Friends, I am appalled -- appalled, I say! -- by woke Fox's decision to dial back Homer Simpson's time-honored attempts to strangle his son, Bart, for misbehavior. The Simpsons has been sliding inexorably into the pit of wokeness for years now, even cancelling some beloved characters because they trigger oversensitive leftists. When will the madness end? Not anytime soon, I think we can safely assume. Hollywood grows more unhinged by the day. In fact, I imagine it's only a matter of time before one or more of the members of the Simpson family become black, or trans, or disabled, or "undocumented", or some such nonsense. Oy! Anyway, getting back to the strangling, the message of Fox's new editorial line is, of course, that child abuse isn't acceptable, even in "art", and moreover it isn't even remotely funny. Well, I suppose one could take that exceptionally pious view, sure, but will Fox also be reconsidering all the violence that is done to Homer himself on the show? The poor guy's been put through the proverbial ringer, and we've laughed with (but mostly at) him all along. But of course what am I saying? Why would Fox take Homer's plight even slightly seriously? He isn't a member of a "protected class", or a vulnerable one, so, as per neo-Marxism, he deserves what he gets! I say there's only one fair resolution to this dilemma: STRANGLE EVERYONE!!! It's the only democratic solution, after all...
I also recommend to you this interesting article about whether "the West" is ready for "WWIII". The author does not consider whether Americans and Europeans are morally and psychologically prepared for a major war -- I think we can safely answer that question with a resounding NO! -- but whether we are industrially and materially prepared. The degree to which our global industrial dominance has slipped is indeed shocking, and the degree to which we rely on various Asian countries for critical and strategic technologies calls into question whether we could ever go to war with a country like China, even if we wanted to! In all likelihood, we are entering a new phase of world history, in which the ability of the United States to call the shots internationally will rapidly diminish and then disappear. That doesn't mean that some Asian superpower will seamlessly step into the breach, mind you. We may face a long period of global instability instead. Buckle up!
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/05/is-the-west-ready-for-world-war-3/
RAY TO DR. NICK
ReplyDeleteWhat if God decides to destroy the entire planet?
Dr. Waddy from Jack: In a democracy a key element in readiness to wage war is political will to fight. The US until Dec. 7 is a good example. The draft act passed by an extremely small margin in Sept. 1940. By then, Hitler had fixed the murderous Nazi boot on most of the Continent and Britain stood in mortal danger. Churchill, of all people, as much as begged FDR for help, which he eventually gave only after carefully weighing how much the American public would endure.Obviously Pearl Harbor and Hitler's reckless declaration of war mobilized public resolve overnight.In the 30s,Britain, still traumatized by WWI's astonishing destruction coming after so many years of Victorian and Edwardian relative peace, simply could not bear to consider another clash with the Hun. Churchill's well informed warnings went unheeded and Churchill was viciously castigated until almost the point beyond which Perfidious Albion could not have produced the radar establishment and the air power to bring about its " very near run thing"repulse of the Luftwaffe. The French, in 1940 much of whose military went unengaged, may simply have lacked the perhaps impossible will to go through "all that" again after 21 restive years.
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DeleteIn 1940, The French probably still believed that The Maginot Line would protect them from the Germans, which it did, but they just went around it in a place the French least expected they would.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: So do we have the will to fight a major war? Depends on the nature of the provocation. The American public would also have to RESOLVE to overwhelm those domestic enemies who would surely seek to sap US morale!
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ReplyDeleteI strongly suggest that you check out Colonel (retired) Douglas Macgregor on how ready our country is for a major war of any kind. You will not regret it.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: As a librarian,using brief book reviews in order to select fiction acquisitions, I was appalled by the frequency of plots( meant after all for entertainment) involving children as wicked or as victims of graphically described monstrous misuse. On TV even and in movies it is commonplace to show children witnessing obscenity and sexual performance. Of course it is necessary to responsibly document such anathema but to use it as entertainment is SICKO! But a farcical romp like the Simpsons is too unreal to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteRay from Jack: The French blindly devoted themselves to the indoctrination of the offense prior to and early in the Great War. Its consequent tragic unsuitability apparently motivated in them an equally wrongheaded comprehensive devotion to the defense. When the wily kraut easily defeated it in 1940, I think the French just reached their wits' end. After the indescribable ordeal of 1914-18 its hard to blame them.Churchill once opined that battle was preferable to the "cold light of the execution yard". "Maybe this time the Boche will be merciful; yes surely that's it! After all we did provoke them" the harrowed French may have whistled in the dark gathering about them.But Nazi evil was unimaginable. Churchill alone fully anticipated it.
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DeleteThe main problem with France in 1940 is that their large communist party would not fight the Germans because of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, and The Right in France was eager for the Germans to win so they could have Vichy. Both the far Left and the far Right were reponsible for the degeat.
RAY TO JACK
Deleteshould read "for the defeat" in the last sentence.
In any event, the French Resistance was mostly a product of the Free French exile government in Great Britain, and Churchill's very own Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Ray from Jack: I suppose, even though he was insufferable, we should be glad DeGaulle prevailed and prevented the commies from working more of their treason on France.
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ReplyDeleteActually I like Charles DeGaulle, and exactly because he did save France from the communists, and he punished the Nazi collaborators too. He was a difficult man, but he had a certain style. He really did care about his country, regardless of his personality.
Ray from Jack: I did call up some sites featuring Colonel MacGregor and I think his views on the danger of the Ukraine War to us are well taken. I haven't yet found an opinion from him on our readiness for a very big war but I'll keep looking. The danger he plausibly describes is perhaps the most unnecessary ever faced by our country. Ukraine has never been of vital national security interest to us until we foolishly made it so..We may disdain it but it has always been so for Russia and we should never have trifled with that rugged ,vindictive country over it.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
ReplyDeleteColonel MacGregor does have his own site, so look for that before anything else. Thanks. Good luck.
Ray, if God decides to destroy Planet Earth, then all those who decided to drive econoboxes instead of SUVs to "save" it will feel awfully silly. On the other hand, my strategy of paying off my credit card balance every month will look decidedly over-cautious as well.
ReplyDeleteJack, it's true that America had no appetite to jump into WWII, but I wonder if that truly reflects an unwillingness to fight, or a disinclination to be suckered into conflicts that didn't concern vital U.S. interests. That's how many Americans saw it at the time. They felt we had been lured into WWI on false pretenses, and it's true, to a point. I would distinguish, at any rate, a sensible reluctance to fight unnecessary wars from a categorical unwillingness to fight for anything, ever. Nowadays I'd say we're more in yellow-belly territory. I mean, how could we not be? We can't even tell which way on our genitals is up!
That's a good point, Jack. The morality of The Simpsons would be totally different if actual children, or actual people in general, were involved as actors. Animation is a wonderful medium for social satire, partly for this reason.
As for France in WWII, I think history may be somewhat unkind to the frogs. I say that because their strategy in WWII was (vaguely) offensive. They planned to wait for the Germans to invade Belgium, and then invade Belgium themselves and meet them in the middle. Then the Boche attacked through the Ardennes, drove into the French rear (talk about adding insult to injury!), and wiped the floor with them. There was an element of luck and pure moxie to the German plan, though, that could, I think, just as easily have produced disaster as speedy triumph. Maybe not all Frenchmen were gung-ho for battle, but neither were all Germans. Not by a long shot.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Perhaps some false pretenses were offered to justify our entry into WWI but I think Imperial Germany presented a substantial potential threat to America. In 1917: Brit Admiral Jellicoe told American Admiral Sims that the Uboats had put Britain in extreme danger of being soon starved out. Those tuna fish cans the boche sent to sea had almost closed the Atlantic! Supposing the Brits had left the Continent to Germany.Wilhelm II had displayed vaulting ambition in trying to build his surface fleet to parity with the great Brit navy. In 1918 he had 23 more years to live. What further advances might he have craved? Sans the Nazi threat the boche might well have developed jets, ICBMs and nuclear weapons with the scientists who would not have fled, at Wilhelm's egotistical impetus. Isolationist America could easily have be driven off both oceans by the advanced subs the boche would have built in schools
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: . . . in vast schools following up on their Great War submarine triumph. (lacking heavy bombing capability the Brits could not have destroyed the sub building yards in WWI and the mostly untrammeled subs would eventually have sunk the Brit blockade).True, the boche would probably have destroyed Bolshevik Russia but they might well have stayed in Russia. A besieged America, its commerce doable only at the pleasure of Wilhelm would have had to come out of its shell sometime and it might have been too late to engage a dominant German empire.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: But the French plan hinged on the survivability of the Maginot Line, a defensive measure only. True, the German public displayed marked lack of enthusiasm at the advent of WWII.But morale in the German army was high because of victory and because it was a skillfully managed army; it featured a quasi "big brother" relationship between enlisted men and lower ranking officers.
ReplyDeleteBoy, Jack, you paint quite a picture of a continent dominated by the Kaiser! One flaw in your logic is that the (British) convoy system and technological improvements defeated the U-Boats. U.S. help wasn't required. Ergo, I feel as though, even had Germany prevailed over France and Russia, Britain and its empire would have been left intact. That dangles the tantalizing prospect of a tripolar world: the U.S., the Brits, and the Krauts. Would it have been better or worse than what we got instead? I certainly haven't a clue, but I do know that those are all peoples I admire and respect, and, assuming none of them were later subverted by totalitarianism, they might have done a passable job of administering Planet Earth. Of course, one assumes that eventually they would have come to blows.
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