A bit of reminiscing by Canadian conservatives. Worth the time to read.
I just finished Ted Morgan’s rather long biography of William Burroughs. For a guy who shot his wife dead and was a heroin addict most of his life, not to mention a weird sort of homosexual avatar, Burroughs had many glittering friends and a remarkably dull life.
I like literary biography as a genre and will read lit bios more or less to fill in the missing pieces of the English literary enterprise in the 20th century. Burroughs’ own work I have found unreadable and now that I know, in excruciating detail, from whence it came, I should not be surprised. Give me Gore Vidal anytime.
On eBay, I found a stash of Tom Wolfe’s early work. Four dilapidated pocket books chronicling the end of the Beats and the birth of the Hippies. The shorter form journalism of The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby remains a pleasure with Wolfe getting the rise of American prole/teen culture in the early sixties exactly right.
From Junior Johnson and stock car racing to slot cars to Hot Rods and demolition derbies - plus Las Vegas - he demonstrates the sheer power of the underclass with a bit of World War II money. It’s a bit dated now - “style of life” for “lifestyle” - but Wolfe’s journalism says a lot about America in an age of optimism. More at the link: An interesting look at recent cultural history, only I guess it's not all that recent.
I grew up as part of that 1968 generation--Class of '65. All that rebellion and stuff looked really kewl, and there I was stuck in Vietnam or Okinawa or Thailand, eventually in West Berlin. They were doing neato-keano stuff and I had to work. All that wasted time and energy was because I didn't realize how damned boring they were.
Wolfe really was a great writer. "The Right Stuff" describes what real he-men are like. Not the tough guys with tattoos up and down their arms, or the yo boys haunting street corners and packin' unregistered heat. Wolfe defined the difference between the two types--I sometimes think of them as two species, kinda like the difference between thoroughbreds and jackasses.
All the easy choices in life seem to lead to the jackass stable. They've even had a teevee show about them. High school too much for you? Drop out, get a tattoo on your neck and go relax in the stable. Finished with high school and feel like coasting for four years? Major in modern dance or Black Studies or Gender Studies. You won't have a job when you get your degree, but there's lots of room in the stables and you can probably support yourself pouring overpriced coffee at Starbucks'. He's handsome, your're drunk and not on the pill? Go ahead and shuck your drawers. If you find yourself sober and with child (that's assuming you're ever sober) there's lots of room in the stables.
"I hate Americans!" Whatsername said the other day as she was licking the icing off the counter display at the donut shoppe. She was demonstrating to her friends (she didn't know about the video camera) that she's a by-Gum rebel. Not a Confederate battle flag kind of rebel, mind you; they were ucky and they oppressed all those Negroes and she's glad they're all dead now. She's the female equivalent of the Marlon Brando Rebel Without a Cause movie, or like James Dean. What she really hates is White People, even though she is one.
It's always possible to cease being a jackass, even though the numbers say it doesn't happen very often. It takes goals, with milestones along the way from You Are Here to There. It takes hard work and diligence. Usually it takes teamwork to get there, which is a different thing from Collective Effort™. It takes a willingness to use the tools that are available, rather than sitting down and complaining about their lack or inadequacy.
We live (or have lived) in an age where it's possible for the poorest, most downtrodden among us to be just as good as any member of landed gentry. Being a "gentleman" or a "lady" depends not on birth, but on character.
The fact that there aren't more ladies and gents is a pretty black commentary on humanity.
#1
What she really hates is White People, even though she is one.
A very accurate observation of hate, but not an isolated one. Like most forms of treason, cultural treason's most frequently used tool is the love of money.
#2
We live (or have lived) in an age where it's possible for the poorest, most downtrodden among us to be just as good as any member of landed gentry. Being a "gentleman" or a "lady" depends not on birth, but on character.
Equality of outcome ends up with the outcome being an upgrade for people who don't deserve a good one and a downgrade for those who do, in the economic realm.
It also ends up incentivizing a downgrade for everyone in the social realm.
In the end, we managed the WWII peace dividend horribly. It could have been used to build a society that lasted centuries. Instead we burned through it in less than two generations and politicians told the people it would last forever. Outcome equality requires atrocities be performed on the people who would be ladies and gentlemen, every time. And politicians found a lot of votes in telling people that while in office, they'd make sure that the government would insure that the lowest person wouldn't be that much less than the smartest or most talented or hardest working. You don't need to guess the sort of person this appeals to the most.
The second worst thing we did was not de-communizing the way we de-Nazified. Two presidents in particular - Truman and Bush I - had golden opportunities to simply defund the left by fiat, given the times they served in as presidents, and did not. We are now paying the price as a nation in terms of a nearly completely degraded culture, an economy on the brink of what happened to Greece, and a hostile public sector clerisy which is prepared to, at a whim, put people like me into concentration camps and sip chardonnay while listening to NPR with a smile on their face - or licking a donut in a bakery.
If the center/right ever gets into the position to do so again - which is by no means a certainty - they must engage in scorched-earth tactics. Remove EVERY person with even a whiff of leftism about them from as many positions of power and bureaucratic posts and functionary positions as possible and force them to choose between doing real work in the private sector or facing economic oblivion. Enact as many laws as possible to remove professors and farmers and lawyers and lobbyists from making money off of rent-seeking regulations and subsidies. Revoke tax free status of foundations who have been taken over by leftists. Most importantly, return the percentage of government employees to the rest of us to pre-1968 levels.
If we don't do that we will certainly perish as a nation - people like me first, by the left's violence, but eventually they will even destroy themselves.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/12/2015 7:31 Comments ||
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#3
What she really hates is White People, even though she is one.
A very accurate observation of hate.
Actually a very good description of Barack Obama's mother (Stanley Ann Dunham). During her college years, she was known for being dating anyone provided they weren't white.
Obama is actually an obedient son who is following his mother's instructions. She hated White middle class America, and he is trying to destroy it.
Al
Posted by: frozen al ||
07/12/2015 11:18 Comments ||
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#4
Target ahead
Do the Bombay door thing man
Righteous
Bomb run nao!
10,000 copies of the Naked Lunch on San Dieago!
#5
Actually Dunham would screw anything in pants provided they were not white...and pose for girly magazines.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
07/12/2015 19:56 Comments ||
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#6
Maybe not buying into the 'big tent' crap allowing the professional liberals who escaped the socialist party to take over your own party. There's a certain part of any population you are never going to incorporate because they never want to 'share'.
[IsraelTimes] Gazoo's ruling terror group is spying on Egypt, training IS jihadists and smuggling arms -- all while cracking down on Gazoo's home-grown Salafis
While Hamas is far from reticent about showing off the drones it has sent into Israel several times over the past year, it appears that the Jewish state is not the only target of the terror group's covert UAV activity.
Last December, the unmanned aircraft were given pride of place at a military parade to mark the group's 27th anniversary, including a drone that Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, claimed had been in operation during the conflict that summer. And it is becoming clear to Israeli officials that intelligence-gathering for military operations is not the sole purpose of the craft. Continued on Page 49
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
