Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Thoughts from Galicia: 18.1.17

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain. 

If you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, see my web page here.

Cataluña
Spain
The USA
  • After searching for an 'objective assessment of Trump's first year', I alighted on this site. This is the first comment which jumped out at me:- Congressional Republicans, unlike their president, have yet to assimilate the fact that they belong increasingly to a working-class party of the uncredentialed forgotten men and women of the 21st-century digital global economy. And this was the second, actually the final paragraph:- The lesson of Trump year one is that objective reality plays little to no part in assessments of his tenure. Trump the president is subsumed in the operatic character of Trump the man. On one hand, his most loyal voters won’t abandon him because their connection is psychic, personal, and charismatic. On the other, his most vehement opponents cannot be won over by the conventionality of his governing choices or the success of his policies. The ultimate referent in political debate is Trump’s personal behavior, his outbursts and moods, his likes and dislikes, his Tweets and asides and insults and flattery. Not only is America divided along lines of education and class. It is polarized by attitudes toward the personality and aesthetics of Donald Trump. And I do not think he would want it any other way. 
  • For a personal view of the tribal nature of the politics of this polarised/polarized nation, click here. Even more depressing, if accurate.
The UK
  • In this clip, the London head of Breibart News – Raheem Kassam - not only says it's fine for President Fart to label countries shitholes but adds – on the basis of some crime statistics that might well be accurate – that London is a shithole city. This confirms something about the alt-right – that, in pursuit of its version of the truth, anything goes in public discourse. Including ad hominem attacks and personal abuse. So, presumably it'd be OK for Mrs May, the queen or even the Pope to label President Fart an arsehole. Apart from being indecorous, this doesn't seem to me to promise consensus or even compromise. But, then, that's not what the alt-right is after, is it? What it wants is imposition of its Bannonite policies, even if the majority of the electorate is against them. The end justifies the means. Rather like Putin, then. Or the Jesuits. Quasi-religious fervour and a hunger for power, justifying anything and everything. O tempora, o mores.
  • Pondering the news of the possible loan of the Bayeux tapestry to the UK in a few years's time, it struck me that - given the origins of the Anglo-Saxons - this tapestry might well celebrate the last time the French defeated the Germans at war. I was going to say 'at their national game' but this would be churlish. And worthy of Raheem Kassam, perhaps.
Nutters Corner
  • Former White House (short-term) communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, says Fart's tweets show off his wit. Rather more accurately, perhaps, he confirms that: Fart is using Twitter to jump over the mainstream media to directly message the people who voted for him.
  • Oh, you are so happy you voted for me. You are so lucky that I gave you that privilege. Yesterday's example of said wit.
Galicia
  • It's reported that 31 people were convicted here last year of operating as psychologists without any professional qualification whatsover. Another example of 'low ethics', I guess.
Pontevedra
  • The camino pilgrims aren't – or some of them at least – the only religious folk to have come to Pontevedra in the last 100 years. In 1925, one of the little girls who'd seen a vision of the virgin in Fátima in 1917 – now a nun, Sister Lucía - was visited not only by Mary again but also by the infant Jesus in her little convent here in Pontevedra. Honest. By the way, this is the same nun whom some Catholics think – as I reported a while ago – was later replaced by an impostor. I'm not sure why anyone would do this. Unless she'd become a Nazi supporter and had to be quietly supplanted. Here's something on the alleged conspiracy. Plenty more on the internet, of course.
Finally
  • If you're considering a DNA test done to discover your ancestry, you might want to read this first. Says one geneticist: These companies are asking people to pay for something that is at best trivial and at worst astrology. But might, all the same, be at least a bit of fun.
Today's Cartoon
  • I had hoped to upload this short video but, as usual, it doesn't work. So here's a link to it.

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