Rhesus, I think you’ve pretty much sewn this baby up tight.

I, for one, am now weirded out.

One does wonder, though, how Icke proves to his fans that he himself is not a reptilian, or, indeed, a space-amphibian send by the Amphbitironic Empire of Galaxy Z2TN765 to fill human heads with silly claims of imaginary reptilians and distract them from the Ampibian invasion. Or whatever. :)

Jinro makes gin? That’s… simultaneously very right, and very scary. It must be horrible stuff, too.

Also, see the symmetry? Boxcar Willie is a fake hobo. What do hobos drink? Thunderbird! Or Night Train or whatever. All the themes of this post fold in on themselves. Also Boxcar Willie is free from contradictions, having no evident morals.

btw Jinro makes gin.

Sorry, your comment was stuck in moderation.

Well, even I have argued in the past that we should at least see the notion of the White Man’s burden as a step up from the kinds of interaction (and justifications) involved when cultures or groups of people steamrollered one another in the more distant past, when the dominant approach was simply genocide.

The White Man’s Burden is a repugnant idea, but there’s this weird ethical dimension to it that I think simultaneously made hypocrites of the people who believed in it, but also allowed those white colonists sometimes to resist the system about as much as any complicit participant can.
Hell, Gandhian nonviolence worked in part because of that weird, stunted but present ethical dimension, I think, in a way it could never have if it had been, say, the Nazis he’d ended up trying to wrest independence from.

(My brilliant Indian friend has argued that Gandhi wouldn’t have taken that approach with the Nazis, which may well be true. We were discussing an alternate history by Harry Turtledove, by the way.)

I should add, though, that part of the reason I think it’s important to think not just of the repugnant idea, but also of the regular people who were raised under the sway of it but strove to be decent, is because my father is one of them.

He ardently believed into later adulthood — I remember arguing with him in his mid-fifties — that Europe had colonized Africa for the good of the Africans (and as evidence, he cited how much more horrible the postcolonial governments were for the common people). But he also was the kid in his school (in Malawi) who got the shit kick out of him for standing up to the South African kids for treating the local black kids like crap, and he really did also feel a calling to help the people around him who were living in a pretty precarious situation at the best of times. He felt horror at the suffering of Malawians around him, and I suspect he would have even if it were the British government inflicting it, instead of the thugs doing the work of Hastings Banda, whom he routinely called “Bloody Banda” for things he’d seen done to people he knew. (Like the office guy who, intent on cycling to work, crossed three checkpoints where he had to show is [political] party card. He showed the wrong card in each case one day, since it was guesswork sometimes, and was beaten severely at each checkpoint, arriving pretty badly injured and with his bicycle destroyed.)

Yeah, that complexity is really weird. Then again, it makes me think a lot about what kinds of things I’m ironically blind to that utterly contradict my own ethical beliefs. :)

I don’t think everyone who reads Icke is a freak, but I do think everyone who takes his claims seriously is, and I can’t imagine people who willingly spend money on more than one book (outside of research purposes) aren’t freaks. I mean, I’ve read Blavatsky and Jane Roberts (ah, Seth) too, but one usually grows out of it, or becomes a freak. (A small margin may find constant fun in it, but I suspect it’s a small number.)

Jinro Port Wine, oh noooooo! The drinks mentioned on this comment thread are all making me feel ick! :)

Nah, I’m going with Gin, London, ca 1740. And I’m fully aware I’m like one of those upper class dudes off in my apartments drinkking [alcoholic] “punch” as I fiercely criticize the drunken poor. :)

Religious freak s/f? Soju all the way. Not everyone who reads Icke is a freak, and not everyone who drinks soju does it to get screwed up. Or perhaps Jinro Port Wine (the old $2/bottle stuff).

If you want a Western equivalent, then fortified wine is probably best (Thunderbird!).

(I’m sure high-alc beer can be good, but this one kind a skater I worked with “recommended” (and I tried out of curiosity at how bad it really was) was, well… unforgettably disgraceful stuff.)

I’m tempted to swap in soju for malt liquor, except I know some people drink it not exactly to get drunk, but out of… well, I’d put it as social convenience. The folks who just have a single bottle with a friend or two, with this or that food. I suppose it’s the same with malt liquor. I wonder if there is a perfect drink for that analogy…

… besides, of course, the gin circa The English Gin craze. I guess that’s probably a better analogy.