* Edward Norman (then Dean of Peterhouse) had attempted to mount a Christian argument for nuclear weapons. The discussion moved on to ‘Western values’. Mrs Thatcher said (in effect) that Norman had shown that the Bomb was necessary for the defence of our values. Powell: ‘No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.’ Thatcher (it was just before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands): ‘Nonsense, Enoch. If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values.’ ‘No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.’ Mrs Thatcher looked utterly baffled. She had just been presented with the difference between Toryism and American Republicanism.
John Casey, ‘The revival of Tory philosophy’, The Spectator, 17 March, 2007.
* It’s why (at least until every high school got a digital model) scoreboards were inscribed:
HOME:
VISITORS:
It’s why the Olympics have a host nation, and all the other foreign competitors are visitors.
It’s why the accommodations for Olympic competitors are called The International Village and not The Global Multi-Culti Utopian Hangout.
It’s why the gold medalist atop the medalist platform has his national anthem played, instead of “Imagine” or “We Are The World.”
* It is one the sobering facts about the distortions of today’s political culture that the policies of Trump are regarded as potentially regressing us to the rule of Hitler, when plainly they hark back to the time and place of Eisenhower.
On what rational basis can anybody believe that we Americans, adopting nationalism, would behave like Nazis, rather than following the model of nationalism Americans embraced in the past — you know, the one under whose influence we fought and defeated the Nazis as a great moral abomination?
* Few seemed to worry that, say, basketball superstar LeBron James was not really a normal-looking 240-pound 17-year-old.
* In 2014 after the NBA announced it would test for HGH, Lebron James lost a significant amount of weight. He looked closer to how he should have looked in high school. Apparently it took him a few months to find another enhancement that would help him maintain his size and strength.
* I hate the Olympics. I think they’re stupid. I don’t watch them. The entire thing reminds me of some kind of stupid stunt put on in high school by all the kids that are “somebody” — the prom queen, the yearbook editor, the quarterback, etc. They get the approval of the most liberal faculty to spend taxpayer money on something that showcases their narcissism and supposed virtue — like sleeping in cardboard boxes to raise money for the homeless, or having a bake sale for UNICEF, or some such crap. If you’re not one of the ruling clique, they make you out to be morally indecent for not applauding their little self-serving game.
Yes, the Olympics are about nationalism. I remember well when I was a kid during the Cold War the big deal they made out of Communist Bloc vs. “Free World” competition, as if beating the Russians in pole-vaulting signified that capitalism was superior, or something. I remember quite well how Bruce Jenner was the worldwide symbol of American Alpha-male masculinity, and they put him on every Wheaties box. “Eat your Wheaties, kids, and you can grow up to be a REAL MAN like Bruce Jenner!”
Now he’s a transvestite, formerly married to a member of the Kardashian slut-clan, who was formerly married to one of the lawyers who sprang O.J. Simpson for double murder. Yeah, rah-rah America, land of the tattooed and the morbidly obese on disability, the perverts, the weirdos, the trannies, the illegals, and the race-mixers. See how superior we are? “I pledge allegiance/ To the flag/ of the United States of Anal Sodomy…”
Sorry, I’m not buying into any of the Olympic propaganda. It’s all designed to make the fat American slobs jump off their sofas and clap like trained seals at the television. Pah.
* People won’t even watch fencing for nationalist reasons. They streamed some of the matches and there was no one sitting in the audience except for the immediate relatives of the fencers. It’s basically unwatchable – even the refs cannot see the points being scored so they switched to scoring by sensor touch decades ago. What they really need is something high tech like vests that will light up at the touch point so that the spectators can actually tell what is happening. Slow mo instant replays for the audience, etc.
* Apparently, the swimmers in particular have been giving a cold shoulder to the Russians who have had doping violations in the past. The IOC says that these Russians have served out their suspensions and are legal competitors now, but the swimmers feel otherwise and they make no secret of it.
