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Americans Are "Twerking & Jerking", Not Working
Submitted by James H. Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
Bruce Jenner’s journey to transgender sainthood was interrupted Saturday on the road to Malibu, and with it perhaps the Kardashian Klan’s hopes and dreams for achieving supremacy of the known universe. All of America was twerking at the news because that is what we do and who we are now. The nation’s attention these blizzardy days would have otherwise gone straight from the Super-bowl halftime hallucination to the stupendous narcissistic grandiosity of the Grammy Awards. America becomes, day upon day, one gigantic act of “performance art” geared to shocking a bourgeoisie that has dwindled so deeply that, curiously, there may be absolutely nobody left to shock.
Of course the Kardashians are a mere metaphor for what has happened to this country, and Bruce Jenner is a metaphor for what has happened to American men. Maybe that’s why they persist in the spotlight. It is a well-known fact that motorists on a highway always slow down to see just what happened at the grisly scene of the accident. We can’t take our eyes off these freaks and geeks.
The Romans, on their journey to decadence, lacked the voltage and the wiring to amplify the anomie overtaking them. We’re bathed and bombarded with the images of exactly how disgusting we are. People of WalMart, throw off your chains of debt, indeed! Imagine trying to govern a land of such vicious dolts. Well, here’s a news flash: no one is really trying — whether from a lack of conviction or courage or intelligence, or out of sheer contempt, it is hard to say.
It is heartening, finally, to see Europe attempt to creep away from the intrigues of our Klown Konfederacy at least in the current matter of Ukraine, that poor perpetually over-trodden land of potato-eaters lately torn asunder by America’s idiotic wish to wrest it away from Russia’s 1000-year sphere of influence. Merkel and Hollande stole over to Moscow last week to confab with Mr. Putin. They evidently omitted to inform the haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, Secretary of State John Kerry. Who would want that mule-faced ninny at the table? The Europeans are beginning to say some sane and arresting things, such as: Russia and Europe are part of the same civilization — note the implication that perhaps America is not so much in that club anymore. Perhaps it should be left twerking out on one of its fabulous lost highways until it is all twerked out.
Europe, of course, has its own problems and they are very grave, and they are hard to understand because they derive from a financial system grown so abstruse and impenetrable that the ancient black magic arts look like a game of Go Fish in comparison. At this late stage, they can only pretend to figure out where all the entwined obligations really lead, and what might happen if someone starts to yank on a thread somewhere. The question for the moment therefore is: can they continue to succeed in pretending? A sickening sense of look-out-below spreads through the sentient ranks. This week will be a doozy.
One thing is clearing up: Europe does not want or need to start a war with Russia at America’s insistence. What America needs is a war with itself, a war against the lazy narcissism that has left it susceptible to armies of grifters and racketeers, because ordinary people were too busy twerking and jerking to pay any real attention to the systematic dismemberment of their culture. Waiting in the wings is a whole category of human endeavor quaintly known as virtue, lately absent in the collective consciousness. What a shock it would be if Americans began to witness acts of fortitude and valor among us.
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Hymie is shocked at the cultural degradation overtaking the West.
Now I've seen everything.
"What American needs is a war against itself"
Perhaps the US could win that one. Great chance for someone to be the next "American Sniper" and beat the current high score.
most of them eat shit and consumes this earth
Translation: YANKEE GO HOME!
Isn't it time for Lin-Lo to supplant the Kardiasian trailer of trash?
Holy shit! It's Nancy Pelosi's sister!
https://nyppagesix.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/bruceindex.jpg
UGGGGHHHH... DON'T LOOK AT THAT THING!
I had to look it up. I didn't know who Bruce Jenner was, and now that I do, it is something to be made fun of.
American exceptionalism. They hate us for our freedom to twerk and have sex change operations
Not all of us are twerking. Some of us krunk.
And stay there
Your self portrait is so spot-on! LOL
..."a haircut-in-search-of-a-brain".
A brilliant description of the Kerry character !
America is already at war with itself, we just haven't gotten to the shooting part yet.....
Not openly
War Shmoar.
What's Bruce's bra cup size?
Seriously... if you don't laugh at this shit, you'll go insane just like them.
Oh, we are laughing about it...
Mostly I am lauging at all the 'already driving like a woman' jokes, they are just way too funny...
I want to laugh, cry and fight someone all at the same time...
.
Dark humor in everything i guess...If life wasnt so tragic, it would be funny.
Hey Citi, like a commenter said on ZH the other day ... an investigation showed 'woman driving' was not the cause ... it was a bad tranny.
AMEN
Godamnit!
And I've got just the thing to wake up Amerika:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtIRArhVD4
Holy shite, just watched that video.
107,000,000 views, 450,000 likes...
Says it all...
I'm watching it without sound. Makes no sense whatsoever. Does sound help at all?
Definitely more enjoyable with the sound turned off.
OK, Kunstler (who wrote that crappy book, Too Much Magic, where Kunstler states he loves the Federal Reserve!!!), here's some REAL NEWS:
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/02/second-alleged-murder-suicide-by-jpmorgan-worker-in-seven-months
And,
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/9/exclusive_freed_cia_whistleblower_john_kiriakou
Bruce Jenner's car accident: further proof that women can't drive.
I'm sorry, that fucking cig Brucella was smoking looked like a fucking blunt. Was Bruce putting on his mascara...making pouty faces in the rear view mirror when he murdered that poor woman at the light. Rot in hell you worthless piece of human debris....fucking idiots. I nearly filed for divorce yesterday when I saw a copy of US Magazine on our table with that cocksucking freak on the cover.
Air Fucking has a new name.....who knew?
now that's comedy.
Apparently there was some sort of tranny problrem leading to a rear ending.
I can't help but think this Bruce Jenner being a tranny thing is just another Kardashian attention whoring stunt.
This just in a black hummer was involved. He apparently shares the same bent his daughters and ex wife do.
A-thank-you.
Were there any bankers involved in the accident?
How about a EMP event lasting 6 months or so, that the issues can all be resolved.
Actually, a solid 6 second event would last way longer than 6 months.
And we'll get to find out how close all those dystopian disaster movies were. Mad Max anyone?
Mad Maxine would be more politically correct these days. Say it with a lisp.......
Mad Mactheen?
Probably, but in actuality, the level of damage all depends on the nature of the EMP event, man made or cosmic and the strength of the pulse.
Then, there's this...
Interesting phenomenon.
Better twerking and jerking than Bible thumping.
People only twerk and jerk these days because life is too easy and not competitive enough for them. That won't last forever. It only applies to one class of society, too, and maybe it's not bad to have a twerking-and-jerking lower class... happy slaves and all that.
Yeah, but who is being enslaved to lavish the victims of the lower class with an ever growing 'reparations' payment?
More lower class, or soon to be. Fear not... the lower class isn't going to consume the entire world (hopefully). Even if they do, I doubt they're sustainable... they'll degenerate into chaos and someone will come out of it to take power again.
"Even if they do, I"
They?
I am sympathetic nowadays to the thought that we need some cultural movement to encourage people to rediscover and live the best of traditional American values. Embracing cultural rot is not a new and revolutionary transgressive understanding, it is just rot, no matter what the ivory tower or Twitter says. But I suspect it will not be as easy to do that now. Whatever the values you choose, whether it's "Work and support your family instead of twerking and jerking" or maybe just "For god's sake don't cut off your weewee and go on TV bragging about it", you have to have some way to have consequences for people who won't play along. And name and shame and ostracize doesn't work as well when your society is 320 million people under a central government, versus 2000 people in one specific locality. It's too easy for people to just shrug off others and keep on taking subsidies from the people you're shrugging, and hang with just your like-minded group of degenerates. (I welcome your downarrows, it cuts both ways people.)
When and if I ever get to hang up my tools, the only mode of having contact with me will be by a letter in a mailbox. I am going to do all I can to reset my life to 1890. Garden, bunny rabbits, chi kens, hunting and fishing will take all my time. Well, then there's all the maintenance an off grid locale requires.....
Get a big easy to read caller id box and get into the habit of never answering the phone except for important return calls like from a doctor, etc.
I stopped answering my phone years ago and I tell people who want to "friend me" that I don't answer my phone.
That gets rid of all the stupid bullshit I don't care about and don't need to hear.
And when they say I'm anti-social, I tell em they're right and to go fuck themselves as proof.
Already there.
The wife has that AT&T U-verse shit that displays the phone number on the TeeVee screen. Since the only channel I watch is old reruns on MeTV, she does most of the phone screening.
Now, back to Hogan's Heros.....
Is Bruce Jenner getting his Johnston removed root and all? Do tell!
Thats good news cause Mr Yellen be looking for an organ donor !!!
I heard that the doctors that actually do this weird shit they chop it off and scoop the innards out, then fit it up into what was once the pecker root.
I also heard this sex change shit was started in the Nazi death camps by Dr. Mengele.
Now, who is gonna be that special guy that crawls on top of old Brucie and fucks the shit out of him?
How many countries have ex male olympians with french nail manicures ?
It has yet to be realized by the zombie population how truly fucked up this country has become.
Blame ZWO control of the media and education system.
Realize the protocols being used against us over generations.
1 Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
2 Start fights between different races, classes and religions
3 Use bribery, threats, blackmail, lies and deception to get our way
10 Eliminate religion; replace it with science and materialism
11 Control the education system to spread deception and destroy intellect
12 Rewrite history to our benefit
13 Use our media to create entertaining distractions
14 Corrupt minds with filth and perversion
15 Encourage people to spy on one another
16 Keep the masses in poverty and perpetual labor
Pretty good prescience for a 100 year old forgery.
#10 sounds pretty good to me. If only.
The problem, Mr. Kunstler, is not lack of will. It is lack of purpose. The financial industry has had much success redefining "purpose" over the years, to the point where nothing is seen as having value unless it has a price tag on it. And the bigger the price tag, the more "valuable" it is.
So naturally all those low wage jobs being created are not seen as something to go for, and many people refuse to do them. They are leaving the labor market rather than 'lower themselves'. If we want to see people working, then we have to either make it financially desireable (which no one seems to want to do..) or return to the pre-financialized world, where people were motivated by things other than immediate monetary gain.
When you make money your God, what do you 'tithe' to the Church?
Hear hear, you eat that you lazy kardasian USA scum !
:-) :- )
;-)
life is a drama, the only true reality that you can know is that you exist all else is an illussion. if you want to get real, indians and amish maybe the way to go, as they understand both sides of the trade, accept that pain has its benefits. a society that thinks there is a way to cheat nature and create what they think is better is doomed to fail. focusing on the wrong of others only masks the wrong in you. compassion for the twerkers, can show you the greater complexity of the system and that twerkers are a symptom not the cause. the reality is that we are in a hamster treadmill and that no matter what you do there you are. acceptance is the only pathway to salvation as then you will be free of judgement and accept the momentum that nature has been building for eternity.
There's no such thing as "salvation" or escaping "judgement". It makes little difference whether one accepts it or not. The only thing that we leave behind in the end is our actions, not how we rationalized them.
At a get-together last weekend, I saw two young boys, three and eight, totally glued to their tablets, playing video games. This seems to be a trend among all young children who are handed a telescreen. Twerking and faggotry aside, the lack of physical-world-interaction in young children, [older children], and adults alike, is more concerning than anything else. Screen zombies are sad to look at. :-(
Not really concerning at all unless you are on some kind of quest to spread your values throughout the world, in which case I'd say you're failing pretty hard. Sad to look at? Nah. Funny. They make me laugh. I'm not jealous of them... maybe that's what makes you sad? You just know that the little twerking faggots are getting hot young pussy and they don't have to work half as hard for it as you....
+1 for "screen zombies". I'll be borrowing that phrase.
Yes, good one! Glad I read that on -- oh, wait...
It's easier to give your kid a screen to look at than it is to parent them.
It's easier for a river to flow through a valley than through a mountain.
That's what was said about television.
Yeah, and look how we all turned out.
Due to a dead diesel truck I had the misfortune of needing to take the train from Albany to NYC a couple of weeks ago. For those who don't know, this is one of the most scenic trips in the country; there's something about the light along the Hudson that makes it special. There's trains, mountains, small ships, beavers making dams, architecture, etc to see and it's only a couple of hours. Along with me was a family of four from the west coast. (I asked them.) Mom, dad and the two kids had their faces buried in a device from start to finish. The kids had window seats and never looked up.
There's not much point to valuing your home, your nation, even your family when you aren't even willing to acknowlege thier existence. The screen is all there is now. You might as well wait for orders to come from it, a la Orwell.
Thanks for the tale BCB. I was on a train from Sacramento to San Jose last year. A couple of hillbillies sat right behind me, boomer age, a guy and a gal. They were chatting the entire trip, and I was a listener by proximity and volume. It was the gal's first time on a train. She pointed out every little interesting thing we passed us by (C&H sugar factory HQ was one of them). We did not share words, but from the things they were saying, I was overjoyed by their simplicity and the geniune innocence and niceness of the gal.
I went to Yellowstone labor day and the rangers said they had to cut their WiFi back to just hot spots for safety. Said kids come from all over and just play with their cell phones the whole time and dont even appreciate the natural beauty or look around
When I owned a bar five women came in, sat down and ordered drinks, pulled out their smartphones and were glued to them, ignoring each other.
I was sitting accross from them, finally I asked, "What are you girls doing, texting each other?"
The reply from Zoomorph sorta speaks volumes,,, yes?
As does this entire thread: "WAH WAH our society doesn't follow MY values. WAH WAH the freedom choice of other people to do things that I don't personally like doing makes me sad. I'll go cry about on the internet."
Some people just love whining and complaining. There's an ounce of revenge in every complaint, as they say. ;-)
Skateboarder "At a get-together last weekend, I saw two young boys, three and eight, totally glued to their tablets, playing video games. This seems to be a trend among all young children who are handed a telescreen."
Back in the mid 60s when IBM delivered and installed a mainframe (System 360) it had to run up about 500 hours on the system clock before monthly billing would commence. Some systems included a state-of-the-art piece of I/O simply called a "video display unit". Never mind it was the size of a refrigerator and the CRT was probably ~12". Now, unbeknown to the customer but known to the engineers installing the system was a slick piece of software simply called "Flying saucer vs. Tank". Yes, one of the first video games. Needless to say the system clock did not sit idle after system testing was completed and we made them aware of the great toy that was included free of charge.
I programmed a 360/40. RPG II. Ah, the memories.. Actually the memory in that machine was less than in a modern laptop. A lot less.
I would say something about the twerker in chief taking the lead but I'm too old to care about twerking and jerking. Is it true that they all jerk a little when they die? That's a question for an american sniper.
A Kunstler by any other name is still a Cunt. This guy is so full of himself it almost makes me want to puke. So what the answer asshole take back our jobs? Vote? Revolution? Most people around the world are the same you arrogant price of shit. Most people just want to be left alone to raise a family. Most people want something better for their children. Same as its ever been. It called human nature. Where is this Utopia you mention? I'm no fan of the masses (or the Kardashians) or the .0001% that lead them, but what's the answer? Changing human nature is almost impossible, and if Kuntsler had any insight into that he might not write such drivel. So James, are you saying the Oligarchy that runs Europe and Russia are any better or insightful or less evil? Hey James there all the same people, and the masses of those nations are the more enlightened than Americans? All I can say is bullshit. Disingenuous bullshit. Maybe James people are smarter and realize that no what they do they short of a very painful culling of the heard nothing will change. Maybe you should go after the .0001% instead going after the masses. Truly enlightened people help the uneducated, the weak. Try that for a change asshole.
'All most want is to be left alone and raise their children,' but most will agree to any Party/Gov't led evil with the belief and hope that THEY will be left alone. History reflects otherwise.
Kunstler is going to have a not-so-nice surprise when his long hoped for collapse comes. The man is such an arrogant prick (unless his writing is total bullshit) that all his neighbors will dance on his corpse as they raid his ever-loving garden.
Hey James, when TSHTF, people will find it beneficial to have been NICE to their neighbors.
Kunstler voted for Obama, not once, but twice, by his own admission (http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/84261/disenchantment-american-politics).
When humans got done digging up the earths bounty and spending it long it to the future they proceeded to Jerk and Twerk into the evolutionary dustbin of time. What a party!
Well I think Jackie Jenner is one fugly bitch! The women he slammed into was killed but what's important to the "news" sluts is how worried the lard ass klan is about their mom/dad Jackie!
What a super fucked up world we live in!
This:
When you make money your God, what do you 'tithe' to the Church?
I was having this conversation with a friend recently, and it's amazing to look at the obvious difference shown simply by the architecture of two cultures. The architecture dedicated to a belief in God is all over Europe. The cathedrals are still around hundreds of years later, and are still inspiring awe in tens of thousands daily. Look at the architecture of the money-worshippers, meanwhile. Thousands and thousands of spiritually dead glass and steel towers and strip malls that are falling apart on completion, and are forgotten as soon as the next is built.
Organized religion has lots of negatives associated with it. Millions have been killed using it as a tool. But when you look at what it leaves in its wake compared to what is left in the wake of the worship of money? There are worse things than organized religion, and we are living in a culture dominated by men and women who are demonstrably worse, true spiritual destroyers.
It's really about whether you want to live in a culture where everyone pulls their own weight and helps their neighbors -- versus one where people are taught to desire a bigger pile even if they have to take from their neghbors.
Exactly! You can't have a government, "of the people and by the people", if "the people", need the government to help them because they are the government they need help from.
People won't throw off their chains until their EBT cards stop working....
we need a selective emp: anyone who tweets or snapchats gets an emp pulse.
All the "Big Boys" want is war. It doesn't matter with whom, where, or why. Only that it be a big money maker, that it destroy all financial records post the 9/11 audit and that it happen very, very soon... There's robots and drones and bizarre aerosols and other whiz bang murderous shit to be tested!
Bullish the Death Merchants Godless Devils!
Can't we just paper over all this shit and call it a success story......?
Mr Kuntsler, what a fucking name eh? Could you pen a piece about these cunts printing money from thin air that not just mixy uses, but I would fucking hazard a guess you do?
The more they print son, the less we are worth. Could you find it in your time to rail against that for a bit? Or are you just like them fucking cunts that offer distractions instead of solutions?
And by the way son, I do some fucking work a week, all over the place, and the youth are far more plugged in than us older folk. Dont take my word for it, just talk to them, like fucking I do.
:-)
I can't remember the last time Kunstler wrote something informative, interesting or enlightening. Seems I keep reading him for the same reason others follow Brucette Jenner.
Mkultra and its derivatives saw to this. A nation of "people of walmart" is exactly what they wanted and what they have achieved.
I have no friggin clue what this author is writing about. I know who Bruce Jenner is but I never knew he wanted to be a woman.
We're simply shocked...SHOCKED I tell you, at what we've designed our society to be actually coming true!
Oh, Kunstler, never change. You hate everything. Everyone could do exactly as you think is best for them, and you'd still find a way to be pissed off at them. He's the only guy who could write 2 paragraphs about how awful a basket of puppies is.
Sure, now sing the song from the Lego movie.. Everything is Awesome.
But I thought the world wanted America to be more "European"? We elected a Marxist POS, half of the population doesn't work, structural unemployment, debt up to our eyeballs... America is the new Greece.
The freedom from judgement I speak of is from your own judgement. the salvation I speak of is from your own thought. Save yourself from yourself.
Advancement in my American country between 2013-2105 consists of the words 'twerking' and 'frapping'. We already had words like shaking ass and jerking it to describe these activities.
Going from becoming France to Mexico is certainly depressing.
Amerika is gay, stoned, black, muslim
This is what civilizations look like in their final phase, corruption is endemic.
It is the Age of Decadence where everyone has their snouts in the trough trying to get something for nothing.
http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf
The bankers who get unconditional bailouts.
The politicians who feast on expenses.
The businessmen who play the global tax system to avoid tax.
The poor who cheat the benefits system.
Corruption is endemic from top to bottom.
It is the end of days.
Lardass America......Home of the conniving cunts, Land of the gun toting loonies.
Kuntsler is right.
When I was young, it was embarrassing to not graduate from high school. Now, about 19% of students don't graduate high school.
Lots of kids today get their essays online. They pay people online to do their homework and buy the answers to tests. It is very common, meaning they aren't learning, their cheating.
1 in 5 young women are raped in college, with Harvard leading the way. We've all heard the military stories, as well.
The number of immigrants in the population of the United States has exploded like no other nation on earth. Just 30 years ago, it was mostly Whites, African Americans, Native Americans and a few immigrants. Go to any major city now and you'll see about 50% immigrants. Those immigrants are doing all the odd jobs kids in high school used to do to earn money. I'm not saying I don't like them. I'm just saying that it is hard on the lower and middle classes to earn liveable wages when there are so many poor immigrants waiting to do the work at a fraction of the cost. http://nypost.com/2014/09/26/us-has-highest-percentage-of-immigrants-in-...
High school kids who used to mow yards and wash cars are now required to do volunteer hours to graduate from high school. Conditioning them to be slaves.
There aren't the same social activities for kids, like dances or bike riding, because it has become too risky to allow your kids outside. So, they're forced to get their social needs met online.
The plethora of perversions is at an all time high. There are even guys who are obsessed with "My Little Pony." In California elemetary schools, the bathrooms are now unisex, because otherwise it would discriminate against the 7-year old who doesn't know if s/he's a boy or a girl.
If you think these aren't problems, then we have another problem.
Don't shoot the messenger.
Okay. Go back to your twerking and jerking.
It's all been pre-ordained. Check out The Long March Through The Institutions and the evil work of the Frankfurt School and the playbook makes everything clear. You'll never be the same afterwards!
Murica needs a good civil war to purge the scum
"Waiting in the wings is a whole category of human endeavor quaintly known as virtue, lately absent in the collective consciousness. What a shock it would be if Americans began to witness acts of fortitude and valor among us." --James H. Kunstler
Virtue, fortitude, and valor? I liked Kunstler's article, but calling for a national "virtue" of sorts is to make a religious appeal. Never mind this word's traditional association with sexual virginity, angelic order, and grace from god; virtue as "moral excellence" implies universal consent to a right-wrong system, but religious virtue is not the same thing as, say, humanist virtue.
I live according "my code", for instance, and I see this system as right, but my Jesus-worshiping family members judge me to be immoral because I don't conform to their religion. And I judge their oppressive proselytizing to be immoral because it violates the live-and-let-live premise of "the Golden Rule", as their denial of others' rights to freedom of belief is not what they'd want others doing unto them. How in the world could we ever constrain America's "human endeavor" to a single brand of virtue without instituting a nationalized program of externally programmed social indoctrination? Church, this is State, State meet Chur--- oh, you already know each other.
As for "fortitude" and "valor" emerging as evident cross-cultural norms, I'm afraid these words are too closely associated with our proud national traditions of militaristic and economic conquest. America's collective psyche is not well disposed to conceive social norms relating to courage or bold determination without their familiar corporatocratic associations. We're a bit stuck there.
Ukrain did not do a revolution because USA convinced them. They did t out of necessity. They could not afford the cleptocracy that was plundring them. Russia got plenty of oil and thus can afford it a bit longer.
To Putin, it was a mortal threat. A people acting to get rid of a corrupt regime. Scary. They must, one way or another be punished.
aka "The Frankfurt School" -which has metastacized into Columbia and from there into every Ivory Tower in this hemisphere.
It is a screwed up world when a 60 something guy starts saying "I'm a woman" and instead of testing him for "Low T", they start getting ready to give him female hormones and cut off his junk. If he ends up going to the can for vehicular homicide, you can bet the taxpayers will get the bill for making a facsimile Va-jay-jay for this guy.
In a thousand years, if they find his corpse, the archeologist will look at skeleton and say "male".
Kuntlser thinks that staring an organic farm will save you. What about the billions who didn't start farms James? What will they be doing... especially the ones with guns?
James Kunstler is a Philosopher. I like it.
Obscurantism (French: obscurantisme, from the Latin obscurans, "darkening") is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two common historical and intellectual denotations to Obscurantism: (1) deliberately restricting knowledge—opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the public; and, (2) deliberate obscurity—an abstruse style (as in literature and art) characterized by deliberate vagueness.[1][2]
Anti-obscurantist: The humanist scholar Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) actively opposed obscurantism.
The term obscurantism derives from the title of the 16th-century satire Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (Letters of Obscure Men), based upon the intellectual dispute between the German humanist Johann Reuchlin and Dominican monks, such as Johannes Pfefferkorn, about whether or not all Jewish books should be burned as un-Christian. Earlier, in 1509, the monk Pfefferkorn had obtained permission from Maximilian I (1486–1519), the Holy Roman Emperor, to incinerate all copies of the Talmud (Jewish law and Jewish ethics) known to be in the Holy Roman Empire (AD 926–1806); the Letters of Obscure Men satirized the Dominican monks' arguments at burning "un-Christian" works.
In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers used the term "obscurantism" to denote the enemies of the Enlightenment and its concept of the liberal diffusion of knowledge. Moreover, in the 19th century, in distinguishing the varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern philosophical skepticism, Friedrich Nietzsche said: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence."[3]