Friday, May 9

These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)

ON my last raid on Half-Price Books I picked up John Keegan's one-volume The First World War which I successfully dug down to a couple days ago and began reading.  (Keegan is easy to distinguish from the American Kagan tribe; he's the one who writes non-fiction.)
On 4 October an advance guard of the Royal Naval Division, which had landed at Dunkirk on 19 September and had meanwhile roamed western Belgium, arrived in Antwerp by train.  In its wake appeared the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, thirsting for action and glory.
Which is what makes the real Churchill easy to distinguish from the one the Right used to pretend (ah, nostalgia!) was inhabiting the White House:  the object of their respective thirsts.*

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* The Churchill of the American Right is himself a pretend Churchill in many respects, but that's a post for a day when my gutters aren't clogged with maple droppings.

 

1 comment:

  1. heydave10:41 AM EDT

    I heard a good radio interview/speech with some writer or other (yeah, that's how specific I can be) and Dubya's "eccentricities/fuckedupness" was explained as having selected only some of the personality traits of the real Churchill to emulate, apparently opting for a less functional/attractive package.

    Made/makes a lot of sense to me.


    And I promise to stop talking/posting with this dumb mannerism myself in the future.

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