I keep saying this is that it makes absolutely no sense to judge historic figures and events by our standards today. I wasn’t interested in watching the movie The Odyssey, not because of the woke casting, but because I see no point in transposing the Reddit mentality of today onto the events that happened millennia earlier.
And this is not only true for historic distance but also for the linguistic. Language provides the building blocks for our inner architecture. One tiny example is the word order in a sentence. Some languages have an extremely rigid word order, while others have a loose one. Curiously, you can find the most well-ordered societies among those who speak languages with the most rigid sentence structure.
Every day, I look up what cancer my mother died of and then immediately forget its name. This is obviously psychological. It’s getting so I’m about to ask my AI agent to remember it for me and then bring it up on demand.
Yesterday, I located it after three Google searches, and today I don’t remember what it is yet again.
My father died of advanced myeloid leukemia. It’s three words instead of one, and I remember it easily. Plus, he died a few days after the diagnosis. Still, that I remember.
Tucker Carlson says correctly that Ronald Reagan was an early proponent of legalizing abortion in his state. He also says incorrectly that Reagan signed a large immigration amnesty because he was tired of being called a racist in the press. The reason for both of Reagan’s positions is the same: he was a neoliberal. In fact, he was one of the earliest major politicians who were neoliberals.
Neoliberals are, of course, a variety of liberals. This is why the next big American neoliberal after Reagan was Bill Clinton, who shipped American manufacturing to China. Neoliberals do not like the concept of a country because this concept constrains freedom of movement.
It isn’t the freedom of human beings, however, that interests neoliberals. They will lock you down in a flash if it serves their only real purpose, which is to ensure freedom of movement for flows of money. The direction in which they want the money to be moving is upwards. If it serves that goal to drag large groups of the population across national borders or, alternatively, lock people down in their homes, they will gladly do both.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
You made me think. I might give this a try with sardines rather than the chicken.
Simple, but it does sound good. I’ll try making it some time.
It’s not that the age of nations is unbearable. It’s that neoliberalism is way too enjoyable. A salad is tasty,…
It’s not that the age of nations is unbearable. It’s that neoliberalism is way too enjoyable. A salad is tasty,…
I’m so glad you’re enjoying Vivien. In my opinion, it’s the best novel W.B. Maxwell ever wrote. People can download…
Clarissa, I deeply respect what you attempt here. However, nobody has ever unscrambled an egg. If people are turning away…
In his last collection of writings, Cold Friday, I highly recommend it, Chambers predicted the demise of the USSR by…
Part of what I thought made I Claudius so great was the fact that Robert Graves was able to put…
*individual depictions
“I mean, of course, to the extent that reading about an endless succession of Latin American atrocities can be enjoyable.”…
methlethyl There is litle doubt that the Church altered Western thought affecting both the formation o the nuclear family: https://janetakesonhistory.org/2020/09/29/the-medieval-church-and-its-consequences/…
Very interesting! I might need to read it. All of the writers of the Boom led lives of almost exotic…
Gerald Martin’s Mario Vargas Llosa: A Life is out. Apparently it’s just as lurid (“dishy” in the reviewer’s parlance) as…
“despite the complete lack of evidence” What would count as “evidence”? It’s a theoretical and suppositional work about cognitive models…
Congratulations
The theory in question has been around for fifty years and seems to have a mythic fascination despite the complete…
This is so beautiful!! Thank you so much. N and Klara gave me a little painting from my favorite local…
Congratulations! Did you know that “In the French tradition, this is the noces de rose, or rose anniversary”? What a…
I read this interesting story (in Russian) – an example of Jewish life – https://auvasilev.livejournal.com/2463561.html
“squeeze my modern brain through a weird keyhole” Some movies can do something like that. The first time I saw…
Right??? A beautiful sight to see. And by the way, I did ask my husband whether the comment about how…
It has been fascinating to live through progressively deeper questioning about the nature of humanity, reality, the nature and purpose…
It’s most definitely going in that direction. Children who grow up watching short-form videos on a screen for a large…
Happy Anniversary! A special bouquet! https://www.theblackpeppercorn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/How-to-Roast-Peeled-Garlic-in-the-Oven-5.jpg
Congratulations and many happy returns of the day! -K
“to nudge people toward the idea that AI is conscious” Would I sound like a crazy paranoid lunatic if I…
AI is most certainly not conscious. After I shared the list of the books I read since 2008 with AI,…
I expect the real point of the article is to nudge people toward the idea that AI is conscious because…
Happy anniversary! A loving marriage is indeed a wonderful state
Historically the Dutch East India company restricted expansion in SA, since conflict would reduce their profits. It was the arrival…
Here is a link to review / discussions of that 1970s book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/22478.The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind
Actually, this does help. Thank you for saying that. I have to keep telling myself that I must respect her…
We definitely had a great middle class society in those days. The only problem was 80% of the population were…
My mother was just the opposite of yours — she went to every doctor appointment, took every test she was…
That’s the first I’d heard of it.
There are certain medieval authors I’ve greatly enjoyed for this reason– because I have to sort of squeeze my modern…
Many years!
One of the leading white opponents of apartheid in SA is now considered the leading representative of white privilege. https://newsday.co.za/south-africa/23136/the-woman-who-exposed-the-steve-biko-cover-up-and-now-wants-to-become-johannesburg-mayor/
Way to go Kid, wishing both of you many, many more ;-D
Thank you. This is precisely it, and this theory also offers an explanation of how the Spaniards defeated the Aztecs…
