A Political Refugee From The Global Village : Monet, Belloc and Trump, Muslims, No Deal, Dr Johnson on gluttonous women

Saturday, 19 January 2019

Monet, Belloc and Trump, Muslims, No Deal, Dr Johnson on gluttonous women

Claude Monet: To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.

George Will in the National Review, two years ago today, likened Trump to the water beetle described by Hilaire Belloc:

He flabbergasts the Human Race

By gliding on the water’s face

With ease, celerity and grace;

But if he ever stopped to think

Of how he did it, he would sink.

This seemed very true when I read it. I love Belloc quotations. Belloc serves you well as a child and at all ages.

Andrew Willshire in The Spectator last month in an article called Rory Stewart is right: the shock of a no-deal Brexit would be fatal for the Tories.

Loss aversion is one of the fundamental characteristics of human psychology. You can be sure that every single catastrophe that befalls an individual in the post-Brexit period will be blamed on the Tory government that let it happen – or indeed argued in its favour. The gains will be small and will accrue gradually across a dispersed group of people, the losses will be immediate, personal and deeply felt.

Now imagine looking a close friend in the eye when they have lost their job. Maybe they voted to remain, wanting only to get on with their lives. Will you tell them that it’s worth it? Or will you have the common decency to feel ashamed?

Mrs May’s deal deserves to be backed because it achieves the aim of leaving the EU while minimising the risk of sudden economic shocks. The Tory Party still hasn’t recovered from its first Thatcher moment. It cannot afford another.

In this video-clip a meeting of a diverse group of "normal, not radical" British Muslims agree unanimously that all the punishments, whether the death penalty, stoning or other penalties, stipulated in the Koran "are the best punishments ever possible and should be applied in the world". This is perfectly unsurprising and right of them, by the way: all Muslims are required to believe the Koran is the word of God. I post this to clear up misunderstandings about Muslim 'extremism', not to attack Muslims.

Senator Rand PaulVerified account @RandPaul 15 hours ago15 hours ago
MoreSunnis have been killing Shia since the massacre at Karbala in 680 AD. If we wait until they stop killing each other, we will stay for a thousand years or more. I agree with @realDonaldTrump. Bring the troops home.

Dr Johnson: When once you find a woman gluttonous expect of her very little virtue.

7 comments:

Toma19 January 2019 at 10:50
I've tried to make it shorter but I couldn't... May the gods of copyright infringement forgive me... Here it is, in its entirety:

An outbreak of good manners
by Theodore Dalrymple

I am so used to lamentation – my own, that is – that I know that I am sometimes inclined to overlook how much better certain things have become of late years. We notice deterioration; we take improvement for granted the moment they have occurred.

Among the things that have improved in the London Underground. I spent most of my early life in London but am now only an occasional visitor, and I never cease to be astonished by the improvement in the underground service. The trains are cleaner, more rapid, more frequent better-ventilated, roomier and quieter than I remember them. I recall with a kind of condescending or indulgent amusement that the civilised are inclined to employ towards the primitive that people once actually smoked in them and took the fug for granted, as a quasi-natural phenomenon.

Another thing by which my wife and I have been surprised is the politeness of the passengers: they invariably stand up for her and when they see that I am with her, they stand for me too. They do so with an ease, grace and naturalness that that suggests that their politeness is habitual. Even those whom I would otherwise tend to regard as tattooed monsters often offer us this courtesy. Sometimes I don’t even have to be with my wife for a seat to be given up for me.

Of course, there is a cloud to any silver-lining, such as this of politeness persisting into modern times. I find it particularly alarming to be offered a seat when I am not with my wife. When I look in the glass I do not see the kind of face that, in my youth, would have induced me (thanks to strict maternal training) to give up my seat to the man who had it. No, I am far too young for that. In my youth, I offered my seat only to the old, or to ladies (and every adult female was a lady). Now that I am on the receiving end of such consideration, I begin to wonder how I must appear to others: old, worn-out, wizened, even incapacitated?

Whether I should accept causes me some heart-searching. To do so means acceptance that I do not appear to others as I appear to myself, which is painful. But not to do so is ungracious and ungrateful – one must learn to receive as well as to give – and risks extinguishing such small but encouraging signs of persisting common decency. In general, then, I accept, surprised at how much of a physical relief to me it sometimes is to do so.

http://www.salisburyreview.com/articles/outbreak-good-manners/
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Anonymous19 January 2019 at 17:09
Flabby, spiteful Donald Trump
As graceful as a heffalump.
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dfordoom20 January 2019 at 04:15
the shock of a no-deal Brexit would be fatal for the Tories.

I'm more and more strongly of the opinion that Jeremy Corbyn has the next election in his pocket, if he wants it.
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dfordoom20 January 2019 at 04:43
a diverse group of "normal, not radical" British Muslims agree unanimously that all the punishments, whether the death penalty, stoning or other penalties, stipulated in the Koran "are the best punishments ever possible and should be applied in the world". This is perfectly unsurprising and right of them, by the way: all Muslims are required to believe the Koran is the word of God. I post this to clear up misunderstandings about Muslim 'extremism', not to attack Muslims.

Muslims still believe that moral rules are necessary, and they also believe that moral rules are useless unless there is some way of enforcing them. I'm more and more inclined to think that they're right.
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