Month: September 2022

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I am finding House of Dragons, the prequel to Game of Thrones, a bit of a bore.

First and foremost it is too dark. I don’t mean dark mood here, I mean too dark to see what is going on. At the beginning of every night scene, I go blind for a few seconds, kind of like when you turn out the lights and your eyes haven’t adjusted. Once I have regained my full sight, I am still left wondering who is talking and where they are and what might be going on. On the plus side, it is a wonderful depiction of night time. Seriously, even a few extra torches would help immensely.

Then there is the plot. It really is just a rehash of Game of Thrones. The only difference is there it is a new group of contenders for the throne who all have seemingly valid reasons to succeed King Viserys on the throne. The good news is that he is taking his sweet time to die. He was on his last legs from the start. But somehow, perhaps the leeches his doctor applies to his wounds, he has managed to hang on, coughing and hacking and barely being able to walk, for an incredible ten years. I wish I could say it creates tension in the show. He has to die in order for the succession battle to begin, until then everyone is waiting for him to kick the bucket. Maybe he lives so the audience can pick a contender to root for. Unfortunately, they are a nasty group of people. I can’t latch on to someone.

There are battle scenes and loveless royal marriages and doomed affairs and gruesome murders and period perfect costumes and fire breathing dragons and medieval sets and plenty of gratuitous nudity. Does this sound familiar?

The worst thing about the House of Dragons is the use of a made up language called High Valyrian. I didn’t like it in Game of Thrones but mercifully that show used it rarely. In House of Dragons it is spoken much more. But, for the life of me, why? No one speaks the language. The audience wouldn’t know the difference between High Valyrian and Chinese. It is unnecessary and adds nothing to the story. For me, in fact, it is a distraction because every time I hear it, I have to fume for a minute or two before I can read the subtitles.

A lot of work has been put into it. It is a good production but it has failed to grab me yet. I am committed to watching until the end of this season. Right now I can say that if I had my druthers I would rewatch Game of Thrones instead.

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Karl Marx is purported to have said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” I have been thinking about this quote since I heard that Putin is drafting more Russians to fight in the Ukrainian war. I am no military expert but is seems like a pretty bone headed move.

Putin plans to draft 300,000 thousand very unhappy men, some of who are fleeing the country to avoid the draft or protesting against the war, and then sending these less than enthusiastic solders to the front where they will be greeted by an already demoralized Russian army who have been floundering in the Ukraine since February. This seems like a mighty desperate roll of the die.

He is betting that any warm body given a gun and pointed in the right direction is enough soldiering required to win a war. If it works, Putin is a genius and I will take it all back. But if his best trained professional troops aren’t able to beat the Ukrainians, why would adding a large group of badly trained draftees be more successful? And, if Putin is wrong, and his disaster in the Ukraine keepings getting worse, he has a large group of angry men with loaded weapons directly on the Russian border facing an already weakened Russian military.

Perhaps this would be a good time for Putin to review the history of the Russian Revolution. The first revolution in February of 1917 was started by mutineers in the Russian army — unhappy with their defeat at the front and unwilling to fight a losing war any longer. The Bolsheviks came later in the year. For some reason, I keep thinking that this farce is about to get worse. Yes, I admit, it might be amusing to watch the evil fuck Putin take a fall but I do fear what might come next.

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As someone who considers himself a part of Western Civilization, I ask this question because people are always carrying on about the success of the West but, it seems to me, that the basis of that success was the departure of millions of people from Europe to other parts of the world. These migrations were so large that the majority populations in three continents (North America, South America and Australia) have changed from a majority indigenous population to a majority immigrant population. The other 5 continents, at least until recently, didn’t find it necessary to send their excess population across the oceans in order for their people to make a decent living. The European world did. And why is this seen as a success?

Over 70% of the population of the United States has European ancestors. They left, by and large, because they were poor. They saw little chance for themselves or for their children in the old country. They left the world they knew to take a treacherous trip across the ocean, bringing precious little with them and landing in a new world. Many immigrants didn’t speak the language of the country they were going to or know anyone who could help them when they arrived or have any money to invest in their new country. They still left family, friends, and their known world. Imagine how bad it must have been for millions of people to take this risk.

Americans have a tendency to glorify this mass movement of people and, because it has been the driving economic philosophy of the time, capitalism as a success story. Poor people were given a chance to succeed in the new world, a chance they didn’t have in the old one. But it begs the question, if the western world and capitalism were so successful why did so many people have to leave Europe, the home of Western Civilization, in order to make it happen? Europe certainly had a problem sustaining the population it had. What would have happened in Europe if the New World had never been discovered? Also troubling is the way the immigrants took the land from the indigenous people. It was less a cash transfer from seller to owner and more outright theft of property. This certainly is the antithesis to how capitalist ideology is designed. How successful would the immigrants have been if they had to actually pay for the land they took?

What bothers me here is that there is this unquestioning assumption about the success of Western ideas in general and Capitalism specifically. It is highlights freedom, personal initiative and courage and forgets the despair the drove the emigrants and the elimination of indigenous cultures. Neither of which speaks well of capitalism, at least, capitalism as it is supposed to be practiced and hardly should be considered a smashing success for Western Civilization.

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I thought Rod Dreher’s column about race would cause more of media storm than it did. He worries that whites are ignoring the dangers of black criminals because they fear being labeled racist. Whites needlessly are walking into danger because they are ignoring their own instincts regarding dodgy black men. He calls these criminals animals unworthy of sharing society with the rest of us. The implication here is that people need to be prejudiced in order to be safe from the rampant criminality of young black men.

The crimes he describes are horrible. But what is his solution — more judicial leeway for the police and avoiding groups of young black men. He only sees the black criminal and not the police. One of the factors in Black/Police relationship is that many in the Black community don’t trust the police. The don’t believe that the police are there to help them. How does Dreher’s thinking address this perception? Furthermore, how does a person distinguish between Black criminals and rowdy Black teens? Or is Dreher’s default setting for young black men hoodlum? What does Dreher think about White criminals? Both the Littleton theater shooter and the Sandy Hook school shooter were White. Does this make a gang of young White men animals as well? As far as I can tell, he is only worried about young Black men.

This makes it easy for Whites to retain their prejudices and believe that criticism of the police are based on isolated incidents that doesn’t represent the actual experience of a Black person in the criminal justice system. Most cops are not racists. How can that be when Dreher documents accounts that support his view of black criminality. He thinks that people need to protect themselves whenever they see Black teenagers. He then admits that Whites already have a preconceived notion of the Black teenaged male as hoodlums but stifle this prejudice because they don’t want to be seen as racists and because they are ignoring these gut instincts they are making themselves fodder for the heartless Black criminal.

If people have this knowledge regarding young Black men then how can Whites working in the criminal justice system be free of this prejudice? There are a numerous accounts of judicial system employees with racial bigotry and instances of their unfair treatment of Blacks. How can Blacks trust a Louisana judge who uses the N word? Or policeman who use the N word, and here, and here and here and here? Or their jailers and here and here? Or policeman who beat them for traffic violations? Or police that are so afraid of young black men that they shoot unarmed black men within seconds of seeing them with toy guns or no guns– see Amadou Diallo, Tamir Rice, Donovan Lewis, and John Crawford III. Or how are they supposed to trust the justice system when innocent kids were railroaded into convictions for the rape of the Central Park jogger? If you remember the Central Park jogger rape, you will also remember that the defendants were called animals. Some of these public officials were absolved for their errors and still retain their government position. How does that engender trust within the black community?

There are an awful lot of isolated incidents here too. If you look at the volume, you might even suspect a systematic problem in the criminal justice system. But, OK, for the sake of argument, I will view these as isolated incidents and not a systematic one. Then, Dreher has to do the same thing with the crimes he is talking about it. He describes some horrible crimes with Black culprits and, from these isolated incidents, draws a general conclusion regarding Black criminality. Or, if he is unwilling to give up his prejudice regarding Black men because people’s lives are at stake here, then how can he ask Blacks to surrender their beliefs that the justice system is filled with prejudiced people who are afraid of Black people and treat Black people differently because of that fear.

Most mystifying in Dreher’s commentary is that he complains that these victims of Black crime are not given the same attention from the press as the Black victims of the police. There is a big difference and that Dreher is unable to see this difference is troubling. I think everyone would agree that people who shoot convenience store employees are criminals and deserve prosecution. There isn’t a question or a debate on what happened. On the other hand, when policeman on duty murdered Floyd, there was a debate regarding what happened. If not for the press attention, this crime might very well have been swept under the carpet because the police, at first, tried to paint Floyd as responsible for his own death. This is a very different situation to the murders Dreher describes. I am not sure what Dreher finds missing from the Press coverage of these terrible crimes. The only thing I can think of was that the press didn’t highlight that Black hoodlums were going around murdering people. How is this helpful to the bigger problems here? Oh, I know, it reinforces the Dreher’s belief that Blacks are criminals and don’t deserve to be with the rest of us.

There is no easy solution, particularly not the one the Dreher chooses. I wish there was. Dreher wants to blame Black criminality as the problem. If only Black people would behave better than White people could begin to let their guard down. But right now Black crime is running rampant and until then Whites have every right to worry about young Black men. The problem with his thinking is that there is no way to stop all Black criminals. Ever. We know this to be true because we still have plenty of White criminals. If White people can’t stop White criminal behavior how do we expect Black people to be successful? It is an impossible standard. What needs to be done is for the police to work with Black communities so show them that police are on their side, that working with the police will make their communities safer and better able to handle and lessen the impact of the criminals within their community. This is a much more difficult task and I don’t see Dreher offering much in the way of a solution.

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Speaking of dicks, I read the following article about Prince Andrew being heckled while walking in a funeral procession for his mother.

I don’t have a great understanding of royalty and why they are necessary in the modern world but if the British want to keep them, it is none of my business and they can do whatever the Hell they want to. However I found this incident irksome. A heckler spouted some choice insults about Prince Andrew while he was walking in a funeral procession for his mother. The heckler was, of course, arrested and charged with breaching the peace while Prince Andrew carried on marching in the procession.

I could have lived with the police removing the heckler from the street because, I suppose, there was a case that the heckler was in danger from the other members of the crowd and removing him was for his own safety. Charging him, however, seems petty given that Prince Andrew is guilty of more serious crimes and he got away with them. He avoided prosecution and criminal charges through artful use of lawyers and his mother’s money while also calling his accuser a liar when she was telling the truth. But then he is a prince.

I thought that the Queen arranged with Prince Andrew a withdrawal from public life. Walking down the street behind the hearse of the most famous woman on earth is about as public as it gets. But it is his mother, you say. Yes and if she was regular old Elizabeth Windsor living in Croydon I would say the heckler was out of line but again his mother was the queen of England — a very public figure. He has forfeited his public role and that means he shouldn’t participate in any aspects of her public funeral. He can mourn her in private.

He has behaved shamefully. He should be ashamed about it. He should be hiding out in some castle while his more law-abiding relatives bury his mother. More importantly, he should have had the good sense to know this without being told. Even more importantly, and a bit shocking because it didn’t happen, is that since he didn’t have the good sense, somebody else in the family should have explained it to him. That nobody told him shows a terrible lack of judgement from the new royal family.

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Aurora Snow, porn star actress, wrote an eye opening article regarding white men’s sexual fears. Apparently the White boyfriends of porn actresses are understanding about their girlfriends having sex with other men as long as they aren’t black. She claims this is because they believe the following three things:

Black Men have bigger dicks.

Women prefer men with bigger dicks.

White women will abandon White men for Black men because they have bigger dicks.

There is so much wrong here I don’t know where to begin.

First and foremost most male porn stars have big dicks. It is in the job description. So if White men are worried about big dicks than almost any male porn star would be a potential threat. Are White men with big dicks somehow less threatening? If so, why? There is something else going on here and it has nothing to do with big dicks.

Then there is the notion that women prefer big dicks. This may be true. Women also might like a hairy men, tall men, younger men, daddys, rich men, nice men, patient men. That these men focus on dick size as a woman’s most desired male trait suggests a pretty shallow understanding of female sexuality. It boils down to the bigger the dick the happier the woman. So much for romance and foreplay.

Then there is women will leave them for the bigger dicked black male. The good news here is that there simply aren’t enough Black men to go around so, unless your woman moves fast, you are probably safe. You, however, might think about getting a penile implant and spending some time on a tanning bed to play it safe. The bad news here is if your woman will leave you because of the size of your dick, you must be a pretty poor catch in the first place. Your dick size is the least of your problems.

The casual racism and sexism revealed in this article is mind boggling. It also explains why racism is so hardy in the USA. You can give a man countless pictures of black men with average and small dicks and it wouldn’t matter. He would still see big dicks . You could have a man listen to thousands of women saying that dick size has no effect on arousing her and he wouldn’t hear them. There is no amount of sensitivity training that will change a man who fears that another man has something his woman wants and he doesn’t have. It is primal. It is irrational. And that it is also why it is extremely dangerous.