#modern American-style aristocracy will do that to you

[butmakeitgayblog]

What is the hairless princess aka chicken cat's name

Depends on who you ask lol

If you ask Lexa then her name is Princess, Majestic Madam, Sweet Baby, Chunky Baby, Precious Tiny Toe Beans Baby (there's a theme here)

If you ask Clarke her name is Satan, Spawn from Hell, Baby Ballsack (Lexa's least favorite), Lil Fuckhead, Why Won't You Die, and the overwhelmingly often used, just "... Bitch 😒"

If you were to look at her collar tho it'd say Isabelle Lilith Griffin-Woods

[hasansonsuzceliktas]

Interior Design Styles

by Sinem Oktay All designers have a decoration style that they enjoy and apply to their projects, but the client may not feel close to it. Everyone is different of course, and each person has different moods and a different style. What the architect must do, rather than dictating his or her own style to the client, is bend toward the client’s style. If the client does not know what his or her style is, the designer should discover it and describe to the client what he or she needs. So, what kind of style do you need? Are you traditional or innovative? Do you prefer nature or industry? Do you need neutral or bright colors? Feng shui is not a design style, but it does allow us to apply all the energy rules within the elements that reflect your personal style. Here are some of the design styles you may gain inspiration from. 1. Modern Modern homes are simple and not cluttered by unnecessary extra items. They feature function-oriented and colorful spaces.   2. Modern Zen Elements from nature are added to the modern style.   3. Zen A focus on the peaceful and balanced Zen style brings simplicity and plainness.   4. Modern classic This balances the chaos of classicism with straight lines and simple furniture in a modern style.   5. Classic Based on the design principles of symmetry and balance, this style represents elements of aristocracy and loyalty.   6. Ethnic This uses colors like orange and fuchsia and shows exaggerated fabrics as dominant factors in this style.   7. Ethnic modern This modern style smooths out how ethnic patterns are used.   8. Ethnic minimal This is a smooth combination of ethnic exaggeration and simplistic minimalism.   9. Bohemian Colorful patterns, carpets, and fabrics typify this style.   10. Bohemian country This combines the above with English country and French vintage styles.   11. Minimalist White walls and black furniture unite for a plain, calm, Zen-style identity.   12. Scandinavian To make the space as bright as possible, the walls are white, the upholstery is cream, and blue, green, or bright tones of yellow abound.   13. Scandinavian bohemian Colorful blankets, fabrics, and pillows are added to the Scandinavian style.   14. Natural bohemian Natural elements and bright colors are used in this style.   15. English country Highlights the serene and comfortable life of country living with natural elements, handmade furniture, and solid wood.   16. Retro Rooted in the 1950s, this charming and striking style uses bright colors and patterns.   17. Rustic A space designed using raw materials is enough to describe the rustic style.   18. Ecological Environmentally friendly ecological homes feature biological treatment plants, energy-efficient heating, and rain water recycling.   19. High-tech This modern and innovative style focuses on creative furniture structure, with each detail being part of the structure.   20. Tropical Inspired by the nature of the tropical climate, this style employs bamboo, teak and rattan trees, and exotic colors.   21. Mediterranean Inspired by the turquoise blue of the sea, you see similar colors on doors and windowsills, complete with white walls and niches.   22. Neoclassical Ancient Roman and Greek inspired columns, beams, and belts in symmetrical arrangement dominate in this style.   23. Colonial American This simple and plain style started in 18th-century America by using many types of wood, from pine to mahogany.   24. Italian Tuscany Doors, windows, fireplaces, and all other elements are in proportion and balance and harmony, while classical stone walls are companied by yellow-toned walls.   25. French Provence This style brings the pastoral life of southern France into homes. The walls are lightly colored, the furniture is natural wood, and the floors are terracotta or made from small ceramics.   26. Wabi-Sabi Coming from Japanese culture, this understanding stands back from showiness and instead adopts a simple, minimalist, plain style.   27. 70s retro This is a return to the 70s retro furniture style.   28. Industrial minimal Materials from old fabric and other buildings are renovated in this alternative style.   29. Renovation With respect to old historical texture, old buildings are renovated for new function and design.   30. Art deco This style emerged in Europe between the two world wars, and it features covered furniture, glass, stainless steel, dark colors, and modern geometric shapes combined with charming graphics.   31. Baroque This style emerged in Europe between the 16th and 17th centuries and involves very showy folds and details in gold.   32. Asian Handmade objects, bamboo, red and black lacquers, and the color gold are widely used.   33. Africa Red, orange, and yellow colors that reflect the bright African sun are used together with handmade animal figures, dark-colored masks, and sculptures.   34. California beach house: This style reflects life on the California coast using pastel blues and fabrics.   35. Robert Adam Created by Robert Adam in the 1700s, this style has a very detailed ornamental approach for ceilings, columns, and fireplaces.   36. Eclectic This unique style reflects the owner’s own style, and it may combine more than one style.   37. Anatolian This reflects the style of Anatolia using Turkish rugs, Turkish sofas, and Turkish-style windows.   38. Ottoman Inspired by the Ottoman palaces, this style emphasizes ornaments in gold.   39. Floral flowers Big-patterned wallpapers and fabrics are widely used here. 40. Your own style You may create your own style by simply using pieces that only belong to you. Creativity is eternal and limitless, but I hope this simple guide helps, With my best wishes...   Read the full article

[antoine-roquentin]

The popular conception of chivalry, as a moral code guiding the behavior of honorable knights, is flat-out, laughably wrong. That’s a creation of 19th-century authors like Walter Scott, and the popular fantasy authors (basically up until George R.R. Martin) who built on their worldview in the 20th.

In reality, chivalry was all about one particular version of Guys Being Dudes. Chivalry could refer to a few different things, but the most common meaning was simply battlefield deeds, executed with some style. This, what knights referred to as “prowess,” was at the core of the broader ideology of chivalry: raw, bloody, physical performance, violence done effectively and to an agreed-upon aesthetic standard. The second major concern of chivalry, honor, grew directly out of the first. Honor wasn’t an abstract concept to medieval knights; it was a possession, a recognition of their particular status and place in the social hierarchy, which they were well within their rights to violently defend and assert through their prowess. Piety was the icing on the cake, but no knight really doubted that God approved of their actions.

An oral culture, passed around during training sessions and drinking bouts and feasts and military campaigns, produced this culture and inculcated new knights into it. A whole universe of texts, the kinds of things knights read or had read to them, sent the same message, like this 12th-century poem called Girart de Vienne:

When I see the whinnying war-steeds plunge

With worthy knights into a battle’s crush,

And see their spears and cutting blades well struck,

There is nothing on earth I love so much!

These were dudes who loved getting after it, and for them, getting after it meant blood-soaked deeds on the battlefield. It’s not that there was nothing more to it - sure, there were some bits about romance and ladies, debates about religiosity and moral actions, exhortations to do better - but the core was always physical, male violence. And it obviously wasn’t for everyone: Knights were members of a hereditary military aristocracy, and their possession of chivalry was what set them apart from dirty peasants.

Two aspects neatly parallel modern Bro Culture: first, the emphasis on physicality and the body, and how that provided both a sense of the self and secured social status; and second, the restricted, bubble-like world that produced and emphasized it, with its fictional and real heroes, its stories about great deeds, its values, and its models to be emulated. Your average knight would absolutely identify with and appreciate this impossibly toxic meathead sentiment:

Obviously, there are pieces that don’t neatly parallel, the biggest ones being the hereditary and explicitly military nature of chivalry. You don’t have to be a soldier to be a Bro, though it doesn’t hurt. And - much more important - you aren’t born into being a Bro; you become one, by doing worthy deeds of prowess.

That’s a quintessentially American value: the idea that anybody can make something of themselves if they work hard enough, move enough weight, run fast enough, practice enough to shoot a tight grouping, make the right sacrifices. The physical meritocracy (and its potential rewards of fame and fortune) is open to anyone willing to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder. Even the least intellectually gifted meathead can make something of himself if he does the workouts, takes the right gear, and builds his audience on YouTube and Instagram. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and smash that follow button.

In a moment of stagnant social mobility, rising inequality, and incredible uncertainty around the future, this strongly visual message of self-betterment and improving one’s socioeconomic status through literal sweat can resonate deeply. It’s all within the individual’s control, if they simply work enough - an antidote to all that uncertainty, everything that’s so obviously beyond an individual’s control and reckoning, no matter how misleading and incomplete the formula actually is.

That’s especially appealing to the many millions of American men who don’t have college degrees (many more of them than women, given the gendered trends in undergraduate enrollment) who are effectively locked out of professional-managerial culture and its straightforward path into the comfortable upper-middle class. Accomplishment through physical prowess is thus a means of building both a sense of self and community.

The connections to this particular moment in American culture and history go much deeper than that, though. This whole edifice of Bro Culture grows out of the broader rise of influencers, performative self-branding through social media, and the construction of identity through consumption.

With the right protein powder, shilled by your favorite strongman, you too can deadlift 800 pounds, or at least tell yourself you’ll get there someday. With the right brand of CBD tincture, which sponsors your favorite Crossfit athlete, you won’t feel that burning pain in your rotator cuff after you clean and jerk too much weight with suboptimal technique. By religiously listening to the right Bro-approved entrepreneurship podcast, hosted by some guy who happened to get booked on the Joe Rogan Experience during a slow week, you too can buy a McMansion in an affordable suburb.

Much of what happens in Bro Culture is driven by lifestyle consumption: ads for sunglasses on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast, brand partnerships between supplement companies and YouTube stars, tactical holsters for concealed-carry that an ex-Marine with a million Instagram followers wants you to buy. It’s self-actualization through sponsor codes.

The tactical lifestyle craze, a natural outgrowth of this particular slice of Bro Culture, is the logical endpoint of all this. It’s where entrepreneurial late capitalism and influencer trends meet imperial wars, the militarization of the police, and the emergence of Gun Guys as a default protected class within American society. You’re not a Crossfitter anymore; you’re a “tactical athlete,” doing varied types of interval, cardio, and strength training so you can be a more effective soldier or cop or firefighter or whatever, or you just want to feel like you could be one. The physical training is only part of this, since you can prominently declare your tactical affiliations with a variety of lifestyle products, ranging from coffee mugs to American flag stickers for your car to, naturally, firearms....

Just as much as its coffee, whose quality I can’t speak to, Black Rifle Coffee Company is selling the tactical lifestyle. They offer a staggering variety of T-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, thermoses, and stickers, many of them prominently branded with the eponymous “black rifle” of the brand. There are a lot of American flags and pieces of law-enforcement and military iconography, signifiers of the in-groups to whom the consumers of BRCC’s products belong, want to belong, or for whom they want to signal their support. BRCC has explicitly labeled itself as a coffee company for conservatives, an active participant in the culture wars. If you don’t like Starbucks and its effete, refugee-supporting, liberal tendencies, buy some Black Rifle product instead. If you like Trump, you’ll be at home with BRCC. Don Jr. endorsed them.

After the picture of Rittenhouse in the Black Rifle Coffee Company shirt appeared, its founder Evan Hafer quickly disavowed the youthful shooter. Even for an explicitly MAGA coffee company, supporting a teenaged AR enthusiast with blood on his hands was a bridge too far. But Rittenhouse had already been shaped by the world BRCC and its fellow-travelers have made. He got the message, loud and clear: You too can become a hero, or at least dress and drink coffee like one, by purchasing the right products, watching the right videos, and following the same Extended Bro Culture influencers. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

The Veteran-owned piece of BRCC’s appeal isn’t a coincidence. They’re selling a position in the culture wars, a sense of belonging, but also a particular vision of what it means to be American, a man, and an American man. A staggering number of this part of Bro Culture’s key figures are veterans. Jocko Willink, perhaps the best known (and least openly political) of the bunch, was a Navy SEAL officer; he was actually the commanding officer of the famous sniper Chris Kyle during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.

After retiring, Willink turned his SEAL experience into a career as a leadership consultant, motivational speaker, media personality, and energy drink salesman. His intensity, built on his military service, is legendary: His exhortations to do hard things regularly, to live by a code, and take responsibility for oneself, resonate with millions of people. And Willink is far from the only one to do so, turning overseas service in imperial wars, especially as a special forces operator, into a key component of his entrepreneurial appeal. This isn’t a judgement on his military service; it’s a statement of fact. Being an undeniable badass is a the core part of why Jocko Willink is a quintessential Bro Hero.

Imperial wars overseas always come home eventually, and they do so in complex ways. The fact that millions of people listen to Jocko Willink, buy Black Rifle Coffee Company merchandise, and dabble in more extreme fringes is a product of decades spent elevating not just military service writ large but violent combat overseas against ill-defined Others. For every Jocko Willink, there’s an Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who was convicted of and then recently pardoned for war crimes after becoming a cause célèbre for large swathes of the online right.

If these are the heroes Bro Culture puts forth - special operators accustomed to high-intensity, high-volume fighting overseas, who then develop enormous media platforms - it’s obvious what message Kyle Rittenhouse and the innumerable police officers, tactical fitness enthusiasts, and more run-of-the-mill viewers and listeners will take. Millions of people listen to Joe Rogan when he talks to Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy (the Green Beret and MMA fighter and increasingly open right-wing figure), or Cameron Hanes (who advocated for Eddie Gallagher’s release). They’re warriors. Joe Rogan isn’t a soldier, but he’s a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a former competitive kickboxer, a bowhunter, and a firearms enthusiast. If these are the people at the core of Bro Culture, a culture that directly touches tens of millions of American men, then there are bound to be knock-on effects. If they’re constantly telling their listeners to be ready, to be tactical, to be prepared to fight and to be good at it, that means something.

This is why I think Bro Culture, or at least its extended reaches, deserve more scrutiny and attention. The code of American manhood that’s developing out of this social-media melting pot has some aspects that bear watching: A love of firearms centered on tactical usefulness (for use in what context, exactly?), a vision of muscular physicality, self-defense as a personal obligation, an unquestioning hero-worship of military culture, and far too often, a deep suspicion of people who don’t subscribe to this precise view of being a guy. Support the Troops, and if you don’t, you’re not really a man at all. If cops - quintessential subjects of Bro Culture - are told that they need to be bigger and stronger and quicker on the draw, that they’re basically Troops, and that the targets of violence deserve what they get, what’s the likely outcome of tense interactions between police and the people they’re supposed to serve?

[things2mustdo]

Is Western Civilization in Decline? I think nearly everyone in the manosphere would agree that it is.

There is a lot of discussion these days about America and the other nations comprising Western Civilization being in decline, and there is certainly a lot of evidence to support this claim. Whether it be dying populations among the Caucasian races that created the civilization, unchecked immigration rapidly replacing native populations in Europe and the United States, evidence that America is currently and has been behaving as an imperialistic empire but is now slowly losing its power around the world, a culture that seems to completely disregard the importance of family, the building block of civilization, or a loss of religiousness and sense of purpose, signs that something is wrong are everywhere.

You may be surprised to learn that many of the things that have been happening to Western Civilization were written down in a predictive model of history written by German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler nearly 100 years ago.

Oswald Spengler, Prophet of Western Decline

That said, Spengler has his critics, as do many misunderstood geniuses. Right or wrong, most of the attacks on his civilization model are made by those who cannot see the forest for the trees. Because of this, his genius work has largely gone unrecognized in modern times. As with many truths, “… in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so,” as stated by researcher Peter Dale Scott. A lot of people seem to be turned off by a predictive model of history since the psychological cost of admitting that humans are subject to the same cycles in nature as other animals is quite high.

Whether you agree with his ideas or not, they’re intellectually fascinating, and worth a look. This article only scratches the surface of Spengler’s epic civilization model.

The Four Seasons

Spengler equated the four cycles in human civilizations to the seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. In compiling his work, he studied the 8 High Cultures thought to have existed: Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Mayan/Aztec, Greek/Roman or Classical, Arab and, finally, Faustian, or what we call Western civilization. He believed each of the eight civilizations went through phases, just like the seasons. While some of those cultures are still with us, they have not been dominant cultural forces since their Winter. For example, China was referred to as a Sleeping Giant until it picked up on some of the vitality of the West.

In Spengler’s model, each culture goes through a formative Culture Stage, followed by a decadent period known as Civilization. The culture period makes up the “organic” Spring and Summer of a civilization, and is when the civilization is inspired by its own art and religion. Autumn and Winter make up the Civilization phase, in which the society becomes inorganic and is based only on the organization created during the Culture phase. The creativity seen in the Culture period slowly fades away. The civilization stiffens, and becomes overpopulated, metropolitan, and uninspired. For the purpose of this article, we will focus mainly on Western Civilization and its expression of the four seasons.

Roughly speaking, each season makes up about 250 years. This procession of “seasons” happened to all civilizations Spengler studied. Spengler said that by using his civilization model he could make predictions so accurate they would astonish people. Indeed, since 1918 through the present day, his predictions for Faustian/Western Civilization have been spot on.

The full civilization model is available here.

The Culture Phase: Spring and Summer

Spengler wrote Western civilization entered its Pre-Culture stage before 1000 AD. During that time, there is what he calls, “Chaos of primitive expression forms. Mystical symbolism and naive imitation.” As with other civilizations coming into being, in Faustian civilization there is a lot of apocalyptic imagery in this period and a fascination with death. Architecturally, the Romanesque cathedrals constructed around this time mark the beginning of the new Faustian culture form. In literature, collective epics like Beowulf and works such as The Song of Roland are published. Politically, there are “tribes and their chiefs. As yet no Politics and no State.”

Moving into Spring, there is a “powerful cultural creation from awakening souls, unity and [cultural] abundance. Great creations of the newly-awakened dream-heavy soul. Super-personal unity and fullness.” Some of Faustian Civilization’s expressions of this idea were as follows: The Holy Grail romances such as Perceval, the Story of the Grail are written. Architectural style shifts from Romanesque to Gothic Cathedrals. Gregorian Chant evolves as a musical form and we hear polyphony becoming the great Western musical form. (While we are discussing polyphony, an important note is that Spengler considered infinity to be the central, motivating idea behind Faustian/Western civilization. It is expressed in its music as polyphony, in its mathematics as infinitesimal calculus, and finally through Manifest Destiny/boundless exploration conducted by Western civilization which ultimately led it to the ultimate infinity – space.)

Politically, there is the formation of “national groups of definite style and particular world-feeling: ‘nations.’ Working of an immanent state-idea.” This is sub-divided into “The two prime classes (noble and priests). Feudal economics; purely agrarian values,” transitioning into “Actualizing of the matured State-idea. Town versus countryside. Rise of Third Estate (Bourgeoisie). Victory of money over landed property.”

Moving into Summer, we see these developments in the Culture: “Ripening consciousness. Earliest urban and critical stirrings.” In Faustian civilization, the dominant literature shifts from Grail romances to novels such as Don Quixote and Shakespearean plays. Architectural forms once again shift from Gothic Cathedrals to princely palaces and polyphonic musical forms evolve into Baroque, which is the period of the birth of Classical music. In politics we see “conflicts between aristocracy and monarchy. The political center shifts from castles and estates to the cities.”

Political Epochs in Spring and Summer

1. Feudalism. Spirit of countryside and countryman. The “City” only a market or stronghold. Chivalric-religious ideals. Struggles of vassals amongst themselves and against overlord. 900-1500 AD.

2. Crisis and dissolution of patriarchal forms. From feudalism to aristocratic State. 900-1500 AD.

3. Fashioning of a world of States of strict form. 1500-1800 AD.

4. Climax of the State-form (“Absolutism”) Unity of town and country (“State” and “Society.” The “three estates”) 1500-1800 AD.

5. Break-up of the State-form (Revolution and Napoleonism). Victory of the city over the countryside (of the “people” over the privileged, of the intelligentsia over tradition, of money over policy.) 1800-2000 AD.

The Civilization Phase: Autumn and Winter

“The body of the people, now essentially urban in constitution, dissolves into formless mass. Megalopolis and Provinces. The Fourth Estate (“Masses”), inorganic, cosmopolitan.”

We have now entered the Civilization phase as Summer transitions into Autumn. The intellect of the civilization, fully developed, begins to sterilize away the culture’s early organic nature. Spengler calls it, “Intelligence of the City. Peak of strict Intellectual creativeness.” In the West, the Enlightenment occurs during this time. Classical music peaks and then declines as an art form, further marking the shift into the Civilization phase.

The civilization becomes metropolitan, first overpopulating its cities, only to eventually begin dying out once Winter arrives. In Autumn, true art dies out in favor of metropolitan “art for the masses.” Politically, there are “struggles between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, Revolutions, and Napoleonism.” The American Revolution occurs during Autumn. Also in autumn we see “urban rise; peak of disciplined organizational strength.” This is the peak of the civilization, which is then followed by a “fissure in the world-urban civilization; exhaustion of mental organization strength; and irreligiousness rising.”

According to Spengler, Western world has entered Winter and its civilization is ending. He describes Winter as the “dawn of Megalopolitan Civilization. Extinction of spiritual creative force. Life itself becomes problematical. Ethical-practical tendencies of an irreligious and unmetaphysical cosmopolitanism.”

Over the coming decades, Spengler expects the intellect of our civilization to fade, people to stop reading and thinking as the civilization as a whole loses interest in thought, and the government to become autocratic/tyrannical. Art will further devolve into “meaningless subjects of fashion.” The population comprising the civilization will continue dying off as it loses touch with the myths and culture it was founded upon. We are also experiencing the “spread of the Final World Sentiment” of our civilization as the spread of Socialism around the world. As government becomes autocratic we can expect “primitive human conditions slowly thrust up into the highly-civilized mode of living.” Our great works and most of our technology will fade and lie in ruins as the population comprising our civilization fades away. First the countryside and then the cities will depopulate (as seen in the Rust Belt and now cities like Detroit.) Spengler says we should also expect conquests of our now-exhausted civilization by “young peoples eager for spoil, or [foreign] conquerors” as the imperial machinery of the State falls apart.

Keep in mind – this was all predicted in 1918 by Spengler even though it sounds as if it was written today!

Political Epochs in Autumn and Winter

1. Domination of Money (“Democracy”). Economic powers permeating the political forms and authorities. 1800-2000 AD.

2. Victory of force-politics over money. Increasing primitiveness of political forms. Inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and constitution thereof as an Imperium of gradually-increasing crudity of despotism. 2000-2200 AD.

3. Private and family policies of individual leaders. The world as spoil. Egypticism, Mandarinism, Byzantinism. Historyless stiffening and enfeeblement even of the imperial machinery, against young peoples eager for spoil, or alien conquerors. Primitive human conditions slowly thrust up into the highly-civilized mode of living. After 2200 AD.

The Future, Echoing Roman Civilization

In the Winter of Roman politics there was a shift from the Roman Republic to Caesarism, or government led by a charismatic strongman. Eventually, the idea of representation broke down and there was a shift to bloody “force politics.”

Of course, our current government is modeled on the Roman system. There are even similarities between the two dominant parties. In Rome, the two dominant parties were the Optimates and Populares, the Republicans and Democrats of their day. This form of representative government eventually stops working because the system of checks and balances interfere with each other, causing gridlock. Force politics (killing people) eventually comes along to break the gridlock. (As an aside, some historians say it’s possible we entered this era in 1963 with the assassination of JFK by the military-industrial complex.) Arguably, this predictive model is spot-on with the current situation in the Western world. So, if Spengler’s model is correct, we are awaiting the rise of a dictator to come along and smash the rotten edifice of democracy sometime this century.

Spengler thought Democracy was the form of government of a civilization in decline

Spengler on Democracy

Spengler did not have a very high opinion of democracy. He believed it was the form of government of a civilization in decline, and interestingly the idea of mass democracy arrived in the Winter of Faustian/Western Civilization. Spengler viewed democracy as a weapon of moneyed interests, who use the media to create the illusion that there is consent from the governed. To him, the notion of democracy is really no different than living under a plutocracy (government by a wealthy elite.) Using the media’s propaganda, money is turned into force and controls people’s lives.

The leftist causes that have dominated the last century, such as equalism, feminism, and Socialism, to Spengler, were only tools used to assist the moneyed powers to be more effective.

The decline is also marked by increasingly authoritarian leaders as the democracy breaks down. Monetary powers permeate the government, eventually destroying it. This is where we currently are on Spengler’s timeline, which leads to what Spengler expects will happen in the West: The rise of a a Caesar as democracy, dominated by money, crumbles under its own corruption. People will cease to participate in elections, and the best candidates will remove themselves from politics. Spengler thinks blood is the only force that can conquer the force of money.

A New Spring After the Winter?

Spengler’s predictions of decline, as prescient as they have been over the last century, may leave you feeling a sense of hopelessness after studying his work. However, as one culture and civilization fades away, it’s very likely another will arise as part of this organic cycle.

John David Gebser later studied Spengler’s work, and believes a new consciousness will emerge from the ashes of the old civilization. Just as Western civilization was built upon the ashes of Ancient Greece and Rome, a new civilization may well be built on the ashes of our own.

The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and largely unknown today, is work that very well could be among the greatest ideas ever conceived by the human mind. It smashes the linear model of history (always moving upward) presented in the public school system, and instead presents the idea that throughout history man and his civilizations go through periods of birth, growth, decline, and death.

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/embed?linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_wvUPwb08JCKM1&asin=B008I6GW28&tag=rok0f-20&amazonDeviceType=A2CLFWBIMVSE9N&from=Bookcard&preview=inline

[betterbemeta]

Re: conservatives and hierarchy — if you're interested, there's a YT video called Always a Bigger Fish, by Innuendo Studios, that expands upon that very idea

yeah i saw him and he’s right. I would also recommend his Origins of Conservatism video for a crash course on how modern conservative thought has direct lineage from toryism and thus monarchism, but like any video essay it’s just an intro. Research is always good to do as a followup.

In a way, the USA in particular obscures the issue though because the USA has not ever had an a local monarchy. So its hard to see American conservatism as connected to some prior philosophy that supported the divine right of kings. But then like, you see how they treat their celebrities and their strongmen, and you notice that the republicanism (that is, not the US republican party, but a 19th century revolutionary ideology against hereditary aristocracy) inherent in USA culture gives way to “every man his own little king” style of thought, and of course the Greatest Men are the Greatest of Little Kings, etc.

[aion-rsa]

Why The Haunting of Bly Manor Needed a British Script Editor

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Warning: contains a spoiler for The Haunting of Bly Manor episode 6

When you belong to a cultural superpower, you get used to things being all about you. Wrapped in the soft cotton wool of cultural dominance, you so rarely feel the prick of non-recognition. To grow up the same nationality, race, and on the same patch of land as the planet’s most celebrated writers, artists and musicians is to feel that their stuff is yours too. Unlike other groups, there’s no fight for representation on your hands. The world literally speaks your language. Fiction is your comfort zone.

The extreme and enduring comfort of which must explain why the slightest jolt feels so unacceptable. The British like to think of ourselves as a solid, unflappable people, but really, we’re all paper doilies who tear at the slightest violation. And the worst violation we can suffer is at the hands of Americans who get Britishness wrong.

The Haunting of Bly Manor, Netflix’s new spooky series based on the works of Henry James – an American who elected late in life to become a British citizen, so technically a win for our team – is well aware of British indignation. In episode one, there’s a gag in which a Yank does a comically bad English accent and receives an eye-rolling response from a Brit (not an actual one, but Henry Thomas doing a sort of James Mason), and a running joke about said American’s inability to make tea (she approaches it more or less like the woman in this video with the added injury of using a coffee pot). 

Trained in decades of King Ralph-style culture-clash jokes about the snooty British tutting at graceless Americans (see Downton Abbey, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Buffy the Vampire Slayer…), The Haunting of Bly Manor knows the routine: Brits get uppity about this stuff.

Why then, does the show go on to commit the most egregious offence of all by making English characters speak American? Only the US pronunciation of ‘twat’ as ‘twot’ is as likely to put an end to the Special Relationship and get everybody dusting off their Revolutionary War muskets as hearing a so-called Englishman saying “math” without an “s” at the end. 

(Sidenote: as a young English child with weekly access to 1980s US sitcom Kate & Allie, I envied nothing more than the brown paper grocery bags and sugary Pop Tart treats of the New World, and so to borrow a bit of US glamour, once wrote the singular ‘Math’ on the front of my school subject exercise book. It was returned to me with the errant “s” added on and twice underlined. Mr Welsh in Year 7 wasn’t having any of my transatlantic nonsense.)

I say ‘so-called Englishman’, in Bly Manor, “math” was said by an actual Englishman: Matthew Holness, actor, writer and the genius co-creator of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. Holness plays sweet toff Dominic Wingrave in the show. In episode six ‘The Jolly Corner’, Dominic works out that he’s not the biological father of his youngest, Flora, and confronts his wife about it: “Math didn’t work did it? I mean that if she wasn’t early, she was actually right on time, that math wouldn’t work. […] Six years, it took me six years to do the math.” Three times. Three. Where’s Year 7 teacher Mr Welsh when you need him? Not script-editing a Netflix show, where he’s sorely needed. 

An episode earlier, an Englishwoman twice offers to “arrange a ride” for her housekeeper. In a rare event for the British aristocracy, she’s not talking about horses (nor is she Irish and offering to procure her housekeeper the services of a male sex worker, or, as we call them in England, trumpet-dandy). She’s talking about a car, in which any English person would always get a lift and never a ride.

It continues. In episode two ‘The Pupil’, English chef Owen urges a bunch of mostly British people to sample his “cake batter” and not a one of them responds by saying ‘Batter? You mean cake mix, you bellend. No more Kate & Allie for you’. In episode three ‘The Two Faces, Part One’, a little English girl performs a party piece about a kitten unravelling “yarn” rather than the English term ‘wool’. (Thankfully she describes said yarn as originating in a “jumper” and not a ‘sweater’, which is, when you think about it, a horrid name for something you wear.) 

The Haunting of Bly Manor was filmed in Vancouver and Washington, but is mostly set in England and specifically, Hampshire (in the south, the county I’m from). For the most part, the US and Canadian locations do a good impression of the English countryside. Their London streets are less convincing, but the addition of flat caps and trilbies to the heads of every man who walks past in the background helps to mitigate things. Yes, it’s supposed to be London in June 1987 and not January 1912 but as one of the greater things to mourn in modern culture is the loss of people habitually wearing hats out of doors, it’s allowable.

Hats, anyway, are so intrinsic to British culture that when Owen picks Dani up to drive her to Bly, where should she be standing but outside a shop selling them. Hat shop = instant London. (In The Turn of the Screw, the original Henry James novella on which Bly Manor is based, a large proportion of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel’s lustful evil is genuinely expressed via the fact that in life, both were often to be found out of doors without a hat. Look it up if you don’t believe me.)

London. So many hats.

In true ‘Wee Britain’ style, the residents of Bly Manor eat the traditional meals of the English – bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, and a pot of tea with every meal. The presence of Yorkshirewoman Jamie (played by English-southerner-doing-a-Northern-accent Amelia Eve) presumably explains the presence of tea as a mealtime accompaniment because it wouldn’t happen in Hampshire – at least, not on my watch. Nothing, as far as I can tell, explains the presence at Bly Manor of the poshest policeman ever to say ‘Why hello, why hello, why hello.’

Pouring salt on the wound of these faux pas is that Bly Manor is filled to the rafters with real British people. In the cast (Rahul Kohli, T’Nia Miller, Tahirah Sharif, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Matthew Holness, Amelia Eve, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Amelie Bea Smith…) and on the writing staff (Michael and Paul Clarkson, Laurie Penny…) the show has enough Brits to form its own cricket team. And yet not one of them spoke up about these severe infringements to our national character.

It’s almost as if there are more important things to worry about. As proven though by the fuss kicked up over Netflix’s fluffy new series Emily in Paris, in which Americans commit the second worst crime imaginable and get Frenchness wrong, there’s no end to the nose-out-of-joint sensitivity of the West’s most pervasive cultures. The French have a point. After all, it’s not as though there are any other films or art about Paris. No, if the umbrage is there for the taking, by golly, we’ll take it. Pip pip!

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The Haunting of Bly Manor is streaming now on Netflix

The post Why The Haunting of Bly Manor Needed a British Script Editor appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[deadendtabletop]

My homebrew race presentation rules

Source: 3.5 edition Player’s Handbook

We choose to present fantasy races in one way or another, but the idea of running every dwarf as a Scottsman or every Elf like a haughty shit never really stuck with me. This is why I chose to present the main fantasy races in my game in some different ways:

Source

Gopnik Elves

After their millenia old empires collapsed following a protracted war against the nascent kingdoms, the Elves have since been largely confined to the faded ruins of their once great cities, few venturing further away. Stuck in their dysfunctional old ways, Elven Aristocracy still believe that they ar ekings of the world, even as their people have long since resorted to trading arcane secrets for a pittance.

Elven adventurers have a short fuse and like to get in trouble, but will break a leg or two for some hard liquor and a cot.

Source: not sure, please provide is possible. Australian Drow A society largely nuilt from exiles, the Drow are content to dwell in the Underdark, disintereted by their surface kin’s plight. While they largely maintain their xenophobic ways, Drow wil ocassionally consider venturing topside to trade or raid a dungeon or two. Drow like to piss people off with their perceived superiority but can make fast friends, on very rare ocassions. They wouldn’t introduce you to their folks though.

Source

Yiddish darves

Once scattered by Elven Imperial decree, dwarves Great Houses have begun to slowly drift together, abandoning their former nomadic style. Basing their society on the restored tenets of old, they have since become more secular. In other words, you don’t have to be born a DWARF to be a Dwarf. All you have to do is live like one. Dwarves are among the more adventurous races and will go to great lengths to uncover any hint of ancient dwarven history. However, they still do retain some mistrust against the other races, especially elves.

Source New Orks

After their warlord empires dissolved, Orkish empires slowly...dissolved into human and dwarven populations, integrating over centuries. Along with Dwarves, Orks are one of the peoples that have most managed to maintain their tribal identities, even if their tradition has not entirely survived in the modern day. Also, they can make some bomb ass barbeque. Ork adventurers are always driven by the chance for something to prove and look down on cowardice. They don’t really like humans or elves but they will put up with them, for a good cause.

Source Finnish halflings

Claiming themselves as the common ancestors of elves, humans and dwarves, halflings emjpy the company of others, even if they don’t always show it. After they abandoned their old nomadic ways, they have since integrated with human  and dwarven societies. It is said that it is literally impossible for a mortal to drink a halfling under the table but the myth has not been tested yet.

Halfling adventurers like to tag along with larger groups for the hell of it and can become fast friends, if treated with respect. Not they will ever admit it outright though.

Source American Gnomes

While their outrageous Brooklyn style accent can be hard to parse, Gnomes are among the most inventive races, being the first ones to embrace magitech, in the aftermath of the Elven Empires’ collapse. They have since expanded across the length and breadth of the world, often waving their superiority around with ocassionally disastrous results.

A Gnome adventurer is usually the person that gets the party most into trouble, driven by equal parts greed and wonder. They also know when to cut off an adventure that’s going south.

[creativity-is-rebellion]

My Love of the Southern Gothic Horror Genre

I’ve always been drawn to the Southern Gothic Horror Genre, with anything from Flannery O’Connor’s Short Stories, to William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, and Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat Series. It’s a genre I want to dabble with for my next story idea, but am concerned that I won’t nail it right, as I am not from the South, let alone from the U.S. For those of you who do not know, Southern Gothic is a sub-genre of Gothic fiction in American literature that takes place in the American South, and includes deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime or violence. Southern Gothic writing is thus an extension of Gothic fiction, which originated in England in the 18th Century, and includes novels such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1794), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). These novels all contained elements of horror, death and romance, often revolving around events that appear to be supernatural, but which ultimately have a natural explanation. Furthermore, the word ‘gothic’ can be taken as an historical reference to the Goths, the people responsible for the first known example of Germanic language during the 4th to the 6th Centuries AD. It denotes the Dark Ages, and the brutality, horror, and decadence associated with this period. It also refers to Medieval architecture; location is very much a character in itself in these novels, which often take place in castles, manors, and monasteries. 

The popularity of Gothic fiction could also be seen across Europe: Germany’s Schauerroman (shudder novels) were much darker than their English counterparts, and stories such as Carl Friedrich Kahlert’s (writing as Ludwig Flammenberg) The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) and Carl Grosse’s Der Genius (1796) contained a greater focus on necromancy and secret societies. European Gothic fiction was used by authors to delve deeply into their history, allowing its audience to experience the thrilling terrors of the dark past, which was naturally echoed in the American Southern Gothic tradition.

Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South were apparent as early as the 19th Century, in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and the de-idealised visions of Mark Twain. However, the genre came together only in the 20th Century, when dark romanticism, Southern humour, and the new literary naturalism merged into a new and powerful form of social critique. The thematic material was the result of the culture existing in the South following the collapse of the Confederacy, which left a vacuum in both values and religion that became filled with poverty due to defeat in the Civil war and reconstruction, racism, excessive violence, and the theological divide that separated the country over the issue of slavery.

The Southern Gothic style employs macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South, thus, it uses the Gothic tools not just for the sake of suspense, but also to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South, with the Gothic elements often taking place in a magic realist context rather than a strictly fantastical one.

Warped rural communities replaced the sinister plantations of an earlier age, and in the works of leading figures such as William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor, the representation of the South blossomed into an absurdist critique of modernity as a whole.There are many characteristics in Southern Gothic Literature that relate back to its parent genre of American Gothic and even to European Gothic. However, the setting of these works is distinctly Southern. Some of these characteristics are exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities.

Southern Gothic particularly focuses on the South's history of slavery, racism, fear of the outside world, violence, a "fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements".Similar to the elements of the Gothic castle, Southern Gothic gives us the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South. Villains who disguise themselves as innocents or victims are often found in Southern Gothic Literature, especially stories by Flannery O'Connor, such as Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own, giving us a blurred line between victim and villain. Southern Gothic literature set out to expose the myth of old antebellum South, and its narrative of an idyllic past hidden by social, familial, and racial denials and suppressions

The term "Southern Gothic" was originally used as pejorative and dismissive.  Ellen Glasgow used the term in this way when she referred to the writings of Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner. She included the authors in what she called the "Southern Gothic School" in 1935, stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares." This is a sentiment that has been expressed less and less, as it’s seminal authors, such as Flannery O’Connor, become lauded as being some of the most important icons in American literary history.

Of course, the genre also exists in film and television, with movies such as The Gift, and TV series like American Gothic and Season One of True Detective, the latter being one of the greatest TV shows of the last 10 years. The first series of True Detective, in addition to its Southern Gothic setting and characters, incorporates many of the core aspects of Gothic fiction, as well as drawing on the work of specific American horror authors, notably Lovecraft, Chambers and Ambrose Bierce. The setting is truly breathtaking and depressing in it’s dilapidation, and it’s clearly poverty-laden surroundings, as well as it’s troubled but fascinating key characters. Every time I watch the series, I imagine what it might have looked like if it was in the form of a written novel instead of a television series.

But I digress. As much as I love this genre, my personal experience of the American South is restricted to visiting Florida on holiday for three weeks when I was 10, so I think that I might steer clear of writing the next great American Gothic horror novel for the moment. Instead, I might focus on a writing project centring around European Gothic horror, as I lived in Norway for 6-and-a-half years. Norway, with its bitterly cold autumns and winters, and sweeping fjords and mountains creating great chasms between communities seems like an ideal setting for writing a good Gothic novel. I am even privy to the fact that Norway is home to an infamous, long-since abandoned mental asylum, which housed the criminally insane and where lobotomies and mysterious, unsolved deaths involving patients were commonplace. So, this will be the setting for my next novel, and my American-style Gothic horror story will have to wait. Stay tuned.

[moviemunchies]

I do like the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but I’m not sure it’s a great film.

Baz Luhrmann is a director known for adding his own style to the stories he tells. Romeo + Juliet, for instance, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set entirely in modern day America, except none of the dialogue has been changed. While I don’t know if it ever made it big, people who cared in their high school English classes love it. What put Luhrmann on the map was his film Moulin Rouge, a love story set in Paris told in a hyperactive style that made it stand out from the rest.

So when it was announced that he was directing an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, many of us were… cautiously intrigued. He would bring his over-the-top style to the visuals, which kind of made sense; a huge part of the story was the excess of the wealthy elites in New York during the 20’s. But the story was meant to deconstruct that decadence and show how hollow it was; so was hiring a director who specialized in showing off all of that the best choice? Then there were minor controversies about the musical choices (featuring hip-hop as a sort of translation of the feel that jazz would have had to the general public) and questions about the casting choices (Spider-Man is Nick Carraway??).

And then the movie came out.

I feel like there’s not that much point in talking too deeply about the Plot, but for the record if you didn’t read it in high school English (or you fell asleep in that class; it’s fine, I get it): The Great Gatsby tells the story of Nick Carraway, a midwesterner who moves to West Egg near New York to get into the banking business. His only family in town is across the bay in East Egg, his cousin Daisy and her womanizing husband Tom (and their daughter but she never appears), old money from the Midwest. Living next door to Nick’s little house is a giant mansion owned by Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire that holds parties every weekend at his house, but no one seems to know who he really is. When Nick finally meets Gatsby, things get complicated, as it turns out that he also knows Nick’s cousin Daisy, and things start unravelling from there.

Or, in short: yeah, we Americans can claim that we don’t have aristocracy as much as we want, but we totally have one, and they’re a bunch of shallow, clique-y punks who suck.

The movie is, in some ways, a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. The Plot is the same, the characters are the same, and much of the dialogue is lifted straight from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. What makes this stand out is the presentation: the gaudy visuals, the in-your-face music, the crazy editing: all of these are things that are Baz Luhrmann’s signature. And for me, that didn’t always work: some of the quick editing felt annoying; why not just stick to one shot instead of constantly cutting during scenes that didn’t need them? I get that it’s Luhrmann’s Thing, and I can hardly fault a director for going His Thing, but I wasn’t a fan of it throughout the entire movie. 

The Great Gatsby also plays the central relationship between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan as an epic romance. At least, I think that’s what it’s going for, what with several shots framing them being together so sentimentally, and having Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” playing too many times during their scenes together. Thing is, I’m not sure that this was ever meant to be a love story. Daisy Buchanan’s a terrible person, and she’s supposed to be. Furthermore, the movie tends to shunt anything to the side that might get in the way of the romance (at least, until it comes crashing down towards the climax), like Daisy’s daughter, who you’d be forgiven if you forgot she existed at all as she only has one mention at the beginning and one scene at the very end.

Maybe that’s reflective of a problem that the entire movie has: that it plays the entire thing a bit romantically. Maybe not Tom’s character, or the tragedy of what happens, but the expensive mansions and lavish parties are all played almost entirely straight in some scenes. I think maybe that Luhrmann was trying to show the grandeur of the world that the elites inhabit, only to then peel it away and show the rotten core, and in some ways this is effective: for instance, the Buchanan mansion is first shown as a heavenly manor full of color and light, but a few minutes later we see Tom spewing racist rhetoric and receiving calls from his mistress, while Daisy tells her cousin that she thinks all she’s good for is as a dumb prop to her husband.

But it still feels like it’s glamourizing the entire scene of the Roaring 20’s, especially in party scenes. Maybe that’s just Luhrmann’s style, maybe that’s part of the point he’s making, but I understand that if, for a lot of people, it doesn’t work.

It’s certainly a memorable movie, and overall I think it’s a good effort and a good movie. But it feels too glamourous in some ways, too stylistic, too choppy to be a truly great film.

[hasufin]

On inherited wealth

My in-laws and I used our free time today to take a trip to Mt. Vernon. To those outside the USA, Mt. Vernon was the estate of America’s first President, George Washington.

My in-laws had been several times before; I had not. It was educational, but I think I got some different things out of it than most people.

Mostly I was paying attention to details of construction, design, and decoration. Though, frustratingly, it wasn’t always easy to tell what was modern and what was historical - for example, the hinges on the shutters in the back of the hosue were of a different style than in the front, but was this intentional or was one set replaced during repairs? The standards for such things have not always been consistent. The most obvious thing was that the siding was a great example of skeuomorphic design: it was wood, made to look like stone. Specifically the wood panels had grooves carved in them so they appeared to be stone blocks, and then painted with thick paint and sand; a process called “rustication”.

My mother-in-law noted how he had given specific instructions on how to apply the rustication, which made him seem perhaps something of a micro-manager; I’m not sure if that was the case but I see her point. There were indications all over that he was deeply involved in running the plantation - he personally oversaw experimental crops and growing, even to the point of working with manure, and he clearly did the accounting - a point on which his writings commented extensively (I’ll revisit this point later). Of course, it’s worth remembering too that Washington literally invented the delegation of executive authority in American government. He convened the first cabinet with no approval from Congress - though that was hardly an unprecedented move, which shows in the now-archaic use of “secretary” (being “keeper of secrets”); at the time a perfectly normal legal device by which one could designate a person to act in their stead - today we use a telephone.

Now, a matter which is not commonly discussed is that George Washington was extremely wealthy. He had inherited a great deal of wealth in the Mt. Vernon estate, and he used that estate (and the slave labor on it) to grow numerous crops, most notably wheat for sale and export. At that time, in the Americas, wheat was quite expensive and maize was considered suitable only for feed animals and slaves. Washington was not simply a general and politician, he ran a rather large and successful business. His wife, Martha, was a widow who had kept 1/3 of her leate 1st husband’s estate (life rights only, which is complicated but meant she couldn’t just sell it off, and had she and George had children, those children would not have inherited the Custis estate). Mostly one was left with the impression that this “Gentleman Farmer” was more of a corporate CEO than a successful worker of the Earth. 

I would wish that we could consider that more than we do. There is this myth that American presidents are drawn from the common man, that they are people whose wisdom and ability were recognized and by which they advanced - that America does not have an aristocracy. In truth, the majority of our presidents come from a very privileged group of people, most of whom inherited wealth which afforded them the best education and connections. At the least, you have examples like Lincoln and Obama who did truly come from humble means - but by the time they sough the office of POTUS, they were quite wealthy in their own right (Lincoln may have affected the image of a country lawyer, but in truth he was a high-powered corporate attorney before running for office). Of course I’d like to hope the current defiler of the office is an outlier, but we shall see.

One thing that felt wrong was that it seemed like they were trying a bit too hard to rehabilitate Washington’s image as a slaveowner. The exhibits in particular emphasized that later in life Washington had concluded that slaver was wrong and inefficient (some of his writings complained that the slaves cost him more than he earned from their labor, and he’d have been better off freeing them all and hiring people). They also spoke of how he did not want to separate families, and since many of his slaves had married Custis slaves who neither he nor Martha could free, manumission would necessarily mean breaking up families. On the other hand, there’s no dearth of slaves trying to escape, including at one point Martha’s own chambermaid, who succeeded. My general impression was that they’re trying too hard to separate him from the legacy of being a slaveholder.

I’d prefer to embrace the nuance and contradictions of his life. He was the heir of great wealth, but rather than being a wastrel with his father’s money he proved a canny businessman in his own right. He was a capable general, and when presented with the reality that he could become king, or President For Life, backed by a military more loyal to him than to the nascent nation, he not only demurred but took steps to assure no one else would face such a choice. On the other hand, whatever hand-wringing he may have done in private, he did own slaves, he did not free them until his and Martha’s death, and he seems to have not been particularly better as a slaveholder than most others. These things are all true, and none of them cancel out the other to any degree. They are simply facts about the man, and they inform us more than any myth or apologia.

[shadowofthetombraiderreview-blog]

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Review

Release Date on September 14, 2018

There are two things I have always loved about Shadow of The Tomb Raider Free Download Game Walkthrough in all my incarnations: beautiful, exciting and dangerous places to explore, and Lara Croft herself. Shadow of the Tomb Raider ranges from East to South Inca cities and modern-day Peru jungles and towns, with missionary cry to climb, dive, and South American locations to the east. But it gives Lara a disservice, who turns her into a deadly mud-camouflaged jungle warrior who, while not interesting to say, is pushed by a plot that is more predictable than its main character and Is more concerned with supernatural artifacts. It’s so silly that you can explain it without sounding ridiculous: Lara is pursuing a secret militia organization across the South American continent to prevent them from stealing a silver thong and bringing about the end of the world. PC Games For free

Lik the first  Shadow Tomb Raider Review video games in this contemporary trilogy by Crystal Dynamics – although this closing access changed into developed by means of an extraordinary studio, Eidos Montreal – Tomb Raider’s Shadows gradual-paced exploration, treasure-hunting, and surround historical tombs. Allegations of creating buzz echo the course to high-adrenaline action-movie-style play. Lara gets trapped in mudslides and earthquakes, scrambles off collapsing buildings and blows up invading helicopters, but as opposed to hiding behind cover with an assault rifle, she frequently ignores herself in tall grass or against partitions. Suppresses, anonymity hunts down the armed forces in the darkish. Lara has “advanced” from a determined survivor right into a silent killer, which gives the player a welcome spoil from capturing things. Sending a poisoned arrow into the thigh of a guard from the wooded area cover is more exciting than losing pistols into them one by one through pointing pistols at them and pressing them to fall down.  As the spectacle, Tomb Raider’s shadow is the nice fight feasible. It is a revelation in its beauty. Whenever Lara emerges from a wooded area or cave, the digital camera rests on sundown-yellow badlands and beautiful temples to find out some new wonders of the historical world. Walking round rocks and crumbling homes is vertical and interesting; It always looks like you're an inch far from falling for your loss of life. The animation and environmental layout are definitely brilliant, and you're generally given time to transport speedy in preference to coping.  Sadly, the shadow of Tomb Raider’s series Wonderful Places is prepare under a plot that collapses beneath the slightest scrutiny. The narrative is an inconsistent mess that is going beyond the standard action movie/online game suspension of disbelief – how do Lara’s weapons paintings perfectly even after an hour of driving through an underwater grave? – and simply shakes up their investment in what’s occurring in the sport. The plot makes little feel, fundamental man or woman motivations are absolutely absent, and Lara spontaneously meets random preoccupation for almost every body.  To pick out one in every of many examples: Why, whilst Lara seems in an undisputed local colony full of people who've escaped from the out of doors world for loads of years, is she right away welcomed and served to settle their disputes is going? How does he communicate fluently with them? At first, Tomb Raider’s narrative ignites a shadow of inconsistencies, however with each new handy puzzle or magical artifact, needless revelation, or paper-skinny person, my tolerance for the useless Thin Thin.  It is also worth noting that during historical Central America, seeing the aristocracy sporting wings and animal skulls and taking pictures enemies dressed in a ceremonial gown, English Lara Croft is deeply uncomfortable. Killing endless streams of militias may be seamless, but at the least the optics aren't so extreme. In the opening scenes, it is Lara’s cruel plunder of a Mayan tomb that kills the apocalypse, but any comment here about Lara’s method to ejecting artifacts from other cultures is made by a plot, which later leads her to The native holds as the protector of the population.  Beautiful backdrop Shadow of the Tomb Raider Photograph: Eidos Montréal  Most disappointingly, Lara Croft is uninteresting herself. At the beginning of this trilogy, whilst he turned into now not compared to the bulletproof aristocratic adventurer he had already completed, everyone did now not love it, but it changed into at least an try and humanize him. In 2013’s Tomb Raider, she became trying to continue to exist on an island; In Rise of the Tomb Raider, she become tracing her late father’s footsteps everywhere in the world to discover what brought on her loss of life; Here, his motivations are a whole lot much less clean and his conscience character is placed in a grandiose plot of a world-finishing. Any introspection about who she is and what she is doing is hidden in the menu, wherein the artifacts tested indicate some lines for Croft. In light of the reality that neither of the authors of the previous  games has been credited right here, and the transition to a brand new studio, you surprise if this recreation is suffering from a improvement drama.  In the Shadow of the Tomb Raider there is a lot greater to comply with its story – monitoring treasures from clues written on monoliths, exploring remarkable hidden tombs with the fine riddles in the game, looking jungle creatures, Unravel neighborhood mysteries in populated areas. These efforts are a lot of amusing, in particular hidden tombs, but the rewards are unusually meaningless. Salted outfits provide meaningless bonuses for Lara (“get extra experience for hitting”), the crafting substances are so considerable that they are now not an thrilling reward, and new skills or guns are rarely used. Oddly, objects together with lockpicks that open up opportunities to are seeking for new treasures are offered through traders, not earned thru exploration. It is very abnormal that this alternative material is so badly included.  Shadow of Tomb Raider is a strange and vaguely disappointing game, however no longer a horrific one. Sneak round within the jungle, combating jaguars, exploring historic crypts that grapple with danger, soar and climb round exquisite Peruvian scenes, the satisfying “thunk” of an arrow finding its target; This is all fun, if not new. The locations Lara visits and the things she does, particularly when she doesn’t have a gun in her fingers, are lovely and enjoyable. But it lacks a coherent plot or innovative imaginative and prescient to put all of it together, and the opportunity to create an exciting individual out of Lara Croft is meaningless.  Shadow of the Tomb Raider Recommended Requirements  OS: Windows 10 sixty four-bit Graphics  Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 480, 8GB Processor:  Intel Core i7 4770K, 3.40 GHz or AMD Ryzen five 1600, 3.20 GHz Memory:   sixteen GB DirectX:  12 Version Storage: forty GB Dedicated Video Memory: 6GB

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Rebecca Ferguson - interview for Grazia Russia (N5, March 5, 2019)

The Lesser Evil

Charming redhead Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson has become famous thanks to “Mission Impossible” franchise. Other than this adventure superhit, in the last couple of years the actress has starred in the musical “The Greatest Showman”, new reboot of “Men in Black”, and now it has also been confirmed that she is the one who will play Lady Jessica in an adaptation of a cult novel “Dune” that is being developed by Denis Villenevue. But when you ask her what’s the most important thing that has happened in her life to date, she is seriously contemplating before answering. “I didn’t die during the latest childbirth. That’s good for starters. Second that comes to mind is our summer vacation in Greece, where we went with my whole family after I finished shooting “The Kid Who Would Be King”.

Last year Rebecca gave birth to a daughter with her husband Rory. She already has a son Isaac from a former boyfriend, art-director Ludwig Hallberg, but she tied the knot for the first time after moving to the outskirts of London. “I love the fact that we are living in an almost countryside. It looks a lot like my hometown Simrishamn, where we also spend a lot of time.” District, where the couple bought a true british house, is close to the Pinewood Studios and Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, where Ferguson works most of the time. Rebecca is shooting non-stop in an Olympic athlete rhythm. For example, the latest “Mission Impossible” installment and “The Kid Who Would Be King” she filmed simultaneously. She had to work weekends for the later. “At some point you get used to it and see this rhythm as a norm. When I was on holidays in Greece my agents contacted me and said that there is a role in the latest “Men in Black” that will take a couple of weeks to shoot. I said: “Dear family! It’s time for mama to go back!” We wrapped the vacations 5 days earlier than planned.” British director Joe Cornish found another way to the actresses’ heart, thought their mutual friend, Simon Pegg. To the first meeting in a restaurant Joe brought his sketches, pictures and acted out best dialogues, and made it so good, that Ferguson said “yes” right on the spot.

|-My agent called me in the evening and in swearing terms said what can be summed up as “What the hell are you doing?”

This spontaneity is very characteristic of Rebecca. She taught argentine tango, for example. The future star was a very active child and tried all dancing styles – ballet, street-jazz, contemp, but the choice was made in favour of tango. “Thanks to my mother. She was always telling me to go for it. I told her: “Give me an example!” And she started taking classes near the fishing village where we lived, and I was hooked as well.” Rebecca has her mother to thank also for the flawless british accent, that only british aristocracy has nowadays. “I used to imitate her when I was little. She graduated from a very good school and her accent is very good. Later, when I was cast as queen Elizabeth in “The White Queen” I studied with an amazing coach, who perfected that “royal” accent. I had to speak like that for 6 months in a row and it got so deep into my head that it stayed with me forever.” The only time when Rebecca’s mom was not listened to is when they were choosing a name for the daughter. “She wanted something traditional and aristocratic. They were choosing between Tallulah, after the American actress Tallulah Bankhead, and Gaelic name Tobermory. My elder sister’s name is Islay, this is the name of one of the islands in Scotland. The island nearby is called Tobermory.” Luckily, her father suggested: “Maybe Rebecca?”. That’s what was decided in the end. “Can you imagine? I could have been Tallulah or Tobermory! What a horror!”. By the way, the third name that Rebecca’s mother favoured was Saga. That’s the name that was given to her now six months old granddaughter. “Sagas are the basis of everything in Swedish mythology. They are telling the legends that form the folklore. I always liked that word and that’s how I named my daughter.”

As a foreigner Ferguson has of course read the story of King Arthur and the knights of round table. Nevertheless, she liked immensely her first role as a villain in “The Kid Who Would Be King”. She swears that now she will only play villains. Morgana, the magic half-sister of king Arthur is living underground and waits for her time to come back to the world of the living. 12 year old Alex, played by Andy Serkis son, Louis, finds the magic sword at the building site, which opens the portal for Mogana and her demons to the modern day London.

|- What I liked about this role, that she is pure evil. Unlike Disney bad witch who is evil, but not that unsympathetic.

How do you feel going home to your husband and two kids after this kind of shoot? “I forget about my character as soon as I leave the set.” Taking a pause to think Rebecca corrects herself. “You know, that was not true. My characters from “The Snowman”, “The White Queen”, “Hercules” – they are all here, - she says pointing to her head. “They live in my memory, but I do not spread that energy on my family.”

“The Kid Who Would Be King” premiere was the first one that her son attended with her. He is the same age as the main hero. During the screening the boy was scared a couple of times and touched his mom’s hand, saying, that it’s only “a reflex reaction”. He has seen Ferguson’s 4-hour transformation with make-up department into enchantress Morgana before. “He used to sleep in the corner while me and my colleges chatted”. The actress admits that her son basically grew up on different sets and cannot imagine a life without constant traveling.

By the end of our interview we decided to look through the Code of Honour that the heroes of “The Kid Who Would Be King” follow:

GRAZIA: The first rule – “Don’t lie”.

R.F. Not sure about that. I admit that sometimes you can tell a “white lie” like the English say for a good cause.

GRAZIA: “Respect the others”.

R.F. Respect is good, but sometimes you so want to be a bit naughty.

GRAZIA: “Do what you do till the end”

R.F. I very much didn’t like a costar once. I did not feel satisfaction from the work and didn’t know how to stand up to myself. But this situation taught me another good lesson: “If something bothers you, say it from the start!”

(scans and translation from russian by @edwardslovelyelizabeth for Rebeccalouisaferguson.tumblr.com)

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

How big is the average Canadian into the Royal Family? Is having Royal or Crown in government named things embraced?

Edit: jesus christ i accidentally stream of thought effortposted againyounger than 50, they dont give a shit. It’s been semi-systematically programmed out of the younger generations, as well as like, just the closer relationship to the USA now and the adoption of the post-national globalist state model that Canada can’t shut the fuck up about in bragging of in absence of any ties to our past. Unless, of course, you are Quebecois or a maritimer. The former, cus duh and the latter because significantly economically depressed regions have an uncanny habit of preserving regional identity.

The conservatives in this country used to be queen and country traditional styled anglophiles but since the 80s, the neoliberal platform (see: alberta) has completely subsumed that faction into becoming generic low taxes capitalist whigs in the style of the American Democrat party. They embrace the immigration and trade policies as we have it because, like the liberals of this country, they are the Fortress Calgary to the Fortress Toronto of the Grits in wanting to become a “super power” in that one sole tradition that Canada still maintains itself, which is the inferiority complex it has with the United States. Canada wants a significantly larger population so it can, in theory, accrue global power and prestige. It’s literally that shallow.

The long time nationalist forces that wanted to break from Britain in search of independence have won. They have the power, the money and the media. Their slow detachment from empire won out, but due to the timing with modernity and frenzied capitalism, we have no distinct culture to speak up aside from icons of consumerism. Tim Hortons, Ketchup Chips, and little red maple leafs on american corporation logos is the new cultural identity. Eat up, citizen.

I am currently living in the era where ive witnessed british arms, british servicemen bars/legions and british goods stores serving an extremely elderly demographic be replaced by japanese stationary stores, modern bars & grills and pho noodle places. My anglophile grandma (see: not the oma) was so distinctly british in her mannerisms and character that she used to have me shop with her in rural Ottawa and flip around the containers to show the english side out because she couldnt contain her disdain for the french, lol. She was the only family member i know who had portraits of the young queen, old queen and other commonwealth/empire memorabilia. That is another uniquely canadian feature of this dominion that is quickly being lost, which is the anglophone vs. francophone dichotomy in this country. The anglophone side has simply ceased to exist, or rather, just become Generic Globalist Consumers with a generically racist right wing that votes Tory. And it wasn’t necessarily something mourned. it just happened as a result of geopolitics, mainly.

Canada is in the process of pivoting toward the west, formerly Europe’s east

This is inevitable because of the collapse in British prestige, the relatively young age of the country and the normalization of Canada’s relationship with the USA culminating with NAFTA, so it can’t be helped. There is literally no political faction in Canada that wants to preserve this sense of identity. As has been the case for a few decades now because people feel its not “our” identity, let alone see it at all. What’s more, they would prefer not to. it feels like reaching into something full of moth balls.

Even Maxime Bernier’s kinda reactionary new Peoples Party is just a generic anti-immigration clone of the Tories.

And describing this cultural identity is not like, going “lmao british people” because it was bigger than that. It is rife with the simulacra that comes from being at the extreme end of a globe spanning maritime empire regarded to be at the time of time. It’s not a British culture, it’s british? It’s the culture that arises from great affinity for a distant mother you miss and try to emulate out of pride for her.

Contemporary conservativism is fundamentally modernist (late 19th century, onward), so it can’t grasp this gilded traditionalism that carries generations and is rooted in Enlightnment. It’s sense of identity is firmly restricted to the want for preserving how it was in the contemporary generation’s youth, which is itself fleeting from the acceleration of technocapital. This sense of identity is intrinsically degenerative because western society ran obsolete, the old aristocracy, it’s values of enlightenment and aristocracy itself almost a century ago. So we are left with a wildly expanded merchant (trade/business) class, the middle class, which has little intrinsic interest other than that of material concern. Conservatism, as opposed to this gilded traditionalism, is lowbrow nostalgia and liberal capitalist. lol

This limit for scope of cultural inheritance is why the conservatives of today were the liberals of two decades ago. In a few decades, the Conservatives will be defending/preserving their nostalgia of shit they tried to prevent today. Whig history, etc etc

Describing this cultural loss is like.. you can’t really look at it in an literally skin deep ethnic lens like in the way the modernist fascists fret, because it was a form of identity that precedes the modern, capital-corroded sense of the cultural. Even superceding that. Britain was a global empire that reached it’s zenith in the twilight of an older sense of identity (nationalism was a new, radical phenomenon then).

The loss of this Britishness in Canada is like the fading warmth from the last touch of a benevolent caretaker who has since passed. You weren’t around to know her when she was a cold, calculating, powerful, feared bitch in in her youth, but what you do remember in fragmented childhood memories is how she was in her elder years, glowing one last time after beating the cancer (nazi reich) afflicting her. But it took the strength out of her and so she quickly expired after that, leaving her children to divvy up, sell and throw away all of her belongings. After all that, all that’s left to you, this generation in the commonwealth, should we actually take care to notice, is that fading warm touch that is deeply of the visceral, the simulacra at this point. Hard to really distinguish what that touch felt like. You try to focus on the warm spot, to conjure her voice in your head and remember at least those stories from beating the cancer or other stories.

But then the contemporary alt-righter thinks he feels it too, so he quickly slaps his hand onto the warm spot and just replaces it with his own warmth. The touch is now completely lost. He doesn’t even realize it.

[xeridandannyamporax-blog]

Tips When Choosing Your Home Interior Design Style

Some of the most popular exteriors in America are Modern, Art De co, Victorian and Colonial Revival. Logically, many of these home owners would choose to complement the home interior design by using unified elements. If the exterior is an Arts and Craft bungalow, for instance, you may want neutral tone walls, stained glass lights and mission oak furniture. However, if you have a Cape Cod, then a country theme might be more appropriate for your interior. You can gain insight and custom designs from a trained professional to help you make the best choices.

Art De co first gained popularity in the 1920s. While the glitz, glamour and gaudiness diminished following the Great Depression, there is still a soft spot in the American heart for the lost innocence of this classic time period. In the twenties and thirties, the professional interior designer saw Art De-co as both elegant and ultra-modern. Combining aspects of airplane design and Futurism with Old World mosaic patterns and Cubism, the end result was something very interesting that spoke to the aristocracy who wanted nothing bland or boring.

Borrowing from austere stainless steel but also exotic zebra skin and saturated modern colors, Art De co interior design trends offer the homeowner a museum-type vibe with an array of conversation pieces. Curved mirrors, Tiffany lamps, lacquered furniture, velvet drapes, silk lamp shades, small furniture, thick carpeting and symmetrical geometric shape patterns can all add a hint of Deco to a room. "It's about glamour and getting a glimpse of those bygone days where TV was less important and it was about cocktail hour and company," furniture designer Barclay Butera tells HGTV.

The Arts and Crafts home interior design style took America and Great Britain by storm from 1850 through to 1920. Following the advent of mass production and rampant industrialism, artists like John Ruskin and William Morris called for a return to rustic craftsmanship. Simplicity meets high quality with clean, elegant furniture that is as practical as it is beautiful. William Morris said in 1882, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Other influential Arts and Crafts designers include Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley, Henry Greene and Elbert Hubbard. Durable, dark-stained "mission style" oak furniture, stained glass, painted tiles, floral fabrics, Mica shade lighting, neutral tone walls and deep green or sapphire blue accent colors are all part of Arts and Crafts custom designs.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2101723

[lucyjones1]

The evolution of hat-making from then to now

You cannot question the art of American hat-making for the years of experience it displays. Most hats offer superior comfort, quality, and excellent finish. Whether you need something for a formal or daily need, you don't have to worry about the purpose of use. From stunning choices for events to casual looks to more, these come in many forms and styles. In these hats, detailing can be the primary emphasis. The reputed companies ensure they provide the best by focusing on their production process from the beginning. The careful choice of materials makes them ahead of the pack. So, if you want to wear a hat that keeps a balance between beauty and functionality, you don't have to go anywhere else.

You can rely on the American Hat Company with a repository of expertise and experience to serve you better. If you need more proof, pay close attention to their designs, stitches, and materials that vouch for nothing but excellence.  

The story of hats

The hat-wearing habit had to do more with image, class, and protection. It also became a fashion accessory for people following a specific lifestyle, etiquette, and practice. However, these have not been an overnight success or always popular. There had been lulls also. In the 18th century, wigs took their position. Things again changed in the 19th century with men’s hats. Even the time after World War I witnessed their emergence. The fashion industry welcomed them back due to the efforts of the hat-making sector. Nevertheless, it can be interesting to know that the Romans didn’t use hats but metal fillets.

In the initial medieval period, hoods and coifs were standard. Doctors and other professionals sported round skull caps with details. Some suggest that straw and felt were the earliest forms of hats as they were functional. People working in the field needed them for sun protection. As the 13th century dawned, brims became a part of the hats. The young crowd loved them, and gradually, everyone shifted to other headgears from metal helmets.

Forehead accessories grew in popularity with time, while hats enjoyed a unique position in men's clothing. The 20th century saw the emergence of Panamas, fedoras, bowlers, top hats, and derbies, which are as much a part of fashion today as they were in the past.

A look into top hat and bowler

The western world adopted black silk top hats initially. These became a symbol of aristocracy and conservative capitalism. However, they lacked a formal vibe. But what made them intriguing was the manufacturing process. In America, hat makers added a special touch by using mercury to increase the black color of the hat. The era stood witness to even the tallest shapes with crowns going up to seven inches high. The width, however, could be different. Then, bowler hats or Derby entered the scene in the 1850s. People looked at it as a classic English choice. Mostly industrial class wore them. The uniqueness of these hats was their rigid and protective lids.

The current hat options based on seasons

Times have changed, and the outlook toward hats has too. These fashion accessories have undergone an incredible transformation to suit modern sensibilities while retaining their classic appeal. Also, their utilitarian goal is equally important. That's why you come across varieties in bucket hats, cowboy hats, floppy hats, boaters, and Panamas during summers. You can select beanies, berets, Ascot caps, fedoras, and others in the winter season. Since there are so many variations, you can get confused about what to choose and why. For quick understanding, you need to become familiar with the hat anatomy.

A hat consists of the brim, crown, sweatband, etc. Brims are the front projections of the hats for ensuring sun protection for the eyes. Almost all hats come with them. The top part of the hat is the crown, which can have ten different forms. You can look at cowboy hats and derby hats for an experience. While cowboy hats feature cattleman crowns, bowlers boast round crowns. Sweatbands can be common to felt hats. Check felt fedoras for a hint. However, this element can be there in other varieties also.

Having a bit of background about hats' origin and their prevalence and evolution is essential to understand the hat-making skills of the American companies specializing in this niche. It gives you confidence that you can expect the best options for your need. Since Black Friday is approaching and soon there will be other significant festivities, you can hurry to find your style. Visit the recognized hat makers with a rich legacy in this field. You can depend on them in terms of variety, quality, pricing, and long-term benefit. At the same time, you don't have to cross-check with other platforms to be sure you have invested in the right thing.The top-notch material and the make will be the proof of their trustworthiness.

[tzifron]

How the word anarchy came to replace the word democracy as a way to demonize grassroots initiatives

Democracy and Anarchism 

FRANCIS DUPUIS-DÉRI: It’s Interesting: you used the word democracy before mentioning anarchy. For a long time the two words were almost synonymous, especially in the United States and France. Until the mid-nineteenth century, democracy referred to a political system in ancient Athens, where power was exercised by a popular assembly in which all citizens could participate in decisions affecting their common affairs. But this concept of democracy had a pejorative taint in the West. The problem with Athenian democracy, according to its detractors, was not just that women, slaves, and foreigners didn’t have the right to enter the agora and participate in debates. The problem went much deeper: it was an irrational and chaotic system of government, and inherently violent. Why? Because it was a system controlled by the majority, and the poor are always the majority. So, critics argued, Athenian-style democracy would give the poor power, which they would use to attack the rich and destroy private property. Hence the idea of chaos and violence; hence the idea that democracy is anarchy, because the poor would never respect legitimate authority or the established hierarchical social order. To the elite, the very idea of democracy was scandalous.

The eighteenth century gave us the American War of Independence (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789). But almost no one at that time used the word democracy in a positive sense. The people we think of as the founding fathers of ‘modern democracy’ in the United States and France were openly anti-democratic. They used the word democracy as a bogeyman in their speeches and writings; to call someone a democrat was an insult. They wanted to create a republic that was opposed to the monarchy and the aristocracy, but also to democracy, understood as a system in which the people, the majority of them poor, govern themselves without leaders. The republican elite considered this idea a political aberration and a moral threat. They insisted that the people needed enlightened leaders who were morally and intellectually superior to the ordinary people. In saying that, they were simply legitimizing their own power, for in their view power naturally resided in the upper class. Hence an observer remarked in 1790 that the French Revolution had simply replaced the ‘hereditary aristocracy’ with an ‘elected aristocracy.’ In other words, they newly elected representatives in France’s National Assembly had become the new elite, the new aristocracy.

That new elite believed that ‘the people’ was a mass of selfish and irrational individual who had no clear vision for society and were incapable of understanding the idea of ‘the common good.’ That explains why, when you delve into eighteenth-century archives, you find so many anti-democratic sentiments. For example, John Adams, one of the most important leaders of the American independence movement and the second president of the United States, said, ‘I was always for a free republic, not a democracy, which is … arbitrary, tyrannical, bloody, cruel, and intolerable.’ Can you imagine an American president saying that today? [transcriber lolsobs profusely]

Many ordinary people are convinced they need leaders to guide them. They get swept up in admiration for their leaders. They venerate them, even sacrifice their lives in their name. In the United States and France, the first people to call themselves democrats and lay claim to the word democracy were egalitarians who dreamt of doing away with distinctions between rich and poor, between the governed and those who govern. During the French Revolution, for example, Sylvain Maréchal put forth such radical ideas in his Manifesto of the Equals: ‘Disappear at least, revolting distinctions between rich and poor, great and small, masters and servants, rulers and ruled. Let there no longer be any difference between people except those of age and sex.’

THOMAS: So when did we start using the word democracy in a positive sense, to describe our political system? 

FRANCIS: Around 1840, the political elite in the United States and France began championing the idea of democracy. They appropriated the word democracy when they realized it could win them votes. By associating themselves with the word, the elite gave the impression that they were listening to the people and serving the people’s interests. This coincided with the creation of new states in the western USA, where smallholders were more likely to vote for politicians who pretended to identity [sic] with the common folk. Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, was the first US president to describe himself as a democrat. Newspapers who supported him called him the defender of ‘democracy and the people against a corrupt aristocracy.’ In France, during the 1848 elections that followed the February Revolution, moderate and conservative republicans appropriated the words democracy and democrat from the socialists, hoping to give the impression that they cared about the people. Within a few short years, democracy had been appropriated by all camps, even the monarchists! In Canada, which is still a constitutional monarchy the political elites began identifying themselves with the word democracy during the First World War, as a way of bolstering support for the war effort. The population was told that their sacrifice was for the common good and to protect people’s freedom.”

Francis Dupuis-Déri and Thomas Deri, Anarchy Explained to my Father. Trans. John Gilmore and Ellen Warkentin (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2017), 3-8