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The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive

essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay

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Category: history

Posted on February 14, 2021February 17, 2021

The impeachment curse

The final forced impeachment of Donald Trump has ended in the result that should never happen in a show trial. The sacrificial victim of the authorities’ spite was acquitted. Jonathan…

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Posted on January 7, 2021February 17, 2021

America’s fate: civil war, fragmentation or collapse?

Today after the distressing events and death in the Capitol building of Washington DC that interrupted the process of confirming electoral college votes, I am reposting this piece from five…

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Posted on December 15, 2020December 15, 2020

Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857

Today, I am reposting this response to William Dalrymple’s magnificent The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857. I wonder if, over the next 5 to 10 years,…

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Posted on December 13, 2020December 16, 2020

A solution to political decay: the ordinary virtues of governing well

I am reposting this reflection on the response to political decay in the midst of the constitutional crisis under way in America, which reveals dramatically the rot in America’s institutions…

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Posted on December 4, 2020

America’s Hispanic Past and its Hispanic Future Proves it is not Exceptional

“even well-educated, amiable, open-minded people in the United States do not realize that their country has a Hispanic past as well as a Hispanic future.” Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Our America: A…

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Posted on November 29, 2020

The Coming Renaissance of the Second Culture

Terrible events occur in history that devastate the cities that our minds build. The Barbarians sack Rome, and other-named disasters have similarly brought ruin to all past civilisations across time…

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Posted on November 27, 2020

Our barren, deformed political society

And if and when Trump is no longer President, all the ills of political system can no longer be blamed on Trump. For four years now – in America but…

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Posted on November 22, 2020December 17, 2020

The Time of Troubles to come in America

“There always is this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be thesame here; here such things are impossible.’ Alas, all the evilof the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.” Aleksander…

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Posted on November 7, 2020December 13, 2020

Six asides on the USA 2020 election

This long post contains my reflections on the election in America. There are six reflections: One. The folly of forecasts: my confession Two. The Presidency is determined not by broadcast…

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Posted on November 1, 2020

Waiting for the crisis to unveil

Events threaten to overwhelm my mind. The world stands on the brink of a crisis, and I cannot tell whether the world will drown me, or whether a disordered mind…

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Posted on October 26, 2020October 28, 2020

Updated 2020 USA Election Prediction: the fall of America’s Brezhnev

In August this year I predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2020 USA election. The final debate has closed, and the laptop from hell has dropped. Early voting has…

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Posted on October 11, 2020

Obsession and Trump’s derangement of the elites

Byron York’s Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump (2020) provides some insight into one of the most poisonous patterns in today’s cultural decay: the derangement of the…

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  • A revelation from Rumi February 28, 2021
  • Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments February 24, 2021
  • The persistence of the Mahabharata February 21, 2021
  • Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche February 18, 2021
  • 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat February 17, 2021

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Adam Phillips America Australian politics autobiography Bakhtin Blanchot blogging bureaucracy change China civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture culture wars death decay democracy Donald Trump dream election Empire Essays Ezra Pound featured Fernandez-Armesto Foucault Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing Harold Bloom history history of emotions Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible Kierkegaard literature lockdown machiavelli madness Melbourne memory music Nietzsche philosophy poetry political decay politics power progressive politics Prose public service quotes reading Russia Russian history samizdat society Solzhenitsyn Symborska terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel violence W.G. Sebald Wallace Stevens WB Yeats Weber William Dalrymple writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

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