Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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On The Road

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

Submit Your Photos

Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Balloon Juicers who are on the road, travelling, etc. and wish to share notes, links, pictures, stories, etc. from their escapades. As the US mainland begins the end of the Earth day as we measure it, many of us rise to read about our friends and their transient locales.

So, please, speak up and share some of your adventures, observations, and sights as you explore, no matter where you are. By concentrating travel updates here, it’s easier for all to keep up-to-date on the adventures of our fellow Commentariat. And it makes finding some travel tips or ideas from 6 months ago so much easier to find…

Have at ’em, and have a safe day of travels!

 

Should you have any pictures (tasteful, relevant, etc….) you can email them to [email protected] or just use this nifty link to start an email: Start an Email to send a Picture to Post on Balloon Juice

 

 

Today, from Sloane Ranger

7 June 2017. My Great Uncle’s headstone in Dozinghem Military Cemetary, Belgium.

 

 

Taken 7 June 2017. General view of Dozinghem Military Cemetary. “Long fields of crosses row on row.”

 

Wow. Thank you all, men. Your sacrifice made the 20th century better.

 

Taken 7 June2017. Ypres Town Square.

 

Taken 7 June2017. Menin Gate.

 

More from her Wednesday, and some great stuff on the 4th.

Travel/party safely everybody – and do send pics!

Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Here in the US, we rarely really study the effect that the Great War had on European populations, given the scope of death.

  3. 3.

    Elizabelle

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: If you know of any good links re that, I am all ears. For the UK, took a generation of young men out of families; left a nation of women with less prospects for marriage.

    Always interested in the aftereffects of the great wars and plagues and the societal changes that ensued. Fascinating, your story about why the Siena cathedral construction stopped in its tracks.

    Aftereffects of wars, plagues, natural disasters, seen from years on. Would be a great topic for a thread or two.

    Happy Monday, all.

    Safe jet travels to Raven (who might be readying for an early morning beach trip in a few hours….)

  4. 4.

    JWR

    Hey, Alain! I haven’t any pictures, ! Just wanted to publicly thank you for your response, to my response, to your response to my initial suggestion, (whew!), and for your rapid tweak to the site. (I actually liked the rounded scroll buttons, stylistically, but not for their functionality.) Also, the Page Up, Page Down, and Top and Bottom links are a nice addition as well. Thanks again!

  5. 5.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    It was bad in the U.K., but positively devastating in France, where some towns lost literally all males by the very young and very old.

    When WWII came around, France had a lack of the sorts of NCOs, company and field grade officers that would have formed the combat-ready core of the army.

  7. 7.

    Chris

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Every small town I’ve been to in France has a monument with the names of its citizens who died in the war. Usually on the central plaza. Kind of sobering when you count the names, compare that with the town size, and then realize it was likely even smaller back in the day.

  8. 8.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Chris: Likewise in the UK. I was brought up in a village and the WW1 dead covered 4 sides of the memorial with several last names recurring. An entire generation of Europeans lost.

    And not just Europe. I was in the Caribbean recently and saw similar memorials in Barbados, Antigua and St. Lucia commemorating the dead of the West Indies Regiment. I didn’t take a photo because of the light but the Menin Gate has the names of all British, Commonwealth and Empire soldiers who died but whose bodies were not recovered for burial inscribed on the walls. The names go on and on and cover every part of the globe. It is truely heart breaking.

  10. 10.

    MomSense

    Very moving photo of J.A. Sharp. I remember traveling to Normandy almost 30 years ago when there were still so many who lived there and who visited who had experienced the war. The look in their eyes when they remembered will haunt me forever.

  11. 11.

    debbie

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I’ve read a lot about WW1 the past couple of years (it got practically zero attention in high school history classes). The photographs especially show the devastation. Every rolling hill was a bomb crater. The countryside was more devastated than the apocalyptic settings in The Road.

  13. 13.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I have a book I’ve been reading off and on – “The War that Ended Peace”. It is interesting, but super depressing, as it focuses on the diplomatic and military failures that led to the war, and exposed the utter mediocrity and lousy decision making skills of the elite European leadership.

  14. 14.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: we had an exercise in freshman year history that was a full time evening. We were randomly broken up into groups, isolated in classrooms far from, each other, and given half-hourly reports and hand-delivered messages from other groups. We were simulating the outbreak of WWI. And us, well-educated, smart men couldn’t avoid the confusion, incorrect information, lies and deceit, and pitiful lack of knowledge of the goals and values of the opposing teams. The experience left a lifelong mark in my estimation of Man. It’s not hard to see how it happened, seeing how we’re likely stumbling into another conflagration.

  16. 16.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Alain the site fixer:

    Note that those poorly planned out and often interlocking treaties were bilaterally negotiated as opposed to multilateral agreements.

    Sobering, in light of the idiocy of what the mediocre Meritorious Inheritor inhabiting the White House currently proposes.

  17. 17.

    debbie

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    That’s one of the books I read. Very good. You might want to read The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund. He collected papers and diaries from 10 everyday, diverse participants in the war.

    @Alain the site fixer:

    If you wanted to simulate the lead-up to the war, all you need to do is stage a bunch of temper tantrums by a bunch of overentitled jerks who should have known better and should have been able to make better choices.

  18. 18.

    meander

    For those who like audio history, two recommendations about WWI:

    Podcaster Dan Carlin has a lengthy (20 hours?) series called “Blueprint for Armageddon” in which he offers a detailed look at the war. He’s an engaging and passionate narrator who is dedicated to recounting some of the insanity and brutality of the war.
    dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

    On a calmer note, to commemorate the centennial, BBC Ulster has been running a series of short (5 min.) pieces about the effect of the Great War on towns in Ireland and the UK, like the post office in Comber, County Down, or a hospital school in Multyfarnham, County Westmeath. Low key and a new perspective on the wider impact of war. bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01p33l4

  19. 19.

    StringOnAStick

    The Spanish Flu pandemic killed even more people than the war did, and reached it’s peak in 1918-19; unlike most influenza it mostly killed those aged 20-40, so this was yet another horrific impact on the population of Europe and the world. I have read this href=”https://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491″bout it and ever since I have been struck by how rarely it is ever mentioned, like the people who lived through it had such horrible memories that they just didn’t talk about it so it faded from memory on purpose.

  22. 22.

    Jay Noble

    We are seeing in Vlad a consequence of the Soviet male losses in WWII. As the war generation got older, the women so out numbered the men, that the men simply did whatever they wanted in regards to women. “Hey, babe get me a sammitch! I can replace you tomorrow you know!” Vlad grew up in that environment and certainly couldn’t have been happy about the 80′ and early 90’s.

  23. 23.

    J R in WV

    I was (am still ) a voracious reader, and at one time I read a lot (tons, really) of history starting with an old encyclopedia I went through volume-by-volume cover to cover. It’s most recent technology sections were telegraphy and steam engines, and The Great War was just past history.

    So after reading the articles on the war and the battles, I would pick up entire books, many of them first-hand stories by participants who were not upper-crust gents who lived a little way back of the front lines, but were in bunkers and troughs of mud. I have to stop being realistic about the trenches, because one day my childish lack of empathy cured itself and the true meaning of what I read struck me.

    I gave up much of history, as I developed empathy and imagination that filled in the gaps in most histories of mankind that touched on the common barbarity of war, revolution, and crusade, such a nice word for religious terrorism carried out by state actors.

    The early crusades were in Europe against people next door who declined to pray as the Lords of creation required, and who were blotted out as if they never existed so that the wealthy Lords and Dukes could take everything they owned, but the food, that was all gone when they surrendered, starving, and were all killed, in the name of Christ.

    The Cathars of southern France for one example. We are unsure of the exact beliefs that led to their extinction. There may be some literature in a sub-basement of the Vatican that describes them as they saw themselves, or not, we will probably never know as the Vatican keeps secrets well, usually. At least secrets that bloody and ancient.

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    @J R in WV: Books are great. I was a voracious reader as a kid too.

    I wonder what kids do these days, in a way, but then I remember Kindles and the like.

    Your mentioning of the Cathars piqued my interest, so I did a quick search. Someone put up cathar.info/ – it seems pretty comprehensive.

    Catholic theologians debated with themselves for centuries whether Cathars were Christian heretics or whether they were not Christians at all. The question is apparently still open. Roman Catholics still refer to Cathar belief as “the Great Heresy” though the official Catholic position is that Catharism is not Christian at all.

    Hmm. Why does that sound familiar? ;-)

    Basic Cathar Tenets led to some surprising logical implications. For example they largely regarded men and women as equals, and had no doctrinal objection to contraception, euthanasia or suicide. In some respects the Cathar and Catholic Churches were polar opposites. For example the Cathar Church taught that all non-procreative sex was better than any procreative sex. The Catholic Church taught – as it still teaches – exactly the opposite. Both positions produced interesting results. Following their tenet, Catholics concluded that masturbation was a far greater sin than rape (as mediaeval penitentials confirm). Following their principles, Cathars could deduce that sexual intercourse between man and wife was more culpable than homosexual sex. (Catholic propaganda on this supposed Cathar proclivity gave us the word bugger, from Bougre, one of the many names for medieval Gnostic Dualists)

    In the Languedoc, known at the time for its high culture, tolerance and liberalism, the Cathar religion took root and gained more and more adherents during the twelfth century. By the early thirteenth century Catharism was probably the majority religion in the area. Many Catholic texts refer to the danger of it replacing Catholisism completely.

    Interesting stuff. Thanks!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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