Saturday, April 20, 2019

Saturday commute clxviii: To the angels of the "deep state"



Hitler's struggle with the Army
General Staff is one of the most
interesting features of Nazi his-
tory during the war, for the Gen-
eral Staff was the one centre of
opposition which Hitler, though
he succeeded in ruining it, was
never able to conquer.





The American President's great
struggle with the profession of
law, nicely revealed in the text
of the week, thrusts one back in
memory to the distinction raised
in a similar context, by one of
the gifted teacher-writers of our
time, the late Hugh Trevor-Roper. 

Although a tremendous carnage, to
return the compliment, distinguish-
es the wake of the degenerate Pres-
ident, a conquest has not occurred.

One reads in Trevor-Roper, of in-
formation on events never seeming-
ly relevant to our wondrous age,
framed with such penetration of
their human constancy that it is
impossible to dismiss them from
the mind. It might have happened
in the European Witch Craze, or
in Oliver Cromwell's Parliaments,
even in the bunker of the suicid-
al Führer, but from the stunning
writing and scholarship of Trevor-
Roper, human conduct shows its un-
dying facets with the memorability
it deserves. It strikes one that
it is against this, that the Amer-
ican President's struggle with the
legal profession truly is defined:
in the recognition of what he does.
























Hugh Trevor-Roper
  Lord Dacre of Glanton
1914-2003

The Last Days of Hitler
1947
Sixth Edition
1987
Macmillan©

The Crisis of the Seven-
  teenth Century
  Religion, Reformation,
  and Social Change
1967
Harper & Row©





Thursday, April 18, 2019

Scrubbing commandments, not washing feet






Everyone seems to be bracing himself
this Maundy Thursday for the New Am-
rican Government's Revisionist Ver-
sion of the Special Counsel's Report
on the most recent Presidential elec-
tion and its monstrous aftermath. The
day could not be better selected, in
view of how militantly sectarian the
New American Government is, because
it's an occasion to recall our Lord's
final commandment to love one's neigh-
bor, and act with the humility He ex-
emplified in the washing of our feet.

(These are not widely cited features
of the doctrine of the NAG, but we
have grounds to anticipate their re-
collection soon enough).

The state of law and language on the
American scene today is more than e-
nough to compel the most diligent re-
sort to that groveling state of beg-
gary for human correction, which is
widely mistaken as prayer, when the
personal mastery of the flinch, or
the occasional wince, will have to
do. The country is divided: the es-
tablishment, which is perfectly 
willing to preside over the decline
of the language, if it may resume
its rule; and the roundheads, who
haven't met a lie they don't adore,
provided it screws everything up.

This morning's release of the rem-
nants of the roundheads' feast on
the facts recounted in  a cava-
lier's Report, should be enough to
guide us into Good Friday with the
brazenest fanfares of ecstatic mis-
representation. Recognize them?





















Mattia Pecchini 
  x Ira Giorgetti






Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Origins of Wednesday xcii: Asylum can wait






How movingly the New American Gov-
ernment has claimed the soul of its
tidier successor to Jeff Sessions,
whose testimony to the Senate Judici-
ary Committee, in protecting his nom-
nation, bore all the stalwart recti-
dude of the failed rapist, Justice
Kavanaugh. This sleeper collaborator 
has just promulgated his revival of
our Fugitive Slave laws, with the 
odd view, that aliens asserting the
legal right to claim asylum in this
nation must be jailed now, without
bail, indefinitely. Who could con-
ceive of sounder advice, as we claim
our own asylum from awareness of the
New American Government, in a bowl of
berries which are not yet in season?

















  

Monday, April 15, 2019

Every city needs a building it could lose






Yet every city holds a building for
which a temptation exists to trade
the city, and rebuild from scratch
around its island. This paradox is
easier to accept, if the city isn't
Paris. Everything that's tempting,
is easier to indulge if the tempted
The belovèd city can't be exchanged.



















Notre Dame de Paris
Rose window
  South façade
1163-1250







Sunday, April 14, 2019

Return of the native






 Fine wines do the same
 thing. They hide for a
 while.  

 Then suddenly they are
 back. This is true. At
 the revival, we should
 know better than to be
 amazed, but nobody ob-
 jects to the sensation
 of a reprimand of awe.



















Tiger Woods
Augusta, Georgia
2001

Myron
Greece
5th C BC
Discobolus
  Bronze
Rome
2nd C AD
  Copy
Glypothek, Munich