jaybogdan

[jaybogdan]

“If you don’t know history - you got a problem … If you don’t have some idea of logic - then you’re easily bamboozled. Now, it seems to me that there are a couple of forces at work in American society that want to keep the schools [bad]. And those two major forces would be the advertising industry and the Republican Party. They have a vested interest in bad schools because the dumber people are, the easier it is for them to work their special magic on the electorate…  “If you are sub-stupid … you will be impressed with a political commercial that shows a man in the presence of balloons asking you to give him permission to launch a nuclear attack … This economy will only work if people are kept sub-stupid and are kept paranoid … I think the Republicans think they have a pretty good racket going here.”

- Frank Zappa, October 12, 1988

[jaybogdan]

“If you don’t know history - you got a problem … If you don’t have some idea of logic - then you’re easily bamboozled. Now, it seems to me that there are a couple of forces at work in American society that want to keep the schools [bad]. And those two major forces would be the advertising industry and the Republican Party. They have a vested interest in bad schools because the dumber people are, the easier it is for them to work their special magic on the electorate…  “If you are sub-stupid … you will be impressed with a political commercial that shows a man in the presence of balloons asking you to give him permission to launch a nuclear attack … This economy will only work if people are kept sub-stupid and are kept paranoid … I think the Republicans think they have a pretty good racket going here.”

- Frank Zappa, October 12, 1988

[jaybogdan]

(via jhig8bd0cczd1.png (PNG Image, 744 × 810 pixels))

[jaybogdan]

This

[jaybogdan]

Some meandering thoughts on writing and being lost....

[jaybogdan]

Mario De Biasi, Park Avenue, New York, 1964

[jaybogdan]

Gustav Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, Under Construction, 1889, Paris, France, Photo Credit: Delpire

[jaybogdan]

"In the Metro" by Samuil Adlivankin (1945)

[jaybogdan]

“Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done? I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated. So I think that there is an answer to this question. Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won’t. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.”

— The Strongman Fantasy - by Timothy Snyder

[jaybogdan]

Orange Julep, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1942

[jaybogdan]

Moscow, 1960

[jaybogdan]

Great use of San Francisco street scenes shot by Philip Lathrop for Experiment in Terror (1962)