[part 2]
So, like, there’s this place called Russia, right? And they’ve got this guy, Vladimir something, and this guy Vladimir, like… Russia doesn’t like us very much. See, the Soviet Union… when the Soviet Union was around, like, it was, like, people like to say they were bad, but maybe they weren’t, you know? A lot of bad people said they were bad, so they might have been good, you know? Like, you can tell if you’re doing something right if you make the right enemies, right? But then again, they had this thing, like, they banned rock music, and I once went to a museum in Berlin, about East Germany, and, like, there was this… egg thing, egg container, I forget what it’s called, but there was only one type of egg thing, you could only get one. It had a chicken head on it. The only style of egg thing you could get. So, like, maybe the Soviet Union was bad. I don’t know. That’s bad. Only one kind of egg thing. That’s bad.
Anyway, Reagan made the Soviet Union stop existing, or something. Reagan was bad, man, fuck Reagan. So then, like, some other stuff happened, I guess, I mean, it was there for like ten years, so something must have happened, but I don’t know what. And, like, then this fascist Putin came along, and he hates gay people, and Russia is really bad now, really bad, man. They’ve got this fucking fascist Putin, and the fucking Russians are too stupid or something to see that Putin is bad. There was this article in the Times, like, this novelist, he holed up in a hotel in New York and watched a bunch of Russian TV, and he thought it was stupid, and there were a bunch of other novelists and they all agreed with him. He’s a novelist and he was in the Times and New York is cool, but anyway. Where was I?
Right. Vladimir something. So this guy Vladimir something, he’s something high up in Russia, some kind of advisor, something like that, and he keeps talking about America, and the Russians, they’re, like, stupid or brainwashed or something, I don’t know, they apparently think this guy Vladimir is right. Here’s what he says:
America has a simple ideology – that there is only one truth in the world, that truth is held by God, and God created the United States to be an embodiment of that truth. So the Americans strive to bring this truth to the rest of the world and to make it happy. Only after that will everything be well. This ideology has a strong influence on their policy.
So Vox ran this article, you know, here’s what they said.
Lukin is hardly seen as an anti-American hard-liner in Russia — rather, he’s considered to be an objective expert on the United States and a highly professional diplomat. He is a founding member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko. That he would get the United States so obviously wrong — what Americans would call defending democracy and human rights, he sees as a far more radical and explicitly religious agenda of “advocating a world revolution” — is troubling. But his view is a common one, and that tells you a great deal.
The interviewer’s response is similarly telling: “So Russia took off its ideological blinders in 1991, but America still seems to have them on. The Soviet Union is gone, but the policy against it is not.”
This narrative of an inherently aggressive America is one we heard over and over in Moscow, not just from people who support Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aggressive, anti-American policies but even from those who oppose them. In this view, American politics and policies are bent on, and in many ways driven by, a hatred of Russia and desire to destroy or at least control it.
Lukin, that’s it. Alright. So, like, yeah, do you see the problem here? Like… this guy doesn’t like democracy and human rights and all that, you know? “World revolution”, how do you get there from here?
Like, democracy, human rights, all that, these things are good, right? And we know that. Everyone knows that. It’s just how it is. It’s not religious at all. Religion, you know, that’s things like myths and going to church, like, weird shit that people do over there. Democracy and human rights, that’s just how things are, you know? Lukin is probably a fascist too. You have to be either stupid or evil not to believe in democracy and human rights. It’s 2015!
And, you know, man, democracy and all that, it’s going to happen, it’s going to come, it’ll just happen. The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice, except sometimes it doesn’t and we have to go bend it ourselves. But, like, it’s progress, you know? It’s just, like, an inevitable historical process. Sometimes we have to go inevit it, but it’s not us doing it. We order that some stuff happen, and some people follow the orders, I guess, and then it happens, but we didn’t make it happen. History did.
It’s like those riots in… where are the riots now? It was… what was it, somewhere, I don’t know where, a while ago it was that, and now it’s Baltimore, those riots in Baltimore, there are rioters, and they burn some buildings down, and then the buildings are burned down and they aren’t there anymore, but the rioters didn’t make that happen, you know? We don’t have enough justice yet. The buildings got burned down because it’s only 2015, and, you know, we’ve come a long way, but we aren’t there yet, like, someday history will end, but today we have all these racists and sexists and homophobes and Putin and all that, and, like, we’ve got to inevit that inevitable process, man, we’ve got to do that, but it won’t be us doing that, you know? It’ll be history, it’ll be inevitable, it’s going to happen, and once it happens, once we’ve gotten rid of all the racists and sexists and homophobes, I mean, once history has done that, once they realize what year it is, once they wake up and realize what year it is, like, this medieval shit, it’s not the Dark Ages anymore, man, once they wake up and realize what year it is, this stuff won’t happen anymore, the buildings won’t get burned down, and the foreigners, the Russians, the… there was that guy who got fucked up the ass with a knife until he died, what was his name, in, like, one of those countries over there, dictator, totally insane, like, once all those fascist dictators are gone, once they have democracy, once they start respecting human rights, those buildings, they won’t be getting burned down.
It’ll just happen, you know? All those dictators, man, it’s 2015, like, you know, it’s… it’s the will of the people, man, humanitarian interventions, we should go over and help them, but, like, sometimes they get brainwashed, you know, and we have to do something about that, we have to tell them, like, it’s not the Dark Ages anymore, man, these dictators have got to go, get with the times, right?
Like, alright, Iraq and Vietnam and all that, that was wrong, man, that was Bush, fuck Bush, something about oil, but these, like, that guy over there, knife guy, he had to go. Humanitarian intervention, right? Democracy. Human rights. It’s the will of the people.
This Vladimir guy, man, how could anyone get America so wrong?
I got news for you: mom and pop were among the first to screech about OSHA and the EPA and never cared much for “the Coloreds” either.
that whey-faced little shit Reagan’s multi-billion dollar crusade for racial purification, lockin’ down the wife and daughter’s ladyparts,
Yet no matter how many laws they break or billions they loot, how many phantoms they conjure, how many social ties they sever, how many innocents they imprison, torture and execute, no matter how many foreign monsters they champion, no matter how much they scream that two-plus-two equals five, and no matter how much they double-down on crazed schemes while swearing it’ll all be different this time, free-marketeers, slavers, neocons, neofascists, Buckleys, Federalists, Bloombergians, traditionalists, Tea Baggers, Randians, McCarthyists, libertarians, Birchers, Goldbugs, Jesus Freaks, new regimes of privilege and domination,
Non-elite conservatives–the Red State bubbas that have cursed this land for so long–we might have to summon up some of that dangerous radical fire that’s propelled every worthwhile step we’ve taken towards a more civil and egalitarian society–
“didn’t Lenin, like, kill people?” Give me a fucking break.
In the summer of 1942 Formby was involved in a controversy with the Lord’s Day Observance Society, who had filed law suits against the BBC for playing secular music on Sunday. The society began a campaign against the entertainment industry, claiming all theatrical activity on a Sunday were unethical, and cited a 1667 law which made it illegal. With 60 leading entertainers already avoiding Sunday working, Dean informed Formby that his stance would be crucial in avoiding a spread of the problem. Formby issued a statement, “I’ll hang up my uke on Sundays only when our lads stop fighting and getting killed on Sundays … as far as the Lord’s Day Observance Society are concerned, they can mind their own bloody business. And in any case, what have they done for the war effort except get on everyone’s nerves?” The following day it was announced that the pressure from the society was to be lifted.[105]
Young people would have liked to know each other before they married, perhaps love each other, but in the day of the Viking, this was not considered desirable, since the girl’s virginity was supposed to be unquestionable. The main thing was to be married according to rank. The marriage had to be useful to the father of the bride; let love come later. That was the couple’s private business and concerned no one else.
Today we hold different views. Love is the decisive factor. But our times seem to be no happier for it. Perhaps we should see with less prejudiced eyes how the Vikings managed their arranged marriages; how man and wife lived together in those days.
Love was rarely mentioned. Love songs were punishable, and the law was strictly enforced. It was probably considered unwise to publicize a woman’s emotions in such a way. Not even her beauty was lauded unless it was a source of misfortune or threatening danger. The sober Nordic peasants valued energy, wealth, and lineage. With these attributes, a good marriage was assured. When Gisle Sursson’s brother died, he ashed for his sister-in-law, Ingeborg’s, hand in marriage, since “he did not want to see such a good woman leave the clan”. This is a typial attitude. Widows were masters of their own fortunes and future life. Ingeborg said yes, and through her Gisle Sursson “gained many possessions and became a respected man.” The social position of the husband could also be influenced by that of his wife. …
The woman was by nature exempt from armed warfare; the men fought for her. This, however, did not prevent her from taking up arms herself, usually in self-defense, though sometimes in a spirit of revenge, and also in times of war. …
However, bloody feuds, wars, and thing assemblies were on the whole onsidered the concern of the male; it was up to hm to resolve all unwomanly conflicts and protect his home; the female had a right to be free of such obligations. Yet living, for male or female, demanded a strong, independent personality and women often found themselves saddled with fates that demanded responsibility.
After settling on a new island, the women as well as the men could claim land for themselves; for this there was a special law. And women, of course, also had rune stones raised. A woman in Denmark called Ragnhild was apparently married twice, and had stones raised for both husbands. …
A man had to see to an increase of his estate, and this included his slaves. They were a part of his legitimte economic interests. Concubines were customary, but they were always of the lowest social class. A wife could tolerate them because they never endangered her marriage. …
Adam of Bremen says: “Every man has three or more wives, according to his means. But the rich and the chieftains have numberless wives.” This may have been true, and was probably the result of Arab contacts, Viking experiences in the slave trade, and the friendliness of the women in the occupied territories (fraternization a thousand years ago). In Shannon Bay, near Limerick, the Irish ravaged, in the year 977, “every site where the Normans kept women, children, and harems”. King Harald Fairhair had an unusually large number of wives. They are listed in the Heimskringla, and when he married Ragnhild of Jutland, he divorced nine wives. But these are purely Oriental customs found only in the higher social circles. On the peasant farms, the wife remained sole manager and at best may have tolerated a concubine or two.
— The Norsemen, Count Eric Oxenstierna
The waitress came over. I had made up my mind to try meatloaf, which sounded very American to my ears, and a pale lager.
“What did you say?”
I repeated it.
She stared hesitantly, almost despondently, at me.
Peter intervened to help us out. The waitress gathered up the menus and disappeared.
The same thing happened nearly every time I had ordered something in the past week. The waiter or waitress would look questioningly at me and ask me to repeat myself. Every exchange of information was piecemeal, chopped into bits, full of misunderstandings and repetitions. It wasn’t that I didn’t speak English, it was that I stood on the outside of the flow that made things glide along easily and without friction, where everything said and done was as expected. I was in command of the content, but not of the form, and form is always the most important aspect of human communication. I experienced the same thing when I moved from Norway to Sweden, all those suddenly blank stares and silent nods, which meant either that someone didn’t understand what I was saying or that what I was saying was preposterous. In those early years, every time I met people from Norway, I felt relief. They only had to say a few sentences, and at once I could place them geographically and socially and address them accordingly. When I was still living in Norway, I wasn’t even aware that this kind of knowledge existed, it was entirely intuitive and obvious, just part of what being Norwegian entailed, and my easy access to this whole subconscious mountain of implicit knowledge and shared references was probably what it meant to have a national identity.
— Karl Ove Knausgaard (source)
A fleeting glimpse of the obvious in the pages of the New York Times. But what follows is weaker.
Once, I mentioned this to a Swedish woman. She looked indignantly at me. “But those are just prejudices!” she said. “You’re judging people before you’ve even spoken to them! It’s much better not to know all those things, so that you can make up your own opinion about them. We’re individuals, not representatives of a culture!”
That is the most Swedish thing anyone has ever said to me.
What is culture, if not a set of prejudices? A set of unformulated and unconscious rules and ways of behavior that every member of a given society nonetheless immediately recognizes and accepts?
Nowhere in the world has shared culture been a more imperative requirement than in America. More than 300 million people live here, and they had descended over the course of a very few generations from a huge number of disparate cultures, with different histories, ways of behavior, worldviews and experiential backgrounds. All of them, sooner or later, had been required to relinquish their old culture and enter the new one. That must be why the most striking thing about the United States was its sameness, that every place had the same hotels, the same restaurants, the same stores. And that must be why every American movie was made after the same template and why, in this sense, every movie expressed the same thing. And that must be why all these TVs were hanging on the walls, unwatched; they created an immediate sense of belonging, a feeling of home.
Even though I grew up with American music and films and read about American politicians and celebrities practically all my life, I was still an outsider. I didn’t understand all these TV sets with their bright smiles.
Knausgaard didn’t see all of America; he drove from Maine to Minnesota, through small towns, suburbs, and Detroit, mostly avoiding the native population on his way. The differences he could have seen, whether on his route or elsewhere, might seem small to someone from a continent with dozens of different languages, but it must be remembered that America didn’t completely settle on English until after WW2.
Clone High
Main characters:
Supporting characters:
Nobunagun
Main characters:
Supporting characters:
I don’t remember these people but Wikipedia says they were there:
Clone High: 80% of main characters and 48% of supporting characters are political figures.
Nobunagun: 40% of main characters, 0% of supporting characters, and 18% of bit characters are political figures.
And that’s what’s wrong with America.
Note that Nobunagun’s percentage is higher than it would be if I grouped the characters myself: I don’t remember Newton or Gandhi being that much more important than Galileo, Gaudi, or Geronimo. If Newton and Gandhi aren’t main characters, it’s 33%; if those other three are main characters, it’s 25%.
Some categorizations can be disputed — maybe Nobel was political or Rasputin wasn’t, maybe Joan of Arc was or Paul Revere wasn’t — but the numbers are different enough that the point still stands.
After allegations that [Hizb ut-Tahrir] members had spread antisemitic propaganda, in 2004 the British National Union of Students imposed a No Platform order.[61] The party then resumed recruiting at British universities under the name “Stop Islamophobia.”[62]
Is there a name for this tactic?
Incidentally, “No Platform” comes from the socialists.
Five Christian missionaries tried to convert the Huaorani. The Huaorani killed them. Why?
On January 6, after the Americans had spent several days of waiting and shouting basic Huaorani phrases into the jungle, the first Huaorani visitors arrived. A young man and two women emerged on the opposite river bank around 11:15 a.m., and soon joined the missionaries at their encampment.[17] The younger of the two women had come against the wishes of her family, and the man, named Nankiwi, who was romantically interested in her, followed. The older woman (about thirty years old) acted as a self-appointed chaperone.[18] The men gave them several gifts, including a model plane, and the visitors soon relaxed and began conversing freely, apparently not realizing that the men’s language skills were weak. Nankiwi, whom the missionaries nicknamed “George”, showed interest in their aircraft, so Saint took off with him aboard. They first completed a circuit around the camp, but Nankiwi appeared eager for a second trip, so they flew toward Terminal City. Upon reaching a familiar clearing, Nankiwi recognized his neighbors, and leaning out of the plane, wildly waved and shouted to them. Later that afternoon, the younger woman became restless, and though the missionaries offered their visitors sleeping quarters, Nankiwi and the young woman left the beach with little explanation. The older woman apparently had more interest in conversing with the missionaries, and remained there most of the night.[19]
After seeing Nankiwi in the plane, a small group of Huaorani decided to make the trip to Palm Beach, and left the following morning, January 7. On the way, they encountered Nankiwi and the girl, returning unescorted. The girl’s brother, Nampa, was furious at this, and to defuse the situation and divert attention from himself, Nankiwi claimed that the foreigners had attacked them on the beach, and in their haste to flee, they had been separated from their chaperone. Gikita, a senior member of the group whose experience with outsiders had taught him that they could not be trusted, recommended that they kill the foreigners. The return of the older woman and her account of the friendliness of the missionaries was not enough to dissuade them, and they soon continued toward the beach.[18]
An interesting story, written with a universal template.
The Ordnung is also designed to promote humility by encouraging Amish adults to avoid being photoraphed in such a way that a viewer can distinguish who particular individuals are. This helps to reinforce the idea that an Amish person should not stand out as an individual, but rather is part of a community.
Therough measures like these, the Amish use the Ordnung to promote their values, instill responsibility, pass down traditions, and build strong ties with one another. One Amish minister described the effective use of an Ordnung when he stated: “a respected Ordnung generates peace, love, contentment, equality, and unity”. Because it lays out how their life should be lived, in a very real sense the Ordnung is what makes an Amish person Amish.
The second way the Ordnung structures Amish life is by defining what is not Amish. In a sense, the Ordnung is the line that separates the Amish from the non-Amish; it is what gives the Amish their distinctly separate identity. For instance, each of the rules that detail what an Amish person should wear not only ensures that they will look Amish, but also that they will be easily distinguished from outsiders. In an interview, one Amish man used a parable to describe how this aspect of the Ordnung can promote community. He said that if you own a cow and your property is surrounded by green pastures, you need a good fence to keep it in. For the Amish, who are as human as anyone and are tempted by the outside world to abandon their faith and way of life, there need to be good fences as well. The Ordnung defines what the Amish cannot do and makes those who are not adhering to the faith readily visible. Because they believe the outside world is a distraction that must be mediated, the Ordnung provides the barriers that keep community members focused on their fellow Amish and their faith.
This surely sounds dystopian to modern liberal sensibilities: the Amish are encouraged to abandon their individuality and live by a code that regulates every aspect of their lives, right down to what they wear. But the Amish are capable of feats that liberals are not. The difference between the Amish and the ‘English’ is not that the ‘English’ do not believe their children would be better off without television—the two cultures agree on that point. The difference is that the ‘English’ don’t get rid of their televisions.
There is much else that we ‘English’ cannot do. Consider the common argument against homeschooling: even if homeschooling can provide a superior education, even if it is not prone to the social pathologies of the public school system, the public school system is still preferable because it’s necessary for socialization. (This is not a straw man—this is precisely the reason I wasn’t homeschooled.)
Another example is Facebook. “I hate Facebook and I want to deactivate it, but everyone else uses it, so I have to also”—I keep hearing this exact sentiment. If we could coordinate against a technology that is widely acknowledged to be harmful, we could escape Facebook. But we can’t.
Television—pop culture in general—is similar. I once said that I don’t watch movies. The reply: “Everyone watches movies. If you don’t, what will you talk to people about?”
(Two more reasons for the coordination of the Amish must be mentioned. First, there is the rumspringa: the Amish practice adult baptism, and it is only after baptism that one is held to the highest behavioral standards of the church. Second, retention rates have risen over the years, indicating selection for certain behavioral traits. It’s easier to coordinate with those who are psychologically similar, and psychology is partially influenced by genetics.)
I once heard David Kline tell of Protestant tourists sight-seeing in an Amish area. An Amishman is brought on the bus and asked how Amish differ from other Christians. First, he explained similarities: all had DNA, wear clothes (even if in different styles), and like to eat good food.
Then the Amishman asked: “How many of you have a TV?”
Most, if not all, the passengers raised their hands.
“How many of you believe your children would be better off without TV?”
Most, if not all, the passengers raised their hands.
“How many of you, knowing this, will get rid of your TV when you go home?”
No hands were raised.
“That’s the difference between the Amish and others,” the man concluded.
nydwracu niþgrim, nihtbealwa mæst 
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