Feeling the Bern: Up and Down Sanders’ Weak-Kneed Play for the Poor and Desperate

/ M.B. Drapier / 2 Comments

While neither trying too hard, nor trying too little, we allow ourselves reckless observations about the sensationalism and mind-numbing echoes of a thousand voices screaming at us constantly. Dragged between war, drugs, sex, love, peace, religion, politics, and money, we somehow catch the drift of an overpowering stench. Transparent Eye-balls were gouged out long ago and have been rotting in a corner ever since. Just like Icarus soaring for the sun, we sought to catch the glorious, ethereal rays and boast of our power to the universe. But we didn’t create, or even harness this overpowering spotlight — we were blasted by it and told to reflect it every which way. No filters, no blinders, and no breaks. Pure, unadulterated sunlight, bombasting our brains and airwaves until we had soaked in every square inch of propaganda, only to start oozing it out ourselves.

The Mangy Dogs of Main Street

I was at a political forum last week, and a GOP candidate for president was speaking to a packed hall. Besides the rip-roaring applause, there was booing from two kids who were preaching the gospel truth of free higher education and climate change. I’m in a unique position because I know folks on both sides of the spectrum. Many personal acquaintances are young, kicking into college and the workplace for the first time. My professional life services multi-millionaires on a daily basis NOT A PROSTITUTE…, and the stories of how they made their millions are about as diverse as you can imagine. Truckdrivers, mailmen, real estate tycoons, and heirs of inheritances — not all of them earned their dollars with blood and sweat, but the vast majority of them did earn their fortune themselves.

Social Justice seeks a shocking disambiguation in the war between classes, where we can simply label all of mankind as haves and have-nots. Continue reading →

The Startling Normality of Adolf Hitler

/ bellewether / Leave a comment

Part of my course load this year requires me to teach Nazi Germany. Frankly, it’s been years since I’ve done work on the Second World War, but I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with the subject. The unfortunate thing is that studying the Nazis is emotionally challenging if only because good history requires, to paraphrase Atticus Finch’s words to his daughter Scout, the ability to walk around in another man’s shoes. Of course empathy for an abused black man is easier for us to grasp that for a demonic mass-murderer. And yet the historical enterprise seeks truth: what happened, why did it happen, why did people do what they did? To answer these questions there is no choice but to get into Hitler’s jackboots and strut around a bit, no matter how painful for the historically conscious.

A. N. Wilson has written a short but complete history of Hitler entitled, well, Hitler. For the most part his methodology is on track and he does a good job standing above the emotional fray and giving a straight account of the man and his times. He does fall into some unnecessary dissonance with his description of counterfactual history as a mere parlor game while occasionally playing the parlor game himself. Alternative histories can be specious, and Wilson is astute to point this out, but we must be careful not to be fooled into thinking that what happened must have happened. Nevertheless, one thing (among others) that Wilson does well is help the reader appreciate not only how insane Hitler was, but more importantly, how normal and sane he was by the standards of his times.

Continue reading →

Dead White Men. Also, an Introduction (of sorts) to Bellewether.

/ bellewether / 1 Comment

I am an educator at an international high school. Most my day is spent teaching students history and interacting with colleagues. It’s a good gig. I’ll mention it more in the future since kids from abroad have a way of casting a strange light on American culture. They generally seem to like Americans (although they find our drinking laws preposterous) but they find some of our sexual mores (among other things) peculiar. We are both too liberal and too conservative.

I digress, but will return to this at a later date.

One day I headed home with a fellow teacher and in the course of the conversation classical education came up and after a I give her a brief description the teacher says, without a hint of real cynicism in her voice, “Oh, so dead white men education.” Continue reading →