“Worse, the teachers are often fluffy internationalists, having been taught what I call “tourist multiculturalism.” They believe that “culture” is clothes and crafts and food. Or, as I kept running into when they told me to teach the kids their “culture” and I replied I was, that they were perfect “US Geek.” They got upset, and wanted me to teach them Portuguese culture. (Why this would trump the culture of their father whose family has been here since the 1600s is a mystery.) They have some vague idea culture is genetic. And they lack the historical knowledge to realize that is one of the most racist ideas ever.”
The first time I heard of “the international” as in the communist song, it was in a Giovanni Guareschi book. Since this was the seventies in Portugal, it tells you that at least the Portuguese socialists and communists had learned not to press that facet of their beliefs too loudly. Certainly not to celebrate it.
I’m not sure why. The socialism that we were taught as – as someone on this blog put it – people in the US in a certain time had civic education was very short on the HISTORY of socialism. Possibly because well, after a while, when you study the thing, you get a feeling that there is a lot of failure of wonderful predictions. Oh, and a lot of blood.
Instead Marxism and Marx-inspired regimes were presented as a sort of eternal ideal. Socialist and communist revolutions were the end of history, and the countries…
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Now, I’ll admit that I have rarely felt a need to go to war with someone on the internet personally – at least unprovoked. I have once started a war unwittingly, by linking someone who was being as Georgette Heyer would say “foolish beyond permission.” This is known around here I think as “the incident of the very pampered non-fic writer and her insane groupies.”
Most of the time, though, when I have something to say, I have something to say about ideas, not the person in particular. And since the ideas are usually stupid enough on their own, I don’t link the source – though I or my fans have been known to clue others on how to find it. This usually avoids counterstrikes, because the originators of the annoying ideas either don’t feel a personal incentive to counter attack, or they don’t recognize the ideas as their own. …
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Sir Leigh Teabing today announced his possession of a lost page from the Prophecies of St. Malachy, which set out the succession of Popes.
“I found the restored page at a bookstall in Rennes whose keeper assured me that it was liberated from the secret archives of Opus Dei. Since Rome attempted to suppress it, it must be genuine.”
The missing page shows that far from looking for “the last pope”, Gloria Olivae is followed by Bonum Graecus Aeriale.
Commentators immediately pointed out that in Spanish “Greek” is “Griego”, which is corrupted to “gringo”.
“While most of our audience think that ‘gringo’ means only those from north of the Rio Grande,” wrote Todd Unctuous, in South America, especially Argentina, it means people fresh off the boat from Europe… most likely Italian.”*
Thus, the missing passage foretells the election of a “gringo” from “Good air”…. or BUENOS AIRES!
Teabing declines to reveal the following entries, but said “Better not try betting against me during future conclaves.”
The Holy Roman Emperor Marcus Sheavius proclaimed “This is a prime example of the desparate reaching of anti-apocalyptic woowoos!”
* If you don’t believe this, turn to the Argentine national epic, “Martin Fierro“…
“… for no one could speak his lingo.
” A ‘Pap-o-li-tano’ he said that he was,
” Which I take it is some kind of gringo.”
“The members who composed it were, seven-eighths of them, office-holders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks,
contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-train’d to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, blowers, electioneerers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, sponges, ruined sports, expell’d gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duelists, carriers of conceal’d weapons, deaf’ men, pimpled men, scarr’d inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people’s money and harlot’s money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.”
Mehak Restaurant is back in business, shabash!
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