Jupiter Rising: “It is not that the public is in some deep slumber or guided hypnosis, but that they are so deeply humiliated and abused that they don’t even know who they are anymore. Many Americans don’t even know their own fathers, let alone contemplate or internalize the triumphs of their ancestors.”
The Cionci Thesis: Benedict XVI Never Resigned: “[Andrea] Cionci’s thesis is that Benedict’s Declaratio was not a canonically valid resignation – and that this was intentional on the part of Ratzinger. This sounds somewhat insane, a trad’s fever dream, that is until we look at the evidence presented.”
The Edward Luttwak Tapes: “Historically, the Chinese were defeated by everyone. If the United States had not destroyed the Japanese Empire, there would still be Japanese garrisons in Shanghai and many other places. China tries to forget this by making hundreds of movies showing brave Chinese troops attacking cowering Japanese soldiers, but Xi knows the truth. He is a bit like Benito Mussolini. Every Italian city has a street called Via Veneto, which is a reference to Vittorio Vento rather than the Veneto region. It commemorates Italy’s victory over the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but as Mussolini well knew, the Italian army only defeated the Austro-Hungarians after the Austro-Hungarian Empire had already collapsed. Before that, the Italian army was beaten every time. Mussolini was obsessed with that, which is why the walls of Italian cities were covered with phrases like, ‘better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years a sheep.’ These were desperate attempts to turn the Italians, of all people, into warriors. ”
The Populist Moment Never Happened: “…my guess is [Argentina] will eventually, and within this century, stop existing. Someone like [Javier] Milei could turn it around, but only with a complete abandonment of democracy and a militarization of the government. The United States will likely not allow that. It may allow it in El Salvador to stop gangs and violence, but probably not in Argentina to stop the local version of racial Marxism, which is its own program as well. But history has many surprises lately and some peoples are showing unexpected and hidden founts of energy and ingenuity; I hope I’m wrong, and that Milei or someone else stops this process in South America and gives an example to others…but it’s unlikely.”
The Surrealist Violence of Heaven: “…the truth is, that when the surrealist violence of heaven is unleashed upon you, there is precious little you can do besides stay away from the windows, wait for it to finish, and hope your insurance will cover most of the damage.”
The Waters No Longer Run Clear: “A friend of mine, a child of the sixties counterculture, once told me a story about [Bob] Dylan. He went to see him at Earls Court back in the eighties, expecting the place to be packed. In fact there were just a few hundred people there, and the venue was mostly empty. The reason was simple: Dylan had just produced a Christian album, and most of his fans had run away screaming. He came onto the stage and said something like, ‘I’m not going to play any of my famous songs tonight, and I’m sorry about that. But I do something else now. Something incredible has happened to me. If you want to know what it is, you can stick around afterwards and we can talk.’ Apparently he did.”
What I Saw at the Longhouse Fashion Show: “[Designer Elena] Velez drew the image of the ‘chthonic swamp’ from Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae. In that book, Paglia presents the history of Western art and civilization as an ongoing contest between masculine order (Apollo) and feminine chaos (Dionysus). According to Paglia, ‘the Dionysian is liquid nature, a miasmic swamp whose prototype is the still pond of the womb.’ The swamp generates life, but it is dangerous, threatening to collapse the male-created order into an undifferentiated state. Left to its own devices, the Dionysian will draw life back into its primal chaos the way a starving rabbit will absorb her fetus. ‘The Longhouse’ is a term on the dissident right that gives metaphorical expression to the Paglian idea that feminine chaos destroys individuality and domesticates the order-created ambitions of the masculine. As Paglia sees it: ‘If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.’ Velez was captivated by the metaphor when she read ‘What Is The Longhouse?’ on the First Things website, and she credits the article’s author, L0m3z, as an inspiration for the show. She went so far as to plant a copy of Passage Prize Volume II: Rewilding, which L0m3z edited, in the runway sand.”