Some deep reading for a Friday afternoon:

Millenarian Mobs
An old and dangerous story.

Today we see scenes of monuments which had stood for decades, now destroyed and defaced, as well as the forceful cancellation of names from circulation. Smashing others’ idols was, and remains, a staple of tribal warfare. The Old Testament recalls the divine command to destroy idols, and the clashes between Christian and Muslim armies always aimed as much at symbols as at people. The Song of Roland contains a lyrical account of Charlemagne’s iconoclasm in his campaign against the Saracens. In the 6th century, Emperor Justinian made Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia cathedral the Christian world’s biggest and most important church. The Muslims who added that city to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 killed its priests, toppled its statues, and made it into the principal mosque of the Muslim caliphate at war with Christendom. In 1923, Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s modernizer, turned the building into a museum in order to end that war. But in July 2020 Turkey’s Islamist president Recep Erdogan, consistent with his hostility to Judeo-Christian civilization, turned it into a mosque again and began covering up what remain of the Christian frescoes on its walls. Destroying symbols, however, has had no place within Christian civilization. As the equivalent of torturing dead men, it has always been the work of cowards likelier to run from living enemies. On the other hand, war against statues, paintings, books, biographies, etc., has been a defining feature of civilization’s revolutionary enemies, consistent with their chosen identities as alien tribes.

Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence as blood-drenched farce, only dangerous because it is taken so, so seriously.

It’s a long read, but very interesting. And cultural memory of these ages of madness is why this image has stuck in my craw for months.

Does this not horripliate your flesh? Do your hackles not rise? Blood. This all ends in blood.

And did the COVID hordes seek to invade the north and make it their own…

Coast Guards on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border have warned people against participating in the 2020 Float Down, an annual event that sees thousands of people travel down the St. Clair River on tubes and rafts.

The event is scheduled to take place this Sunday, Aug. 16 on the river that separates Sarnia, Ont., from Port Huron, Mich.

Ahead of the Float Down, which is more than 30 years old, the Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard Leadership released a joint statement reminding people of the serious legal repercussions that come with crossing the border.

“This remains an un-sanctioned marine event and poses risks to the participants and other users of the waterways during the 7.5 mile /12 km course. In addition to these risks, the Canada/U.S. border also remains closed until at least August 21, 2020, due to COVID-19,” they said.

The RCMP said that any Americans who unintentionally arrive in Canada will be required to wear a mask while being transported back, and will have to complete a COVID-19 health screening.

Brownface Justin doesn’t want no wetbacks in his Tundra Texas. Yee-hah!

(Hey, SugarFree? Why no you put original headline? Well, that’s because that site is one of them there cunte sites that won’t let ole SugarFree cut n’ paste their headline. Because, I can only assume, they are really just a boy-touching factory pretending to be a website.)

Due to The New York Times getting so much attention, The Los Angeles Times had to make a play for dumbshittiest article of the week:

The ice cream truck song has a racist past. So Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA wrote a new one

Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA is putting the “good” in Good Humor, partnering with the sweets vendor to create a new ice cream truck jingle as a free alternative to the well-known and problematic tune “Turkey in the Straw.”

The rapper-producer unveiled the catchy new song Thursday morning in a video acknowledging the racist history of “Turkey in the Straw,” which has long been associated with minstrel shows and racist imagery.

“Remember that ice cream jingle?” RZA says in a promo video introducing his tune. “Of course — we all know it. I’m not gonna play it right now, though, because we come to find out that it has racist roots.

“‘Turkey in the Straw’s’ melody originated from British and Irish folk songs, which had no racial connotations. But the song itself was first performed (and gained popularity) in American minstrel shows in the 1800s. Some songs using its same melody contained highly offensive, racist lyrics,” Good Humor explains on its website.

Pay attention to that last paragraph. “Turkey In The Straw” isn’t racist but certain songs, sung over a hundred years ago, set racist lyrics to the same tune. So the tune itself, in an example of viral transmission of racism, I guess, is now racist.

Just like if someone took, say, a Wu-Tang song, and replaced the lyrics with ones promoting White Supremacy would mean that the original Wu-Tang song would therefore and forevermore be a racist song as well. Logic.

The counterrevolutionary coloring book must be destroyed!

The Dark, Forgotten History of Coloring Books

A medium celebrated for its stress relief in quarantine has a more sinister side.

It’s an incoherent ramble. You hope it’s satire and then you remember Slate is too stupid to write satire.

Mood music