Also from H2G2, behold the majestic :
"
-Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
-And are you?
-Ah. No. Well that's where it all falls down, of course
"
I like it even better in the movie, Bill Nighy embodies this sentence perfectly.
Recently, I learned about a historical quote, from French PM Daladier on his way back from Munich where he knew he gave everything to Hitler.
He got out his plane, expecting to be lynched or thrown oranges at, and people, when he realized people were praising him as a herald of "peace", let out this magnificent "Ah.. what a bunch of idiots".
Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur Dent: And are you?
Slartibartfast: Ah, no.
[laughs, snorts]
Slartibartfast: Well, that's where it all falls down, of course
Hmm, you're right. I first read this sentence for the first time as an epigraph for a violently anti-patriotic, individualistic, fantastic and oniric book which gave me this impression.
After a bit of digging, I still think there's something of my interpretation in the original material (a lettre from Vaché to Aragon from the battlefield), but it's also a dadaist piece, so not so easy to decipher, in which he wishes for the death of his own generals, somehow talks about killing Germans while wearing a monocle and, all of them soldiers, French and German, being slowly decerebrated. He was fighting and killing although he was still against the war, seemed to be borderline self-destructing, dandy, rebelling, talking multiple times about how war changed him for the worse in both his mind and his body, crippled for life too. He died at 23 from an opium overdose.
So there is certainly more to it. Indeed, he doesn't say what I implied and seemed to be such a complicated person he might have wrote the quote while thinking it is a good thing, but I suppose my interpretation isn't totally absurd.
Oh, not them. I suppose they meant among non-right wingers. I always found quite explicit they aren't welcome here. Not today, not ever.