NEW COLUMN: Forget Iran, China And Hunter: Americans Are Suffering

COVID-19, Crime, Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Iran, Latin American, Neoconservatism, Race, Republicans, Technology

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NEW COLUMN, “Forget Iran, China And Hunter: Americans Are Suffering,” is currently featured on WND, The Unz Review, The New American. It’s scheduled on CNSNews.com.

And is now on ilanamercer.com.

Excerpt:

… Eddies of passion now flow from the conservative commentariat to the Chinese locked down by their government. And for Iranian women locked behind the hijab. Iran is no great shakes. China is terrible. But how dare our “thought leaders” agitate at cyclone strength for Chinese and Iranian protesters, yet offer a collective yawn over liberty sundered at home!

Americans have endured lockdowns, still battle vaccine mandates, cannot unite with unvaccinated friends and family outside the US and are subjected to FBI raids and other Security State surveillance.

The pincer for the person bucking orthodoxy comes when, with state acquiescence, corporate thought police cancels nonconformists, publicly shames and financially ousts them. Jan. 6 protesters and other prisoners of conscience are denied their due process rights. Other than Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, no representatives intervene on their behalf. Libertarian activist Julian Assange is slowly being murdered by the Anglo-American axis of evil for exposing its machinations; and Americans are maimed and murdered daily by a sinecured, coddled criminal class, imported or hot-housed here at home by elected officials who reject the Sixth Commandment. …

It so happens that the real story in Iran is not the women and their nosebags—who, once in the US, become indistinguishable from our own woke witches, down to the tumbleweed hair and the banalities that tumble from their motor mouths. Rather, the real story is our successive, neoconservative administrations starving the Iranian people. If they can’t kill directly, the neocons of Foggy Bottom and DOJ, whichever party is in charge, steal from Iranians or starve ’em. …

… READ THE REST on WND, The Unz Review, The New American.

UPDATED (11/30/022): Complex, Masterful Music Is Not Marxist; Atonal Arnold Schoenberg Is

Art, Cultural Marxism, Culture, Music, The West

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Schönberg’s music sounds as ugly as it looks—behold the the sheet-music heading this blog post

People throw about the term “Cultural Marxism” with abandon, without always understanding what it means. Like antibiotics, the overuse of  the term diminishes its potency.

About the virtuoso progressive metal band “Dream Theater,” a reader wrote on Twitter:

It is not MUSIC, it is the INSIDIOUS cultural Marxist degradation of music into a WALL OF NOISE that passes itself off as progressive. In actual fact, it is a step backward for civilization.

The reader is confused. Highly accomplished and polished progressive rock groups like “Dream Theater” or “Symphony X” follow Western rules of harmony, which go back hundreds of years. Layers of complexity in composition are being conflated here with Cultural Marxism.

The fact that it takes some dedication to listen to music that isn’t all of three chords—as is the blues or the country music twang—doesn’t make it Marxist.

What the reader is hearing in Dream Theater is, again, complexity. Highly accomplished and polished progressive rock groups like Dream Theater and Symphony X follow Western rules of harmony. And, odd time signatures, “irregular, complex, asymmetric or unusual time signature,” (my fav) are not Marxist.

While Dream Theater uses exceptionally complicated rhythms, their music is at its structural core traditional Western music.

What the reader says about Dream Theater—some would say about the genius of Béla Bartók or Igor Stravinsky. They would be wrong.

I was trained by a tough father, no longer with us, to listen to classical, in particular, chamber music, starting at a tender age. No option was given. The love followed the discipline, hence the ear for complexity.

If we wanted to spend time with dad, Friday, it was 5 hours of nonstop music. One night it’d be Bartók, the other Beethoven, but dad also introduced us to The Beatles. (Western civilization, parents. Do it up, not Kanye West.)

The routine dad enforced seemed awfully oppressive then. Today, I am grateful for the gift of knowing—nay, seeking out—the greatest music, which is, indubitably, Western music. Thus transitioning from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” to gifted progressive rock guitarist Tony MacAlpine is organic.

Dad, a rabbi, once whispered sheer blasphemy to me as a kid, “Don’t tell anyone, but Bach is really God.”

Without going into Cultural Marxism and doing the hard work of applying the concept to music, let me say only that the music mentioned is not Marxist as it adheres to traditional scales and structures.

WHAT IS MARXIST is the G-d-awful Arnold Schönberg and his atonal technique. Schönberg’s  music sounds as ugly as it looks—check out the sheet music heading this post.

The reason he’s Marxist is that Schönberg treated all 12 semi-tones as equal, seeking to weaken harmonic progression. This rigidly ruled out patterns and familiarity, and with it the pleasant sensation that comes with beauty and symmetry.

MORE here:
http://barelyablog.com/category/music/
www.ilanamercer.com/category/music/

UPDATED (11/30/022)

Arnie Schönberg would think “Brother Of Mine,” a sublime piece by “Yes,” kitschy in the extreme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5LNojKALxc

https://youtu.be/U5LNojKALxc

While it has plenty odd time signatures; it also has exquisite compositional complexity, masterful execution, top-notch musicianship. AND THIS IS LIVE. Indistinguishable from the studio version.

Most so-called musicians today, other than classical, are inaudible and tuneless live without the mighty Auto-Tune: the “holy grail of recording,” that “corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts.”

UPDATE II (6/15/023): The Curse of Ham: Pious Political Correctness Perverts The Hebrew Testament

Ancient History, Argument, Christianity, English, Hebrew Testament, Religion

If you are reading translations of the Tanach (acronym in Hebrew for all books of the Hebrew Bible: Pentateuch or Torah, Prophets and Writings)—you’re likely reading a lot of porcelainized nonsense

Funny thing how Christian commentary “changes” what my Hebrew Bible says, plain and simple. (I am sure politically correct, Americanized rabbis will join in this textual finessing.)

See, not only can I read Biblical Hebrew perfectly well—I’m looking at the tract now—but my Israeli teachers decades ago confirmed the commentary that claims Ham and descendants were cursed.

Ham did something unspeakable to his father, Noah. Noah, cursed him and descendants.

And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.

24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.”
Genesis Chapter 9

But not according to King James commentary, which is still better than most. Accordingly, the biblical author didn’t know what he was saying. Ham’s descendants were never cursed in the Hebrew Bible.

Yeah they were. It says so in Genesis 9:24.

That’s why I say: If you are reading translations of the Tanach (acronym in Hebrew for all books of the Hebrew Bible: Pentateuch or Torah, Prophets and Writings)—you’re likely reading a lot of porcelainized nonsense.

UPDATED (11/28/022): Interesting thread on LinkedIn.

ME: The biblical tract doesn’t say today’s blacks originated in Ham. And I, of course, claimed nothing of the sort. I said quite clearly that Ham and descendants were cursed in the Hebrew Bible, and pious scripture should not develop creative ways of pretending they were not.
I don’t know who Ham begot. I do know that his excuse-making defenders say he begot the greatest civilization ever. ? Why, of course. Next they’ll claim ancient Egyptians were really Africans. Wait a sec, they have already.
Ask Mary Lefkowitz, Greek classicist, author of “Not Out Of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History.”

 AND:

Yes, let us demonize non-aggressor Noah for objecting to his abuse. I have not disputed your point. I only questioned the hubbub of white-noise commentary around what seems to be straightforward biblical text.