vxbush 8/15/2022 6:07:52 AM

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vxbush 8/15/2022 6:42:15 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 1:

I should have put up a warning: it's a long piece for online reading. 

buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 8:00:01 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 1:

There's an immense amount of confused, self-contradictory, and incomplete ranting in that article.  Unfortunately, I don't have time at present to provide a few examples; I'll try to do so later today if I can.

Occasional Reader 8/15/2022 8:05:06 AM

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Google searches for the term "firewood" have exploded in Germany. 

If only some (orange-haired) person had warned them! 

Occasional Reader 8/15/2022 8:12:17 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 4:

And the idea of Germans desperately looking for biomass of some sort to burn in ovens... makes me a little nervous. 

vxbush 8/15/2022 8:14:22 AM

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In #3 buzzsawmonkey said: There's an immense amount of confused, self-contradictory, and incomplete ranting in that article.  Unfortunately, I don't have time at present to provide a few examples; I'll try to do so later today if I can.

I'd appreciate it. This is NOT an area of expertise for me, so I really don't know enough history to know if this makes sense or not. I definitely ned sources to compare against. 

buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 8:33:17 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 6:

Just for starters, the notion that the evil bankers deliberately crashed the economy in 1929 is ridiculous---but the article starts out stating that ideological belief as fact and digging deeper from there.  The  article seems to think that Roosevelt was president from about 1930 (he was elected in 1932, inaugurated in '33; the New Deal had barely started in the 1933/1934 period the author is writing about).  Hitler, BTW, did not really take power until 1933 either, and he'd barely gotten going in '33/'34.  

The real concern about a fascist threat in the US was leading up to FDR's first re-election campaign, when Huey Long, sometime governor of and at that time Senator from Louisiana, split with Roosevelt and made it clear that he would challenge FDR for the presidential nomination in '36.  Long, who was famous for running Louisiana in a gangster/fascist manner as a personal fiefdom, was cut down by an assassin's bullet in '35.   

Something of the feel of that era politically can be gotten by reading Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," which is  a novel about the fascist takeover of the US by a bombastic Senator elected president, aided by his flagrantly-homosexual sidekick.  

Some films which deal with all this are, of course, "Golddiggers of 1933," especially the finale which recalled the then-still-fresh social wounds of the US Army routing the Bonus March veterans and their families from Anacostia Flats at bayonet-point; "American Madness" (early Capra, starring Walter Huston), which deals with a banker trying to combat the Depression by lending money based "on character," and having to deal with a run on his bank; "Gabriel Over the White House," wherein the angel Gabriel possesses the comatose body of a corrupt president (the film also alludes to the Bonus March); "Stand Up and Cheer," the film which introduced Shirley Temple and which features Warner Baxter appointed as "Secretary of Education" so that America can "laugh its way out of the Depression."  The "I'm Laughing" sequence, available on YouTube, is excellent;  the finale, "We're Out of the Red," which features a parade of people in different walks of life---bakers, construction workers, etc., etc.,---celebrating the (alleged) end of the Depression, is a cross between a Leni Reifenstahl filming of the "work brigades" at a Nazi rally in Munich, and the pre-Nazi photographs of August Sander.  

Occasional Reader 8/15/2022 9:17:05 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 7:

as I have said before I come up in a just world at least there should be a way for you to earn a very good living teaching this stuff.

buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 10:17:21 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 8:

I should perhaps mention that "Gabriel Over the White House" has occasionally been condemned as "a fascist movie" because the "angelic" president shows a fine disregard for legal/constitutional niceties.  

More interesting (to me, anyway) is that it is a modern update of the legend of King Robert of Sicily being koepenicked (possessed) by an angel, a story which is also referenced in the pre-WWI Saki short story "Ministers of Grace," wherein angels possess a number of British politicians, with disastrous results.

buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 10:44:45 AM

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Let me also add, as a reader's guide for anyone who might pick up "It Can't Happen Here (I recommend it; it's a bit overlong, as all Lewis's works are, but his instincts in describing American types is unerring), that one should be aware of the intentionally-punning names which abound therein.

It's been some time since I read the book, so do not remember the names of all the characters, but the fascist  Senator is named Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip.  "Buzz wind-rip" = "fart."  His homosexual sidekick is "Lee Sarason," i.e., "the Saracen."  The hero's first name is "Doremus," i.e., dormouse---in other words, someone who is asleep.  One of the villains is named "Effingham Swan"; "Effingham" = "f*cking pig."

buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 11:58:40 AM

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Occasional Reader 8/15/2022 12:18:00 PM

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In #11 buzzsawmonkey said: Haz I done kilt the thread?

Oh, no.  It was beauty killed the thread.  

-Carl Denham

buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 12:24:51 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 12:
++++++++++++++×

Occasional Reader 8/15/2022 1:50:44 PM

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buzzsawmonkey 8/15/2022 5:20:43 PM

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Kosh's Shadow 8/15/2022 5:21:55 PM

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In #14 Occasional Reader said: BBC is shocked to learn that the Taliban have broken their promises.  

Were they also surprised there is gambling at Rick's?

Kosh's Shadow 8/15/2022 5:23:22 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 15:

I just got here.

Kosh's Shadow 8/15/2022 6:54:54 PM

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