Scott Rhee > Recent Status Updates

historian Simcha Flapan: "The military campaign against the Arabs, including the "conquest and destruction of the rural areas" was set forth in the Hagana's Plan Dalet." ['Dalet' is the Hebrew letter 'D'] The aim of the plan was in fact the destruction of both the rural and urban areas of Palestine."

"People who lie about the end of the world will keep lying until the world ends."

"The cheerleaders wrote books to spread rationalization memes: we are getting smarter (we're not); it's not as bad as the newspapers portray (it's worse); in the end, maybe all this is just a simulation (it's not); so we are not responsible (we are) and shouldn't worry since we don't really exist (we do)."

"...Reagan's cowboy hat and boots brought an image of conquest but no frontier to conquer."

"Since the decade of Reagan, Americans have been drowning in the syrup of a postimperial immobility: sweet references to a time when Americans could move forward and upward, the 1940s through the 1970s, to distract from the crystallization of an oligarchical social order. The political trick was to swap real social mobility for just the intimation of imperial mobility, which was no longer possible."

"On social media, our attention is divided into fragments that are the right size for analysis of us but not by us. Our minds flutter hither and thither, landing nowhere. Attention is no longer about a special state of mind but about eyeballs on screens. Things get our attention, but we no longer pay attention. And then we do not remember. When memory fails, our future has no past, and we are not really present."

"Life rebels against all uniformity and leveling; its aim is not sameness, but variety, the restlessness of transcendence, the adventure of novelty and rebellion against the status quo."---Vaclav Havel

"...When Giuliani arrived late to the meeting, he laid into [Federal Prosecutor Sidney] Powell, too. Scanning her affidavits, he said, "This is gibberish. Nonsense."

"Trump did not, however, want Powell to stop. Gibberish has its uses. But the clash with the rest of the team had become untenable. Henceforth, the White House announced, she would be "practicing law on her own," an unofficial combatant..."

"It's nearly impossible to know exactly how much money Trump and his allies spent in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Some of it is public and traceable; for instance, Trump's political action committees spent about $8 million on legal fees in the first half of 2021 as they fought the election and his impeachment. But Trump also pays associates through LLCs, which makes those payments impossible to track.."

"Irony, in some cases, is not real. It does not matter what someone really believes. They don't always know what they believe. If they believe it enough to laugh at it, they believe it enough. If they believe it enough to drive halfway across the country to march for it, they believe it enough. And if they believe it enough to mow down twenty-six people for it, they believe it enough."

Machen detested secularism. He was a good Catholic boy, apparently. The "horrors" in many of his stories have to do with a society that has turned away from the traditions of the church toward materialism, consumerism, and worldliness. Also, I think he was afraid of midgets, or what we call "little people" today. Strangely enough, that's what he called them, too...

To fully understand and appreciate Arthur Machen, one must understand the Victorian-era mindset predicated on the very real fear of forbidden sexual knowledge (i.e. anything that wasn't sanctified or approved by biblical precepts). Basically, sex was the Devil, in a quite literal sense.

"In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously proclaimed that "there were no such thing as Palestinians... they did not exist," and that they had never existed."

Well, that's one way to deal with a problem: completely ignore it.

I'm taking a break from this one, not because I don't think it's worth reading. On the contrary, I respect and admire Justin Baldoni's attempt to write about a very serious and important topic---toxic masculinity. My problem is that Baldoni is a much better actor and speaker than he is a writer. He even admits, early on, that he didn't want to write this book, and I hate to say it but it shows.

I'm in a holding pattern on this one.

Stalled out on this one. I'll get back to it at a later time, but for now, I need to read something a little less dry and academic. Crick spends a lot of time on Orwell's childhood, of which Orwell wrote very little. Lots of boring minutiae, plus Orwell's childhood was depressingly absent of any teen sexcapades, dysfunctional family drama, or enchanted wardrobes.

While I'm fascinated by the train wreck that was the Bush/Cheney Administration, and while Peter Baker's "Days of Fire" is a thorough and in-depth look at the behind-the-scenes starting from inauguration to the day Bush left the Oval Office, I just have to put this book on hold for now. It's extremely dry reportage, with an emphasis on rather unnecessary details while overlooking important ones. I'll finish later...

Getting psyched for the new season of "The X-Files". It's only been about 15 years. This anthology of short stories is fun, and the stories aren't bad. I've just read the first four (out of 15). The best one, so far, is about A.D. Skinner, who is forced to solve an X-Files case by himself. One story, "Dusk" is a silly little rip on Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series.

I just finished the first story in this collection, "The All-White Elf". It is absolutely horribly written, ridiculously plotted, but surprisingly fun to read. I guess that's why they were considered pulp. There are four classic Doc Savage adventures in this omnibus collection. I will eventually read them all, but I have to pace myself. Seriously, it's really literary trash...

This book is awful. I know that many of you are, like, "duh", but this is, like, AWFUL awful. I've read better Penthouse Forum Letters. Hell, I've WRITTEN better Penthouse Forum Letters. Not sure where to even begin writing a review for this, assuming I ever actually finish the damn thing...

Slow-going on this one, for two reasons:1) Ayn Rand's horrible prose, and 2) the fact that buried within the detritus of an incomprehensibly silly story are actually really interesting philosophical ideas worth reading and contemplating.

I'm amazed at how completely disgusting, loathsome and despicable every single character in this book is, and yet they are utterly fascinating and believable.

I've really only just started this and already I have a plethora of thoughts and opinions, but I'll save it for the review. I do wonder, though: Was Ayn Rand by any chance autistic? The protagonist, Howard Roark, exhibits many symptoms of high-functioning autism/ Assberger's syndrome (which didn't, as far as I know, even have a name when this book was published in '47.) Just an interesting observation.

I've really only just started this and already I have a plethora of thoughts and opinions, but I'll save it for the review. I do wonder, though: Was Ayn Rand by any chance autistic? The protagonist, Howard Roark, exhibits many symptoms of high-functioning autism/ Assberger's syndrome (which didn't, as far as I know, even have a name when this book was published in '47.) Just an interesting observation.