#738 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday August 29)
Good morning,
“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”
—Inspector Louis Renault (Claude Rains) to Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart)
Followed, immediately thereafter, by the croupier handing money to Renault and saying, “Your winnings, sir…”
A BRIEF NOTE
First, any chance I get to share a quotation from my favorite movie, I’ll take it. Inspector Renault, of course, is well aware of the gambling going on in Rick’s Cafe Americain, as he was a regular. His feigned shock is for the benefit of his Gestapo overlords.
SHOCKED! SHOCKED!
In the meantime, there are several news items that hardly were shocking:
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group and one-time short-term coup leader against Putin’s Kremlin, was one of 10 people killed in a plane crash this week. The plane, one of the safest in the air, fell from the air in broad daylight and without significant weather even. The Russian State-controlled media talked about how an investigation is underway and the Russian leadership promised an exhaustive inquiry. Does anyone want to take bets against Putin being at the base of this disaster or that the investigation will turn up nothing?
Donald Trump elected not to join the debate with the other Republicans vying for the nomination. Why should he? After all, he has a seeming commanding lead, he runs the risk of having to defend his election lies and attempted coups and—let’s face it—he isn’t that smart and performs poorly when subjected to questioning.
Trump’s mug shot is defiant. Some of his acolytes, even more disturbingly, seem smugly satisfied. Like cultists, people who believe they will be vindicated because everything they did was in service of the great leader and because they believe they ultimately be pardoned. By the way, there’s good reason for the smugness. The Trump cases are most dependent not on the mountains of evidence of guilt, but on the likelihood that one “true believer” in 12 jurors will make it onto the jury and, loyal Trumpists that they are, will ensure a hung jury.
There also were a few minor shockers: The Republicans apparently are only comfortable with “friendlies” from Fox News, which is where their debate took place. And Mr. Trump falls back on his favorite acolyte, defender, and trader in lies for his counter-programming—the disgraced Tucker Carlson.
MEANWHILE, A BERTRAND RUSSELL QUOTATION WORTH YOUR TIME
In these times, when the most vociferous advocates on either side of the debate try to pan books or restrict speech, does it dawn on them that far worse is available on the Internet and that their children are capable of learning, discernment, and criticism? Perhaps they should heed these important words:
“Just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics, and to this end we should seek to produce independence of mind, somewhat sceptical and wholly scientific, and to preserve, as far as possible, the instinctive joy of life that is natural to healthy children. This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve.”
-- Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis. (1938) Ch. 18: The Taming of Power
Have a great day,
Glenn