Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

March Ex(clusion) — seventh day

Monday, March 7th, 2022

“How sad in our blinkered arrogance that we go across the globe to the tribal Third World to teach the impoverished a supposedly preferable culture and politics, while at home we are doing our best to become a Third-World country of incompetency, constitutional erosion, a fractious and politicized military elite, and racially and ethnically obsessed warring tribes.”
– Victor David Hanson
 

The last thing I would think is that Ukraine or any other part of the world does not have the rightful destiny of self-determination. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a self-evident truth. But that’s a far cry from jumping into immature, self-righteous posturing or following the drumbeats that would move us toward another proxy war. I happen to be keen on the benefits of Western Civilization, and I won’t apologize for it, nor deny that its finest fruit is American Exceptionalism. But that’s also a far cry from endorsing the ulterior motives of the ruling elites, and how they use secrecy, lies, and propaganda to perpetuate their relentless exploitation and lust for control.

Today’s sight bite— A full conference table of plein air artists, —c-l-i-c-k— the overwhelming majority of whom decided not to wear a face mask.

March Ex(clusion) — fourth day

Friday, March 4th, 2022

“Many called former U.S. president Barack Obama the ‘greatest gun salesman in America’ due to his support of strict gun control measures. Similarly, I believe Justin Trudeau will be remembered as the greatest Bitcoin salesman in Canadian history.”
– Frank Holmes
 

I don’t know what I’d be thinking today, with the dismantling of my CHANGE OF SEEN exhibition, if much of the artwork was not on its way to a new venue, thanks to Kate S of Arts Connect. My first all-collage landscape show is over, and I have much more for which to be grateful than any justification for critique. Beyond multiple deficiencies in the venue, I am enormously thankful to have been offered entrée to the Lexington art scene. Meanwhile, the war against Ukraine continues, with no ceasefire on the horizon. Yes, he is “Vladimir the Terrible,” but that is no reason to escalate a conflict that could bring catastrophic harm to the American people, far out of proportion to our interests in Eurasia. Too many are needlessly playing with a fire that could burn millions. Shouldn’t our leaders be brokering a peace, instead of throwing around gasoline?

Today’s sight bite— Driving along Clays Mill to check out my favorite chinkapin oak, —c-l-i-c-k— as grand a spectacle in the nude as he is with a full set of leafy clothes.

Monday, January 31st, 2022

“The term ‘disinformation’ is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, ‘misinformation.’ It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of “disinformation.’ Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard… Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly.”

Glenn Greenwald, 1/29/22
 

Wednesday, April 14th, 2021

“Just as it is laughable that the CIA and GCHQ care about social justice, feminism, and racial diversity as they bomb and subvert the rest of the world in ways that contradict all of those professed values, the idea that corporate giants who use sweatshops, slave labor, mass layoffs and abuse of their workforce care about any of these causes would make any rational person suffocate on the stench of their insincerity.”

Glenn Greenwald, 4/13/21

Tuesday, January 19th, 2021

“Now, as I leave the White House, I have been reflecting on the dangers that threaten the priceless inheritance we all share. The greatest danger we face is a loss of confidence in ourselves, a loss of confidence in our national greatness. No nation can long thrive that loses faith in its own values, history, and heroes, for these are the very sources of our unity and our vitality. At the center of this heritage is also a robust belief in free expression, free speech, and open debate. Only if we forget who we are and how we got here could we ever allow political censorship and blacklisting to take place in America. Shutting down free and open debate violates our core values and most enduring traditions. In America, we don’t insist on absolute conformity or enforce rigid orthodoxy and punitive speech codes. We just don’t do that. America is not a timid nation of tame souls who need to be sheltered and protected from those with whom we disagree.”

Donald J Trump, Farewell Address

Friday, January 8th, 2021

“What China actually is (and where the USA is headed or has already arrived) is a form of oligarchic fascism. The capitalist market’s fine as long as it’s my capitalistic market and you’re a member of my party. Communist Party, Democratic Party, what difference does it make? As long as it’s one party and we’re in charge.”

Roger L Simon, The Epoch Times

Tuesday, December 15th, 2020

“You are not making us live in fear, but you are really starting to piss us off.”

@mycalynn/@britton7052 via Ted Nugent

Sunday, May 31st, 2020

“But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.”

M L King, Jr — Stanford University, April 14, 1967

Friday, May 8th, 2020

“No one has ever taken this kind of jackhammer to the economy in such a brief time and shut it down. We just don’t understand whether this is going to take a year or ten years to work out of. Therefore, the prudent thing right now is to hunker down, minimize discretionary spending, build up liquidity, get into cash, and buy gold. There’s no playbook that will tell you where we’re going. We’ve violated all the rules of economic life and monetary rationality that have ever been created over the last centuries.”

David Stockman — InternationalMan.com

Sunday, March 29th, 2020

“And in case anyone still hasn’t figured it out, the whole ‘republican, democrat’ split of the population in two rival camps is nothing more than theater meant to distract while those in control loot not only the here and now, but also rob the future generations blind. Because the sad truth is that behind the fake veneer of either progressive ideals of conservative values, politicians on both sides have one simple directive: to perpetuate the broken status quo for as long as humanly possible, and get as rich as possible in the process.”

‘Tyler Durden’ — ZeroHedge.com

Thursday, March 19th, 2020

“There is no precedence for the situation we are facing now. An epic battle of humanity trying to combat a new virus for which there is no cure and still no all clear signal, a global asset price collapse at the end of an aging and highly indebted business cycle and central banks with limited ammunition desperately trying to regain and maintain control. … I think all the excess and reckless monetary policies of the past 11 years are directly responsible for the severity of this crash.”

Sven Henrich @NorthmanTrader

50 Years

Saturday, July 20th, 2019

Certain things have a logic for me that probably make no sense to anybody else — a cropping of Marty’s Nineteenth Cosmosaic posted on the observance of the original moon landing.

Humanity’s “First Man” and my own “All-American Boy” seem like a fitting juxtaposition.

censorship of art

Friday, June 28th, 2019

This is Wendell Berry’s must-read 2015 editorial about art censorship:

www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article47230635.html

hatless guy of stone whom I sketched, once upon a time

Monday, June 24th, 2019

“When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts.
— George Carlin
 

I first noticed the statue in McDowell Park about the time I started to walk around Danville after we got the Town House. There was something about the artistic interpretation that appealed to me — not entirely realistic, but only slightly abstracted from life, perhaps like the way I might draw something. I reacted to it as sculpture before I thought much about it as a Confederate symbol. Eventually I did draw it. I don’t remember the year, although I could look it up. At any rate, it was a long time before tragic events were used as an excuse to denounce antique works of art. As soon as they were condemned elsewhere, I thought, “Danville seems immune to such things, but it’s only a matter of time before that statue becomes a target for destruction or removal.” My recent conversation with a local artist has informed me that the day has finally arrived. The decision to spend a lot of money to truck it off apparently has sparked a firestorm within the church congregation with jurisdiction over the statue, which is probably about a hundred years old. I once heard that it’s the northernmost Confederate memorial, but I can’t see how that would be possible. It is understandable that with the Perryville Battlefield only a few miles away, and the history of the conflict’s effect on Danville, that there would be a monument here to honor dead CSA soldiers. More than that, it is a work of art. Period. It was created as such, and is part of of American, Kentucky, and Danville history. It makes sense to preserve it, to conscientiously interpret it, and to put it into the context of the times. Some are certain to have found it offensive, most likely from the time it was erected, and I can respect that, but it is very dangerous territory to use that as justification for the censorship or desecration of art. The whole thing brings a wave of sadness over me. I doubt that those who oppose the decision will successfully swim against a strong tide of political correctness. When the relocation takes place, I hope it ends up north of town, over at the Danville National Cemetery, near the graves of southern men who were buried far from their homes.

Each time the Taliban or other radical groups obliterate Buddhist artworks deemed objectionable, it would appear to a reasonable person, on the face of it, as an abomination. When art historian Robert Hughes describes Stalin’s repression of the Russian avant-garde after 1930, he writes that, “as a wholesale trashing of a civilization, only Hitler’s demolition of the German modernists compares with it.” Although I’m not holding my breath, it will remain my hope that American culture warriors with a self-righteous upper hand are not embarking on an enterprise that people in the future will classify as yet another ideological outrage.

Wednesday, October 11th, 2017

Junger still understands what it is to be a journalist. These honest professionals still exist, but there are fewer and fewer of them.

Saturday, August 26th, 2017

“Our congenital distrust of authority and suspicion of history were born in the Enlightenment and it informs us all, progressives and conservatives alike. It is what makes America great and exceptional, but in too big of a dose, it becomes lethal. Letting go of the past is the great American curative for all manner of European social and political pathologies. But letting go is not the same thing as forgetting, and forgetting is not the same thing as hating. The progressive push to erase the past has gone from being a remedy for social resentment to a cause of social resentment.”

Jonah Goldberg 8/25/17

Tuesday, August 15th, 2017

“Madam, do not train up your children in hostility to the government of the United States. Remember, we are all one country now… Bring them up to be Americans.”

Robert E Lee

Sunday, August 13th, 2017

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

George Orwell, 1984

Saturday, June 17th, 2017

“Liberalism of the 1950s and ’60s exalted civil liberties, individualism, and dissident thought and speech. ‘Question authority’ was our generational rubric when I was in college. But today’s liberalism has become grotesquely mechanistic and authoritarian: It’s all about reducing individuals to a group identity, defining that group in permanent victim terms, and denying others their democratic right to challenge that group and its ideology. Political correctness represents the fossilized institutionalization of once-vital revolutionary ideas, which have become mere rote formulas. It is repressively Stalinist, dependent on a labyrinthine, parasitic bureaucracy to enforce its empty dictates.”

Camille Paglia 6/15/17

Monday, February 6th, 2017

“Mr. Trump has overloaded all circuits. Everything is too charged, with sparks and small shocks all over. ‘Nothing feels stable,’ I mused to a longtime Washington media figure at a dinner the night before the Prayer Breakfast. ‘Nothing is stable,’ she replied. Earlier, on the Hill, a veteran conservative member of Congress, speaking of the president, got a puzzled look: ‘There’s no calming with him. It’s Look what I can do now!’”

Peggy Noonan 2/2/17

It’s showtime, America . . .

Friday, January 27th, 2017

It occurs to me that if the Trump presidency is overly problematic, it can in many ways be transcended as an aberration, but Hillary Clinton was an embodiment of everything abhorrent in the existing political class, and that is why so many considered him the lesser of evils. This entire notion is beyond the typical progressive. There are times when things boil to a point more critical than political agendae. Things were due for a major disruption of the status quo. It looks like the new administration sees the first order of business to be a striking of as many blows as quickly as possible in the culture war (from political correctness to the distorted role of the media; from American exceptionalism to traditional constitutionalism). It will be interesting to watch the convulsions and to see if more good comes out of this than bad. I long for the viewpoints of Heston, Kemp, and Snow, but I’ll just have to think for myself and stay clear-headed about what is proving to be a very complex dynamic.
 

Now what?

Wednesday, November 9th, 2016

1:43 pm — So here we are. A shocking upset that developed state by state, well into the early hours of this morning. The possibility of a Trump win became plausible after Florida, and then Ohio made it even more conceivable. Up to that point, I had been totally convinced that Hillary would prevail. I was as wrong as those who voted for her. Too many Democrats were content to denigrate a massive chunk of the population and missed the mood of the electorate. They would have done better with James Webb, who has understood what was happening. They should have read BORN FIGHTING. The pollsters were astonishingly wrong. I think the Democrats would have preferred to have known they were behind. The media bias appears to have backfired. It energized those who felt disaffected and may have convinced members of the liberal coalition to believe that a second Clinton presidency was a done deal. Two major factors that not many are talking about today: the NRA ground game and the defection of countless union members to the Republican candidate (a throwback to the 1980s). Apparently, Clinton under-performed among educated white women, who identified less with their gender and more with the security concerns and economic uncertainties that Trump exploited. After an overnight scare, the markets have stabilized a bit today, but I expect continued volatility and perhaps a sharp technical correction over the coming weeks. At any rate, I didn’t see this coming — for Trump’s populist uprising to carry the day — and, sadly, I cannot foresee any kind of “honeymoon,” in spite of the millions who yearn for a national healing.

“We don’t for a moment think that every Trump voter shares his darkest views or instincts, only that they were willing to accept them as a way of casting a vote against ‘the system,’ as they’ve seen it. Now, their candidate is the system, and we’ll be there to hold him to account for how he runs it.”
Jon Avlon, The Daily Beast