Big stick

We've gone from Teddy Roosevelt speaking softly and carrying a big stick to Obama bending over and taking the big stick to Trump speaking loudly about his big stick.

Modern Version of "First They Came..."

First they made victims of the Gays, I remained guilty—
Because I was not a Gay.

Then they made victims of the Blacks, and I remained guilty --
Because I was not a Black.

Then they made vicitms of the Women, and I remained guilty—
Because I was not a Woman.

—and then there was no one left to feel sorry for me.

Clickbait Propaganda

So I saw this clickbait "Do You Know Your History" test pop up on Facebook.  Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, I take the bait and waste 10 or 15 minutes taking one.

The format of the test was a picture would pop up with two names under it.  You'd select a name and then the screen would advance, telling you whether you were right or wrong.  It would then pop up a short blurb telling a little about the historical person in the picture.

The test had about 100 people and you could tell it was heavily slanted towards the Progressive view of history because, despite being about 10-12% of the population, blacks were about 30-40% of the historical figures represented. Another 30-40% were women and the rest were white men.

This wasn't really a problem, despite the incongruity of equating someone like Billy Holiday with Benjamin Franklin. The problem was every women or minority got a glowing blurb.  There wasn't a single one with a description that could in any way be construed as negative.

However, the "Dead, White Men", i.e the presidents were another story.  If they were left, they got off easy.  If they were conservative, they got a write up like this one about Ronald Reagan.

I don't know whether I worry more about this kind of propaganda garbage being fed to unsuspecting minds or whether the author of the blurb actually believes that's what happened.

Either way, it's disturbing there are people writing these tests, who are so ignorant of what really happened and that more people are going to continue to be ignorant if they read it and believe it.

Is Peace Always Better?

I've been reading a lot about WWI lately and came across this great quote related by eminent historian Alistair Horne.  The quote is from a Frenchman, Jean Dutourd deploring the more debility of his countrymen in 1940.

"War is less costly than servitude.  The choice is always between Verdun and Dachau"

It seems this is a lesson we're doomed to learn over and over again.

Dakota Pipeline Protesters

The truth never comes out when it can make a difference, but I guess it's good that it comes out at some point.

From today's WSJ in regard to the Dakota pipeline protesters causing more environmental damage than what they are purporting to fix.

The Army Corps closed the area and said in a press release that grass has been destroyed or removed from some 50 acres. The mess has to be cleared out before a spring flood sends toxic sludge into the nearby Cannonball River and Lake Oahe, the same lake the protesters said would be polluted by the pipeline. Moral grandstanding can be a dirty business

A Nice Young Man For a Small Tea Party

I was reading an interesting history last night about the Siege of Paris by one of my favorite historians, Alistair Horne, where he mentioned a French phrase, "petit creves", in reference to problems with some of the young men of Paris joining private 'medical' units and disappearing from being able to fight.

Most of the French phrases Horne uses I'm able to figure out or type into Google Translate and get the gist of what he's saying.  In this case I knew petit was small, but had no idea what creves was.  Here's the results from this particular search.

Google Translate didn't help much since I don't know what the punches idiom means in French.  Luckily there was a footnote on the phrase that said a petit creves was best described by the English phrase "A nice young man for a small tea-party"

Although I thought I knew what the phrase meant from the context, it was still pretty obscure.   I did some searches for it and found the following from a book published in 1885.

What a great phrase!  It's very interesting to see dialog from over one hundred years ago describing things I've personally discussed.  It's also interesting to see that the human condition never really changes.

It also shows the richness that can be added to your reading by taking the effort to look things up you don't understand.  I can't wait to use this phrase in a sentence.

Idea of the Day

If the Democrat hacks in the Senate don't confirm Betsy DeVos, Trump  should shut down the Dept. Of Education. That's what I call a win-win situation