Archive Listing
February 15, 2009 - February 8, 2009
Friday, February 22, 2008
McCain reacts
angrily
to NYT smear article
to NYT smear article
XOFF NEWS. In the wake of a New York Times piece claiming he might have tried to have a sexual affair with a much younger female lobbyist, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain was positively irate in his response.
"These so-called journalists are still too wet behind the ears to know what a real man can or cannot do," he said. "I'm here to tell you today that there's still plenty of lead in this old pencil."
With wife Cindy McCain at his side, the candidate scoffed at questions about whether he was physically capable of getting intimate with a woman half his age.
"I want to say one thing to the American people," McCain told reporters in his most serious voice. "I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Iseman. I did not make the whole thing up to impress Ted Kennedy in the Senate cloakroom. These allegations are false. And now I need to go back to work for the American people."
Mrs. McCain also took the microphone to back up her husband's claims. "The only thing that's true in this whole ugly smear is the part about the pencil," she sighed. "But we've worked through that as a couple, and I think the American people can see -- after the drubbing my husband gave tall, dark, and handsome Mitt Dreamy, uh, Romney -- that size isn't everything. It's not the Energizer anaconda, is it? It's the Energizer bunny. He just keeps going, and going, and going." Then, overwhelmed by the situation, she was led away in tears.
McCain staffers said they would be releasing, later today, a complete list of all the younger women in the DC area Senator McCain had given monster orgasms to. A source inside the campaign distributed these photos, which he described as a "down payment on full disclosure."
"And there's a lot more where these came from," the source promised.
We'll see, won't we?
posted at
8:11 am
by
The XOFF News Team
Michael Clayton is, uh, Good.
Clooney does a nice job, dammit.
Clooney does a nice job, dammit.
FAIRNESS IS THE MOST ANNOYING OBLIGATION. It's absolutely true that we're not the world's biggest George Clooney fans. And the insiders say that Daniel Day-Lewis is a dead cert to win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the incredibly virulent anti-capitalist (Oil Companies!!) film There Will Be Blood. Since we are fans of Daniel Day-Lewis, we should be happy, right? Wrong. There's just no satisfying us nuance-free, rightwing lamebrains. What with its being a snow day here in the northeast and all, we found ourselves watching Michael Clayton for cash money in the on-demand region of our cable service. And here's our message to the conservatives who practice their secret boycotts of Jane Fonda movies and all those other products of leftwing Hollywood ingrates: Forget it this time. Michael Clayton is well worth watching. It may be, in fact, the best movie we've seen about the soul-destroying experience of working 24/7 for a truly bad company.
The screenplay, by Tony Gilroy, is brilliant, focused on the indispensable "fixer" all large organizations have to have, the one who does the kind of dirty work which guarantees that almost everyone needs him and almost no one will ever respect him. This is the apotheosis of the role so many corporate employees see themselves playing day after day and year after year of unfulfilling employment. Iin most movies, this is the kind of moral limbo you escape by making some grand gesture and walking away with your soul intact. Michael Clayton can't. Like most people can't. Because bills have to be paid, families have to be maintained, and you do what you have to do to keep the wolves at bay. So he keeps doing things he knows aren't right. He won't be blowing up headquarters with a pipe bomb. That's not how things work. And that's why this is such a good movie.
We'll say this part straight out. Clooney does a remarkable job of conveying the corrosive tradeoffs of this kind of existence without ever throwing a single, scenery-chewing tantrum. He doesn't make faces. He doesn't roll his eyes. He keeps them almost immobile, in a level gaze that is simultaneously searching, perceptive, determined and defeated. He's carrying exactly the right number of extra pounds -- five, seven -- that tell you he's no action hero. But he's tough enough to take the blow without flinching when a man he respects tells him, "You're not an attorney. You're a bagman." He doesn't even blink, but you can feel the depth of the insult anyway. (He is an attorney in this movie.) It's like a punch he's been waiting for without knowing exactly when it would come. It's a knockout shot, but his knees don't buckle until the final scene, when he does what all of us have felt like doing after a really bad day at the office.
There won't be any spoilers here. The plot is, for once, actually subsidiary to the quiet internal war being experienced by the protagonist. And Clooney's isn't the only noteworthy performance. Tilda Swinton, in the role of an ambitious executive in way over her head, and Tom Wilkinson as a brilliant but crazed attorney could both be given an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor without raising any eyebrows. Wilkinson has a scene in which he switches from confused defensiveness to laser-like intimidation with stunning credibility. (The last thing the Brits can still do is act the pants off everyone else.)
Swinton and Wilkinson. He has a nude scene and she doesn't. But her
semi-nude scene is far more revealing and, somehow, downright chilling.
One final tip before you rent or go see this movie. Don't be looking for the hidden lefty agenda. (Even though Clooney is one of the executive producers.) For once, it isn't there. Yes, we're talking about bad corporate behavior, but the real quality of this screenplay is its understanding that bad things are done by individuals, not by vast over-arching conspiracies. And that's probably why Michael Clayton won't be quite enough of a statement about our evil capitalist system to please the Academy.
Here's our promise. We won't stop criticizing Clooney for his moronic politics. But we won't ever call him untalented again. Fair enough? We hope so. This business of being fair is a real bitch.
posted at
5:31 pm
by
The Glimmers
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Unhooked from
Reality
One of the executions w/o trial ordered by Castro henchman
Che Guevara, he of the fashion accessories & Obama decor.
One of the executions w/o trial ordered by Castro henchman
Che Guevara, he of the fashion accessories & Obama decor.
A BETTER PLACE. Some mysteries get old without getting solved and people gradually lose interest in solving them. That doesn't make them less mysterious; it just makes them more opaque. At the moment one of the most baffling such mysteries is being covered up by a wildly over-extended figleaf. What would happen if we ripped away that leaf? Let's see. But first, some background.
By now, everyone's seen the CNN talking points about how Castro's regime should be characterized by that network's correspondents:
Some points on Castro – for adding to
our anchor reads/reporting:
* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.
* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.
* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.
* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.
* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.
* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.
* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.
* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.
Enter the figleaf: Castro's excellent record on health care and education. Remember it. Perhaps this will help:
People who care about such things have probably also seen some lefty apologists stepping up to the plate for Castro, like this one by a Brit professor in the blog Crooked Timber:
Castro
retires
Posted by Chris Bertram
I haven’t looked yet, but I’ve no doubt that there’ll be lots of posts in the blogosphere saying “good riddance” to Fidel Castro (especially from “left” US bloggers like Brad DeLong who never miss the chance to distance themselves). And, of course, Castro ran a dictatorship that has, since 1959, committed its fair share of crimes, repressions, denials of democratic rights etc. Still, I’m reminded of A.J.P. Taylor writing somewhere or other (reference please, dear readers?) that what the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the earth’s surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help [sic] defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre! [emphases added]
Posted by Chris Bertram
I haven’t looked yet, but I’ve no doubt that there’ll be lots of posts in the blogosphere saying “good riddance” to Fidel Castro (especially from “left” US bloggers like Brad DeLong who never miss the chance to distance themselves). And, of course, Castro ran a dictatorship that has, since 1959, committed its fair share of crimes, repressions, denials of democratic rights etc. Still, I’m reminded of A.J.P. Taylor writing somewhere or other (reference please, dear readers?) that what the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the earth’s surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help [sic] defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre! [emphases added]
Don't be content, though, with reading just the blog entry. Read the comments, too. Other lefties of varying stripes weigh in, some even to criticize Bertram for passing too lightly over Castro's excesses, to which he responds incredulously (paraphrase), "Didn't you see the part where I mentioned crimes, repressions, etc?" (Don't you just love the cavalierness of that "etc"? How many lives have disappeared without a trace into the bottomless pit of that abbreviation?) Mostly, though, they're trying to explain away the symptoms of Cuba's misery in rather astonishing ways. For example, the fact that most refugees headed directly to the U.S. is indicative of capitalists relocating to a more lucrative market rather than flight from political oppression. I kid you not. Read'em for yourself.
The key point is that the views held by the bloggers and commenters at Crooked Timber aren't unusual. A current editorial at the National Review demonstrates just how very usual they are:
Castro has viciously persecuted Cuban
intellectuals — anyone with an independent thought—but intellectuals in
the West have done little to come to their aid...
And liberals, especially from Hollywood, have always paraded down to Havana, to toast and coo at the dictator. Carole King sang “You’ve Got a Friend” to him — and he has a great many. Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell: All have been there. Campbell hailed Castro as “a source of inspiration to the world.” She and other celebrities are now devotees of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who campaigns to be Castro’s replacement on the world scene.
And Castro has his friends and champions in American politics — particularly Reps. Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano, both of New York. Rangel, a press pet, would literally embrace Castro when the dictator came to New York to perform at the U.N.
And liberals, especially from Hollywood, have always paraded down to Havana, to toast and coo at the dictator. Carole King sang “You’ve Got a Friend” to him — and he has a great many. Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell: All have been there. Campbell hailed Castro as “a source of inspiration to the world.” She and other celebrities are now devotees of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who campaigns to be Castro’s replacement on the world scene.
And Castro has his friends and champions in American politics — particularly Reps. Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano, both of New York. Rangel, a press pet, would literally embrace Castro when the dictator came to New York to perform at the U.N.
(And NRO was so kind as not to mention Jimmy Carter, Barbara Walters, and... oh, fuck it.)
Ah, but health care. And education. The two axes of that oh-so-precious cover for the dirty privates of Castro's Cuba. Except that they're both made-up crap. Even brass-balled propagandist Michael Moore is forced to retreat to a defense of Canadian and European "universal health care" in this exchange with ABC's John Stossel:
What's especially galling is that it's American taxpayers who are doing more than anyone else to subsidize the fraud of Cuba's health care publicity stunt.
The end of Soviet subsidies forced Cuba
to face the real costs of its health care system. Unwilling to adopt
the economic changes necessary to reform its dysfunctional economy, the
Castro government quickly faced a large budget deficit. In response,
the Cuban Government made a deliberate decision to continue to spend
money to maintain its military and internal security apparatus at the
expense of other priorities--including health care.
According to the Pan American Health Organization, the Cuban Government currently devotes a smaller percentage of its budget for health care than such regional countries as Jamaica, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. ...
The US embargo does NOT deny medicines and medical supplies to the Cuban people. As stipulated in Section 1705 of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the U.S. Government routinely issues licenses for the sale of medicine and medical supplies to Cuba....
Since the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act, the U.S. has become the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Cuba. Much of the humanitarian assistance by U.S. non-governmental organizations consists of medicines and medical equipment. The U.S. Government has licensed more than $150 million in humanitarian assistance to Cuba over the last four years. That is more than the total of worldwide foreign aid to Cuba during that period....
According to the Pan American Health Organization, the Cuban Government currently devotes a smaller percentage of its budget for health care than such regional countries as Jamaica, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. ...
The US embargo does NOT deny medicines and medical supplies to the Cuban people. As stipulated in Section 1705 of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the U.S. Government routinely issues licenses for the sale of medicine and medical supplies to Cuba....
Since the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act, the U.S. has become the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Cuba. Much of the humanitarian assistance by U.S. non-governmental organizations consists of medicines and medical equipment. The U.S. Government has licensed more than $150 million in humanitarian assistance to Cuba over the last four years. That is more than the total of worldwide foreign aid to Cuba during that period....
So let's get this straight. The evil American capitalist health care industry provides Cuba with most of the equipment and medicine they employ -- although these resources are routinely diverted to the Castro inner circle elite and to foreign health care "tourists" -- while the America-hating left just as routinely cites Cuba's ludicrous propaganda as some kind of embarrassment for a country that is in every way freer, richer, better cared for, and altruistically generous even to its most malign neighbor. Got it?
You see, it's all okay because of that 100 percent literacy rate. The Cuban method of counting can be trusted implicitly, of course, since Castro only lies about the "et ceteras" of life in his country, like how many dissidents have been imprisoned, tortured and killed. When it comes to the important stuff, like the precious kids everyone's willing to trade every other freedom for, we must believe whatever they say. In Cuba, as nowhere else, education is valued for its own pure sake:
On April 4, 1961 the Cuban dictator
created the "Unión de Pioneros de Cuba" (Union of Pioneers of
Cuba).
Almost all Cuban children, including Elian Gonzalez (above), have to become 'pioneros.'
If you don't want your child to be a pionero his chances of getting an education in Castro's Cuba are almost non existent Pioneros have to participate in many extra-curricular activities, like marching in front of the US Interests Section whenever the dictator wants, or any other activities being promoted by the Castro regime.
Pioneros are also asked to denounce any counterrevolutionary activity that they see at home, or at the homes of their friends, to their teachers. Many Cuban parents went to jail because one of their children notified authorities that their parents were talking about the government or doing anything at home that was considered 'illegal.'
When the pioneros participate in a government march or any other government sponsored activity, they are given a coupon like the one above. These coupons must be given to their teachers the following day proving that you participated. If you don't turn in your coupon and don't have a very good excuse, the teacher will make a notation on the "Expediente Acumulativo del Estudiante" (Student Accumulative Dossier) that each Cuban student carries from kindergarten until he graduates from high school....
In addition to information about the student participation in all political activities, the dossier also has information about his family including whether his parents are 'integrated' or not, as can be seen above.
This page reads "Integración Revolucionaria" or Revolutionary Integration. The first line refers to the father and the second line to the mother of the student. It shows if they belong to the Communist Party; to the Union of Cuban Women; to the CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution); the Federation of Cuban Women; and the CTC or Confederation of Cuban Workers. In pre-Castro Cuba, the CTC used to represent Cuban workers and demand new benefits and better salaries for them. In Castro's Cuba the CTC, as everything else, is part of the regime that is exploiting the workers and treating them as if they were slaves.
The poor Cuban workers have to pay a fee to the CTC from their meager salaries in order to be "represented" by them. It is equivalent to Afro-Americans paying a fee to the KKK in order for the KKK to protect their rights as Black citizens! [emphases added]
The above comes from a website operated by Cubans who have escaped from
Cuba. It is therefore to be trusted less than the information which
issues from the Cuban government, which is, after all, a government,
not a collection of disgruntled emigres. I mean, what would American
emigres say about the U.S.? See? Except that American emigres never
have to escape by setting out to sea in rafts made of tied-together
truck tires. If that means anything.Almost all Cuban children, including Elian Gonzalez (above), have to become 'pioneros.'
If you don't want your child to be a pionero his chances of getting an education in Castro's Cuba are almost non existent Pioneros have to participate in many extra-curricular activities, like marching in front of the US Interests Section whenever the dictator wants, or any other activities being promoted by the Castro regime.
Pioneros are also asked to denounce any counterrevolutionary activity that they see at home, or at the homes of their friends, to their teachers. Many Cuban parents went to jail because one of their children notified authorities that their parents were talking about the government or doing anything at home that was considered 'illegal.'
When the pioneros participate in a government march or any other government sponsored activity, they are given a coupon like the one above. These coupons must be given to their teachers the following day proving that you participated. If you don't turn in your coupon and don't have a very good excuse, the teacher will make a notation on the "Expediente Acumulativo del Estudiante" (Student Accumulative Dossier) that each Cuban student carries from kindergarten until he graduates from high school....
In addition to information about the student participation in all political activities, the dossier also has information about his family including whether his parents are 'integrated' or not, as can be seen above.
This page reads "Integración Revolucionaria" or Revolutionary Integration. The first line refers to the father and the second line to the mother of the student. It shows if they belong to the Communist Party; to the Union of Cuban Women; to the CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution); the Federation of Cuban Women; and the CTC or Confederation of Cuban Workers. In pre-Castro Cuba, the CTC used to represent Cuban workers and demand new benefits and better salaries for them. In Castro's Cuba the CTC, as everything else, is part of the regime that is exploiting the workers and treating them as if they were slaves.
The poor Cuban workers have to pay a fee to the CTC from their meager salaries in order to be "represented" by them. It is equivalent to Afro-Americans paying a fee to the KKK in order for the KKK to protect their rights as Black citizens! [emphases added]
Enough. The figleaf is a lie. It always was. Is it really possible that all the Castro apologists ever believed it? Not really. Grinding poverty, fearful silence as the constant ambiance of ordinary folk, and endlessly repeated desperate escape attempts that would never be attempted by the beloved kids of America and Europe are signs that even a Sean Penn, A CNN producer, or a British professor can recognize. Which leaves us with the original mystery stripped bare.
The face of Castro's Cuba
Why have leftists, and liberals
generally, gone so out of their way over the years to admire and suck
up to Castro, to lionize his Eichmann, Che Guevara, and to celebrate
(Yes, they do!) the reign of a murderous, almost certainly psychopathic
dictator whom many of them continue to suspect -- conspiracy theorists
as lefties are in the marrow of their bones -- of assassinating their own most beloved icon of American
liberalism, John F. Kennedy?
Most conservatives act as if this is a sidebar of left/liberal nuttiness, a kind of rococo flourish so bizarre that it's more exclamation point than question mark. They're wrong. The mystery of liiberal sympathy for vicious totalitarians is central to the philosophical corruption they carry in their souls like a fatal spiritual disease.
It's not a quirk. Or an accident. Or a fashion statement. Or an epistemological pose. It's a true measure of their self-hating nihilism. And by self-hating, I'm not limiting the term to their own persons. It's the whole human race they hate. They make their continual excuses for Castro, Stalin and his successors -- including KGB boss Gorbachev, whom they prefer to Reagan as the architect of the Cold War's peaceful resolution -- because in their twisted perception of existence, the worst evolutionary accident of all was the emergence of human self-consciousness and the meaningless agony that fluke inflicted on the most intelligent of our catastrophically destructive species. And despite their excruciating, faithless, existential angst, they are united by a cowardice that prevents them from resorting to individual suicide. Rather, they have chosen to focus their prodigious intellectual talents on achieving at a macro level what lowly New York police officers call "suicide by cop."
The leftists of the western world are the women who write love letters to, and ultimately marry, serial killers. They're the sexual masochists who experience an orgasm as their sadistic lovers murder them in what purports to be an act of love. They're the Canadian Human Rights Commissions, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cindy Sheehan, the citizens of Spain, the AP journalists who call Islamic terrorists gunmen and freedom fighters, they're all the bankrupt, consciousness-hating pseudo-intelligentsia whose deepest desire is to be slaughtered by the one constituency on earth which hates them as much as they hate themselves.
But here's the saddest part of all. Having given away their own share of the divine spark which elevates us all, they have lost the scope of imagination which might enable them to see the vivid ugliness of their own demise. While they may revel in the tortures described in Solzhenitsyns's Gulag Archpelago or Castro's neolithic labor camps, their hyper-intellectualized loss of empathy deprives them of the ability to understand that social justice is not a kind of mathematics that will satisfy their esthetic desire for cancellation. Perhaps that's why the nihilists in charge of the MSM have stopped showing us -- i.e., themselves -- the jumpers from the twin towers and the slow sawing off of heads favored by their Islamist liberators. They have convinced themselves that the just end, when it comes, will be some kind of fulfilling release from the fancied pain of their too pampered lives.
It won't be. That's the only consolation left to the rest of us, those who believe life is worth living and worth dying to save the dignity of.
I'm truly sorry I can't believe that the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States -- and most particularly his wife -- have any idea what I'm talking about. They think a Cuban flag featuring Che Guevara at one of their campaign offices is merely "inappropriate." (If that. Let's be honest.)
I think Americans who hate America for the very vitality that has made this nation the light of the world are inappropriate. But, then, I've never been smart enough to be a nihilist.
Most conservatives act as if this is a sidebar of left/liberal nuttiness, a kind of rococo flourish so bizarre that it's more exclamation point than question mark. They're wrong. The mystery of liiberal sympathy for vicious totalitarians is central to the philosophical corruption they carry in their souls like a fatal spiritual disease.
It's not a quirk. Or an accident. Or a fashion statement. Or an epistemological pose. It's a true measure of their self-hating nihilism. And by self-hating, I'm not limiting the term to their own persons. It's the whole human race they hate. They make their continual excuses for Castro, Stalin and his successors -- including KGB boss Gorbachev, whom they prefer to Reagan as the architect of the Cold War's peaceful resolution -- because in their twisted perception of existence, the worst evolutionary accident of all was the emergence of human self-consciousness and the meaningless agony that fluke inflicted on the most intelligent of our catastrophically destructive species. And despite their excruciating, faithless, existential angst, they are united by a cowardice that prevents them from resorting to individual suicide. Rather, they have chosen to focus their prodigious intellectual talents on achieving at a macro level what lowly New York police officers call "suicide by cop."
The leftists of the western world are the women who write love letters to, and ultimately marry, serial killers. They're the sexual masochists who experience an orgasm as their sadistic lovers murder them in what purports to be an act of love. They're the Canadian Human Rights Commissions, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cindy Sheehan, the citizens of Spain, the AP journalists who call Islamic terrorists gunmen and freedom fighters, they're all the bankrupt, consciousness-hating pseudo-intelligentsia whose deepest desire is to be slaughtered by the one constituency on earth which hates them as much as they hate themselves.
But here's the saddest part of all. Having given away their own share of the divine spark which elevates us all, they have lost the scope of imagination which might enable them to see the vivid ugliness of their own demise. While they may revel in the tortures described in Solzhenitsyns's Gulag Archpelago or Castro's neolithic labor camps, their hyper-intellectualized loss of empathy deprives them of the ability to understand that social justice is not a kind of mathematics that will satisfy their esthetic desire for cancellation. Perhaps that's why the nihilists in charge of the MSM have stopped showing us -- i.e., themselves -- the jumpers from the twin towers and the slow sawing off of heads favored by their Islamist liberators. They have convinced themselves that the just end, when it comes, will be some kind of fulfilling release from the fancied pain of their too pampered lives.
It won't be. That's the only consolation left to the rest of us, those who believe life is worth living and worth dying to save the dignity of.
I'm truly sorry I can't believe that the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States -- and most particularly his wife -- have any idea what I'm talking about. They think a Cuban flag featuring Che Guevara at one of their campaign offices is merely "inappropriate." (If that. Let's be honest.)
I think Americans who hate America for the very vitality that has made this nation the light of the world are inappropriate. But, then, I've never been smart enough to be a nihilist.
