@FBM,
See what you can make of this FB--
http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
But try to remember that those ancients were just as intelligent as we are and had similar material and psychological pre-occupations albeit in different geographical circumstances than those in northern Europe. And sailors were their internet.
Mr Obama's demographic fits nicely with the Roman demographic of the Isis votaries. As is necessary for a man with an uppity wife and two daughters and the electorate having a majority of screeching female malcontents and enlarged when combined with those they have under the cosh. It is a wonder that Mr Romney did as well as he did.
You might notice that the Isis cult in Rome was repressed and encouraged by turns and intuit that the swings between the parties in our world are an atavistic holdover from the past dressed up in much less prettier symbolisms. More humane though.
The uni-sex hair salon and the tight division between Reds and Blues may well represent the principle of synergy at work. That sort of thing is not something the academic historians, of the type Setanta attempts to imitate, take cognizance of.
What the Romans found was that certain types of crises required an extreme shift. One or the other. No half-way jelly-wobbling ****.
The fact that such a shift has not taken place must signify that there is a general public sense that the crisis we are undergoing at the moment is merely a trick to keep us all on the edge of our seats which is the best place to have us when the ads are being screened. The CBS News reporting last night of the cash tills jingling from sea to shining sea to the tune of $51 billion seems to bear out such a conclusion. Just on "Black Monday". The shoppers shown being sheared were of that ilk which gets its Christmas shopping in early to beat the rush. After a brief holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Saviour, and by **** He certainly was, there follows the stampede of bargain hunters.
I have something else interesting. It is an ad in The Globe and Commercial Advertiser, New York, Tuesday, March 27, 1923 for the services in St. Patrick's over Easter.
Veblen provides it as a footnote to a a couple of paragraphs concerning the cost of the number of "schools for the training of certified publicity-agents in Divinity and for generating a suitable bias of credulity in the incoming generation, as well as to the mighty multitudes of convents, clubs, camps, infirmaries, retreats, missions, charities, cemetries and periodicals, in whole or in part given over to this work and its personnel , at home and abroad, it will be evident that any of the figures commonly assigned, whether for the material equipment, the receipts and disbursements, or for the operative personnel engaged on the propaganda, should freely be doubled, at least.
The man-power employed in this work of the Propaganda is also more considerable that that engaged in any other calling, except Arms, and possibly Husbandry. Prelates and parsons abound all over the place, in the high, the middle, and the low degree; too many and too diversified, in person, station and nomenclature, and vestments, to be rightly enumerated or described,--bishops, deans, canons, abbots and abbesses, rectors, vicars, curates, monks and nuns, elders, deacons and deaconesses, secretaries, clerks and employees of Y.M.C.A. , Epworth Leagues, Christian Endeavors, etc. , beadles, janitors, sextons, sunday-school teachers, missionaries, writers, editors, printers and vendors of sacred literature, in books, periodicals and ephemera. All told--if it were possible--it will be evident that the aggregate of human talent currently consumed in this fabrication of vendible imponderables in the nth dimension, will foot up to a truly massive total, even after making a reasonable allowance, of, say, some thirty-three and one-third per cent, for average mental deficiency in the personnel which devotes itself to this manner of livlihood*.
*That is the point Mr Veblen inserts the footnote relating to St. Patrick's.
When I have more time I will bring it to you. It's enough to get an agnostic chewing his gums. I can't copy and paste due to copyright restrictions.
Of course, it is all in Rabelais and Balzac and de Sade and many others. If Mr Jervais thinks he's onto something new he is kidding himself. He isn't even any good at pressing the point.
