Tag: Culture Wars

Civilization vs. Barbarians

At Last, Some Sanity

Behind Enemy Lines, Gummint, Seen On Campus

…even if it’s coming from the French, surely one of the loopiest nations on Earth.

Smartphones and tablets have been banned from all French schools ahead of the academic year, after a new law was voted through Parliament yesterday.  The phone ban will apply to all pupils in France up to the age of 15, as of the start of the new term in September.

I’ve always thought that giving kids smartphones was a recipe for disaster — similar to letting them go play all day and night in a mall, unsupervised.  And I don’t want to hear whines of “What about their securityyyy?” either.  If that’s so important to Mumsy (or actually, Madamesy), she can buy little Francine or Jacques a flip (dumb) phone.  Calls and texts only (and only a few of those, too).

Perhaps — and I know this is a radical thought — the schools can actually keep a closer eye on the little dears for a change.

And if the kids go all whiney at the indignity and the oppressive injustice of it all, we can call it a cheap life lesson.

Incomprehensible Fuss

Business, Politics

So one of Wal-Mart’s satellite suppliers was selling “Impeach 45” (i.e. the 45th POTUS, Donald Trump) merchandise, but after some people started squealing, the Big W ordered the stuff pulled.

I have to say that I’m a little nonplussed by the fuss.  Frankly, I remember when a lot more “objectionable” stuff was sold — and still is, e.g. Che Guevara T-shirts — and the world got on just fine.  Even the satirical riffs on the revolting Obama’s “Hope” / “Dream”  logo could have been construed as objectionable, at least to liberals, Commies and Democrats [massive overlap] , but I don’t remember howls of outrage coming from them — and they are quite easily the most-easily-triggered population group ever (see MAGA caps, reaction to).

And I’ll probably get the “But it’s Wal-Mart that’s selling it!”, as though the stereotypical American retailer (with 90% of its inventory carrying a Made-in-China label) should somehow be above such objectionable merchandise.  (I note that the Emperor Misha’s excellent dictum — “Rope.  Tree.  Journalist.  Some Assembly Required.” —  was also pulled from being sold on a T-shirt, as though journalists should not be strung up weekly from lampposts, as commonsense would suggest.  Sheesh.)

But with all the shit that the Left is causing these days, a stupid call for impeachment (which ain’t gonna happen, no matter how many Impeach 45 T-shirts they sell) is small potatoes.  Far more problematic is [list of 2,000 Lefty-loony actions omitted, for space reasons] .

Let’s face it:  we as a nation have a long and proud tradition of using T-shirts, pamphlets and bumper stickers to get under the other guy’s skin and up his nose.  And I’m enough of a capitalist to believe that as long as there’s a market, people should be able to make a buck from it, regardless of offense taken.

Here’s my suggestion for a T-shirt logo which broadens Misha’s thought somewhat:

Think I could get Target to carry it?

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

So much for hippies:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.
“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” — Orson Welles as Harry Lime, The Third Man

Artsy-Fartsy

Culture

I have long thought that “post-modern” (and maybe even “modern”) art is a load of crock, camouflage for the untalented to pretend their talent. It started, of course, with the post-WWI Dadaists (who were really nihilists) and really took off with Marcel Duchamps (may his  current body/spirit temperature be set to “BROIL” for all eternity). I mean, seriously?

Now comes this article, which looks at post-modernism’s more deadly aims:

If wisdom begins with the definition of terms, what do you call efforts to deliberately lie about what those definitions actually are? The manipulation of our shared understanding is too calculated to be merely inept; too consistent to be ascribed to simple ignorance; too debased to be just misguided. There is strategy here, relentlessly advanced and ferociously enforced.
Misdirection is at the core of the whole rotten Postmodern gambit. “Who is there among you, who, if his son. asks him for bread, will give him a stone?” The contemporary technocratic managerial class, that’s who. Our culture is saturated with globalist diktats that that are fundamentally at odds with reality. They not only give us stones for bread, they give us leftist activism in place of art, and tell us to swallow it.

Quite right. I’ve studied Art Appreciation quite thoroughly — because Art had always been a hole in my store of knowledge as a younger man, I had to fill it — but try as I may, I could not “get” Modern or Post-Modern Art. When a piece has to be “explained” as to its meaning or direction by either the artist or an “expert” (who may be completely wrong, by the way), I think it’s essentially meaningless. Or, if the interpretation of the work is completely in the eye of the beholder, it’s equally meaningless — it’s a blank page, in other words. (The gallery pic above is therefore quite instructive, in this regard.)

I make a clear distinction between these schools of art and Impressionism, by the way, because at their worst, Impressionist paintings gave you an insight into the artist’s view of the world, even though that view might have been disturbing (hello, Picasso):

But modernist / post-modernist art is nothing like that. Instead, we’re treated to the chaotic randomness of, for instance, Jackson Pollock:

…which tells us absolutely nothing, about anything.

I can live with some of the Modernists like Egon Schiele:

…and ditto the modern Impressionists, like Leonid Afremov:

(That’s his Winter Sun, and it’s hanging on my wall as we speak.)

But the whole school of Post-Modernism screams “FAKE!” at me, every time I see it, and the attempt to redefine terms — as the author explains in the above article — likewise revolts me, and I’m calling bullshit on the whole thing.

It’s not art; it’s anti-art. And a pox on them for their attempts to redefine and, ultimately, to destroy beauty.