Breaking History

By Jared Kushner (2022) Kushner is no prose stylist. But this tome is a valuable guide to the tour-of-duty of an outsider in a White House full of outsiders. It shows how a transactional background with amateur oversight, ego, and the Art of the Deal, can actually accomplish something in the Deep Swamp that is American federal executive governance. Take, for example, the Abraham Accords. The conventional wisdom, espoused by the likes of the never-right-but-never-in-doubt John Kerry, was that a Palestinian solution was a necessary pre-cursor to improvement of general Arab-Israeli relations. Yet the Trump administration, at Kushner’s suggestion, flipped…

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STONEHENGE STATS

December 18, 2022 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | HISTORY, LESLEY'S WRITING, LIFE, Poetry |

Here are Druidic spatial data, which is leadenly prosaic in both tone and content. ***************************** But three trilithons abide Seven metres high, five metres wide Sarcens – mortise and tenon joints Aligned to Bronze Age sistral points After digging an earthen bank, Fifty-six Aubrey holes the Britons sank Outer circles, a central horseshoe arc In total, seven times one Central Park Ninety-three stones remain at Salisbury Plain Once purchased by Chubb – but not for gain! (Cecil paid six thousand, six hundred pounds, Did that include the funeral mounds?) The bluestones came from Wales by boat (At about three tons…

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The Great Degeneration

(How Institutions Decay and Economies Die) (Niall Ferguson, 2014) This compendium of Reith Lectures by historian Niall Ferguson given in 2012 is no less topical a decade later. In fact it is a fortiori, given that the subsequent years have borne out many of the predictions made. For example, the author quotes ‘cliometrician’ Peter Turchin predicting “the next instability peak [of violence] should occur in the United States around 2020.” Orwell’s pigs have taken over Manor Farm: “What Charles Murray has called the ‘cognitive elite’, educated at exclusive private universities, intermarried and congregated in a few ‘super zip codes’, looks…

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Ode for Elizabeth

September 10, 2022 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | HISTORY, LIFE, Poetry |

Queen Elizabeth II (21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) The argument from merit Casts us all in a harsh light, Elevation arbitrary Tends to set things right. A young girl, out of Africa Came home to wear a crown, She asked for peoples’ prayers So she would never let them down. And while her Empire crumbled She refused to do the same, Lack of power her super-power, ‘De-Colonize’ her name. Her race is run and she will lie The wrong side of the turf; As certain as the sunrise –  Timeless as the Earth.

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Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!

July 14, 2022 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | HISTORY, Non-Fiction |

July 14, 1789 We have spoken of the ‘glory’ of Bastille Day; let us instead hear more from Carlyle on how inglorious it really was: “…De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish….For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it…

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