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Might as well start a #BookClub thread on BAM.
Four paragraphs in, was 😂 at these descriptions of “Hillary Clintong”, Adam Schiff, and, presumably, Jean-Claude Junker. 
BAP on the left's soi-disant atheists:
"When they say they are atheists, I never believe them: atheists act like Stalin or Brezhnev, not like a Presbyterian schoolmarm."
"When they say they are atheists, I never believe them: atheists act like Stalin or Brezhnev, not like a Presbyterian schoolmarm."
BAP on the impact of agriculture...
... Kim Stanley Robinson making a similar point in The Years of Rice And Salt.
The Years of Rice and Salt is a great book, btw. Although KSR leans left, compared today, this is almost reactionary: a world in which 99% of the population of Europe was wiped out by Black Death & the same sort of stuff blamed on Europeans still happens.
From Cabaret to @PeteButtigieg.
BAP on the Chinese love of lists...
KSR making a similar point in The Years of Rice and Salt.
Convulsive laughter.
The “Dune-like headset” is a hilarious cherry on top of this Mitt Romney-as-Alcibiades sundae.
BTW, @SPressfield, who wrote Gates Of Fire, also wrote a historical novel about Alcibiades: The Tides Of War.
amazon.com/Tides-War-Nove…
amazon.com/Tides-War-Nove…
Coincidentally, after reading this in a Starbucks, I left as a half dozen European men who’d been hanging out outside so they could smoke were leaving.
Shortest of them was maybe 6’2”, so I assume they were Balkans. They shook hands and kissed each other on the cheek.
Shortest of them was maybe 6’2”, so I assume they were Balkans. They shook hands and kissed each other on the cheek.
Someone tweeted or blogged about how this sort of thing was common among heterosexual men in more traditional societies where public displays of homosexuality are suppressed - don’t remember if it was BAP or not. Pretty sure none of these guys was gay.
BAP says no one reads Camões anymore...
... Prove him wrong: Landeg White, something of an adventurer himself, wrote an excellent English translation of The Lusíads.
Thread on it here.
Thread on it here.
BAP says Vasco da Gama’s accomplishment dwarfed Columbus’s. This is true.
The open-ocean arc BAP mentions da Gama made to round Africa itself took 93 days out of sight of land. Columbus’s crossing only took 37.
BAP mentions Francisco de Almeida avenging his son in battle. Nice letter he wrote ahead of that.
A point @bronzeagemantis makes is that the stories of da Gama, Almeida, Afonso de Albuquerque, etc. are so extraordinary but get little attention today. I searched YouTube after reading about them a couple of years ago, expecting some Hollywood movies or series based on them...
Instead, I found a hokey Malaysian movie from a few years back, made from the Indians' perspective. Some revenge fantasy about martial artists trying to kill Da Gama, who's played by some crazy-eyed American expat.
BAP also notes that the conquest of Mexico owed little to guns. That's clear from Bernal Díaz's classic account. Thread on that here.
Cortés reminds me a bit of Trump.
Cortés reminds me a bit of Trump.
Re the failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea that BAP mentions: it's described in @SteveCollNY's book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power. I read that several years back, but don't think I did a Twitter thread on it.
amazon.com/Private-Empire…
amazon.com/Private-Empire…
Correction re the Vasco Da Gama movie mentioned above: it’s a Malayalam-language Indian movie, not a Malaysian movie (h/t @JOttoPohl1).
BAP mentions former SS troops serving in the French Foreign Legion. There was a book written about this, called Devil’s Guard. I never read it, but years ago, an Army ROTC friend told me about it. Looks like it’s not available on Amazon.
amazon.com/DEVILS-FASCINA…
amazon.com/DEVILS-FASCINA…
BAP on feminism: “the revolt of women against the outrage of democracy.”
Having finished Bronze Age Mindset, I just reread Michael Anton’s review of it. A few thoughts follow. claremont.org/crb/article/ar…
First, an observation. Michael Anton is no stranger to aesthetics, although more of the men’s fashion than the sun and steel variety.
neh.gov/humanities/200…
neh.gov/humanities/200…
Similarly, the rightist novelist Tom Wolfe carefully described both men’s fashion and physiques, often using fairly obscure anatomical terms. And of course he was a student of manly courage (the test pilots and astronauts in “The Right Stuff”, the tough cops in “Bonfire”, etc.).
