Useless Tree

@AntigoneJournal @HarryMacD Iggy also likes Michel Houellebecq, for anyone wondering about his reading interests.

Timely reminder of when this guy reviewed that guy... Iggy Pop on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Classics Ireland, 1995): Caesar Lives by Iggy Pop In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude. Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters — Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando — with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental. I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs, personalities and values, played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters. And that was the end of that. Or so I thought. Eleven years later I stood in a dilapidated but elegant room in a rotting mansion in New Orleans, and listened as a piece of music strange to my ears pulled me back to ancient Rome and called forth those ghosts to merge in hilarious, bilious pretence with the Schwartzkopfs, Schwartzeneggers and Sheratons of modern American money and muscle myth. Out of me poured information I had no idea I ever knew, let alone retained, in an extemporaneous soliloquy I called ‘Caesar’. When I listened back, it made me laugh my ass off because it was so true. America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of Western life and institutions today are traceable to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman children for better or worse. The best part of this experience came after the fact — my wife gave me a beautiful edition in three volumes of the magnificent original unabridged Decline and Fall, and since then the pleasure and profit have been all mine as I enjoy the wonderful language, organization and scope of this masterwork. Here are just some of the ways I benefit: I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there were others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day. I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins — military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial — are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective. The language in which the book is written is rich and complete, as the language of today is not. I find out how little I know. I am inspired by the will and erudition which enabled Gibbon to complete a work of twenty-odd years. The guy stuck with things. I urge anyone who wants life on earth to really come alive for them to enjoy the beautiful ancestral ancient world.

@roddreher Why do you think the prideful triumpalism happens mostly with Catholics? What is it about Catholicism that would produce this?

Orthodox here, but most faithful Cathos I know are too Christian to be this nasty & prideful. They hold their version of the faith as true, obviously, but don't use it as a triumphalist club with which to beat fellow Christians who lack what they consider the fullness of truth.

@elonmusk @grok I have. Saves a lot of energy. Thank you.

Try using @Grok for your taxes!

The new head of a major Mexican drug cartel is a U.S. citizen--courtesy of birthright citizenship. Being a U.S. citizen makes it more complicated for law enforcement to target him. wsj.com/world/americas…

I urge anyone involved in the California election fraud ring to come forward and help expose it. This thing is coming down. We want the people at the top. Be on the side of the good guys. I will not reveal the identity of anyone who comes forward. My email is in bio.

@CindyHoedel @walterkirn It’s much harder with written speech, frozen in time. Face-to-face, things can get resolved immediately.

@walterkirn It’s a sign of an illiberal mind to say: I cannot respect anyone who doesn’t share my opinion on this or that issue. The founders had vehemently different positions but respected each other. We need to get back to that.

I love when strangers tell me here that they've lost respect for me because of this or that thing I've said. To hear I've lost what I never knew I had and never sought from someone is not a loss at all. It's a puff of wind.

Knowing this man was arrested for the most trival and lucidrous reason has made me anxious that something this unreasonable might happen to me So I would like to see an arrest of the arresting officer for causing me this unbearable anxiety

@ConceptualJames That was me. I was playing it on my phone today.

I sit in peace and suddenly feel as though I can hear "Thunderstruck" playing somewhere off in the distance.

@ClimateAudit Then there is the risk to JD Vance and Marco Rubio in 2028 and how they’ll have to reconcile with Trump and this war. TBD.

re-upping this comparison of Trump to Lyndon Johnson. Lots of points of similarity. Both bullies. Neither wanted to appear "weak".

@laurent_bart @TheEconomist @TuckerCarlson @zannymb You don’t understand.

@_Useless_Tree_ @TheEconomist @TuckerCarlson @zannymb I find you went pretty quickly from « you have to prove that », « well yes but it doesn’t matter »… soon you’ll be realizing that it fucking matters if it’s a foreign country who decides when and where you should go to war

Has Donald Trump betrayed America First? @TuckerCarlson thinks so. In an interview with @zannymb, Mr Carlson argues the war on Iran was launched on Israel's timetable, not America’s. Watch the full interview on The Insider at 6pm London time: econ.st/4rCV3gj

When everything you do in life is a college application essay that requires a minimum number of words.

I tried it last week and in the first two fights in the book, one guy wanted to take the other guy's eye out with a broken bottle, and they weren't the same guy each time. I don't dislike CM, but he's over-rated. There are better books. If you want a page-turner masterpiece, read Deliverance.

About to start Blood Meridian for the first time. Give me all your best advice.

@laurent_bart @TheEconomist @TuckerCarlson @zannymb Yeah, I heard that clip. Not good enough. Further, it doesn't matter whether Israel "chose the timing": 1. Because it's too vague a statement. 2. Because such things necessarily happen in non-unilateral war.

@_Useless_Tree_ @TheEconomist @TuckerCarlson @zannymb Have you not been listening to what Rubio literally said on the first day of the operation ?

@Zigmanfreud ICE should deport her, just because.

Why the adult rape allegation against Cesar Chavez is VERY clearly not credible… 1) The woman is 96 years old with a “hazy” memory 2) She waited over 60 years to go public 3) She had 2 kids with him but only had sex with him twice (🤔) and neither time was 100% consensual 4) She also had 4 kids with HIS BROTHER! (Which the @nytimes conveniently leaves out) 5) She worked with him until he died and she praised him on X multiple times, decades after he died (see below) 6) She has plenty of incentives to lie, particularly so that her career doesn’t look like it was carried by her having extensive sexual affairs with him AND his brother, and the fact that Cesar accused her of stealing money from the organization This story is not only not credible, it is completely irrelevant to the uncorroborated allegations of child rape, which the NY Times desperately conflates with it in order to give the appearance of there being significant evidence here. I have ZERO love for Chavez, but this story is completely unfair, especially since he has been dead for 33 years.

@Zigmanfreud They were both rotten 2 days ago, and they are both rotten today.

@77_steeze In the 60s, the lefties were the ones pushing alternative medicine.

Leftist men are the most misanthropic, “I’m such a piece of shit” characters, so it’s kind of hilarious that one of the things they hate most is “alternative medicine” and the idea of potentially taking some non-vetted bro-sciencey supplement or herb or whatever

@ThomasEWoods Israel is dragging Trump into war — except when they’re not. In that case complain about what the ambassador’s opinion might be.

Donald Trump seems to be angry about the Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field. Where do you think Mike Huckabee stands on the question? I mean, he's not going to side with a foreign country against his own, is he? That would be unimaginable

@christopherrufo x.com/_useless_tree_…

I read the first hundred pages of The Road last year, and read the first hundred pages of Blood Meridian this year, and in both instances, gave up, because the books never clicked. Lyrical writing, but the characters are reduced to way down Maslow's hierarchy, and the tone is so relentlessly bleak, with almost no humanity breaking through, it was difficult to feel anything besides the flint clicking against the cold steel in the overwhelming darkness. I know many of you love it, but to me, it's overwrought, overstylized, and overhyped.