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The Single Greatest Moment in Russian Literature

Or, possibly, the literature of any nation. Or, possibly even, any possible literature of any possible nation:

Убил отца не ты.

“It wasn’t you who killed father.”

Years & years ago, I “taught” The Brothers Karamazov at the University of Chicago, and was quite taken with it.

Just now, I’ve been revisiting the book, in an audiobook performance of the Magarshack translation, as I drive into and back from work. The line I’ve just quoted, from Book 11, Chapter 5, is, in context, so brilliant, so devastating, and so completely unexpected…I’m lucky I didn’t crash my car.

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“Genuinely Great”

Vox Day can be fun, but, honestly, he needs to get over his Japanese girl-rock thing.

He posts this bit of routine commercial junk:

…and then goes on to enthuse about how this pop-crap debris is “genuinely great, the perfect combination of music, voice, instruments, and lyrics…”

I wonder if this great defender of Western Civilization has ever even heard of Die Winterreise.

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What a Gift

We on the dissident right are always hoping for something – anything – that will finally “red-pill” the normies, and force them to see what they don’t want to see: that they are now second class citizens in the country built by their ancestors, and that it’s way past time for them to start fighting back.

Is the Sarah Jeong case what we’ve been waiting for?

Time will tell.

 

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Derbyshire Doubles Down

John Derbyshire got a lot of grief, in comments at Unz, over last week’s Radio Derb. Most of it well-deserved, I think.

This week, he doubles down:

July Diary

I mean, here’s a guy who was (like so many of us) completely made a fool of by Western “intelligence” agencies in the run-up to the Iraq War – and here he is, fifteen years on, trusting their word on the Skripal case – and calling anybody with doubts a “pro-Putin troll.”

And then it’s off to the races, citing lefty NGO’s like “Transparency International” and “Freedom House” (both of which would ban him at the earliest opportunity!) in support of his judgments about corruption & freedom in Russia.

I guess you can take The Derb out of The National Review, but you can’t take The National Review out of The Derb.

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Vox Day vs David Cole

This…

…strikes me as mostly right.

I was living just a couple of miles down the road, in Venice, California, when the McMartin pre-school story broke, way back in 1983. What was done to those poor innocent people can never be forgiven.

This…

…on the other hand, strikes me as mostly wrong. I mean, c’mon. If you’ve got serious evidence of criminal wrong-doing, let’s see it.

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The fundamental drive of human beings is [not] reproduction…

…and it’s a fundamental error to think that it is.

Yes, human beings have the various drives (desires, behavioral dispositions, or whatever) that they have because, at crucial points in our evolutionary past, those drives tended to maximize inclusive fitness.

So, roughly speaking, gals want to mate with high-status guys.

And guys want to achieve high status & take advantage of their position to, well, take advantage of every gal in sight.

But hardly anybody really wants to maximize the representation of his or her genes in  future generations.

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thezman vs libertarianism

This 

…is quite interesting, and well worth a listen.

Throughout the podcast, thezman excoriates libertarians for their unrealistic beliefs about human nature – and, mostly, I find myself nodding along in more-or-less, sorta/kinda agreement.

But then, at 55:00, he comes out with this:

“The fundamental drive of human beings is reproduction – like every other living thing on this planet. And, for social animals like us, that quickly scales up to wanting to preserve and advance our people. We want the people who look like us, who sound like us, who love the things that we love, who hate the things that we hate, we want those people to be successful. You know, they’re our people, they’re us. That’s why group loyalty is as old as man. It’s in our nature.”

Almost every sentence, here, seems to me every bit as unrealistic as the libertarian fantasies he’s just been criticizing.

Before getting into the weeds with a word by word critique – just plug in “Swedes” for “human beings” in the above, and see how far you can get before you begin to doubt.

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Was Dostoevsky Right?

If there is no God, is everything permitted?

Jordan Peterson seems to think so. And so do I.

So there’d better be a God, or we’re in deep trouble. But where to find him?

The God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob? No. He’s a monster – a bloodthirsty tribal elder.

The God of Jesus of Nazareth? No. Another monster – dealing out eternal torment for any failure to believe the unbelievable.

The God of Mohammed?

As if.

So what is one to do?

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The Magnitsky Hoax

Andrei Nekrasov’s documentary “The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes,” available, for the moment, at least, on Bitchute, is really quite astounding.

Yet another case where vast swathes of hugely consequential American public policy are based on proven lies.

But it seems I can’t link to it here.

So let’s try this:

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/is-bill-browder-the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world/

(scroll down and you’ll find it).

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Cinderella at the Mikhailovsky

Sorry, this is a really self-indulgent post, but I just can’t contain myself…think of it as an addendum to Go East, Old Man, below.

The current production of Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg is absolutely magical – the sort of thing that even a fairly jaded opera & ballet-goer like me dreams about. I had hoped to go last March, but due to a scheduling conflict ended up giving my tickets away. So only last night did I finally make it.

Gorgeous sets & costumes, wonderful performance from the orchestra, amazing dancing (as one would expect at the Mikhailovsky) and, last but not least, truly brilliant use of digital effects – swirling autumn leaves in the foreground, fountains & fireworks in the background…I’ve seen this sort of thing attempted before, but never with such complete success.

Prokofiev’s score is, of course, a little more “modernistic” than Tchaikovsky’s ballets, which might deter a few particularly cautious folks, but it’s full of memorable tunes, and, believe me, grows on you with repeated listening.

Unfortunately, the few remaining seats for the last three days of the season are prohibitively expensive. – but it’s back in September.

Can’t wait to see it again.

Dissident Righter’s take note: Russia today is a place you really need to experience.

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What if they kill him?

In the early years of the Obama administration, Democrats indulged in quite a bit of assassination-porn, anticipating, in a sort of ecstasy, the killing of their president and his ascension to the exalted status of Holy Martyr, alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

Strangely enough, Obama survived his presidency, and is now busily plucking the fairest flowers of the pay-for-play circuit.

Will Trump be so fortunate?

I worry, because if Trump goes, there’s nobody that I can see to replace him.