Turn the FM dial to 91.7 here in the great Republic of Texas and you get filmmaker and rabble-rouser Alex Jones' gravel voice with the latest list of the loss of freedoms in America. Alex isn't always wrong and he is often very entertaining. I like the come-on for his film on Bohemian Grove.
Since 1873, the Global Elite Has Held Secret Meetings in the Ancient Redwood Forest of Northern California. Members of the so-called "Bohemian Club" include Former Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan.
The Bush Family Maintains a Strong Involvement. Each Year at Bohemian Grove, Members of This All-Male "Club" Don Red, Black and Silver Robes and Conduct an Occult Ritual Wherein They Worship a Giant Stone Owl, Sacrificing a Human Being in Effigy to What They Call the "Great Owl of Bohemia."
Now, for the First Time in History, an Outsider Has Infiltrated Bohemian Grove with a Hidden Digital Video Camera and Caught the Ritual on Tape. That Man is Alex Jones, the Exclusive Digital Video is Just Part of His Shocking New Documentary...
Maureen Dowd's more restrained comments demand attention. She isn't as taken with capital letters but she is no less perceptive about conservative style and behaviors.
Conservatives, she writes, are "obsessed with ancient Greece, and from believing that they are the successors to Plato and Homer in terms of the lofty ideals and nobility and character in American politics — while Democrats merely muck about with policies for the needy."
Harvey Mansfield, a leading Straussian who taught political science at Harvard and who wrote a book called “Manliness” (he’s for it), gave the Jefferson lecture recently at the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.
It was an ode, as his book is, to “thumos,” the Greek word that means spiritedness, with flavors of ambition, pride and brute willfulness. Thumos, as Philip Kennicott wrote in The Washington Post, “is a word reinvented by conservative academics who need to put a fancy name on a political philosophy that boils down to ‘boys will be boys.’ ”
In his prepared remarks, Mr. Mansfield did not mention the war, which is a downer at conclaves of neocons and thumos worshippers. But he explained that thumos is “the bristling reaction of an animal in face of a threat or a possible threat.” In thumos, he added, “we see the animality of man, for men (and especially males) often behave like dogs barking, snakes hissing, birds flapping. But precisely here we also see the humanity of the human animal” because it is reacting for “a reason, even for a principle, a cause. Only human beings get angry.”
If they'd only gone and bought themselves Harleys, ape suits, and some Viagra. Instead they had to go and put America (and the world) through eight of the worst years of "brute willfulness" we've ever experienced.