AC Fick 📚

Extract from CAN GOVERNMENT DO ANYTHING RIGHT? by Alasdair Roberts (Polity, 2018). 'the era since World War II has been called "the long peace."² It is distinguished by a lack of war between Western states, the absence of civil and secessionist wars, and a decline in rates of violent crime. The frequency of terrorist attacks also has declined in the United States and Western Europe over the last four decades.³ Professor Steven Pinker has argued that people in the West might be living "in the most peaceable era in our species' existence."⁴ Westerners take this peace for granted, Even when politics becomes fraught, we do not contemplate that it might degenerate into mass violence. Americans complain about polarization, but they do not worry about civil war or rebellion.'

Extract from CAN GOVERNMENT DO ANYTHING RIGHT? by Alasdair Roberts (Polity, 2018). 'Meanwhile, it is important to recognize that the fundamentals of American national security policy are robust. The country has found a way of maintaining a powerful military apparatus without straining domestic politics. Even during President Bush's war on terrorism, the United States dedicated a smaller share of national income to defense than at any point in the Cold War. Polls consistently show that the military is the most trusted public institution in the country, with almost three-quarters of Americans expressing a high level of confidence in it. And in terms of performance, we should not take for granted the fact that national security policy has accomplished its most important goal. For three generations, it has kept the homeland free from attacks by other states.

Extract from CAN GOVERNMENT DO ANYTHING RIGHT? by Alasdair Roberts (Polity, 2018). 'Leaders of states need to be respected. More exactly, they need to be accepted as legitimate rulers of their territory. Over the centuries – and particularly over the last century – leaders of Western states have developed sophisticated ways of cultivating support for their claim to power. Some experts claim that these techniques no longer work. They see a dangerous "crisis of legitimacy" within the Western democracies. This is an exaggeration. Western governments have gone a long way to treat their people well, and people have reciprocated by maintaining solid support for the core elements of Western governance.'

Extract from CAN GOVERNMENT DO ANYTHING RIGHT? by Alasdair Roberts (Polity, 2018). 'The Afghan and Libyan governments suffered legitimacy crises of the external variety, with fatal consequences. But Western states never suffer this sort of crisis. They are members in good standing of the society of states. Rather, their problems relate to the apparent erosion of support for government among the people that are being governed. Internal disaffection appears to have risen to a new and possibly dangerous level.'

Hubris? Parochialism? Bathos.

Beware of prophecy . . .

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1950s table covered with cloths on which there are a portable typewriter, stationery, various books, a tablet, and framed photographs.

The main work desk cluttered with stationery, dictionaries and thesauruses, a printer, an old 1990s laptop, a mobile telephone, notebooks, and tchotchkes (including a mid-century bakelite rotary telephone).

Upright 1980s student desk with shelves, on which a laptop, stationery, a desklamp, and various bibelots can be seen. Next to the desk is a bookcase. All shelves are packed with nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Todd Gitlin through Gloria T. Hull.

A laptop next to Masha Gessen's SURVIVING AUTOCRACY on a table covered with an orange cloth. Behind the table are shelves of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Richard Ford through Frank Herbert.

Saturday afternoon in the #LateImperialLibrary with the new inductee (Masha Gessen on surviving autocracy), unable to decide at which desk to work in sunny, autumnal #NorthJozi.

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A work desk on which dictionaries and thesauruses are propped between and under bibelots in the middle of a room in which the walls are lined with bookcases; the volumes of non-fiction on the shelves are alphabetised by author and editor surname.

A table covered with an orange cloth in front of two perpendicular walls of bookcases on which volumes of fiction are alphabetised by author surname from Ceridwen Dovey and Unity Dow through Bessie Head and Robert A. Heinlein.

View through the balcony windows of the trees beyond the ha-ha at the bottom of the garden and the art deco building downslope; remaining rain clouds can be seen on the northern horizon under a mostly blue sky with some cirrus clouds.

A blue sky with some cirrus clouds.

Saturday morning in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi after days of uncharacteristic "motregen".

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The sheer volume of facile rightwing content created by barely literate shills being pushed at me on Youtube is interesting, given I mostly watch the videos of one team of film reviewers, and 1980s music videos.

Extracts from J. M. Coetzee's DIARY OF A BAD YEAR (2007). There must be people all over today's world who, refusing to accept that there is no justice in the universe, invoke the help of their gods against America, an America that has proclaimed itself beyond the reach of the law of nations. Even if the gods do not respond today or tomorrow, the petitioners tell themselves, they may yet be stirred to action a generation or two down the line. Their plea thus becomes in effect a curse: let the memory of the wrong that has been done to us not fade away, let punishment be visited on the wrongdoer in generations to come. This is very much the deep theme of William Faulkner: the theft of the land from the Indians or the rape of slave women comes back in unforeseen form, generations later, to haunt the oppressor. Looking back, the inheritor of the curse shakes his head ruefully.

There is nothing ineluctable about war. If we want war we can choose war, if we want peace we can equally well choose peace. If we want competition we can choose competition; alternatively we can take the path of comradely collaboration.
▫️J. M. Coetzee, 2007

#BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋

Title card from Volker Schlöndorff's 1990 film adaptation of Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE (1985) showing a conifer covered mountainous landscape through which a road winds, and the text reads: Once upon a time in the recent future a country went wrong. The country was called The Republic of Gilead.

Mary McCarthy was wrong in 1986: "I just can't see the intolerance of the far right, presently directed not only at abortion clinics and homosexuals but also at high school libraries and small-town schoolteachers, as leading to a super-biblical puritanism by which procreation will be insisted on".

Two copies of Javier Marías's "All Souls" in English translation, onnthe left the Panther edition, on the right the Vintage one. Both have a cover photograph--"Ménilmontant", 1946 reproduced courtesy of Willy Ronis/Rapho/Network Photographers. The chiaroscuro image is of a man and a woman in shadow in front of a café or bar with the word "telephone" in black capitals printed on the glass front above a curtain with lace top hanging from a cross bar, above which bottles of alcohol can be seen on a shelf in front of a mirror next to a printed notice; the image appears in the centrenof the Panther cover, and is enlarged to spread across the full Vintage cover such that some details are cut off. Copy from the back cover: At High Table in an Oxford college, the pretty, young tutor Clare Bayes attracted all eyes, not least to her fetching décolletage. No one's eyes were sharper, however, than those of the visiting Spanish lecturer, invited as a guest on this occasion, and in due course the two young people were lovers, unbeknown to Clare's husband. In a city where 'simply being is far more important than doing or even acting' the narrator finds a community immersed in gossip, one-upmanship, lust and loneliness and soon begins to find the spirit of Oxford affecting even him. With crystalline observations and brilliantly funny set pieces "All Souls" perfectly captures the drifting rhythms of academic life.

Choose 20 MORE books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BookChallenge

Day 2B

Virginia Woolf called it "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" (1925); one can only agree, even (if not especially) a century later.

Main work desk in front of a 1980s student desk surrounded by bookcases packed with nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname.

Short bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Peter Carey through J. M. Coetzee.

Swimming pool surrounded by trees seen through a rain-spattered window.

Trees beyond the ha-ha at the bottom of the garden and the lift shafts of the art deco building downslope to the north on a rainy morning.

Rainy Friday morning in #NorthJozi; one is locked down in the #LateImperialLibrary, engaged in a #CerebralRinse.

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Shelves of fiction alphabetised by author surname along three walls and on a double-sided bookcase in the middle of the room.

I must have gone to bed
Around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep
And so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style
It's funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
▫️Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus, 1982

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence.

#BookSky 📚💙

How I feel when someone blocks me.

First wound of pride and how you cried and cried
But save your tears you've got years and years

Fool if you think it's over
'Cos you said goodbye
Fool if you think it's over
I'll tell you why
[…]
You're a fool if you think it's over
It's just begun
▫️Chris Rea, 1978

Film still of Daniel Day-Lewis as Danny in Jim Sheridan's THE BOXER (1997), holding a white mug at the level of his chin, a sly, knowing expression in his narrowed eyes. Translation of the Nietzsche quote: "If a people is suffering and wants to suffer from nationalistic nervous fever and political ambition, it must be expected that all sorts of clouds and disturbances – in short, little attacks of stupidity – will pass over its spirit".

Man muss es in den Kauf nehmen, wenn einem Volke, das am nationalen
Nervenfieber und politischen Ehrgeize leidet, leiden will, mancherlei Wolken und Störungen über den Geist ziehn, kurz, kleine Anfälle von Verdummung.
▫️Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

"G-d help all children as they move into a time of life they do not understand and must struggle through with precepts they have picked from the garbage cans of older people, clinging with the passion of the lost to odds and ends that will mess them up for all time, or hating the trash so much they will waste their future on the hatred. ▫️Lillian Hellman, "Bethe" (1976)

The overthrow of beliefs is not immediately followed by the overthrow of institutions; rather, the new beliefs live for a long time in the now desolate and eerie house of their predecessors, which they themselves preserve, because of the housing shortage.
▫️Nietzsche, 1878

With no context, how are you starting the week?

Two different varieties of granadilla, freshly dropped from the vines.

Rainy morning harvest, early autumn in #NorthJozi.

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The theatrical release poster for Richard Attenborough's OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR! (1969) showing a man dressed as a World War I military official walking among rows of white crosses.

Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR! (1969).

Moderate rain falling on an empty, tree-lined street with leaf litter abd a lamp post.

View of a tree on an empty street seen through a rain spattered pane as a spout of water pours from a rooftop gutter.

Northern horizon obscured by rainfall; view of the three lift shafts and the upper floors of the building downslope rising above the tops of the trees at the bottom of the garden.

The pool surrounded by trees on a rainy Monday morning.

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old
Sometimes I'd like to quit, nothin' ever seems to fit
Hangin' around
nothin' to do but frown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down
▫️Richard Carpenter, 1971

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Extracts from THE UTOPIA OF RULES: ON TECHNOLOGY, STUPIDITY, AND THE SECRET JOYS OF BUREAUCRACY by David Graeber (2015) This process—the gradual fusion of public and private power into a single entity, rife with rules and regulations whose ultimate purpose is to extract wealth in the form of profits—does not yet have a name. That in itself is significant. These things can happen largely because we lack a way to talk about them. But one can see its effects in every aspect of our lives. It fills our days with paperwork. Application forms get longer and more elaborate. Ordinary documents like bills or tickets or memberships in sports or book clubs come to be buttressed by pages of legalistic fine print.

[B]ureaucratic techniques (performance reviews, focus groups, time allocation surveys ...) developed in financial and corporate circles came to invade the rest of society—education, science, government—and eventually, to pervade almost every aspect of everyday life.
▫️David Graeber, 2015
📚💙 #BookSky

Perhaps the analogous precedent for the leaders of the Empire of Fright is not to be found in the strong man of the mid-century Italian boot or in the demagogue at those mass rallies in Nürnberg, but in Pétain both during and after the war, and that increasingly apt concept, "indignité nationale".

A pile of books to be read before the end of April 2026.

View from the northern balcony into the Nonfiction Room of the Late Imperial Library.

View of the pool and garden through a rain spattered window.

View to the north of the trees beyond the ha-ha, and the lift towers of the building downslope on a rainy Sunday in Johannesburg's old north.

Must make a dent in this pile before the world ends.

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A room lined with books, with a table and sofa in the centre, and in the foreground the Calendario Romano open to March, showing an altar boy about to receive communion.

A room lined with books, with a table in the middle, and in the foreground the Calendario Romano open to March, showing an altar boy about to receive communion.

A room lined with books alphabetised by author surname.

A small shelf with books alphabetised by playwright surname from Ama Ata Aidoo, Edward Albee, and Aristophanes through Harold Pinter, Dennis Potter, and William Shakespeare, clocks, boxes, keys, and a framed photograph of a group of writers on a beach at the southern end of Africa.

Earthquakes mean March
[…]
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
▫️Anne Sexton, 1975

A new, apocalyptic month in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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Neville Morley's CLASSICS WHY IT MATTERS; Alasdair Roberts's CAN GOVERNMENT DO ANYTHING RIGHT?; Göran Therborn's THE KILLING FIELDS OF INEQUALITY; and Alexandra Fuller's FI: A MEMOIR OF MY SON.

Four hot cross buns.

Prunes

Four pouches of parsley.

Books and buns, parsley and prunes: one dared to go forth to market just before the afternoon wind-storm began in #NorthJozi.

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Pumpkin, tomatoes, gooseberries, lemon, green pepper, yellow granadillas, purple granadillas, beans, chillis, and tamarillos.

Today's mini-harvest from the volunteer food garden in #NorthJozi.

Laura Jean McKay's THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY, and Karl Ove Knausgaard's THE THIRD REALM.

Friday inductees into the #LateImperialLibrary: time to shut one's imperious personage in for the week's end.

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Four purple granadillas freshly harvested off the vine at the office garden.

A yellow granadilla harvested off the vine at the office.

Granadilla flower.

Granadilla flower.

Today's harvest from the two vines and two new flowers in #NorthJozi.

E-waste chemicals found in the brains of dolphins and porpoises A new study has warned that liquid crystal monomers from electronic devices are accumulating in the organs of endangered marine species.

"How chemicals from our laptops and TVs have ended up in the brains of dolphins and porpoises"
www.euronews.com/2026/02/25/h...

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