THE TERRACE OF INFINITY
Over a thousand feet on a mountain ledge above Amalfi on the Mediterranean, you’ll find the Terrazzo dell'lnfinito, considered by poets for centuries the most beautiful view in the world. It is part of the magnificent gardens of the 11th century Villa Cimbrone, in the hilltop town of Ravello, built by the Romans in the 5th century.
The Sorrentine Peninsula is a finger of land south of Naples sticking out into the Med’s Tyrrhanean Sea, off the tip of which is the legendary island of Capri. The main town of Sorrento is on the north side facing Naples and Mount Vesuvius. But it is the steep southern shore of the Amalfi Coast that is our planet’s most spectacularly scenic drive with its ancient ports of Amalfi and Positano.
Exploring this magical part of the world is an ultimate “bucket list” experience. And to top it off, on the way down from Naples, you get to visit Pompeii, the excavated Roman city buried and preserved by the ash of Vesuvius in 79 AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #115 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
MCCARTHY CAVES IN A GIANT LOSS FOR THE GOP AND AMERICA
Kevin McCarthy trumpeted a debt-ceiling deal Sunday. His one dealbreaker should have been his promise to defund President Biden’s massive $80 billion to turbocharge an already weaponized IRS.
This was the totemic centerpiece of his pitch to become speaker. It was the most memorable promise of the Republicans’ midterm campaign to win back the House. “Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy vowed. “You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”
Sure enough, the House voted 221-210 to repeal the extra IRS funding. “Promises made,” the newly minted speaker said Jan. 9, banging the gavel on the first bill of the Republican-controlled House.
What about promises kept? Fuhgeddaboudit.
WHY ARE OUR GOVERNMENT, CORPORATIONS, AND POPULAR CULTURE COLLUDING IN MASS SUICIDE?
[In this compendium of current Leftist insanity, VDH asks: “Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide—to the delight of our enemies like Communist China?” But he has no answer. Do you agree that the answer was given 20 years ago in “Beyond Treason”? That all the passions of the Left are frenzies of masochism, that the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy-appeasement?]
The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.
Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.
Anheuser-Busch has destroyed its best-selling Bud Light brand. Disney has rebranded its films, amusement parks, and television with billion-dollar losses in Disney stock, subscribers, and viewers. A woke CNN has all but destroyed its once-global audience. It now has fewer viewers than certain popular podcasts.
All these implosions are not just shocking but surreal. Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide?
THE STONE TURTLE OF GENGHIS KHAN
800 hundred years ago in 1221, Genghis Khan established the capital of the Mongol Empire he created at a place called Karakorum in the grasslands of central Mongolia. It became a city of palaces, temples, and mansions of the Mongol nobility, a place of fabulous wealth that left Marco Polo in awe when he visited in in the 1270s.
When Mongol rule over China ended a hundred years later, the Chinese rulers of the Ming Dynasty ordered Karakorum razed to the ground with all evidence of its existence obliterated. All that was left was this solitary stone turtle lying in mute witness to the glories of what was here once and is no more. Known as the Stone Turtle of Genghis Khan, it’s all there is for you to try and imagine the magnificence of the past amidst what is now an empty wilderness. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #149 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BEYOND TREASON
Yanomamo mother and baby
[This Monday’s Archive, “Beyond Treason,” was originally published on July 30, 2003. Written just a few months after TTP’s inception, it is my first statement explaining the pathology of the liberal – in today’s parlance, progressive or woke – mind. Please consider commenting on the Forum as to what extent it remains explanatory now, almost 20 years later. I’m really eager to learn what you think.]
TTP, July 30, 2003
Reading Ann Coulter’s new book, Treason is a lot of fun. But let’s go beyond all the fun and outrage and cut to the chase. Coulter is fabuloso at explaining what aid and comfort three generations of liberals and Democrats have given to any and every anti-American cause and group on the planet, but she is at a total loss to explain why.
Further, America is hardly the only thing liberals are treasonous towards. Calling someone a traitor to their country doesn’t explain why they are a traitor to their race, their culture, their civilization, and their species.
We thus need a deeper understanding of what motivates liberals that goes far beyond simply hurling epithets of treason and traitor at them.
For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.
THE INDIA LESS TRAVELED
This is Mysore Palace, home of the Wadiyar Rajas who ruled Mysore from 1399 to 1950. It is one of the many wonders of Southern India that’s far less known than traveler’s meccas up north like Agra and Rajasthan.
There’s the Nagarhole Tiger Sanctuary, more Asian elephants than anywhere else in the world, over 100 tigers, scores of leopards, their prey in profusion. Christian churches founded by Christ’s disciple St. Thomas in the 1st century AD. Towering Hindu temples covered with tens of thousands of eye-popping multi-colored sculptures. The gorgeous beaches of Goa, the serene peace of the Kerala Backwaters – “one of the most beautiful locations on earth” according to National Geographic, that you explore by luxury houseboat. It goes on and on.
And here also you find the business metropolis of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. We did all of this and more a few years ago, and may again in ’22 or ‘23. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #81 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/26/23
Tired of Being Targeted
We discuss the Durham Report and its existential threat to Republicans should the world take note of their inaction in response to the report. Democrats and federal agents behaved shamelessly and with criminal disregard for the Constitution.
However, if Republicans continue to act cowardly in the face of such a constitutional crisis, then we have the end of the Republican Party. The world accepts evil, but the cowardly are hunted down like dogs.
DeSantis and Scott declared their intentions this week. The Durham Report points out corruption is so deep and vast within the government that institutions might need to fall. Corrupt federal institutions must go for the sake of the nation and the future of humanity. It's this bad. But where can we find a presidential candidate with the audacity and determination to counterpunch against entrenched corruption?
Ukraine is training crews to operate the American M1A1 tanks now in Germany. These are battle-proven machines, but Russia continues to threaten them with hypersonic missiles. Well, it turns out there is a lot of propaganda behind those missiles.
Boycotts against Budweiser and Target are still gaining momentum. Stock purchases and direct cash transfers from BlackRock to these companies have been unable to stabilize stock prices. It seems that BlackRock's promise to make companies following the LGBTQCIA agenda whole against customer blowback cannot overcome reality. Big Woke is brittle.
A.I. is accelerating, creating an opportunity to build robust systems that detect and avoid deep fakes. Many are working on the problem, such as the gang over at M.I.T. We discuss how to make TTP robust against deep fakes.
Come on over to this week's HFR. Let's talk about corruption.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY MEMORIAL DAY SKYDIVE
My skydiving buddy Chris Wentzel and I made this flag jump on Memorial Day years ago to pay tribute to those in our military who gave their lives for America. I’m on the right, Chris on the left. The jump was performed at the Skydive Perris drop zone in Perris, California. It’s only fitting I post this on TTP in honor of those whom we memorialize in gratitude on this Memorial Day weekend. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #207 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Time for your favorite political TV show - ‘The Debt Ceiling Game Show’
THE ROCK PALACE OF YEMEN
Dar al-Hajar, the Rock Palace, was built by Yemen’s ruler, Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamiddin (1869-1948), atop a rock pinnacle as his summer residence. It lies in a valley about 10 miles outside Yemen’s capital of Sana’a. While an iconic example of Yemeni architecture, it’s impossible to visit now with civil war raging in the country. Someday we’ll be able to safely return to Yemen again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #143 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)