One Evening Years Later....

I've never written anything about my ex-wife. Elton John does it well instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oul-lKr4t5I

Loved you best. Good-bye, Super Girl.
--
Yalla, Dag

Something Rotten in the Dutchmark

I don't know how the Dutch can understand each other, given that they all speak a foreign language. But the message below is pretty clear even so.

Poepterrorist plaagt Eindhoven

(Novum) - Inwoners van de Eindhovense wijk Strijp hebben sinds een aantal weken te kampen met rondslingerende pakketjes poep. De uitwerpselen liggen, verpakt in krantenpapier, op verschillende fietspaden. De gemeente zegt met het 'stinkende zaakje' bezig te zijn en alle pakketjes zorgvuldig op te ruimen. De poepterrorist is vooralsnog onvindbaar.

http://www.trouw.nl/laatstenieuws/ln_opmerkelijk/article1029384.ece/Poepterrorist_plaagt_Eindhoven#readmore

Some "poop terrorist" is leaving stinky bags on people's doorsteps in Eindhoven. What does this remind us of? Maybe this.

4 July, 2008

I was sitting in the booth at the diner with my hands wrapped around a thick white coffee mug, one of those clumbsy things they used at diners in the old days, the kind of mug with the blue line around the rim, coarse and pasty ceramic, the coffee not a bit better. I looked around, scanned the diner, gazed out the window, looked, more for effect than for anything to see. All of outside was just more two-story red brick row-housing mile after mile across Baltimore; in front of every apartment number sat a little compact car under street lamps, some cars different colors from the one parked in front and the one behind. Miles and miles of the same private lives in little spaces in long rows compacted. Pay the rent, pay the bills.... Small worries. But what worried me was an image from the evening before, of the black guy working at the loading dock on the other side of me, he reaching up into the back of the semi trailer, lifting a box onto the conveyor belt, pushing it along, and then going for another, over and over; and the other guy picking up the box at the end of the conveyor belt, picking up the box and turning to put it on the pallet, then turning back for the next box, mechanical, repetitive, to me, pointless. I sat at the diner, like I did most nights, and I thought of the motion never ending till it's all over. I decided to go to university. That was a bit of a leap, you see, given that I was 16 at the time.

I found myself driving through the desert, not for the first time or the last, in the night. I had a pebble stuck in the tread and I could hear the rhythmic click, click, click, I could see the white lane lines rushing forward and falling under my hood, the pin-prick lights of a car approaching in the distance, and then turning away and going somewhere, maybe home, or somewhere, tail lights turning down a dirt road. The silhouettes of the distant mountains in the moonlight perked the plum and wine sky brighter and lush, gave a frame to the tableau of sequoia cacti, barrel cactus that looked in the darkness like big farm boys waving stupidly in the night. I enjoyed the freedom of the road's smooth and the stillness of the night across the desert's flat. I had only a dread of morning and the confrontation with the Sun and the sharp angles of rock reality. Night was comfort and motion and the float of nowhere yet.

I'd occasionally scan the dashboard gauges, looking at the bright little lights in the darkness all around me, bright little lights like poems that suggested of deeper meaning if only one would spend the time and the mental money to prize out the gems. I liked the speedometer needle especially. It was bright and stood alone. It always pointed forward in the darkness. The odometer was my friend on those quiet evenings crossing cold, the white turning band and the yellow moving at different rates out of sync. Sometimes I'd sing a song:

"All hands on deck, we've run afloat!" I heard the captain cry;
"explore the ship, replace the cook: let no one leave alive!"
Across the straits, around the horn: how far can sailors fly?
A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive.

We sailed for parts unknown to man, where ships come home to die.
No lofty peak, nor fortress bold, could match our captains eye.
Upon the seventh seasick day we made our port of call,
A sand so white, and sea so blue, no mortal place at all.

We fired the gun, and burnt the mast, and rowed from ship to shore.
The captain cried, we sailors wept: our tears were tears of joy
Now many moons and many Junes have passed since we made land.
A salty dog, this seaman's log: your witness, my own hand. 2.

I'd sail west in the night, sometimes east.

There is a thing that happens, and I'll explain it now: That in the darkness when one is alive in the world of darkness, one sees the whole of all. I know it. I'd sometimes stop the car in the night and climb out and breathe the air and take in the chill. I could see to every horizon or the hills and the moon and the sky and the stars above shining. I could touch the sky and feel the crumble of dirt and sand beneath my boots. Everything was all at once. I could sit on the hood and warm my butt and gaze and dream and ponder the night and the horses ambling, the crickets, the shape of a bird above.

So, I'll explain it now: that in the night as the car moves on with the man inside, the outside is there too, cut off from the dark, the headlights ploughing a path forward, cleaving the world from the black road. The world there, to either side, and the distant dark spotted with with mustangs, pintos, chargers, impalas, a jaguar. It's a world of them out there, all moving silently, contained in the body, and preying on the weak, eating up the miles and the hours. And in the darkness the needle would shine brighter with each mile, pointing forward, glowing like a fire, rising like a god from the exile of death. I'd see it there burning on the hilltop, and watch as a rabbit on the road would look at his world shrunk to the convergence of the high-beams; and he, bolting, would run to the end of the lit path to escape back to the world that had disappeared from him.

Rabbit in the headlights, his world gone from him could see nothing but the light's illuminated vision, a road, a dark path. Run. Run, run, run. A rabbit can't outrun the lights of a car, can't see beyond the artificial light that blocks out his surroundings, that blinds him to the sides of his freedom. He sees only the straight and narrow in the beams ahead, not able to reach beyond it, not aware that he could stop and turn aside into the free dark world of his own. Trapped in his own fears, he runs on till he slips under the wheels, heart-burst, and is no more forever. Then the needle dims and the light of the false dawn slowly reveals the rocks and the dust and the roadside motels decorated with the stripped-out chassis of abandoned derelicts, a cracked tyre on a frayed rope hanging from a rafter of a broken barn.

Had a mother once. Didn't like her much. Tried to murder me.

Don't get home all that often. Have to keep moving. Can't risk getting stuck. Have to go onward.

Oh, mamma.

I come from a free country. I'm a free man. Every day is an independent day for me and mine. But one day a year is more than that. That one day is Independence Day, the Fourth of July. It's about something I try to deal with when I'm on the road. It's about our nation. It's about the light on the land. It's about amber waves of grain. It's about marching to the Halls of Montezuma. It's about voting for some crook. It's about yelling at the television newscaster. It's about going for a haircut at Elmo's and listening to the barber talk about the Yankees. It's about hitting on a waitress at IHOP. Fanbelts and broken fence-wire and snow in the driveway and the kids crying from the flu and the girlfriend nagging and the phone ringing when you're in the shower. It's about 'you do the best you can.'

We don't celebrate Freedom Day. There's no such day on the calender. We celebrate Independence Day.

I have all the freedom I could ever hope for, and I don't much care. I have two lane blacktop and two wheels to move me till I hit some beach and need a ship to carry me back to my old home where I don't live there. Freedom I have a lot of. Independence I have a lot of too. I have something else, though, that most people don't: I have the Fourth of July in me.

All the petty shit of a grinding day and the knowledge that it ends in a distant ditch, I don't care at all. I have the joy of Independence Day. When we cheer, I am there. I touch the ground and it is home. My country.

I have the Stars and the Stripes.

I sit in foreign diners and sip coffee from paper cups and look around me at strangers making mechanical motions in distant places. I look away and see high towers row upon row across the landscape, at their feet little cars buzzing like bugs in gloom. I listen to foreigners who hate my country.

Something nice to end with? I don't have anything nice for this day. We will live as we live and die when we do. We can do pretty much as we please because a few men some long time ago on the fourth of July signed their names on some paper and agreed to stick with it, the Declaration of Independence. They started this whole thing, and to this day we have men and women still fighting to keep our independence alive and vital. I do the stupidest damned things, and still, men and women fight for my right to do so. I could do better. But if I do or do worse, those who save my nation from those who would harm it do so for the nation of us all, people good or ill. We're independent. We decide. We make our own moves.

Independence. Day.



1. Edward Hopper, "Nighthawks." 1942
2. Gary Brooker / Keith Reid, "A Salty Dog." Procul Harum. 1969
3. "Johns makes us see familiar objects in a different way by utilizing optical illusions. If you stare at the top flag long enough, then shift your focus to the gray flag below, it seems to take on the familiar colors of red, white, and blue." http://www.wakeforest.edu/art/ac_johns_flags.htm

Tabac Osama: Everybody Knows

Melissa Etheridge and Carson McCullers would both have gone for me like crazy if only only. But everybody knows. And I keep on going, even though everybody knows. I got too few secrets. Everybody knows. They know I think Osama sucks.

Yup, everybody knows. Camille Paglia knows. Everybody knows.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

http://www.oddball.net/lyrics/?tt=Everybody_Knows&bn=Leonard_Cohen&an=I'm_Your_Man&dsl=327
Oh. Oh. Osama Balama. Everybody knows.

"I'm the only one."

Might as well get up and dance.

Eugenics as a Socialist Project

The following feature from the National Post covers one of the main themes of this blog so nicely that I run it in full and hope it spreads to every mind on Earth, it being an excellent summary of eugenics and a great piece on socialists in general. Socialists: I call them Death Hippies for a number of reasons, and this piece will shed more light on at least one reason:

Michael Coren: Don't blame right-wing thugs for eugenics — Socialists made it fashionable

Posted: June 16, 2008, 3:01 PM by Marni Soupcoff

Michael Coren

An exhibition of the history of those scientific ideas that gave a grimy intellectual veneer to the Nazi genocide opens this week at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The collection centres on eugenics, the notion that humanity can be improved and perfected by selective breeding and the elimination of individuals and groups considered to be undesirable. Entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, it reveals how it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.

The exhibit is important, accurate but, regrettably, long overdue. It also fails to stress just how much the socialist left initiated and supported the eugenics campaign, not only in Germany but in Britain, the U.S. and the rest of Europe. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, English social democrat leader Sydney Webb and, in Canada, Tommy Douglas were just three influential socialists who called, for example, for the mass sterilization of the handicapped. In his Master's thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family, the now revered Douglas argued that the mentally and even physically disabled should be sterilized and sent to camps so as not to "infect" the rest of the population.

It is deeply significant that few if any of Douglas's left-wing comrades in this country or internationally were surprised or offended by his proposals. Indeed the early fascism of 1920s Italy, while unsavoury and dictatorial, had little connection with social engineering and eugenics. The latter German version of fascism was influenced not by ultra conservatism in southern Europe but, as is made clear in the writings of the Nazi ideologues, by the Marxist left.

The most vociferous and outspoken of the social eugenicists was the novelist HG Wells, author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. He argued in best-selling books such as Anticipations and A Modern Utopia that the world would collapse and from this collapse a new order should and would emerge.

"People throughout the world whose minds were adapted to the big-scale conditions of the new time. A naturally and informally organised educated class, an unprecedented sort of people." A strict social order would be formed. At the bottom of it were the base. These were "people who had given evidence of a strong anti-social disposition", including "the black, the brown, the swarthy, the yellow." Christians would also "have to go" as well as the handicapped. Wells devoted entire pamphlets to the need of "preventing the birth, preventing the procreation or preventing the existence" of the mentally and physically handicapped. "This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and the sensual is possible. I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved."

The people of Africa and Asia, he said, simply could never find a place in a modern world controlled by science. Better to do away with the lot. "I take it they will have to go" he said of them. Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their "desires, diseases, needs" on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom.

Population would be rigidly controlled, with forced abortion for those who were not of the right class and race. Religion would be banned, children would be raised in communes and all would be well. The old and the ill would, naturally, have to be done away with and doctors would be given the authority to decide who had a right to live, who had a duty to die.

In the United States socialist writer Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the mother of the abortion movement, called for a radical eugenics approach as early as the first years of the 20th century. She wrote of the need for "a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization."

The key of civilization. Unlocking the doors of a hell once unimaginable but now, after the Holocaust, the Ukrainian genocide, Pol Pot and Mao's mass slaughter, entirely within the grasp of contemporary sensibilities. History is often clouded by fashion and the whims of the victorious. Because some of the most pernicious intellectual criminals of the past century wore red they have escaped condemnation. It is time for the clouds to clear and the fashions to change.

www.michaelcoren.com

— Broadcaster Coren's biography of HG Wells was described by The New Yorker as "superb" and The Times as "outstanding."

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/06/16/michael-coren-don-t-blame-right-wing-thugs-for-eugenics-socialists-made-it-fashionable.aspx

I'm busy writing my response to the question, "What is fascism?" This is one part of one aspect of the answer. Of course many people won't like it, the look at what fascism is, what socialism is. It challenges conventional wisdom. The truth about socialism will destroy careers. It will ruin reputations and it'll ruin lives. Such is life. Truth hurts sometimes. I don't like it fairly often. Nothing to do but struggle on and hope, maybe thanking the gods for a bit of insight, and perhaps feeling some gratitude that one can know rather than live in ignorance or self-induced stupidity forever. I hope I live for a thousand years so I can learn enough to be a decent person. It'll probably take at least that long even though I try hard to do better. Those who resist can likely hold out for many thousands of years. There ain't so much time. Get what we can and hope, I say.

Thanks to CGW: Milking the System

A long while ago Truepeers asked me to define "fascism." I use the term too often, it seem, without defining what I mean by it. I went to the library with Charles and got loads of books, and I've gone through my own books, and I've got more books since, all in the effort to define the term properly, according to my abilities. I'm not done yet, though I've got roughly 100 pages of cramped long-hand per page, none of that wasted space with margins and such. I'm still at it. Will post more regularly once I finish. Meanwhile, here's all about cows, thanks to CGW.

DEMOCRATIC

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbra Streisand sings for you.


REPUBLICAN

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?


SOCIALIST

You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.


COMMUNIST

You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.


CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.


BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one,
milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.


AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised
when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating
you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.


FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.


JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.


GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent
quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.


ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.


RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.


TALIBANCORPORATION

You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private
parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to
milk production but use the money to buy weapons.


IRAQI CORPORATION

You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.


POLISH CORPORATION

You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.


BELGIAN CORPORATION

You have one cow.
The cow has split-personality disorder.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.


FLORIDA CORPORATION

You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote
for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is
the best-looking cow.


CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are il legals.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders

http://somehavehats.typepad.com/some_have_hats/2008/06/an-old-joke-lea.html

Obama Team Hires Rocco and Vinnie to Quash Rumors

Obama combats darker side of Internet politics

WASHINGTON (AFP-RE/Press) — Democrat Barack Obama has shown the stunning power of the Internet for political fundraising. Now he is fighting its darker side as a vehicle for "smears" against his bid for the White House.

Pausing from a war of words with Republican John McCain over taxes, the African-American senator Thursday unveiled an interactive website to debunk false rumors peddled by email and right-wing media outlets.

The site at www.fightthesmears.com was created after one recent, and thus-far unfounded, assertion that Obama's wife Michelle had been caught on tape slurring white people.

"We created an interactive tool to allow our supporters to fight back against these smears in the same way that they received them -- on the Internet," campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "And if that's not enough, we send in Rocco and Vinnie to make things right."

"People can upload their address books and easily send fact-based emails to their friends and family," he said.

"Just knowing the truth isn't enough -- you have to proactively tell people the truth to fight back. Bust some chops maybe."

Obama campaign aides said that because of the innate evil of so many non-Obama persons, it was essential to reach out through innovative channels, one of which was hiring Rocco and Vinni to quash rumors before they have a chance to reach the unenlightened.

"I got a guy in South Chi who knows some guys in Brooklyn who did time with a guy who set up a meeting with Rocco and Vinnie for Obama's team. Dese guys are funny. When dey ain't crackin' jokes dey's crackin skulls, ya know? And den dey goes on ta crush testicles. Youch."

The Obama team expects quick results once the new investigative and corrective efforts of Rocco and Vinni become known to the non-Obama public.

"Dese rumas, dey gottsta end, ya know?" said Rocco, a lean and tattooed man of about 30, found conducting business in a back room at Smack Yer Balls pool hall last evening in Bed.Stuy.

Now you know. Vote accordingly.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOZW2q0bm_qkN6-U9knaGt-ehdPg

Obama Pop

Imagine, all this time I though Baraka Banana was hoping to get erected because he's a gasbag with nothing inside. How wrong was I. No need to repeat that. I have mended my ways. I now understand that Osama will quell the tides and heal the Earth. That's right, it's time for Obama Soda, [insert echo], all the fizzle and twice the froth, sugar.

My only question is, "If we can," how come it's in a bottle?

Muslim Activist Fails Dale Carnegie Course Big-Time

More threats, more obnoxious posing, more inane ranting from a sock puppet sent to B.C to do Mohammed Elmasry's dirty work on behalf of stealth jihad. Not very stealthy. More like more of the same. Muslims have it bad? Let's see. How about going for dinner at a Muslim establishment? OK, and once you find Muslims have poisoned you with their own excrement sprinkled liberally on your food, maybe you want to go to a Muslim doctor.

And so on.

I met Dale Carnegie once, and he told me, "Dag, some people just aren't worth befriending." I asked if they were worth beheading. But, you see, I was joking. Seriously, I'd settle for some people just shutting their mouths for the next 100 years or so. I'm not going to get that lucky, though, am I?

Muslims told to demand equal voice in media

Laws against promoting hatred called useless

Joseph Brean, Published: Monday, June 09, 2008

TORONTO - Muslims must "demand that right to participate" in national media, Khurrum Awan, the primary witness in the Maclean's magazine hate speech hearing, told a weekend conference of the Canadian Arab Federation.

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars," he said.

On a discussion panel with Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and Haroon Siddiqui, editor emeritus of the Toronto Star, Mr. Awan described his increasingly high-profile struggle "against particular elements in media that are misusing and abusing their responsibility" in writing about Islam.

Under the sponsorship of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and with the help of a small team of fellow recent graduates of Osgoode Hall law school, that struggle has so far involved complaints to the British Columbia, Ontario and federal human rights commissions over an excerpt of Mark Steyn's book America Alone in Maclean's magazine in 2006.

The only case to be heard so far, in B. C, concluded last week with a decision pending.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=573457

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no law against being a total arsehole. If there were, Awan would get life in solitary. And the rest of us could breathe a little bit.

On Ernst Haeckel and the Roots of Left Dhimmi Fascism

Recently my friend and colleague at Covenant Zone, Truepeers used the brilliant phrase: "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." I laughed when I read it. It's sort of true, and it's essential insight if one cares to solve the puzzle of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Peers is an ardent student of Canadian history, a passionate defender of the good aspects of the nation, and perhaps recalled the phrase from Stephen Jay Gould. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Peers came up with it off the top of his head. Then again, the Internet reveals: " Every biology student knows Ernst Haeckel as the originator of the "Biogenetic Law": ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Yeah, I knew that. Regardless, it does originate from our old nemesis here, the founder of the 'science' of ecology, Ernst Haeckel. That doesn't detract from the beauty of the phrase, and it does present a chance to reprise Haeckel here.

Not to go on at length about ecology this time round. Not to delve into ecology as the ground of "Blood and Soil" mysticism. No, the point is to leave yet another reference to Haeckel for further points later. I blame Peers for this, he having asked me persistently for a couple of years to define "fascism." Now that I'm around page 200 into it, I have soon to turn my attention to Haeckel again; and I use this opportunity to beg further insights and information from my readers. For those who know little or nothing about the man in question, this short run-down from an amazon book review and a bit of bio. from wikipedia will perhaps start a long and careful look into why we think we think the things we think:

Short review -- get this book. It's only 180 pages or so, but it's an excellent reference book on your shelf the next time some numbskull lazily hurls around the "Nazi" label against any political ideology he or she opposes. Very well documented and researched.

This book describes the origins of National Socialist thought (the "Volk" movement), and its connections to Darwinism, evolution, and nature worship. The author does an excellent job at the connecting the dots between Ernst Haeckel's evolutionary Monism and Hitler's philosophy. This should be read by all, because the evil ideology of National Socialism is irresponsibly misrepresented in pop culture as a capitalistic, Christian enterprise, when nothing could be further from the truth. An excellent companion to "Nazi Economics" by Barkai, another good myth-buster.

It's kind of scary how little people know about the intellectual origins of Nazism, how it's glossed over by professors and "intellectuals" who find that the skeletal backbone of National Socialism hits a little too close to home.

And here, a little less heated, is wikipedia:

Haeckel promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' entire evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

Haeckel's political beliefs were influenced by his affinity for the German Romantic movement coupled with his acceptance of a form of Lamarckism. Rather than being a strict Darwinian Haeckel believed that racial characteristics were acquired through interactions with the environment and that phylogeny directly followed ontogeny. He believed the social sciences to be instances of "applied biology". Most of these arguments have been shown to be over-generalizations at best and flatly incorrect at worst in modern biology and social studies.

Haeckel was the first person known to use the term "First World War". Shortly after the start of the war Haeckel wrote:

" There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared "European War"...will become the first world war in the full sense of the word. " Indianapolis Star, September 20, 1914
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel

What, you might ask, has this to do with jihad, with our people murdered by crazed Muslim fanatics who continue to this day to plot to kill and/or enslave the world under the rule of the caliphate? It has much to do with Left dhimmi fascism, with our own people who are our own worst enemies, those who, hating America and our beautiful Modernity, seek to destroy America, hence Modernity itself, and return the world to pristine Nature and man to his prior feudal state as farm animal. We live with assumptions we seldom think of questioning, and here I hope to open up some of those assumptions of things as they are to explore just why they are as we think they are. What is fascism? How can I go on for years here about fascism without defining it properly? I find I cannot go on further without a real and definitive definition after all. Part of the answer is in the works of Haeckel.

I'll continue with this, and other themes related, as time allows.

Meanwhile, if you're in the mood for some fun, click the link to see some pomo musings about fascism. It's by Mark Mcintire, SBCC. Not me. I just liked it enough to post it for passers-by. Not me! I'm not that clever.