
Ironists of a Vanished Empire - lermontov
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/06/22/marjorie-perloff-ironists-vanished-empire/
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thriftwy
Kakania is a triple pun. It's also a country of peasants' paradise in european
folklore.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockaigne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockaigne)

I'm not even sure it was ever about excrement actually.

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scandox
I would have imagined Musil was thinking of the Greek kakistos (κάκιστος;
worst).

This is for example the root of the word Kakistocracy:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy)

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PhasmaFelis
Have we stopped changing immigrants' names for no fucking reason? I knew some
Malaysian students in the '90s who had incongruously whitebread American first
names, but I'm not clear if it's something people choose to do to fit in. (Or
maybe whitebread English names are common in Malaysia, for all I know.)

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interfixus
_You_ clearly have not stopped, for any reason, using " _we_ " to mean
"Americans".

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PhasmaFelis
In all seriousness, I would like to know why you object to me using "we" to
refer to the nation where I live and hold citizenship. I feel like you're
implying some kind of nationalistic sentiment on my part, but I have no idea
why, especially given the context.

