Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

some fascinating stories in the op Columba piece, AF. I've reached my LRB free article limit, but thankfully you can still listen to the full audio version of it if you have.

interestingly Hawking Divisions are making a comeback as drone hunters these days.

I'd love to have my own personal hawking division: seize that fule's scalp over yonder, Lightning!

Plankton for morons:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/18/boris-johnson-claims-about-kippers-fishy-brussels-says

boris talking to his base freebasing again.

bottom feeders the lot of 'em

sometimes I think if Shaun Ryder had an RP accent and even without couching his language with much florid verbosity to try make himself sound cleverer than he is, he would still be a more insightful leader of the Conservative party than Boris is ever going to be. This is where I concur with mark s, boris has reached a bad level of wet-brain degeneracy or something, he's just not quite all there.

My friend who I may have mentioned before as witness to BJ stalking a woman she used to know said she was alarmed by how empty/parts missing emotionally he seemed to be, and that was describing the BJ of 10-15 years ago.

Come on people can grow as they get older!

stephen bush and diane abbott are bad now:

Quite sad that #bbctw ends tonight. V good piece on it by @HackneyAbbott here: https://t.co/CnwCG9jqmS

— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) July 18, 2019

(i haven't read the piece)

"never surpassed"

that's like saying not many horses ever got past Quixall Crossett.

(not read the piece either because I prefer making flip comments about things I'm never going to read!)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-s-biographer-i-know-too-well-the-fire-and-fury-lurking-behind-that-smile-03gqmxt5v

"Even as a child his temper was legendary within the Johnson family. He once came to blows with his sister Rachel after a row over the identity of the lead singer of the Clash."

To be fair, Mick Jones did his fair share of singing.

has fists of (big audio) dynamite does this lad.

Imagine being so vile that the only thing you can think of to insult Leo is him being half Indian

Boris Johnson on Varadkar: ‘Why isn’t he called Murphy like all the rest of them’ https://t.co/XLFXGg4y0d via @IrishTimesOpEd

— Irish Times Opinion (@IrishTimesOpEd) July 18, 2019

You're called Johnson you sassanach cunt

Hope the circa 20% of voters who are Asian in his constituency are paying attention.

the state of the lesser NS
https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2019/07/reaction-to-there-is-only-one.html?m=1

Imagine being so vile that the only thing you can think of to insult Leo is him being half Indian

Most pieces of shit aren't half as foul as Boris.

most pieces of shit don't have the schooling, the reasoning or the academic intelligence to construct a cathedral of vileness comparable to those of men like johnson

he is sophistry and selfishness personified

Nothing screams erudition quite like using 'Murphy' as a stand-in for all Irish people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/books/boris-johnson-72-virgins.html

as a 2nd gen irish he's radicalising me, I'm ready to enlist for the RA sleeper squad again!

Yeah I see no reason to credit him with intelligence or reasoning, however you modify those words.

if there ever was anything like that there, it's gone now.. that's plain to see.

Tbf we can't and shouldn't rule out the possibility that he was slyly alluding to Sam Beckett's second novel, thus demonstrating his nonpareil knowledge of the Irish avant-garde.

just started reading dante and the lobster yesterday, weirdly!

there's a nice new little edition of it for like a fiver in foyle's. i couldn't help getting it.

Nice. I'll take its 'epiphany' over most of Joyce's.

Would feel no pity, nor piety, if BoJo were boiled alive tbf

One can daydream.

Don't feel like he is 'vile' or anything of the sort. Most of us have met or encountered this species of entitled brat in a pub or on the lol internet. A very common type. Most of the elite are expected to behave like this.

👀

https://i.imgur.com/DNsXXq9.jpg

Waiting for comrade to expand on that...

xyzzzz in elites are not vile shockah!

fussing over johnson's personality as if it's a rare object of interest and concern is foolish, xyzzzz otm

Basically, everyone is posting as I expect them to do.

Ah sure let's get a full list of what's foolish to do itt

it isn't a rare personality

he has private school cunning (a lower form than it usually thinks it is) and a thorough classical education

these are sufficient qualities to imbue him with tremendous self-importance and the ability to reason himself into an ontology wherein he is the puppetmaster and the proles should basically shut up and listen

he is not erudite in the slightest; he is schooled

I'll be the one to go "let's all shrug at the continued normalisation of the far right in Britain" and then someone else can go "I don't see what difference it makes when the hostile environment is still ongoing" and then we'll argue about it until something else happens.

obviously this analysis comes from a place of horrified self-recognition. i too was very good at latin and self-worship. the differences are that i applied brakes, and always regarded ancient greek with some suspicion. boris however is the golden god

"the differences are that i applied brakes"

🧐

well, some mouthy internet tankies applied them

Work not done yet.

Like clockwork, you can all read more about how vile this guy is.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/08/15/boris-johnson-ham-of-fate/

Idk why pointing out that taking the fash line on Leo - not really being Irish - shouldn’t be seen as cool and normal, esp when I hear this far more here, in a country with a far larger 2nd+ gen Indian population, than I do among Irish people or at home. But why bother arguing with Mr Perfectly Calm Accelerationist? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Is my tankie friend honestly bothered by my word choice, because ngl it was hardly my best effort & I was half asleep at the time. Happy to withdraw the phrasing if he’ll withdraw the tanks.

Not everything is about what you post.

The best reason for not bothering to express our outrage about these pronouncements is that they are straight out of the Trump playbook and designed to keep Johnson dominating the news cycle. But not talking about him to prevent that is futile because he's going to dominate the news cycle anyway, just like he's going to win anyway and become PM anyway. It's distracting us from the more interesting question of how long he's going to be PM for.

OTOH this leads you perilously close to that awful Jonathan Freedland article from a couple of days ago when he argued that Democrats shouldn't call out Trump's racism against Dem congresswomen because it wouldn't be the "politically smart" thing to do.