From the Editor’s Perch…

Fashion

 

            In the book, Fascism versus Capitalism, Llwellyn Rockwell Jr. mentions the Harvard philosopher, Santayana’s observation “that ideas aren’t usually abandoned because they have been refuted; they are abandoned when they become unfashionable.”  Most people reading this who have tried to introduce an unfashionable notion probably have suffered this observation.  You either find yourself socially isolated.   Or you are made to feel as if you are speaking in a foreign tongue, as if, as a woman at a theater rehearsal once told me (regarding my thoughts):  “I feel as if I am talking to someone from the moon.”  Thoughts judged to be unfashionable are simply left to die alone while conversing to the backs and sides of heads, and thence to float away, detached and withered, into the cold outer reaches.

The most dramatic example I’ve run across of this phenomenon is from the same book as mentioned above.  Henry Hazlitt was an editorial writer for the New York Times from 1934 till 1945 who backed a return to the gold standard.  He was finally sacked for his editorials in opposition to the Breton Woods agreement of 1945 establishing the World Bank.   Hazlitt wrote: “it would be difficult to think of a more serious threat to world stability and full production than the continual prospect of a uniform world inflation to which the politicians of every country would be so easily tempted.”  Throughout his tenure, no one, as far as can be seen, joined him in his warnings.  He could not even generate a credible opposition.  His opposition around the Breton Woods agreement ignored him, claiming a world catastrophe if the measure were not passed.

History has proved Henry Hazlitt correct.  And millions of lives perhaps need not have been lost to the devastations of WWII if the advent of rampant inflation had not been there to fuel the rise of fascist philosophies.  But no matter.  WWII did occur.  The Times has never apologized.  (Don’t hold your breath!)  And Henry Hazlitt lost his job.  John Maynard Keynes ideas appeared to be new.  Henry Hazlitt’s appeared to be old.  To be included in a current conversation you must be perceived to be ‘new’ – otherwise, the argument goes, why have one?   Though there was no factual basis of incompetence for firing Henry Hazlitt, by 1945 the Times publisher,  Arthur Sulzberger, “had had enough.”  “When 43 governments sign an agreement, I don’t see how the Times can any longer combat this,” he said.

 

“How important is sound money?  The whole of civilization depends on it,” says Llewellyn Rockwell.  Nevertheless, fashion trumps it.

 

            If these anecdotes don’t arouse you, then I give up.  I can’t reach you with a sharp pin.

 

But fashion itself is a fascinating topic.  It seems to move and change on its own timeline, without regard for events.  (Which, I would suppose is as we should expect, given its impervious nature.)  In my younger years I lived in a home I’d purchased on the cheap in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle.   This section of Seattle contained (and still does) the most diversified population in terms of race and ethnicity of any area in King County.  While I lived there, gang violence was endemic.  I still remember my neighbor arguing loudly in the middle of our street with his son not to join the gang which was waiting for him on the corner.  I had passed the years watching this decent kid grow from a toddler, to the middle school aged youngster who now apparently had been judged old enough to join the gang.  I also remember a neighborhood friend relating the tale of going to pick up her son at school and having to hug the floor of her car outside of the school to escape the exchange of bullets passing overhead.  Our community and the city government tried this and they tried that.  Then, after it seemed I had given up hope and had moved on anyway, it just ended.  No more violence.  No more gangs on the corner.  And yet everything else was the same.  Same people.  Same laws.  Same police.   Same homes.  Same everything.  Only the people who did that sort of thing, didn’t do it anymore.  As near as I could tell, it just passed out of fashion.

Photo is Lady Gaga from Google Images

Murders in Progress by Eldon Cene

Editor:  Okay.  Back to crime, murders, sex, violence and all that… set in a rural milieu.

Is This an Ivy League Mistress? (Vote Frequently; Vote Often.)

“I just love this recession!”

(Episode 24)

 Benny Green slid off of his mistress.  “I just love this recession!” He crowed.  Really high profit businesses were scrambling like rats to deal with their cash flow problems, and Benny was gobbling them up right and left like a hungry alley cat.  ‘And some really high rollers were tossing some really nice mistresses out on the streets, besides’, Benny thought, kicking the sheets gleefully.

Benny, himself, had just upgraded to a natural blonde, ten years younger than his former for near the same outlay… with better teeth and a lot less profanity.  He glanced to the left.   And she had just risen from bed and was in the kitchen now, steaming his latte and warming his brioche, which she was soon to bring out on a tray with a fresh squeezed glass of orange juice and a freshly printed edition of the mornings news.  And this had happened many times before over the past few months.  Still, he nearly had to pinch himself to believe his good fortune.  ‘How the very rich lived!’  Benny was just finding this out now, himself, from her, the natural blonde debutante from some rich eastern Ivy League school.

He didn’t know which.  And frankly, he couldn’t care.  Plus it probably all was a lie.  But, ‘dammit if I’m not living like one of the 1 percent’, Benny thought gleefully, exulting in his newly found prosperity and snapping open the front page of his newly printed morning paper as his mistress unfolded the legs of his bed tray over his ample midsection.

“Shit!” he exclaimed.  “Someone popped the Muffin Lady.”

His mistress quietly mopped up the spilled juice.  Benny almost stopped reading to get a little head, but then let the thought go.  ‘Business first.’

There it all was, just below the fold: a tale of a gruesome rape, complete with a decapitation – if the sources were to be believed.  And there, way down at the bottom, was a hint of Federal involvement.  Which Benny took to mean right away that he’d better call Delores.

“Delores,” he said over his cell.  “You may be getting some visitors soon from back East.  Make sure those files we discussed in the pasteboard box…”

“It’s too late, Benny.  They’re already here.”  Delores’ voice shrunk to a whisper.  “And I’ve been trying to hide that box as well as I can, but I don’t know…”

“So… that’s great!”  Benny exulted.  “That’s perfect.  That couldn’t be better!  Now you just sit back and let them find it.  Okay?”

“You sure about this?  That’s what you really want?”

“I’m sure about this.  That’s what I really want.”  Benny could hardly contain his glee.  “Okay?”

Delores acknowledged and he hung up.  “Well, now,’ he thought, ‘I think we know who the rat is.’

There was always one, which was why Benny was always prepared.  It baffled Benny how so many people felt that if things were going good, then they were always going to go good.  Baffled him, but also made him a lot of money.  “Lots of people didn’t anticipate a recession and so it just gave me a opportunity to be of help,” Benny snickered.  And “ lots of big wig criminals refuse to acknowledge the risk of getting caught,” he wagged his finger at his mistress.  “But sooner or later, getting caught is nearly a certainty.”  His mistress nodded, agreeing with his wisdom; seeing she had lived the fallout of it, firsthand, Benny figured.  The first mistress he’d ever had, had served him warmed up pizza and flat beer on the lid of a limp cardboard pizza carton, served in a sour bed, all the while finding fault with whatever scheme Benny had been cooking up at the time – until it had invariably descended into a screaming match/ food fight.  ‘Why am I screaming at my mistress?’ Benny had to ask himself at the height of it all.  ‘This is nuts!’  But at the same time, the thought of changing her out just hadn’t occurred to him, as all of the other mobsters he had complained to had related the same problems…

“Jeeze, we may get older, but we do get wiser.”  Benny smiled at his blonde bedmate.  She smiled back.  ‘Perfect teeth, and such a lovely smile’, Benny thought.   And for about two seconds, Benny Green was a satisfied man.   Because Benny has a satisfaction Attention Deficit Syndrome.

‘But with all this new business he anticipated coming in – maybe he could trade up again?  And what would that be?  Maybe a sixteen year old, fourteen, thirteen…?  That could be a little risky.  How young are they supposed to get?  Maybe someone who just looked fifteen!  I mean, really naïve.   That sounded about right,’ Benny considered.  ‘I never could get laid for all the rice in China at that age.  And maybe now he could make up for that.  But how would he find someone like that?’   Southeast Asia?  But he really wanted a blonde.  Maybe Columbia?’

Benny made another call to Deloris.  ‘Then again…’  He hung up.

‘Nope.  Better not call Deloris.’

Photo taken from Google Images by lascivious Editor.