John > Recent Status Updates

Third thought before diving in: is there a newHSK OUT YET, with the updated vocabulary? Better check…

Second goal for 2026: take some HSK tests. At least HSK1&2, but maybe 3 too!

Ok, so I really like this book but haven’t studied it for ages.

New Year’s resolution is to finish it as soon as I’m done with HSK1.

Ok, so I have had this in my inbox for God knows how long with little progress, even though I almost finished the book a few years ago. Now I’ve probably forgotten most

New Year’s resolution: study every day and record the sessions here!

Let’s hope this resolution lasts

Christianity “postpones to a point beyond the span of history the cure of evil and murder,” he noted, while Russian Communism justified terror and murder and crushed freedom in the promise of some far-off workers’ utopia. For Camus, “real generosity to the future lies in giving all to the present.”

What Camus could not abide were ideologies that sacrificed life in the present, the one fundamental value above all, for some promise of future justice.

The first philosophical secret of life for Camus was the recognition of the absurd condition. This instinct for positive rebellion—against death, oppression, suffering, or injustice—was the second secret of life, and a path to humanity.

Among the many contributors to the rise of terror, Camus suggested that one overriding factor was the emphasis on doctrine and bureaucracy over human dignity.

By the end of the chapter the people was the body heat of “the masses” stationed at the Hujialou intersection in Beijing, in May 1989. 10k were gathered to stop troops from proceeding to Tianamen square. It was same at every other intersection in Beijing! Has this been published in Beijing? Forbidden knowledge!

Glanced ahead at other words. Can’t wait to get to Bamboozeled. A very American meaning

This is gonna be a fun read. Read the first chapter, 人民= Rénmín=the people. Describes the evolution of the the word’s meaning in the author’s head. During the cultural revolution the people = Mao, and the reverse was also true.

If it were presented to them, some would undoubtedly respond as Barbara Bush did, when ask about the Iraqi dead, “ why should we hear about body bags and depths.? It’s not relevant. so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that.

Presented with proof of injustice, the majority human reflex is to act against it.

Chapter 6: craft

Omar is quite angry at “the west,” which really should be defined as the white west. More particularly the hypocrisy of the white west’s liberals. He is angry because they (we) have let him down so badly in Gaza… and so many places before, but especially Gaza, now. Can’t blame him, given the violence he describes which we fund and which our govt supports unquestioningly.

(But is the 3rd world citizen so self-righteous and innocent? It’s easy to blame the ppl who overthrew the Hawaiian govt or Chile, or who built their country with innocent slaves. But prior to the latest aggressors were and are equally oppressive native rule. And a system that sold their own into slavery, or sacrificed them even to the sun god. Shouldn’t the real villain be Man, not western man, or German man)

It are the 3rd

44:32. C1
“For members of every generation there comes a moment of complete, and completely emptying, disgust when it is revealed there is only a hollow, a completely malleable thing whose primary use is not the opposition of evil, or administration of justice, but the preservation of existing powers”

Then the cynical discovery of empire by the occupied.

But the blind eye that “the west” has turned tothe suffering of Gazans has put us on an equally despicable footing as the depots. But is this fair? Is the west responsible, or should we blame Biden and the Democratic Party establishment, and the other cowards who reflexively align with Israel out of political fear?

The wests big failure is to fail to live up to ideals that the autocrats never feign to adopt.

So far this reads as an indictment of the west. But the starting point is a rejection of authoritarian banana republics and sheikdoms. The west began for the author as an escape from the arbitrary rule of the powerful, to a rules based and free society, where people could be left alone to watch the movies or listen to the music they wanted, without stupid censorship.

Preface: 6 yo girl being taken out of bombed bldg. only survivor of family. “Are you taking me to cemetary” Gods will. “You are the moon”

Ch1. 18 mo old child shot by Israeli sniper in forehead.

Authoritarianism of Egypt, Childlike longing for freedom in western, rules order. Rules protect from whims of the powerful.

Disillusionment. native beating “invisible” Vs west financing slaughter in Gaza.

Finished the audio version. Btw I initially couldn’t find an affordable copy of this book, but have since found it as a reprint from 2017, from University of Chicago Press. It’s expensive for a paperback, but worth the $18 I paid.

9:52:35. C32. “We are late in discovering the essential resemblance of communism & nazism, diverted perhaps by the advanced condition of the Germans, perhaps by the confusion of Soviet communism with democratic socialism, perhaps by both.”

8:17:50. !!!!

Ch22: Jews = Germans. So similar. Being beset in fact and fancy has produced in Jews & the German nation the compensatory assertion of superiority and messianism. Each must save the world. But neither is evangelistic. Conversion, which implies humility, and love, which implies submission, has no place in either’s mission. The remaining alternative is mastery. Mastery, of course, for the sake of the mastered.

Amazing: The Jew would have to do, if he could be distinguished from the German.”

Authoritarianism/fascism needs a devil.

8:09:33. Ch21. “I think that what worried policeman Hoffmeister &… was their own common knowledge. The achievements of Jews in every field in which Germans excelled gave rise to an essentially schizoid condition n my friends. The inferior race, the Jews, was also, like the Germans themselves, superior…”. See prior entry.

Ch21:“The inferior race, the Jews, was also, like the Germans themselves, superior. The gypsies would have made a better devil for german racism, if only the devil were not, by definition, superhuman as well as inferior. The gypsies were adequately inferior, but not in German terms superhuman. They were quite literally, such poor devils. The Jew would have to do, if he could be distinguished from the German.”

I heard about this on the Rachel Maddow show in a momentary aside. I was never able to find any kind of text version of this book, but found audio at least. This one of the best books I’ve ever read on authoritarianism. It approaches the subject not from theory, but from the experience of 12 ordinary Germans. “Little people” as the author describes them, and as they describe themselves.

Peak Sullivan: continued:
Anti “libel tourism laws” in wake of Saudi ruinous suits filed in Britain. Ehrenfelf (author of Funding Evil) vs Malthus (who funded Bin Ladin).
Rachel’s bill????
Supported by Jeff Sessions and his aide Stephen Miller

Libel laws before Sullivan case… injurious claims are false unless proven true by defendant.
- ruinous litigation chills speech.
-NYT bans reporters from going to Alabama

Sullivan - bar for libeling public figure (elected officials) lifted to require knowledge that a claim is false, or recklessly ignores questions of truth.

Peak Sullivan: accidental public figures: Carey Lohrenz fighter pilot career ruined.