a material vision of the good

the self-proclaimed "non-elitist" mouthpiece of the east coast elite has always known what i should think politically and culturally ( actualy they routinely confuse fine arts with culture...i am skeptical of anything the label as "culture " )...in that respect they are no different than fox news, msnbc, or breitbart...all final arbiters ( in their own self-image anyway ) of how things should be viewed by the great unwashed american public...they are the cream of the media world...all with a product to sell...ideologically and commerically...and far be it from the non-elitist times to ignore the commercial...today's paper blesed me with...

the new york times "style magazine:women's fashion" issue...with splashy ads from hermes, alexander mcqueen, dior, chanel, , max mara, rolex, fendi...all the big names are here hawking a saleable ethical good for you all to aspire to...

and at fire sale prices...that's $20340 worth of clothing that model is wearing...including those eye catching $18000 trousers...christmas is 125 days away...start saving those pennies you don't blow on $5 packages of bologna in the cold cut aisle...americans laugh at inflation and trust their leaders in the same way the times is "non-elitist"

g.w.f. hegel or 30 april 1975

listen closely all you youngsters and braying trumpists...there is an instructive point or two to be made if you leave behiind your exceptionalism and pay attention...

kabul yesterday ( i believe )...

saigon april 1975...

kabul...

saigon...we have done this before and, rendered stupid by american exceptionalism, will doubltlessly do it again...g.w.f. hegel maintained that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history...i would, in the case of imperial thinking, amend that to all we learn from history is the wrong thing...we simply refine the mistakes of the past into the policy of the present and future because we think we know better when we do not...we are learning what the british and the soviets learned...you do not win in afghanistan...one would have thought the war in viet nam would have brought imperial adventures into question...but empires lie to themselves as well as the rest of the world...all viet nam taught the military was that they needed to control the media and how it presents information more closely so the public doesn't find out how inept it really is ( is where you work a chaotic mess most of the time...all anthropogenic structures are inherently unstable and prone to entorpy...the military, despite its hubris, is the same )...read some history...reflect on the mistakes you have made...amplify them with american exceptionalism...and you might have an epiphany...or you can close you mind and keep making the same stupid mistakes thinking " it'll be different this time"...and, before i go, whose adminstration negotiated a peace deal with the taliban? that's right, donny greenlighted this...and the viet nam withdrawal ( no not the entire war ) was a wholly republican affair...get a grip yahoos.