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[Music clip: From Haydn's Derbyshire March No. 2, piano version]
01 — Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! This is your apocalyptically genial host John Derbyshire with some shards of the week's news. I apologize for traffic noise in the background. I am on the road, on my way to Baltimore in fact, and recording from a friend's apartment in New York City. More on that later. There hasn't actually been much eye-stopping news this week, so I am going to exercise pundit's privilege and pass comment on some large general social and political trends — on the slow currents of the deep ocean rather than the storms and navigational hazards of the surface. Identifying and prognosticating about broad historical trends is a bit of a mug's game. Surveying the science fiction of fifty or a hundred years ago — what people of those times thought their future, our present, would be like — shows how very limited our abilities are in this area. If there's not much hope of definitive answers, though, I believe there is some value in asking the questions. So, let's ask them. |
02 — Teeming shores, wretched refuse. Question: How will the mass invasions of European or European-founded nations by the wretched refuse of the Third World's teeming shores work out? These great movements of peoples are, in my opinion, the biggest social and historical phenomenon of our age. Again, they are not precisely news, as they go on relentlessly month after month, year after year, like the weather. There is in fact a school of immigration romantics — Tamar Jacoby is representative — who argue that mass Third World immigration is like the weather: beyond the power of human beings to control. It's bound to happen! Just get used to it! Nothing we can do! Particular news items do emerge, of course. To pluck a couple at random from this week's headlines:
So yes, there are particular news items emerging from these mass migrations; but the migrations themselves have been going on for years, and look set fair to go on for years more. That's what I mean by a historical phenomenon, as opposed to a transient news story. So again with the question: How will these mass invasions play out? Of course I don't know, and neither does anyone else. I can, though, make a list of things that might happen and assign probabilities. Here are five scenarios. There may be others that haven't occurred to me. Scenario One: Absorption. All will be well. The migrants, in whatever numbers choose to come, will enrich and energize our tired, aging societies. They will take on our liberal values and become good Europeans, Americans, and Canadians. Scenario Two: Restriction. Political pressure from their native populations will force receiving nations to stem the flow. Fences will go up, coastal patrols will commence; but those illegals who are in, will be allowed to stay in. Scenario Three: Rejection. There will be a real uprising of native peoples. Illegals will be deported en masse to their countries of origin. Scenario Four: Surrender. The native European and European-descended populations, enervated by soft living and psychologically disarmed by globalist propaganda, will yield up their societies to the invaders. Scenario Five: Fragmentation. Some part or parts of the First World will opt for one of the foregoing scenarios, some other part or parts for a different one. Got that? One: Absorption. Two: Restriction. Three: Rejection. Four: Surrender. Five: Fragmentation. Allow me separate segments to mull over those scenarios and try to assign some probabilities. |
03 — Immigration boosters' innumeracy. OK, my five scenarios once again. One: Absorption. Two: Restriction. Three: Rejection. Four: Surrender. Five: Fragmentation. I'll take them in turn. Absorption, the migrants in any quantity happily melting in to the host populations, is the actual stated position of many powerful groups. Libertarian economists, for example, under their standard-bearer The Economist magazine, take this cheerful position. Let them come! The more the better! We need the workers! They'll pay for our entitlements!. Most Western politicians — Angela Merkel most obviously, Barack Obama, David Cameron, the new Prime Minister of Canada — support this line, to judge from their speeches and actions … or in the case of Cameron, lack of actions. Yes, they're all on board with Scenario One. Let them come! We will absorb them! There are two problems with Scenario One, though; one mathematical, one scientific. First problem: It's innumerate. Second problem: It ignores HBD, human biodiversity. I'll deal with HBD another time; I only have one pair of hands. Let me just have a little fun with numbers here. Think back to that German village of 102 souls having 750 illegals dumped on them. That's a ratio, dumped to dumped-on, of 7.4 to one. Now add up the major First World population numbers: The E.U., the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and Japan. You get a pretty neat one billion there. So, if 7.4 billion people were to move to the First World, we'd be in just the same position, demographically, as that German village! Is that going to happen? Not right now, it's not. The entire non-First World population of the world is only six billion, and most of those would probably prefer to stay home. Still, six billion is six billion. If only one in six of them wanted to move to the First World, and we let them, we just doubled our population. If it turned out to be one in three, we tripled it. Things would actually be a tad worse than that if Japan were to continue its current policy of essentially zero immigration. Europe, America, and Canada would then get Japan's share. And that's on today's numbers. The latest U.N. projections are for a world population of 11.2 billion people at century's end, in spite of, quote, "declines in Europe and East Asia." First World populations could be outnumbered ten to one when our grandkids retire. Seven point four to one — the Sumte ratio — for foreigners settled in the First World isn't so far out of reach. For comparison here: The U.S.A. considers itself immigrant-friendly, yet the highest ever proportion of foreign-born in our population was in 1890 at just under fifteen percent. When those 750 illegals have been settled in Sumte, that little German village will have eighty-eight percent of its inhabitants foreign-born. Fifteen percent, eighty-eight percent. Under Scenario One, the future demography of the First World will be somewhere between those percents, somewhere between 1890 U.S.A. and 2015 Sumte, most likely towards the Sumte end of the scale. That's not wild speculation, it's what our leaders want. It's what The Economist argues for, every damn week — I'm a subscriber, I read their stuff. It's what we're allowing to happen. The globalists believe foreign populations are infinitely absorbable. Didn't we absorb that fifteen percent from 1890? Yes we did. Fifteen percent, in a big empty country that needed lots of unskilled labor. Fifteen percent, nearly all white Europeans, when other races were excluded. Fifteen percent, and absorption much assisted by a 44-year moratorium on further immigration, 1921 to 1965. Thirty percent? Forty percent? Of different races and religions? Pouring in relentlessly, no moratorium in sight? Absorption will not happen. My estimate of the probability for Scenario One coming to pass? Zero. The globalists are dreaming. And their dream is our nightmare — right now, today, it's Sumte's nightmare. |
04 — Restriction or rejection. Let's continue working our way through these scenarios. Scenario Two: restriction. The First World comes to its senses and stanches the flood, reducing it to a trickle and accepting the presence of most of the illegals via some kind of amnesty. Here we are actually in the realm of possibility. It sounds like a moderate solution. It has that split-the-difference quality to it that legislatures in democratic countries like. It's not too politically incorrect: "Hey, we've accepted all these foreigners! We'll make them into good Americans / Europeans / Canadians! And look, we've built a high fence around the country to control the flow!" Definitely possible. I'd accord this a high probability: fifty or sixty percent. However, it's chastening to think how far we currently are from even this "moderate" position. Sure, it has been the stated policy of some American politicians. Those politicians are characterized by the American media as "right-wing," though; and even when elected, they do nothing to follow through on their talk. In Europe they don't even get elected. The standard-bearer for restriction in Britain, the UKIP party, has just one seat in parliament. The U.S.A. still has no complete border fence; the EU has bits of one, thanks to local initiatives by politicians like Hungary's Viktor Orbán — initiatives much criticized as "extreme" by media and political elites. And while Scenario Two might very well happen, it's not a very good result. The First World would end up with big sub-populations of blacks and Muslims, two groups that no European nation anywhere has been able fully to assimilate. If we're politically a long way from Scenario Two, then Scenario Three, rejection, is out of sight below the horizon. In Scenario Three the First World would not only close its borders, it would expel illegal aliens. There are big First World constituencies in support of this. Donald Trump has championed it in the U.S.A., and he's polling well. Even more extreme measures have sizable constituencies. A year ago in Britain the Daily Telegraph reported that, quote: A survey conducted for British Future [some kind of think tank] found 25 per cent of people agreed that the government should "insist that all immigrants should return to the countries they came from, whether they're here legally or illegally." Again: a quarter of Brits want all immigrants, legal and illegal, expelled! How much they want it is open to question, given the poor performance of UKIP in this year's election over there; but at least they're open to the idea. Given the aforementioned difficulties of getting just to the milder Scenario Two, though, Scenario Three seems to me way out of sight. A nuclear-scale terrorist attack or some really serious civil disturbances might change this; but as things stand, I think five percent is a generous estimate of the probability for Scenario Three. So Scenario Two, restriction, I'm rating at probability fifty or sixty percent. Scenario Three, rejection, five percent maximum. Scenario One, fuhgeddaboutit, notwithstanding it's the darling position of all First World elites. |
05 — Surrender or Fragmentation. That leaves us with Scenarios Four and Five: Surrender or Fragmentation. Scenario Four, surrender, is the one envisioned in Camp of the Saints, Jean Raspail's 1973 novel about a Third World invasion of Europe. Their will sapped by ethnomasochism and decades of prosperity, the Europeans lie back and let it happen. I would by no means rule that out. After years of asking the rhetorical question, "What the hell is wrong with white people?" I have become persuaded by those who argue, as Kevin MacDonald did at National Policy Institute's conference in Washington D.C. the other day, that there is some widespread psychopathology among whites — "an empathic disorder," MacDonald calls it; also "pathological altruism" — in which inclinations to benevolence and empathy turn self-destructive. So yes, the white race may be committing slow suicide, from the best possible intentions. It can't be ruled out. Stranger things have happened: read my account of the attempted national suicide of the Xhosa people in the 1850s, published at VDARE.com last July. And think of the way Mexicans and Central Americans have occupied our southwestern states. New Mexico is close to half Latino; California and Texas are forty percent. Most of that's happened quite recently, in a single generation; and anyone who objected was shouted down as bigoted, nativist, un-American. So for Scenario Four, surrender and civilizational suicide, I'd assign a ten percent probability. That's my way of saying I'll be surprised if it happens, but not very surprised … Here's where you get into a shouting match with white nationalists, though. "No," they insist, "whites will only tolerate so much of this marginalization. Then they'll rise up and take back the situation!" What do I think of that? I think it might happen in some places. This is Scenario Five: fragmentation. If it were to happen everywhere, we'd be back in Scenario Three, rejection. Rejection won't likely happen everywhere, though. That's why I assigned it only five percent probability. In both America and Europe there are regions where ethnomasochism is deeply entrenched as a local religion. In Europe, Sweden seems to be the worst case; in America, New England and its cultural offshoot in the Midwest, which latter also has lots of Scandinavians. There are, however, other regions where real resistance could happen. In America, the Southeast and portions of the mountain West might resist being swamped. In Europe the main fault line is the old Iron Curtain. Those parts of the EU that were once satellites of the U.S.S.R. — Poland, the Baltic States, the eastern part of Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria — are the parts least hospitable to the illegal aliens. The last three of those — Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria — are outside the so-called Schengen Area of unrestricted travel across national borders, so they have more national freedom of action. The others, within the Schengen Area, are supposed to knuckle under to Mutti Merkel's plan to send them hundreds of thousands of obstreperous black and Muslim youths, along with a few women and children as human shields. They're not knuckling. Headline from the Washington Post, September 28th: A Small Town in Slovakia Held a Vote on Accepting Refugees; 97 Percent Said No. The headline is really all you need there. Europe really could break apart over this. Could America? And if so, would it be by secession or expulsion? Because some part wanted to go, or because the rest of us wanted them gone? Either, I'd say, is conceivable, at a small but nonzero probability. Idaho could secede; California could be expelled. No, I don't really expect either thing; but either is possible. It's Europe where the real possibility for fragmentation exists. With that in mind, for the First World as a whole, I'd rate the probability of some fragmentation somewhere — Scenario Five — quite high. Note that this includes the case where different scenarios work out in Europe and America. That's the argument Mark Steyn makes in America Alone; that Europe will surrender but the U.S.A. will resist. I don't buy Mark's thesis; but if it happens, I'll count it as fragmentation. Since something must happen, my five scenarios need to have probabilities adding up to 100 percent. So far I have zero, fifty-to-sixty, five, and ten. That leaves a probability of twenty-five to thirty-five percent for Scenario Five, which I think is reasonable. And the winner is: restriction. Fences, coastal patrols, bribes to foreign states to keep their people home or, like Turkey, to maintain refugee camps, and amnesty. That's what I'd put my money on. |
06 — Wide and Unguarded Stand Our Gates. Just a couple of footnotes to the foregoing segments. First footnote. I started off there with a reference to, quote, "the wretched refuse of the Third World's teeming shores." That was of course an allusion to Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus," which you can find in its entirety inscribed on a brass plaque in the museum attached to the Statue of Liberty, even though the Statue of Liberty did not originally have anything to do with immigration. "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore," wrote Ms Lazarus in 1883. Her lines are endlessly quoted by immigration romantics, some of whom seem to think they were endorsed by the Founding Fathers. No reference to "The New Colossus" should be left standing alone without some counter-reference to Thomas Bailey Aldrich's poem "Wide and Unguarded Stand Our Gates," written a dozen years later. It's too long to quote in full, but here's the closing stanza, quote: O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well Second footnote: I am reading a new book by Michelle Malkin and John Miano, full title Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best & Brightest Workers. It's a spirited exposé of the H-1B and other guest-worker rackets. Official publication date is November 10th, but you can pre-order from Amazon, and I urge you to do so. It's an excellent companion volume to Ann Coulter's ¡Adiós, America!, which I've been doing my best to promote. I'll be reviewing Sold Out at VDARE.com next week. |
07 — White Lives Don't Matter. Possibly relevant to my remarks on Scenario Four, that was "surrender," is this much-noted study on rising mortality rates among middle-aged white proles in America. "Middle-aged" here means ages 45 to 54. "Proles" means no college education. The study is by two Princeton economists, husband and wife, the husband a Nobel Prize winner. It's been written up all over, but I'm working from the New York Times November 2nd report. Money quote: The analysis by Dr Deaton and Dr Case may offer the most rigorous evidence to date of both the causes and implications of a development that has been puzzling demographers in recent years: the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated American whites. In middle age, they are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans, Dr Deaton and Dr Case found. End quote. That's a 22 percent rise in just a decade and a half. Death rates for every other group you can identify, including middle-aged blacks and Hispanics, are declining. What's more, the rates for middle-aged prole whites in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden, Australia, and Canada are also declining. This seems to be just an American phenomenon. What the heck is going on here? It's really an astonishing finding. Only in this one group, non-college-educated middle-aged white Americans, do we see this sharp increase in death rates. Why? The researchers, combing through causes of death, deduced that, quote, "taken together, suicides, drugs and alcohol explained the overall increase in deaths," end quote. OK, but then what explains the suicide, drugs, and alcohol? The researchers note big recent increases among the affected group in reported chronic pain — neck pain, face pain, joint pain, sciatica; and corresponding increases in prescription narcotics. But what's causing all that? A commenter at the Times website gets a good piece of the answer, I believe. quote: I'm suspicious of this pain-drug argument. Such widespread reports of pain are a symptom of something else — of despair. Everything in life that was once important to these middle-age whites has been lost to them — their jobs, family, community, social status, self-esteem. Even their values have become obsolete. In a real sense, they have been discarded by society. They have lost their very identities as human beings. That's what's killing them, not the drugs. End quote. I agree. These are the casualties of the Cold Civil War. Middle-aged white proles are mostly badwhites, with an outlook, opinions, and habits scorned and despised by the goodwhite elites who own the commanding heights of our culture — and whose death rates, the Times tells us, are declining along with all other death rates, except for this one group. Nobody stands up for middle-aged white proles. The Democratic Party, which used to, is now owned by Goldman Sachs, the anti-white race lobbies, and the man-hating, marriage-hating feminists. The Republican Party is a front for billionaire donors and the Chambers of Commerce. These middle-aged badwhites have no representation and no prospects. Attitudes towards them from the rest of society range from indifference to hot hatred. They have no social refuges: the factory bowling leagues and Elks Clubs are long gone — Robert Putnam has documented all that. Nobody's going to pay them a decent working wage, not when there's cheap foreign labor in abundance via liberal immigration policies. Even assuming all that, though, why is it just American white proles who are dying? Here's another New York Times headline, this one from October 31st. Headline: Lights Out in Britain for the Coal Industry. Substance of the story: In December, Kellingley colliery in Yorkshire, Britain's last deep coal mine, is scheduled to close for good. That got my eye because I come from a family of coal miners. When I was a kid it seemed like every other working male in England was a coal miner. It was in fact around three percent and already declining; but in the little pit villages where my relatives lived, "every other" was about right. The marginalization of middle-aged white proles is universal in the First World. So why is it only in America the researchers found this trend? Well, for historical, cultural, and racial reasons, the Cold Civil War is fought here with more pitiless ferocity than elsewhere. Scorn for and loathing of badwhites, especially badwhite males, is much stronger here than in other countries. Then there are differences in availability of drugs and guns, which have to affect the suicide and accidental-death rates. And then, I wish I could find the breakdown here by sex. I suspect, as does a high proportion of commenters on this story, that this phenomenon is mainly driven by males. With that in mind, going back to the despair issue, there's divorce, which it seems to me is more painful and destructive here for men than is the case elsewhere. If I remember my scripture correctly: To him that hath, more shall be given: but from him that hath not, the divorce lawyers will take away even the little that he hath. If I'm right about males driving this, then there is something deep and cultural here. You know how different nations have stereotypes of each other? Germans are methodical, Italians excitable, Scandinavians dour, the Chinese love gambling, and so on? Well, one stereotype of Americans that I grew up with in England — it goes all the way back to colonial times — was that American men are terrified of their women. Having now, in my circle of acquaintance, several middle-aged men who have been through divorces, my general respect for stereotypes has only grown. What's to be done? Well, we could round up all the badwhites and put them on a reservation somewhere. Their collective situation, after all, is very much like that of an Indian tribe, once bold with warrior spirit and purposeful in defence of its hunting grounds and customs, then subdued by conquest and given easy liquor and opiates to dull their pain. Please don't think I'm being callous or flippant. These are my people. My parents, my uncles and aunts, my grandparents, were white proles, industrial or low-class clerical workers. Here's another quote from that Times story about the end of deep coal mining in England. They are interviewing a 50-year-old miner, a guy right in the middle of the age range we're talking about. Quote: "I will be putting the lights out," he said, adding that, after a quarter-century in the industry, he would particularly miss not just his paycheck but the unique camaraderie among colleagues who work together underground. Let's face it: Middle-aged badwhites are surplus to requirements. The economy doesn't need them, the women and the men don't need each other, and all the signals they get from their social superiors, from TV and the movies, from the churches and universities, from law and politics, all the signals are of loathing and contempt. "Hey, you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, pal — white privilege! — and you blew it. Loser!" They shoot horses, don't they? |
08 — Melancholy long withdrawing roar. If you're not yet sufficiently depressed, here's another headline, this one from Reuters, November 3rd. Headline: Americans Becoming Less Religious, Especially Young Adults: Poll. Sample quotes: The share of U.S. adults who say they believe in God, while still high compared with other advanced industrial countries, slipped to 89 percent in 2014 from 92 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study … End quotes. None of this will be news to readers of my world-shattering bestseller We Are Doomed, which predicted it all in the religion chapter, Chapter Eight. Now as then, I don't view religious decline with any satisfaction, in spite of being irreligious myself. A healthy society ought to be able to tolerate a few freethinking freaks and sports like me; but widespread shared religious belief is an excellent social binding force, and without it things fall apart. And also, as has been said (although I don't think we've pinned down who said it): When people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. Most people have a religious module wired in to their brains. As with musicality or athleticism, the inclination is stronger in some than in others, but it comes as a standard feature. If traditional religion won't occupy it, something else will. My own religious module being feeble and underdeveloped, I'm very much aware of religiosity in others; just as, if your music module is dry and shrunken, it's all the more astounding to watch Lang Lang play the piano. Well, I see that religious module at work in ideologues. Political Correctness is just the Puritanism of our time. The passion for diversity is the universal love preached by all religious teachers. These are not of course original observations; but I do believe we irreligious types are more acutely aware of them than others. Placing one's hopes for perfection and harmony in another world is, I am sure, much more socially healthful than seeking to perfect this world. This world can be improved, but it can't be perfected. Unhooked from the Supernatural, the religious impulse does nothing but harm. So this decline in traditional religious belief is, according to me, bad news. Unfortunately it's inevitable, as I explained in We Are Doomed. And so … we are doomed. |
09 — Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items. Imprimis: Republican presidential candidates update: Not much going on. Quinnipiac released a poll on Wednesday showing Trump and Carson in a statistical tie among Republicans, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, ten points behind them, and Jeb Bush in low single digits, getting lower. Trumps's appeal remains as the anti-system candidate. A lot of people really hate the system. An acquaintance explained his support of Trump thus, quote: The best thing that could happen to the U.S.A. right now would be a massive thermonuclear explosion over Washington D.C. while Congress and the Supreme Court are in session. Failing that, Donald Trump is second best. I think this sentiment is widely shared. Carson is obviously a very nice man, and I assume he scoops the evangelical-Christian vote. His other big advantage is that he fulfills the deep, ancient yearning among American whites for a gentlemanly black guy. The keynote here was struck by movie actor John Wayne, speaking of black lounge singer Nat King Cole, quote from the Duke: "If only more of them were like that." Rubio, who favors open borders, and Cruz, who is stern on illegal aliens but wants a flood of legal guest workers to displace American workers, are vying for the billionaire vote. Jeb Bush is retreating towards his supply lines, which are thinning out as donors desert him for Rubio and Cruz. And it's one year now to the General. Item: One more note on those candidates. Donald Trump is to be the host of Saturday Night Live this weekend. This isn't very surprising — not as surprising to me as the fact that Saturday Night Live is still on the air thirty years after it stopped being funny. Obviously NBC is looking for a ratings bump. Latinos, who hate Trump because he wants to enforce federal laws, are protesting about the hosting gig. One Latino group, calling itstelf "Deport Racism," which is an anagram of "I scared Tromp," — coincidence? I think not — this group has offered a bounty of $5,000 to anyone on the show's set or in the studio audience who will disrupt the live TV broadcast by shouting out the words "deport racism" or "Trump is a racist." The best comeback to this was a comment on the website of The Hill magazine, quote: Trump should open the show with: "Everybody on a count of three call me a racist! One, two, three … Now this group owes each of you $5,000. Here is the address and phone number where you can send them the bill, and I'll provide legal services to help you collect." End quote. The Latinos didn't really think this through, did they? But there; it's a low-mean-IQ population, so perhaps we shouldn't expect too much. Item: This one's from the London Daily Telegraph, November 1st, headline: Meet the World's First Android Actress. This robot actress, name of Geminoid F, made an appearance on the red carpet at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival; although in a wheelchair, as they haven't yet figured out how to make her walk. The movie she's in is a Japanese sci-fi drama, Sayônara, about two friends in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster. That's according to the Telegraph story. The movie database IMDb, on the other hand, describes the plot thus, quote: "A US air force major in Kobe confronts his own opposition to marriages between American servicemen and Japanese women when he falls for a beautiful performer." So, depending which reference source you believe, the movie is a remake of either The Day After or From Here to Eternity, you'll have to go see it to find out. Let me know. It seems to me that Geminoid F is strictly speaking not an android but a gynoid. Unless, of course, she / he / it's a transoid … or whatever the Greek root is there, don't ask me … Item: Speaking of trans, here's a thing to take note of, just in case you doubted that our culture has gone sheer gibbering squealing batpoop crazy. Imagine you have a teenage daughter. Perhaps you have; so just think about her. She's at school. She just finished a gymnastics event. She's in the girls' locker room, taking a shower. Through the steam, she is suddenly aware of another person in the shower with her. It's a large, muscular, hairy, naked 17-year-old guy with a full set of tackle. She screams. The guy reacts gruffly. "What's the problem?" "What are you doing here?" she gasps, trying to cover her essentials. "This is the girls' locker room." "Right," he growls. "And I identify as a girl. You got a problem with that?" If your daughter does have a problem with it, she is shamefully transphobic. If the school has a problem with it, the federal government will come down on them like a ton of bricks; or like a 17-year-old guy — who identifies as female, you understand — on the girls' track team. This was learned on Monday this week by Township High School District 211 in Palatine, Illinois. This school was aware of the problem, but tried to finesse it by putting up privacy curtains in the girls' showers. That was OK, said the feds; but you can't make any student use the privacy curtains. If Louie wants to shower with Louise, you have to let him. You still don't see the blessings of a thermonuclear bomb over Washington, D.C.? Item: I watched the World Series, as I always do, and here's my question: What's with the beards? When did twenty- and thirty-something guys all start sporting the face fungus? These things come and go, of course. If memory serves, there was a gent in 19th-century Massachusetts who was refused entry to his church one Sunday because he was clean-shaven. Perhaps we're headed back to the full Karl Marx / Charles Darwin look, who knows? Well, it'll be one less thing to change when the country makes the switch to Sharia law. [Clip: Maria-sharia.] Item: Finally, some news from Turkmenistan. Could we have some of the national anthem, please … [Clip: Turkmen national anthem.] Yes, Radio Derb's dear old friend and business associate President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of the noble republic of Turkmenistan graciously received our Secretary of State, John Kerry, on Tuesday this week. I am sorry to report that our Secretary of State did not respond with equal grace. Instead he made a show of chiding President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov for so-called "human rights abuses," as if the whole world does not know that these are vile slanders put about by exile wreckers and saboteurs. Turkmenistan state media, including our own affiliate, reported in a fair and balanced way on Kerry's visit, according him all the respect due to a gullible lackey of the exile cliques. And may I take this opportunity to deny once again that our parent organization, Derb International, has been shown any favoritism whatsoever in the allocation of oil and natural gas drilling rights in Turkmenistan. Again these are lies, put about by enemies of the great, the beloved President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. [Clip: more Turkmen national anthem.] |
10 — Signoff. That's it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening. Now I am off to the historic city of Baltimore to attend the annual meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club. Saturday evening, after we're through with the lectures and presentations, I aim to go off alone and roam the streets of this famous city, looking at all the fine buildings in their night-time splendor. I understand it's quite expensive down there, so I'll be carrying plenty of cash with me. I did want to find some Baltimore-themed music to see us out, but nothing came to mind. The best I can do is this very moving rendition of the Maryland State Song by Tennessee Ernie Ford. It's a lovely song with fine stirring lyrics: The despot's heel is on thy shore, Lovely. I have no idea who the despot was, but I hope the fine people of Maryland taught him a sharp lesson. More from Radio Derb next week! |
[Music clip: Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Maryland, My Maryland."]