Category: Decline and fall

Joseph Moore:

Pity poor Horace Mann, Henry Bernard and other ‘educationists’ trying to sell modern schooling to such people. They had to convince such an educated population to hand over their children’s education to experts. Basically, the educators failed to convince Americans. Mann started pitching Prussian schooling, otherwise known as compulsory age-segregated classroom instruction, before 1837, but it took a dozen years and special circumstances to get the first school off the ground. That first school in 1848 in Boston snuck by because it targeted immigrants. ‘Real’ Americans didn’t send their kids there; those ‘real’ Americans became convinced that it was a good to use the state’s power to beat a little of the right kind of Jesus into the skulls of the Irish Papists kids that were showing up in Boston in large numbers at that time (the Irish Potato Famine began in 1845). From the very beginning down to this day, schooling is seen by the self-appointed Enlightened as a way to correct the moral defects – Catholicism back then, all the ‘bigotry’ and ‘hatred’ today (which of course includes Catholicism) – of the unwashed masses.

Is it too late to impeach Joe Biden?

Congratulations to Donald Trump, the first man to win three consecutive presidential elections since FDR.¹

Clarissa:

In a way, I do envy the people who are experiencing tribal joys around the election. To go into raptures over a candidate together with everybody “on your side” must be pleasant.

But then I think nah, I’d rather have my brain all to myself and enjoy it in a lonesome fashion.

Related: Cthulhu for America.
Update: Or Sauron.

suburbanbanshee:

Donald Trump is no saint yet, certainly; but he has the curious quality that many saints have, of revealing serious hatred problems deep in people’s hearts, even when those people have always seemed good or normal. Some of these “good” people go stark raving mad when exposed to someone sweet, kind, and gentle, possibly because they suddenly feel inferior somehow, or feel disturbed in their view of what is possible for a human to do and be.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has a similar quality, where something innocuous or funny done by Trump suddenly works like splashing holy water on a vampire, shrieks and all. I have seen it with a member of my own family, and still don’t understand it.

Uncle Sam was a plausible personification of the United States of America a century ago, back before the USA became Absurdistan. In this silly age of Tapioca Joe and 57 genders, he’s no longer appropriate. We need someone more in harmony with the spirit of the times. Here’s a possibility:

Clownpiece is a character from one of the later Touhou games. According to the Touhou Wiki,

With the flame of her torch, Clownpiece is able to drive others insane. According to herself, any human looking at the light of her torch would be unable to maintain their sanity, making her able to mess with their minds. In the Human Village, she used this ability to make villagers extremely irritable and short-tempered, attacking each other for trivial reasons….

The flame of the torch is able to affect the lifeforce and make it go berserk….

Clownpiece is similar in nature to many of the other fairies in Touhou: she is playful, mischievous, childish, and a little bit dumb. She enjoys the aesthetics of Hell, often leading to strange looks from others; however, this is because it reminds her of home.

Clownpiece is also the “Embodiment of impurity.”

That sounds more like 21st century America than old, irrelevant Uncle Sam.

*****

There’s another election this fall, where once again the choices will be between Very Bad or Even Worse. I suggest sending the regulatory state a message by writing in “Dave Barry.”

In his spare time, Dave is a candidate for president of the United States. If elected, his highest priority will be to seek the death penalty for whoever is responsible for making Americans install low-flow toilets.