reverse chronological order

[edwardspoonhands]

A Public Letter from My Mom

This is a letter to my friend, Martha Haynie, who is a Republican, an elected official and proud President of the Planned Parenthood Chapter in Orlando. Marty, you are my heroine.

Dear Marty

I have been thinking a great deal about Planned Parenthood this morning. I...

[dsaintx]

"Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn't do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer."

- The Art of Fielding (2012) by Chad Harbach

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Ouroboros

"The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making." - Black Swan Green (2006) by David Mitchell

[dsaintx]

From Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut:

He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

[dsaintx]

Within and without

From Lawrence in Arabia (2013) Scott Anderson writing about how World War I impacted T.E. Lawrence:

...this was an experience that left him utterly changed, unrecognizable in certain respects even to himself. Victory carries a moral burden the vanquished never know, and as any architect of momentous events, Lawrence would be uniquely haunted by what he saw and did during the Great Loot.

From Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) by T.E. Lawrence:

Always my soul hungered for less than it had.

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This doesn’t end well

From Liars in Love (1981) by Richard Yates

Christine and Warren managed to make an early escape, under Grace Arnold's winking smile, and as soon as the bedroom door was shut they were clasped and writhing and breathing heavily, eager and solemn in lust. The shedding of their clothes took no time at all but seemed a terrible hindrance and delay; then they were deep in bed and reveling in each ther, and then they were joined again.

"Oh, Warren," she said. "Oh, God. Oh, Warren. Oh, I love you."  

And he heard himself saying more than once, more times than he cared to believe or remember, that he loved her too.

[dsaintx]

From How to Tell a True War Story (1990) by Tim O'Brien:

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He's nineteen years old - it's too much for him - so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back.

You can tell a true war story if it embarasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for truth; if you don't care for truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.

Listen to Rat: "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fuckin' letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back."

[dsaintx]

During my second ever kiss Holly Deblin's tongue visited my mouth, like a shy vole. You'd think that'd be disgustingsville too but it's wet and secret and mine wanted to visit hers back so I let it.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

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Human Scale

From Lawrence in Arabia (2013) by Scott Anderson:

By point of comparison, over the previous century, during which it had expanded its empire to five continents, the British Empire had been involved in some forty different conflicts around the globe -- colonial insurrections mostly, but including the Crimean and Boer wars -- and had lost some forty thousand soldiers in the process. Over the next four years, it would lose over twenty times that number. In the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, France had suffered an estimated 270,000 battlefield casualties; in the present war, it was to surpass that number in the first three weeks. In this conflict, Germany would see 13 percent of its military-age male population killed, Serbia 15 percent of its total population, while in just a two-year span, 1913 to 1915, the life expectancy of a French male would drop from fifty years to twenty-seven. So inured would architects of the carnage become to such statistics that at the launch of his 1916 Somme offensive, British general Douglas Haig could look over the first day's casualty rolls -- with fifty-eight thousand Allied soldiers dead or wounded, it remains the bloodiest single day in the history of the English-speaking world -- and judge that the numbers "cannot be considered severe."

[dsaintx]

Wilson's Legacy

From The American Political Tradition (1948) by Richard Hofstadter:

In March 1919 Wilson's old friend of the New Jersey period, George L. Record, who had played a large part in converting him to progressivism, sent him a remarkable letter, analyzing the inadequacy of Wilson's conceptions to the present era. Wilson, Record wrote frankly, had ignored the great issue which is slowly coming to the front, the question of economic democracy, abolition of privilege, and securing to men the full fruits of their labor or service.

There is no glory … in standing for the principles of political democracy … [which] is like standing for the Ten Commandments….

The issue of political democracy has passed. The issue is now one of industrial or economic democracy. The League of Nations idea will not help your position, either now or in history, because, like all your other policies, it does not go to the root of the problem. Wars are caused by privilege.

Every modern state is governed by the privileged, that is, by those who control industry by owning railroads, lands, mines, banks, and credit. These men thus obtain enormous and unearned capital, for which there is no use in the country where it is produced, because the poverty of the workers limits the home market. Those who control this surplus capital must seek new countries and new people to exploit, and this clash of selfish interests leads to war. The cure for war is the reign of justice, i.e., the abolition of privilege in each of the great nations. I do not believe that you can set up machinery which will maintain justice in international relations among governments which deny justice to their own people. If the League works, it will be when and to the extent that justice is established within the countries which are parties to the League. Indeed, it is entirely possible, if not probable, that such a league established by the present governments of the Allies, if it has any real power, is very likely to be used as an international bulwark of privilege. That danger looms large after you pass of the scene….

Record urged Wilson to supplement his international program with a social-democratic program at home, including a demand for public-utility ownership and limitation of great fortunes. It might be impossible to realize this program, he admitted, but Wilson's failure would be only temporary. Future generations would recognize his wisdom and acclaim him "a truly great man."

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"Have you thought it through, April? Never undertake to do a thing until you’ve —"

But she needed no more advice and no more instruction. She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

- Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates

[lintufriikki]

my contribution to N7 day is of course baby krogans

[yahoopolicy]

By Ron Bell, General Counsel

Today we are pleased to announce the release of more than 1,500 pages of once-secret papers from Yahoo’s 2007-2008 challenge to the expansion of U.S. surveillance laws.

In 2007, the U.S. Government amended a key law to demand user information from online...

[lessig]

I received this nastygram by email today from Scott Brown’s campaign manager — cc-ing my boss, the provost and president.

I take it Mr. Reed’s outrage is triggered by the Senate’s regulations of what constitutes being a “lobbyist” for purposes of the Senate rules. I hadn’t received the memo...

[coinbase]

[dsaintx]

The global availability, lower transaction costs and the ability to aggregate very small contributions lead me to believe bitcoin donations for non-profits is the a must.

[dsaintx]

The Big Chill: These Are Your Parents

I was disappointed when I heard The Big Chill was getting the Criterion treatment. I thought it mattered to a narrow slice of people in a small window of time, hardly Criterion worthy. The music, the clothes, the problems between friends came from a different time that didn't matter any more.

Lena Dunham's excellent essay has me rethinking that and finding a deeper connection to both the movie and my own mother.

[mikemaihack]

No one is more excited about Batgirl’s new costume than Kara.

Original available here More BGSG comics