I didn't go to Harvard and know the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Up to this point, Ryan had epitomized to Bannon everything that was wrong with the Republican Party. Discussing the two parties’ shortcomings, Bannon later told me, “What’s that Dostoyevsky line: Happy families are all the same, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique ways?” (He meant Tolstoy.) “I think the Democrats are fundamentally afflicted with the inability to discuss and have an adult conversation about economics and jobs, because they’re too consumed by identity politics. And then the Republicans, it’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world.”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/26/magazine/trump-vs-congress-now-what.html?smid=pl-share&referer=https://t.co/lv5uiK3sZ0

[MBS]

1. Oh, yeah, another deep intellectual insight -

-not to mention the spot-on accuracy!- by that great idea-man,
Paul Ryan. (NOT ).
He is maybe the most overrated of all of the Republicans in Congrees.

I'm joking about the intellect, but not about his being bizarrely overrated.

[tblue37]

10. That was Bannon's mistaken attribution, not Ryan's. nt

[MBS]

13. OK, thanks. I'm not a fan of his, either. n/t

[50 Shades Of Blue]

2. Surprising! All things considered.

He didn't get the quote quite right either!

[johnp3907]

3. Reminds me of something a former co-worker once said.

In describing the mess caused by a clogged drain at a restaurant where she once worked she said: "It was like something out of that Hitchcock film The Blob!"

[Lotusflower70]

4. Ugh

He not only messed up the author but messed up the quote as well. And the comment about Democrats not being able to have an adult conversation about economics and jobs is laughable.

[Tanuki]

5. Maybe he's just trying to convince us he's not well acquainted

with Russians.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. I once read a book by his grandson I believe about Stalin's excesses .

It was awesome.


FDR offered him mine sweeps during WW ll and Stalin said they use humans.

[NastyRiffraff]

7. He got THAT wrong?!

It's the first sentence in a very well known Tolstoy book: Anna Karenina. That's a Freshman mistake, although most Freshman know that.

[AngryAmish]

25. Sorry, it is from Dead Souls.

Look it up.

[NastyRiffraff]

34. I suggest you look it up

But I'll help you:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/30-great-opening-lines-in-literature/anna-karenina/

[Orrex]

38. And then the murders began.

[panader0]

35. Dead Souls is by Gogol

[cwydro]

37. Um, no.

Dear me.

[sharedvalues]

8. The GOP IS the Cato/Koch Institute today - please take them on Bannon

Yeah Bannon, go after Cato (founded as Koch) Institute and Heritage and the freedom-for-corporations Caucus. You will blow up the GOP and the Democrats will rise from the ashes and remake the country in their image.

[tblue37]

9. First line of "Anna Karenina." nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Hah! Projection. RepubliCONs exploit identity politics ruthlessly & can't even manage health care.

Bannon's Breitbart is all about Identity Politics.

[grantcart]

17. excellent point. Tribal Politics

[klook]

12. I think we should flood the White House with copies of this Dostoyevsky novel:

[tavernier]

22. ...

[canuckledragger]

14. Ryan is lying and projecting his own party's shortcomings on liberals again.

"“I think the Democrats are fundamentally afflicted with the inability to discuss and have an adult conversation about economics and jobs, because they’re too consumed by identity politics. "

Really Ryan?

That sounds EXACTLY like the vast majority of republicans out there.

And what do YOU know about economics anyway, Lyin' Ryan?

[mr_lebowski]

20. That was Bannon ... kinda confusing wording but I believe that's what it's saying ...

That quote is from the great intellectual, Steve Bannon.

[canuckledragger]

21. Ryan or Bannon, it doesn't matter

It is STILL republican projection of their own behaviour on others.

[rurallib]

15. I was raised Catholic and people like Ryan were what the nuns warned us about

love of money, won't help the poor or sick or disabled or hungry.
Any nun could draw up a list of his sins against humanity in a second.

Probably doesn't belong here, but I am in a nasty mood and hate Ryan.

[grantcart]

16. Willing to bet that Bannon has never finished a Dostoyevsky novel

I was astonished to read that he is currently reading "The Best and the Brightest" now. I first read it in the 70s and have reread it 3 times since then. Pretty basic book for anybody interested in the modern Presidency.

Dostoevsky is so moralistic that it would burn Bannon's hands if he touched it, would love to have Bannon sit before the Grand Inquisitor.

One of Dostoevsky's central themes was the need for honesty, especially self honesty:

He saw Trump before Trump was Trump

The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it.

[KittyWampus]

18. I have read Anna Karenina 3 times. Bannon is a failed intellectual and ugly drunk

who beats women and disposed of a dead body in his hot tub with bleach.

And I love Nabokov more than Tolstoi or Dusty.

[Honeycombe8]

19. Thx. This increased my knowledge.

I had to look up Dostoyevsky, and look up an official definition of identity politics.

Interesting.

[ProfessorGAC]

23. He's Knocking Cato and The Austrians?

Wow, what a buffoon! He's spent his entire political life espousing those very concepts. He doesn't even know who Cato or the Austrians are/were.

[Orrex]

24. Honestly, this kind of criticism seems pointlessly smug and petty

Hell, I studied literature in college, and if you'd asked me, I would have guessed it was Chekhov, but he's the gun-on-the-table guy.

Bannon is a vile pig and should be attacked at every opportunity for the damage and toxicity he's inflicting upon the US at home and abroad, but scolding him for a citation error is pointless. Worse, it paints us as ivory tower elitists, exactly as Bannon wants us to be perceived.

I've seen many smart people stupidly cite the "we use only 10% of our brains" myth as gospel truth, and I've seen many more recite "Einstein's" quote about insanity and repetition, even though he didn't say it.


Painting Bannon as an uneducated lummox will serve only to endear him further to Trump supporters and white supremacists.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

27. If

I worked my way through state college and then grad school as a bouncer, fitness instructor, and lifeguard. My pops had a freaking ninth grade education and died from a heart attack at the ripe old age of fifty eight putting up road signs in the hot Florida sun. Ironically my dad's job was a lot like Bannon's dad's job. He was a lineman. However Bannon's dad seemingly made a lot more money and lived a lot longer. My mom was a bookkeeper. In the working class milieu where I was raised none of my friend's dads wore ties to work.

If calling out such an elementary misattribution of a popular quote makes me an elitist that is an designation I will wear like a crown.

[Orrex]

28. That's up to you, but I see little value in it.

It buys into the pop-culture caricature in which knowledge of trivia is equated with intelligence.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

29. Not to belabor the point but it's more than trivia.

It's a fairly popular quote.

[Orrex]

30. Well, which is more important?

Is it more important to understand the meaning of the quote or to be able to name the person who said it?

The "definition of insanity" quote is hugely popular, but no one loses their shit when someone invariably misattributes it to Einstein. Why should we freak out about Bannon getting this one wrong?

Also, of the people chuckling at Bannon's illiteracy, how many have actually read the source work? But I'm very confident that most people who can identify Tolstoy as the author have read little of his work and likely gleaned this factoid from some internet list or an offhand reference in some other article.


Yes, I'm sure that everyone on DU keeps an original leather-bound edition of Anna Karenina resting on a velvet cushion in a climate-controlled display case, and they read it all the time with white cotton gloves and can quote whole passages from memory.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

31. I never read either but know the genesis of the quote.

It's an awesome quote and lends itself to great paraphrasing such as all happy locker rooms are the same, each unhappy locker room is unhappy in its own way.

I did read a book about Stalin's excesses by Nikolai Tolstoy, a member of the Tolstoy family. It was awesome. The title was Stalin's Secret War. Lots of tidbits like:

-FDR offered Stalin mine sweeps in WW ll. He said we use humans
-After Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia during WW ll, Stalin went on a three day drunk before he pulled it together
- After the invasion Stalin reopened the Russian Orthodox church, rejected communist internationalism, and embraced Russian nationalism.

I did read A World Split Apart by Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn.

[Orrex]

33. You've hit nicely on the main point

Last edited Mon Apr 17, 2017, 11:33 AM - Edit history (1)

You've understood the essence of the quote and can apply it to other, real-world situations. In those moments, the meaning is essential, but the author really isn't that important. Even if the author were forever lost to history, the quote would still have value.

I've read little Tolstoy, and honestly I must admit that I don't have a great appreciation of his work.

[nolabels]

32. Heart and circulatory diseases are a product of genetics and environment

Mostly the buying your way out of it seems limited when both are pushing that way. You might extend your way a little further with wealth but eventually, everybody gets their day in the sun. My pops (67yr) had a productive and reasonably enjoyable life, had a third-grade education (dyslexia) and also past away in the heat of the sun (while mowing a customers lawn). It's not so much how you are born or die but more about what you do in the middle.

Try some giggles on for a change:

How did David Rockefeller get 7 heart transplants at the age of 101?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=12&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwid9-a03_bSAhVP-2MKHSZ7DLEQFghNMAs&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quora.com%2FHow-did-David-Rockefeller-get-7-heart-transplants-at-the-age-of-101&usg=AFQjCNGqmFcZy_Pkg7Cud-JGsWERD1DqEg&sig2=9O6HkxFao-Fd0pH9v7fO2w

[Donkees]

26. Great film, ... Anna Karenina Waltz Scene

[Initech]

36. The GOP loves to stereotype us.

And it's ultimately going to backfire on them.