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Samizdata quote of the day I fear that, like the High Septon, they’re missing something. Cersei wasn’t there because there wasn’t going to be a trial. I think the Republicans aren’t going to win back the House and Senate (or the Presidency in 2024) because there aren’t going to be honest elections. The Democrats are pushing hard on numerous fronts to make sure that they can’t lose on the national stage
– Esteban making a parallel between Cersei Lannister and the Democrats
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No really original ideas in Esteban’s post afaik, but worth thinking about if you didn’t think of that before.
One quibble: Cersei is definitely not the most Machiavellian character in Game of Thrones.
In the books, Littlefinger despises her as a twit who is easily manipulated.
In the end, Machiavellianism and Darwinism converge. Cersei did not survive, so she was not much of a Machiavellian.
I’d nominate Tyrion and Arya as most Machiavellian.
Also Sansa, but not yet in the books: only in the later TV seasons.
He does make a good point about the elections. Corruption may well be found, and it mat well be found to be even more widespread than thought, but then comes the part where the government acts to do something about it. In the Red states, Dominion machines may be dumped, but in favor of what? In the blue states they will likely be kept with the promise of a careful recount of the fraudulent results which will reproduce the fraudulent results. Things will be done, most of which will change nothing.
Every now and then, there is a housecleaning. After all, Tammany Hall only lasted for about 150 years. https://www.history.com/topics/us-politics/tammany-hall
The main problem is that the left has seized the culture and media, and has squads of fanatics ready to scream and riot at the least provocation. The right is more likely to be busy doing something useful. So unless people have the time and energy to search out information (and the left has one hell of a lot more free time and energy) the information they get will be obscenely slanted. And anybody who disagrees with Pravda will be canceled.
After the 2020 election, I am pessimistic.
Y’all watch a LOT of TV, don’t you?
Hardly any TV. “Antiques Road Show”, “Pawn Stars”, and “American Pickers”. As an ex-curator, it’s fun to see what’s out there, and how much ‘experts’ think it could bring on the market. Maybe “Forged in Fire” once in a while, as I’ve done some blacksmithing. Otherwise, I can’t stand laugh tracks and five-minute commercial blocks. Don’t read newspapers, either.
But then, I do read Instapundit and -gasp- Samizdata. Maybe that explains it.
I was here the last time we had riots in Minneapolis — 1967. Lots of buildings burnt down, but not nearly as many as 2020. And just who was cheerleading for BLM and ANTIFA? It’s hard to be optimistic — for years, I’ve seen too many Democrat ballots emerge to flip elections during recounts.
Yeah, I should have been more specific. Sorry. I was mostly speaking to the OP, and then to SG’s comment, both of which were pretty much a foreign language to me. All these shows that “everybody” watched . . . not so much.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/04/26/johnny-rotten-is-dead-right-about-wokeness/
Common sense from the ex Sex Pistol.
I always thought that the Sex Pistols were a bit overrated, a triumph of hype over substance. I thought that their rock and roll covers were very good though.
Lydon is spot on here though, and very eloquently put, concise and to the point.
Lydon would have agreed with you even at the peak of their fame. That was in a sense the very point they were making.
Oh. Sorry back at you. I thought you were telling me I got my paranoia from television. Made sense that way. But I got it from my jobs, two of which made “careful, careful” their motto.
I can sort of get that now, being old and wise, at the time it went over my head. As did Pretty Vacant being a vehicle for being able to repeatedly say the C word with plausible deniability. Great fun was had in the early naughties when Radio 2 were having one of the BBC’s regular charity bashes. You had to pledge some money to get a request played. Other people could then pile on and offer more money for your song to be played. You could tell that they really didn’t want to play Pretty Vacant but, in the end they had to.
In the last year, all what i watched on TV were the major tennis tournaments. The TV series that have come up recently don’t inspire me.
There are many reasons to read literature or to watch a TV series*, but the most important are to learn the Machiavellian way of thinking and to acquire a “spirit of liberty”**.
The Sagas of Icelanders are perhaps best at combining these two virtues, but George RR Martin is unsurpassed (to my knowledge) in teaching Machiavellianism, and does a decent job in teaching a spirit of liberty. (Although he does not practice what he teaches.)
That is why GRR Martin is one of the 2 authors from whom i have read the most number of pages.
(The other is also American: Rex Stout.
Agatha Christie is getting there.
In non-fiction, Karl Popper has a clear lead.)
* Criteria for movies are different, because movies are too short for viewers to appreciate Machiavellianism.
** a footnote to chapter xiii of The Road to Serfdom:
bobby b – a lot of people regretted devoting so much time to the television series Game of Thrones, as it started to go wrong in season seven, and it fell apart in season eight. So you were wise to avoid the show (which is constantly repeated on Sky Television – which is irritating).
As for GRR Martin as an author – he made the mistake that Tolkien warned about, writing a great story with no clear idea of the ENDING. If you know where you are going – you are less likely to get lost. But Mr Martin did not have a clear ending in mind – and has been stuck for quite some years now. One reason the television series did not, in the end, work was because Mr Martin had not written an ending and he still has not done so.
As for the Democrats – they have various plans, such as creating new States (DC and or Porto Rico) or just allowing the influx of illegals to continue and getting them to illegally vote.
But they reason that is time is on their side – the Collectivists control all institutions, public and private, the education system and media (including the entertainment media) are saturated with Frankfurt School doctrines.
It is hard to see what can be done.
Time to just grit one’s teeth and HOLD ON.
If a story is written with a clear idea of the endpoint, it’s not Machiavellian anymore.
But i have to admit that Tolkien wrote some gripping stories. Just not Machiavellian, so i did not find them very intellectually stimulating. (Although i seem to remember that Perry wrote something interesting about Tolkien a long time ago.)
Maybe this, Snorri? 2002 is indeed long ago
In George R.R. Martin’s first book, “Dying of the Light”, it is obvious that the Machiavellian plot, the way in which the other characters only stumble across its existence dangerously late, and above all the dramatic final scene, must have been with him from the start. The desire to write that plot, ending in that scene, motivated the book.
More generally, you must have a good grasp of your story end-to-end in order to write competent Machiavellian plots. Pseudo-Machiavellianism, in which the drama assures you the characters have deep subtle reasons for the strange things they do and the obvious things they omit to do, but never explains what they are (to conceal that the author has no idea), pollutes TV, cinema and books by the ton, but for the real thing you must think ahead. As in a detective story, the reader, like the less- or un-machiavellian characters, does not know what is coming, but the author must.
That it is an error – and a very possible one when one is writing a multi-volume story – I agree with Tolkien. It is not always a deadly error, however. Gene Wolfe admitted that he began the “Urth of the New Sun” series intending to write a novella, and it is quite obvious the story could happily (in the literary, not ordinary, sense 🙂 ) end half-way through “The Shadow of the Torturer” (its first volume) after Severian enables Thecla’s suicide and confesses doing so – and arguably should end there: there is a slight air of with-one-bound-he-was-free in how Severian avoids execution and the story is enabled to continue. However the next three volumes manage to make respectable use of the ideas that were intended as mere gorgeous background in the novella. You could argue that Gene’s mistake was not to continue after the novella but to write a fifth volume instead of ending with the fourth.
As Ellen justly remarks, we read (or in some cases watch) a lot of SF.
(And now a more on-topic comment.)
I think Esteban’s article gives a timely warning in a culturally accessible way. Both their hopes and their fears mean that the US hard left see the necessary way on from stealing one election to be stealing all. The good news is that they seriously lack the subtlety of some George R.R. Martin baddies, and must display their intent a good deal more openly than they’d like. The bad news is the warning Edmund Burke gave:
To me if the ending is no good – if the author did not have a clear ending in mind and the television people are not good enough to think up a consistent ending, it spoils the rest of the story.
That is why I find the endless repeating of Game of Thrones on Sky Television irritating – I can not really enjoy even the early episodes, as I know the ending is such a mess.
As for the Democrats – they have forgotten one thing. Economic and social collapse.
It will be a terrible end – but at least it will be the end. And it will be an end that is consistent with the story and the characters.
Thank you, Perry.
Back in 2002 i had no idea what a ‘blog’ might be, but i think i got to that post from a later post of yours.
When i read The Lord of the Rings, i was vaguely aware of the moral dilemma, but i must admit that i did not give it much thought.
I don’t think that it is much off-topic to discuss GoT further.
I thought that the ending was great… and the more people are upset about it, the better it looks to me.
If people are upset about an absolute ruler becoming a mass murderer, then they needed to be upset, and should be upset more often.
A few more words about Machiavellian plots, just to make clear where i come from.
When my literature teacher taught us Machiavelli in high school, he told us that, prior to M., the prevailing theory was that history is the unfolding of a Divine Design.
(From what i know, i think it fair to call this the Augustinian theory of history. Don’t remember if my teacher said so.)
The novelty of Machiavelli, according to my teacher, was to say that **we** make history.
It seems to me that the contrast between the Augustinian and the Machiavellian theories of history, is mirrored in the contrast between writing fiction with a plot, and writing fiction by letting the characters play it out.
(Not that i have any experience in writing fiction, mind you. But i am told that these are the 2 basic methods.)
For now, i’ll let it go at that.