The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    I have heard the mermaids singing each to each,

    By Flavius on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 2:25am |

    you know how it goes,

    For me it brings to mind  Obie who spent the 20s as a submariner- although he was lucky enough to surface in the 40s commanding a cruiser. But mostly when  I thought  in that direction it was about  stranded subs at the bottom with massive rescue craft  above. With the highest intention  of the officers below permanently assigned for the first sign of  someone deciding to unscrew a  hatch and fix th ings. Forever.

    Like Donald.

    For our sins we´ve been endowed with the world´s  least equipped  person for this particular performance.  Hell of a guy no doubt acting a role , (as we currently  in fact are forced to watch.)

    I can imagine ( I guess)  someone proposing  an argument  to ¨open the economy¨  under some other executive (maybe a Governor ) Hmn , no.

    In the first place ,in this case,  ¨opening" means ¨doing it.¨ .No one, repeat , no one, thinks that Covid19 will allow that opening  to happen without it being followed by  the ambulances 3 weeks later. If a Country is going to impose random summary execution its President should have the guts to preside.

    Now add the mob scene of individual Governors . Happening to turn up my hearing aids I heard discussion of antidotes with the caveat ´provided the massive investment required doesn t  have to be diverted to building them.¨

     

    Comments

    or  in plain words

    o While you're home , you ŕe ¨distanced from the Covid.

    o Restoring the economy  =s  distanced

    o And in x weeks =s more Covid, more deaths.

    o Maybe that can be somewhat limited in  limited ¨restoration¨. 

    o Don´t expect any limit if the ¨restorer¨ is one of those gun carriers

    who crowded the Michigan stage.

    o ¨Restoration¨  is a suicide note Donnie is signing  on your behalf.


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 11:27am

    Captain Queeg was paralyzed by fear in the face of deadly peril and was replaced by an officer who was not. The ship survived because the organization was functioning even though it had a defective component.

    This story is more like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three where the criminals "override the dead man switch" to keep the train moving at high speeds without a driver. Trump is the contraption used to accomplish this task.

    One glaring defect to framing the matter as "reopening the economy" versus "controlling the virus" is that the second part of that has not happened. Death panels are for refined civilizations where the margins of risk could form a decision upon policy. We are merely passengers on a train that isn't stopping at the stations any longer.

     

     


    by moat on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 11:37am

    Mr Roberts : the last lines of the  novel    as I remember them            

    ¨ I threw your damn palm tree overboard ¨.

    The captain didn´t look evil ,just old and tired

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 5:36pm

    What I find most interesting about Wouk is not so much about the drama of the mutiny but the distance between experiences. His accounts of the gap between those who served and those who did not is exactly like those who reported about being in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

    It is difficult to keep up.


    by moat on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 6:44pm

    When I last talked with John it was trudging across the frozen parade field at Fort Dix in 1951.

    Me : Why aren t you going to OCS?

    J:   I don´ t know if I can handle combat and I don't want to risk any one else´s life.¨

    Next meeting ,Wall St. 1971; I reminded him of that discussion,

    ¨ The second time I had to take my  Company commander back to the Chaplain I stopped  worrying about myself¨

    At the time he was ,famously , the head of ¨Wall Street for McGovern¨ 

    John ¨what are you doing¨

    ITT.

    He turned away with disgust . To my amusement.


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 7:36pm

    This is the phony Peace

    By May 16 the  wheels will  come off the Wagon.Victims whose disease was  contracted since since re-opening will  be saying that.  Those who´ve just restarted  wont want to see the writing on the wall , Need more evidence,

        ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    A week later it will be Katie bar the door. 

    o those infected will be furious even  when they had been advocates.

    o The rest :keeping  their heads down.

    Go forward  further  another week and it will become the Un-united States of America. -, it ś your nickel. . It won t be pretty. And much worse than  the Big Fool hadn t said  ¨March- on¨ last week..

    It´ ll require  a calm leader  to avoid   blood shed.

    Oh?

     


    by Flavius on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 12:33am

    I suspect it's the libertarian "live free or die" types of the "wild west" that are going to be the main problem. And they'd be a problem under any public health rules or even suggestions, under any president or governor, it's the nature of the beast, part of this country's make up. Same thing going on with most in the anti-vaxxer movement. And goes left and right, always the conspiratorial suspicions about any centralized government, i.e., also including some anti-war folks in the past.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 1:15am

    Re reading my comments up stream, maybe it ś time to announce

      "I try hard to stay controlled , but I get carried away¨.

     


    by Flavius on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 5:53am

    After paying attention to some local news the last 24 hrs., I'd like to add the thought that there's also a long tradition of a libertarian, anti-government strain in NYC. Back to at least the early 20th century days if not more, with anarchists, free-lovers, Greenwich Villagers and the like.

    What reminded me in particular: I noticed a lot of tribalist todo over photos of a lot of gay whypipple yuppie types not socially distancing and not wearing masks in Washington Square Park vs. the supposedly law abiding citizens of Harlem.

    And I've also been seeing evidence of a lot of boomer borough types hoping all the millennial non-social-distancing and non-mask wearing yuppie scum in Manhattan and eastern parts of Brooklyn go back where they came from a few years ago...

    And I've got to admit that "law abiding" is not exactly a long-term NYC brand.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 7:52pm

    You have not been carried away.

    The cognitive dissonance between "official" announcements and the pom pom shaking for anarchy on twitter is not just another proof of how goofy the POTUS is but a cause for harm that will lead to much death.

    The real problem with conspiracy theories is that when the shit actually hits the fan, the channel cuts to another commercial.


    by moat on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 8:39pm

    Most voters did not choose Trump.

    Most voters think that the people showing up with assault weapons, Confederate flags, and Nazi slogans are insane.

    We have to vote.

    The voters in Wisconsin were willing to risk their lives.

    We may have follow suit.


    "Work Makes You Free" was the sign on a Polish concentration camp.


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 1:30pm

    Same at Dachau-in German of course.


    by Flavius on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 2:36pm


    by artappraiser on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 5:22pm

    Gov. Witmer on the protesters in Michigan

    Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Sunday forcefully condemned the racist symbols, including Confederate flags and swastikas, displayed by some attendees of an anti-lockdown protest at the state’s Capitol building last week.

    Photos from the protest showed hundreds of participants crammed inside the building, many of whom were not wearing masks and flouted federal social distancing guidelines. The protest’s stated purpose was to demand Whitmer ease coronavirus restrictions in the state, though some protesters were seen holding up racist and anti-Semitic symbols during the event.

    During an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper asked Whitmer if the stay-at-home order protests that have popped up across the country are in the same “vein” as the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended in part by neo-Nazis.

    “Some of the outrageousness of what happened at our Capitol this week depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country,” Whitmer said. “The Confederate flags and nooses, the swastikas, the behavior that you’ve seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michigan-gretchen-whitmer-racism-protests_n_5eaf1764c5b639d6e5783895

    Trump encourages these people


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 5:57pm

    Re: Trump encourages these people

    Do you really think anyone using this website doesn't know that?

    Do you really think anyone using this website needs to be told to vote against him?

    Speaking for myself, I your tendency to preach as if participants at Dag are idiots with grade school educations they forgot is insulting to all the participants here.


      by artappraiser on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 7:41pm

      You're leaving out the part that the usage of "work makes you free"by some protestors was unwitting, they didn't know it was used on concentration camps.They were ridiculed about this. It was extremely stupid, moronic. They didn't realize they  were basically saying "we want to go to concentration camps."


      by artappraiser on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 7:35pm

      turns out it was one goofy woman in Chicago, seems to me with possible mental illness issues as well:

      .@OliviaNiland & I wrote about the woman in Chicago who went to an anti-lockdown protest with a sign bearing a slogan from the Auschwitz concentration camp. We spoke to the guy who took the photo. Some have accused him of faking it but he gave us proof https://t.co/19lyj4a1Je pic.twitter.com/O5mS7NzJyK

      — David Mack (@davidmackau) May 2, 2020

      I dislike very much that media spends time feeding trolls like this. It's traditional for protestors to do the equivalent of trolling in order to get attention from the media, just like a p.r. person or similar to having a person in a banana suit hand out flyers. It's unprofessional to fall for it, not good reporting.


      by artappraiser on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 10:26pm

      The anti-vaxxers are joining in with the protesters.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/us/anti-vaxxers-coronavirus-protests.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

       

       


      by rmrd0000 on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 6:29pm