Newsletter #3: Castles, Boats, Bastards, and Apologies
Hello friends. First off, let me apologise for lying to you: despite saying that I would publish a proper piece on Monday, I became too preoccupied with various things of various sorts and failed to do so. I’ll be publishing this newsletter and a new piece today, and another new piece tomorrow, to make up for that failure.
Much of the busyness stems from my ongoing ‘holiday’. This week was particularly full, including trips to the beautiful and mysterious Rosslyn Chapel, the mighty fortress of Edinburgh Castle, the imposing Blackness Castle, the gorgeous Palaces of Linlithgow and Holyroodhouse, and a boat tour of the Firth of Forth bridges with a stopover at Inchcolm Island, home to the ancient ruins of Inchcolm Abbey and a lot of very peevish gulls (it was breeding season and I narrowly avoided more than one divebomb attack). Happily, the weather was stunning that day, full of sun and heat. It’s been a tough week for me on that front, mind you: I’ve had to slather myself in aloe vera and moisturiser after I unwisely braved the sun without any cream. I attach some pictures of this lovely week of trips below.
Incidentally, many of these trips are ones I took with my late Dad when I was younger, so these few weeks have felt like a kind of homage to him. Linlithgow, in particular, where Dad would take me and my friend Jonathan as kids either to the Palace or just the loch, grounds, and parks, where we had great fun and finished it all off with a chippy (and yes, I did get something to eat from that same chippy when I was there this week).
This coming week will be the last stretch of the ‘holiday’, when Shankar and I will be going to St Andrews for a night and then to my hometown of Falkirk for the Wheel, Kelpies, and Callendar Park.
With all of this and more going on, I’ve been a bit out of the loop when it comes to news, but a few recent things have caught my attention. On July 1, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding; the previous week, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, whose own founder, Jimmy Lai, was already locked up, had to shut down after months of harassment by the authorities. Over the past year I’ve watched sadly as China stomped all over Hong Kong’s cherished liberties. One of my heroes, Joshua Wong, was imprisoned again just last year. I corresponded with him on the digital platform Letter shortly before that. The massive protests of 2019 seem to have been the high point of the democratic resistance to Xi Jinping’s tyranny, but the spirit of defiance is still alive. It will take longer than one might have hoped, but the Hong Kongers will win in the end.
More bad news: Ebrahim Raisi, a blood-soaked fanatic and so-called ‘hardliner’, is the new president of Iran. The language of ‘moderates’ and ‘hardliners’ applied to the Iranian political scene has never made sense to me, given that the former are just as ruthless as the latter, and are still upholders of a rotten theocracy with nuclear ambitions, and are hardly any friendlier to the women of that ancient and great but benighted land than the most fundamentalist mullahs.
On a lighter note, Brandeis University in the US released an ‘Oppressive Language List’ of words and phrases that ought to be avoided, including such vile terms as ‘picnic’! (Associated with lynchings, apparently, though as Joyce Carol Oates notes, it’s strange that ‘picnic’ is frowned upon for the association but the actual word ‘lynching’ isn’t included in the list.) I say ‘lighter note’ because it’s ridiculous, but it’s also another worrying victory of Critical Social Justice ideology, which is everywhere making a mockery of the very idea of a university.
I note that Derek Chauvin received a long sentence. Good. And Rudy Giuliani, that puffed up, leaky, senile windbag, has had his licence to practice law suspended by New York state. Also good. Who but a crook would want a crook to represent them, anyway? If only he had rested on his laurels after becoming ‘America’s Mayor’ after 9/11 instead of spearheading an attempt to overturn a legitimate democratic vote, eh? I can never remember if he originated this or if he was quoting somebody else, but Orwell said that had Napoleon fallen at the gates of Moscow, he would be remembered as the greatest conqueror since Alexander the Great. It’s a fun game to play, considering who comes under this Napoleon Principle. Giuliani for sure, but who else?1 There’s something to ponder if you’re bored.
And then there’s the Matt Hancock saga in Britain, but I don’t wish to expend any more breath on my country’s sleazy, stupid, pygmies of politicians. They are so small and boring.
Well, I shall stop there. A final reminder before I go: this coming Tuesday, July 6, I’m co-hosting, with Inaya Folarin Iman, a FREE online drop-in with Jonathan Rauch for Free Speech Champions. Read more details and get your tickets here.
For now, all the best,
DJS
P.S. Happy Fourth of July to citizens of the first and greatest Enlightenment republic.
P.P.S. I’m adding this an hour before scheduled publication just to note for no reason in particular that an almighty thunderstorm, accompanied by about a flood’s worth of rain, has started. As I look out on Arthur’s Seat right now, there is only fog and rain and flashing and noise. I’ve always liked the slight thrill of thunderstorms and it’s a decent view to have while supping a glass of Portuguese red. And they always make me think of the origins of religion. How could our ancestors not have thought this kind of thing was the doing of a great and terrible being(s) up there?
Though Giuliani was probably not all that great even if we only consider his career up to 9/11, given the firefighters and victims’ families who protested against him so much that by 2007 he was forced to stop making public appearances in New York so often.