The Long Goodbye: Don Quixote in the twentieth century is a private detective

The arts in general owe a debt of gratitude not sufficiently recognized to William Randolph Hearst, the press tycoon: to serve as an inspiration for the film "Citizen Kane" and the novel "The Long Goodbye", should count for more than a simple anecdotal detail.

In the detective novel ranking, Raymond Chandler may be ranking second after Dashiell Hammet, author of "Red Harvest" and the archetypal "The Maltese Falcon", but for me, he will always be the first. He is the novelist I always wanted to be.

Chandler completed just seven novels, all about the same character, the private detective Philip Marlowe, living and surviving in the always ruthless Los Angeles. Unlike the "blond Satan" known as Sam Spade (Hammet's relentless detective), Marlowe's constant inner monologue, which serves as the basis for the novelist Chandler's narration, makes him much closer and more pleasing to the reader. Obviating this, the difference between Marlowe’s and Spade’s working methods is virtually non-existent.

Critics place "The Long Goodbye" under “Farewell, My Lovely” and "The Big Sleep", but I resent this having read the latter, because "The Long Goodbye" surpasses it by far. Chandler ages and matures, and this is reflected in detective Marlowe, who ages and matures in the same way. His healthy distrust not only of mobsters but also the legendarily corrupt Los Angeles Sheriff's Office (LASO), finally becomes plain misanthropy; Marlowe is more faithful to principles such as "friendship", “love” and especially "truth" than to people.

Philip Marlowe enters into a complicated friendship with an alcoholic veteran named Terry Lennox, with scars both on his face and in his spirit, who has no problem in becoming (for the second time!)  the paid cuckold of a millionaire heiress even more drunk and dissipated than he is. After awhile, the moocher appears at Marlowe's house, asking him to be taken to Tijuana. The detective agrees under the sole condition of not telling him anything at all. Returning alone to Los Angeles, Marlowe is arrested and beaten by the police after he refuses to answer questions.

When he’s finally let go, he discovers that Lennox is blamed for the brutal murder of his wife, who happens to be the daughter of a millionaire newspapers owner, and who appears to have brutally forced the official investigation to an end. Marlowe, who has posthumously received from Lennox a "portrait of Madison," that is, a $ 5,000 bill, feels that it is his duty to investigate non-stop, without granting a single concession, until he proves the veteran's innocence, who’s the real culprit and finds out how sordid is the sordid the real truth.

Los Angeles in the novel is the same city of vice and depravity that appears in so many other novels and films, and the detective is crossing thru the vile fountains where they sin and crime flourish. In one novel the fountain can be the anachronistic world of pornographic libraries and the everlasting illegal gambling dens, or like in this one, colonies of "artists" where alcohol and drugs are the order of the day, not to mention the golden cages for wealthy elderlies, better known as "geriatric nursing homes", and doctor's offices where the doctor is more than willing to relieve you with morphine of your "pain" if the price is right.

It is disheartening that many of the vices that Marlowe’s world fights seem to be legal (or very close to being) now. But Marlowe would not mind, he would go on fighting for the truth and serving justice. Throughout the seven novels written by Chandler, it is clear that Philip Marlowe never stops, despite the requests of the evildoers, his own clients and even the police. 

The social critique of the novel is poignant: a mocking radiography of the publishing industry, Hollywood scriptwriters, the LASO (whose head is focused only on doing well in newspaper photos and riding his beloved horse), the millionaire elite of the metropolis, the wrong way in which it is dgrowing, already on its way to become one of the largest in the world in terms of occupied territory, the press and the pettiness of the petty-bourgeois mobsters.

Also notable is the monologue where Potter, the ruthless and fearful tycoon, expresses to Marlowe his discontent with mid-twentieth-century society, starting with his own free-speech-mongering newspapers (only yearning to sell "sex, gossip and scandal" instead of serving their readers), and not limited to the hoopla represented by cosmetics and beauty articles. Another memorable monologue is that of Lieutenant Bernie Ohls, where he denounces how the deception of political correctness begins to permeate the police force, and grimly predicts that at the turn of ten years that police officers instead of practicing boxing and shooting, will be applying Rorschach and word association tests, so they could make the delinquents stop hating their mothers and finally reform.

Even more memorable, with an unmistakable reminder of self-deprecation is Marlowe's monologue, where he makes it clear that to become a detective one needs to be little less than a distressed Quixote, just to be getting punches, bullets and problems all the time, but that would never stop him from giving to a cop hell.

What about Hearst? In a not-so veiled form for the reader of the era, he is referred to one of the darkest facts in Hollywood history: the death of the film mogul Thomas Ince at the Oneida yacht, owned by Hearst. It is said that he may have accidentally died in place of Charlie Chaplin, whom Hearst tried to kill for seducing Marion Davies, his lover. William Randolph Hearst allegedly used all his strength to cover up the fact, not unlike how Harlan Potter closed the investigation of his daughter's murder, letting the corpse of Terry Lennox bear the blame. Marlowe is responsible for restoring his reputation by giving the culprit and making it public, which is a way of saying goodbye to his friend.

Also the ending is incredible; The last sentence of the novel says: "I never saw any of them again ─ except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them."

Do you want to know how ugly, absurd, insidious, fascistic, farcical, demeaning, meaningless and orwellian Political Correctness looks?

Seek no more.

As seen in the New York Post... :/

Propaganda: it makes you suffer

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.

Theodore Dalrymple 

Indeed, there is a cliff.

An American Manifesto: Liberals! Don't Push Yourselves Off the Cliff!: Conservatives and Republicans, whatever our faults, can point to two decisive domestic policies of the last 30 years that really made a difference. The first was supply-side economics. The second was "broken-window" policing. The first policy ushered in the Reagan Revolution and ignited a twenty year economic boom from 1980 to 2000. The second made New York City livable and cut the murder rates in the Big Apple by over 50 percent.

But liberals seem to have forgotten the lessons of the past. No doubt that is why Republicans are surging to political power everywhere in America except the two left coasts. Here is a lifeline to my liberal friends before they push themselves off the cliff.

Supply-side economics is why Bill Clinton ran as a "new" Democrat to split the difference between the Sixties Left and the Reagan Right. When he betrayed his promise and raised taxes and pushed HillaryCare he got himself a Republican Congress in the 1994 midterms. In 1996 he passed welfare reform in order to win reelection and prove he'd learned his lesson.

"Broken-window" policing was an idea advanced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982. It was implemented in Boston and New York by Bill Bratton, famously while Rudy Guiliani was mayor of New York City in the 1990s. The idea was to pin-point high crime areas and harass young men that committed minor crimes of vandalism, thus sending a message to the street that disorder would not be tolerated. It was a counter-strategy to the "police brutality" politics of the Sixties and 1970s; police had responded by retreating from the streets and career trouble, and letting crime rage unabated.

If liberals were smart and if they truly believed in science they would have read, learned, and inwardly digested the theory and the evidence. But they didn't, and you can see that by reading the Wikipedia links above. They equivocate; they dance and jive. So if you are a genuine NPR/NYT liberal you don't pay no nevermind to the lessons of supply-side economics and broken-window policing.

But there is a penalty for ignoring reality; you get punched upside the head. The Clinton generation of Dem politicians knew that they had to pay their respects to supply-side economics and pretend they supported the cops even if they didn't believe a word of it. They had to pretend because the "stupid" voters believed it. But then a generation of liberals grew up that knew not Reagan. Call it the Vox generation, after young Ezra Klein's website. They went to college and got their economics straight from Keynes and their politics straight from the left, and so they never got taught that Keynes and cop-baiting was poison for Democrats, quite apart from the fact that they were poison for the economy and for society.

So let's rehearse for our lefty friends why they must take their supply-side and broken-windows medicine if they want to resume the aborted drive for a new Democratic majority. Look, I get that leftist politics is all about benefits and justice for the poor. But you don't get to do it unless you have the economy working and the streets safe.

So let's do the elevator story on economics that every liberal should know.

Supply-side economics The basic thing to grasp is that Keynesian economics is like a relief pitcher for government. It's a get-out-of-a-jam dodge. It says, in the middle of a financial crisis: oh gosh, we can't reduce government benefits while people are unemployed; we can't let our favored corporate friends go bankrupt. So we must keep spending and we must print money. Unfortunately that doesn't get the economy back on track. Supply-side economics says: yes, you must bail out the banks to prevent a credit collapse, but then it's back to hard money. Yes, you don't want the unemployed rioting in the streets, but the way to stimulate the economy is by cleaning out crony subsidies and regulations and taxes and lowering the marginal tax rates on work and investing.

Here's the elevator story on broken-windows policing that every liberal should know.

Broken-windows policing The basic problem of every city since the Industrial Revolution is that you get a strategic concentration of young lower-class males with few skills that tend towards the instincts of all young men down the ages: the dawn raid. Starting in the 1830s with the London Metropolitan Police the response of the middle class to the criminal gang activity of young lower-class urban males has been vigorous policing. The job of British "bobbies" and America "cops" has been to get in the faces of the young thugs and say, like Dirty Harry, Go ahead, make my day. When the cops do this the young thugs retreat and the city becomes safe. When they don't, as in New York City in the 1970s, the young thugs rampage around and make life hell for the poor.

Let us turn to Karl Marx and my copy of The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He begins:

Hegel says somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

He means, I assume, that if we don't learn our lesson the first time around, we will be forced to learn it the second time, only this time in the corner wearing a dunce cap.

Supply-side economics was a response to the tragedy of economic "stagflation" in the 1970s. The Keynesians said that they had figured out the business cycle and how to avoid economic reverses. The 1970s proved them wrong, and supply-side economics proved that there was another way, and it worked.

Broken-windows policing was a response to the anti-police politics of the Marcuse Left in the 1960s and the crime wave that followed in the 1970s. It said that, whatever the "root cause" of poverty, there is no alternative to aggressive policing right in the faces of the young lower-class thugs. When implemented in Boston, in New York, in Los Angeles, broken-windows policing worked.

So come on liberals. Stop the madness while you still can. Go with the settled science and stop being deniers about supply-side economics and broken-windows policing.

Source: An American Manifiesto.

#GamerGate and why they want you to quit being angry about it

Let’s face it gamers: Why bother? The music industry is dripping wet with payola grease, so your beloved #1 hits are as spurious as… well, you know, as the videogames review press. They (you know who they are) want you to accept corruption as something completely normal or else; else being labeled as a bigoted misogynist chauvinist pig. So, don’t even try, because you’re risking to be labeled as immature as… well, as adolescent videogamers.

 

Nobody (in the media) wants the truth. Witness cracked.com, always willing to blatantly assert that governments cannot default (!) and downplay Climategate, just in the name of comedy? “Hey, it’s just a comedy website, what is that supposed to do with the truth?” is their unofficial motto.

 

#GamerGate should be no exception, truth doesn’t matter when there are colleagues to protect and an agenda to further, even if it means they have to demean their readership.