Intrepid journalist Hank Talbot continues his exposé of the disturbing political agenda behind the zoo world facebook propaganda blitz.

The result of part two: we can take dan’s review as good evidence that not all south-Denver strip-club-goers bought into the buzz following the paper tiger’s transformation to the topless live show. The name change could be no more than a thin coat of capitalist whitewash over walls that were, and ever will be, resolutely red.

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pulchritudinous pandas

how to sustain your dragon

part 3

Although we didn’t make as much headway as I would have liked, part two was an important post. After delving into elizabethan english, fragmented idioms and cockney street slang, music history, cross-linguistic punnery, and biochemistry, I believe the true merits of dan’s post have been revealed. It was a herculean effort on my part, but such is the case when lesser minds attempt to penetrate the shroud of genius. I think it’s difficult for people like dan, who operate on a completely different level from you and me; they are often misunderstood because they don’t take the time to dumb down their writing. I’m not asking dan to stoop to our level—but I’m glad for the trippen197s of the world. His review was much easier to deal with . . .

[If you didn’t read part two, chances are you don’t understand wtf any of that means. I recommend you go back and read it now.]

[If you did read part two and still don’t understand wtf any of that means . . . well, I don’t know why you’ve come back for more, but I like your attitude!]

The result of part two: we can take dan’s review as good evidence that not all south-Denver strip-club-goers bought into the buzz following the paper tiger’s transformation to the topless live show. The name change could be no more than a thin coat of capitalist whitewash over walls that were, and ever will be, resolutely red.

Ironically, this suggests that the topless live show is covering something up. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure they still unveil the bristols every time the maestro raises his baton, ready to give the preparatory beat for another 3/4 minuet in d minor (the saddest of all keys). But behind the brazen bristol-baring: a backroom bastion for believers in the little red book.

Between 1964 and 1976, the Chinese government published an estimated 5 to 6.5 billion copies of the little red book, formally titled “Quotations from Chairman Mao.” I don’t know why a better estimate isn’t available; a spread of 1.5 billion copies seems a bit non-commital to me. Then again, there aren’t really any authoritative numbers regarding exactly how many millions of its own people the Chinese government killed following the Hundred Flowers Campaign (let alone over the three decades of Mao’s chairmanship). So maybe Mao simply wasn’t very good at counting.

You can browse the little red book online at marxists.org, but I would like to draw your attention to chapter six: Imperialism and All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers.

As you may recall, the zw2: reign czech ad promoted a violent form of absolute imperialism over capitalism and communism (parts 1-5 contain the full analysis, but part six provides a good summary). In chapter six of the little red book Mao strikes back against the resilient wiener lovers. Tossing around some classic communist rhetoric, he rags on imperialist and reactionary alike. Here are a few choice morsels:

All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality, they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are powerful.

Classic. As we may look more closely at the law of the unity of opposites in a future post, I draw your attention to the yin-yang philosophical reference in the following quote:

Just as there is not a single thing in the world without a dual nature (this is the law of the unity of opposites), so imperialism and all reactionaries have a dual nature – they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time . . .

The entirety of the excerpt is too long to quote here, but the gist is that over time, the tigers in charge turn from cool cats—powerful leaders—into fat cats: impotent imperialists, boobish bourgeoisie, and flaccid feudal flandlords. {Yes, I know there is no “f” in “landlords.” But, if I employ the technique of verbing, I can say that I am “effing” by adding an “f” to the word. And I believe we have all heard of such a thing as an “effing landlord.” Or “f—ing landlord,” if you prefer.} Regarding these formerly-cool-but-now-fat cats, Mao exclaims:

. . . Look! Were these not living tigers, iron tigers, real tigers? Nevertheless, in the end they changed into paper tigers, dead tigers, and bean-curd tigers.

As a journalist, I certainly appreciate Mao’s endeavour to incorporate some synonyms for “paper tiger.” Moreover, by using two synonyms with the original word, he creates a list of three. As in the old addage “two is company, three’s a crowd;” if you can list three things, you’ve achieved an all-encompassing completeness, unattainable with only two. Jokes that start with “a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar . . .” feel incomplete. Toss in a third party member, however: “a priest, a rabbi, and a [duck / minister / shaman / whale / atheist / whatever] walk into a bar . . . ” THAT, my friends, is comic gold.

So: while I admire Mao’s effort to follow the rule of three, I think he looks like he’s trying too hard with “bean-curd tiger.” At the very least, history has shown that the term “paper tiger” had more staying power than “bean-curd tiger.” It also makes a better name for a strip club, I think.

One more quote from the chairman’s chapter six sagacity:

“Lifting a rock only to drop it on one’s own feet” is a Chinese folk saying to describe the behavior of certain fools. The reactionaries in all countries are fools of this kind. In the final analysis, their persecution of the revolutionary people only serves to accelerate the people’s revolutions on a broader and more intense scale. Did not the persecution of the revolutionary people by the tsar of Russia and by Chiang Kai-shek perform this function in the great Russian and Chinese revolutions?

Mao’s message is simple: the harder they try to keep us down, the harder we’ll fight to get back up (it’s almost Chumbawamba-like, if you think about it . . .). The irony, of course, is that neither the tsar of Russia nor Chiang Kai-shek could hold a persecutory candle to the chairman when it came to hunting down revolutionaries—er, “rightists.” Nevertheless, this quote shows how Mao valued the reactionaries. They were advancing the revolution simply by opposing it. Perhaps they were paper tigers, but Mao was grateful for every papercut on the great finger of revolution.

They also were, in a sense, enemies and allies at the same time. I’ll once more postpone the yin-yang discussion, but this is another example of the law of the unity of opposites at work. From this viewpoint, it is not difficult to see how a secret enclave of Maoist politics could happily hide behind a name like the paper tiger. The paper tiger is the Maoists enemy, but it is also his friend. Put differently, the Maoist hopes to soon rid the world of reactionaries and return power to the people, but in the meantime, he wouldn’t mind seeing some of them topless.

As George Santayana once said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. If you have already read zw2: reign czech part five and cannot remember what a “thermidor” is . . . well, I’m not the kind of journalist who would condemn his readers to a second reading against their will. So the operating version of the Santayana quote I’ll use for fantastic drivel: those who cannot remember the post are recommended to reread it. For those of you who would rather be damned than go back to the reign czech posts, I include this intercessory photo:

That’s right. Thermidor is the woman being goosed in this selection from a really, really old French calendar. This is important because: (1) the “thermidor” is the official term historians use to describe a period of strong reactionary backlash in an ongoing revolution; and (2) she’s topless.

. . . paper tiger ↔ reactionary ↔ thermidor ↔ topless ↔ paper tiger . . .

So you see, my friends, the paper tiger is the perfect name for a topless live show under maoist management. Whoa.

I’ll end with this painstakingly-beautiful diagram. Click for a larger version (that you might more fully appreciate its painstaking beauty).

More to come.