And What Does THIS Say to YOU?
Please Discuss the Implications and Possible Ramifications of this Phenomenon
WHO is probably BEHIND it?
Has it arisen SPONTANEOUSLY?
Is it the result of Deliberate AGITATION?
WHAT has MOTIVATED it?
WHY is it not being PUNISHED?
HOW could it be JUSTIFIED?
HOW should it be STOPPED?
~ § ~
FreeThinke’s Blog
"Merrily Cheesing Off the Left since 2012"
Related:
ReplyDeleteAnonymous Exposes ANTIFA, Publishing a Long List of It's Members, INCLUDING MANY TEACHERS.
I rather imagine that these teachers' students get extra credit for participating in the razing of Confederate statues.
They should FIRE every teacher on that list.
DeleteJoe,
DeleteI so agree!
Well, we've been discussing this for some time. A dedicated collection of people want to shred our social fabric and tear down much that this nation is built upon.
ReplyDeleteSome out of hatred, but many other out of the naive notion that doing so will usher in a bright new progressive future.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT BOILERPLATE! PERIOD!
DeleteHow about plates of boiled eggs?
DeleteI sit in one of the dives
ReplyDeleteOn Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame
A great evocative celebration of loneliness, dejection, and extreme sensitivity to the vicissitudes of life to be sure, but what it might have to do with the willful destruction of monuments, works of art, literature, unwelcome opinion –– and the HISTORY they represent–– I can't see.
DeleteIt wuld be good of you to come back and try to explain your motive for posting Auden's poetic masterpiece on THIS particular thread.
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DeleteI receive no response from you, so I shall repeat what you deleted.
DeleteThe next war will not be like the last, but the human emotions, depredations and cruelties will be the same, but cast in the mold of the times.
Men and women are bastards. In the absence of great famines, pandemics and wars, they will invent other ways to torture and bedevil one another.
I'm sorry. Perhaps it is I who am dense, but I cannot see how this bears any specific relation to this specific issues raised by this post. What you said may be true, although I dnn't agree with yeur blanket condemnaition of all mankind,
DeleteMost are fundamentally good, but the vast majority are often perplexed by circumstances beyond their control, and therefore MUCH too easily led.
I see the deplorable situation resulting from the REMOVAL of TANGIBLE reminders of HISTORY as a kind of FAD –– a descent to the level of MOB RULE.
By the way, if you want to be recognized and treated with more respect, it would be a good idea to post with ONE identity. Your unit post identified you as W.H. Auden.
I put the good poet's name there to give proper credit to the poem.
DeleteWe are in a war, but not like The War to End All Wars or the Spanish Civil War, but a war by any other name still stinks of rotting human flesh and the rubble of toppled empires.
The victors destroy the ancient regime (which was already in decline), displace people, and destroy the culture and symbols of the vanquished.
After the horrible destruction, alas, mankind has learned nothing, and the tragedy shall play out again in another time and place.
Auden captures this with beautiful sadness.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT IRRELEVANT REMARKS.
DeleteThe facade has been pierced.
ReplyDelete"The Constitution" and "The Law" thin tissues, myths that help us sleep.
Systems set up by men depend upon man's honor, and therein lies the problem.
We've eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the scales have fallen from our eyes, Dostoevsky and Sartre, everything is permitted.
The radical democratization of everything renders, finally, meaningless nothing and affords us all the giddy frisson of being the Grand Inquisitor.
The bullhorn blares louder from piles of shibboleths.
Yes, but everything of Man's dievising is fated to be TEMPORARY. Only GOD who is the Personification, Embodiment, and perfect Expression of Life, Truth, Love, Principle, Intelligence, Spirit, Soul, Beauty, Creativity, and Fulfillment, is Eternal, Immutable, Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent.
Delete"O, rest in the Lord. Wait patiently for Him,
And He shall give thee thy heart's desires.
"Commit thy ways unto Him,
And trust in Him,
And fret not thyself,
Because of evildoers.
"O, rest in the Lord. Wait patiently for Him,
And He shall give thee thy heart's desires."
~ Elijah - Felix Mendelssohn
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DeleteAn Army of Locusts
Delete2 Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy hill.
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming.
It is close at hand—
2
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and blackness.
Like dawn spreading across the mountains
a large and mighty army comes,
such as never was in ancient times
nor ever will be in ages to come.
3
Before them fire devours,
behind them a flame blazes.
Before them the land is like the garden of Eden,
behind them, a desert waste—
nothing escapes them.
4
They have the appearance of horses;
they gallop along like cavalry.
5
With a noise like that of chariots
they leap over the mountaintops,
like a crackling fire consuming stubble,
like a mighty army drawn up for battle.
6
At the sight of them, nations are in anguish;
every face turns pale.
7
They charge like warriors;
they scale walls like soldiers.
They all march in line,
not swerving from their course.
8
They do not jostle each other;
each marches straight ahead.
They plunge through defenses
without breaking ranks.
9
They rush upon the city;
they run along the wall.
They climb into the houses;
like thieves they enter through the windows.
10
Before them the earth shakes,
the heavens tremble,
the sun and moon are darkened,
and the stars no longer shine.
11
The Lord thunders
at the head of his army;
his forces are beyond number,
and mighty is the army that obeys his command.
The day of the Lord is great;
it is dreadful.
Who can endure it?
Rend Your Heart
12
“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
13
Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14
Who knows? He may turn and relent
and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the Lord your God.
15
Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly.
16
Gather the people,
consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
gather the children,
those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her chamber.
17
Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,
weep between the portico and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”
The Lord’s Answer
Delete18
Then the Lord was jealous for his land
and took pity on his people.
19 The Lord replied[a] to them:
“I am sending you grain, new wine and olive oil,
enough to satisfy you fully;
never again will I make you
an object of scorn to the nations.
20
“I will drive the northern horde far from you,
pushing it into a parched and barren land;
its eastern ranks will drown in the Dead Sea
and its western ranks in the Mediterranean Sea.
And its stench will go up;
its smell will rise.”
Surely he has done great things!
21
Do not be afraid, land of Judah;
be glad and rejoice.
Surely the Lord has done great things!
22
Do not be afraid, you wild animals,
for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green.
The trees are bearing their fruit;
the fig tree and the vine yield their riches.
23
Be glad, people of Zion,
rejoice in the Lord your God,
for he has given you the autumn rains
because he is faithful.
He sends you abundant showers,
both autumn and spring rains, as before.
24
The threshing floors will be filled with grain;
the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.
25
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm[b]—
my great army that I sent among you.
26
You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.
27
Then you will know that I am in Israel,
that I am the Lord your God,
and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed.
The Day of the Lord
28
“And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
30
I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
31
The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
32
And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the Lord has said,
even among the survivors
whom the Lord calls
You might want to listen to Randall Thompson's choral masterpiece called The Peacable Kingdom. It masterfully evokes the spirit of these texts you have quoted.
DeleteI'm sure performances are readily avaulable on YouTube.
Spirit? Something that "evokes the spirit" is dross when we have the actual WORD!
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DeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT IRRELEVANT REMARKS.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT IRRELEVANT REMARKS.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT IRRELEVANT REMARKS.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT IRRELEVANT REMARKS.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for your consideration, DD, but I'd welcome your opinion about removing tangible evidence of our history from the public square, which is what this post is SUPPOSED to be about.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT WITLESS, VULGAR INSULTS
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI find it EXTREMELY irritating when visitors steadfastly refuse even to ACKNOWLEDGE –– let alone ADDRESS –– the TOPICS on which I choose to focus.
DeleteWhen the subject is ORANGES, I don't want to see remarks about GRAPES, AVOCADOS or BASEBALLS.
Why should that be so hard to understand?
Frankly there is no revelancy between pic #1,#2 and #3. I do however understand the purpose for linking them.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteA VACUUOUS, unsubstantiated observation totally without merit or foundation.
DeleteI may empathize withut sentiments, Patsy, but NOT with the vulgar, unnecessarily rude way you express them.
DeleteTry doing it MY way next time. It takes more effort, but it's FAR more rewarding to use GOOD Standard English while avoiding four-letter words and common insuts.
But Nursie Poo Poo is such a tiny, insufferable little prick!
DeleteOf course, but there are FAR better ways of saying it. In fact it would be best not to say ANYTHING either TO or ABOUT him at ALL.
DeleteI am find of Lisa, but she has allowed her BLOG to be used as a PUBLIC TOILET and aan INTERNET DUMP.
I would prefer to have NO COMMENTS agt ALL than to see that happen HERE, hence our militant INTOLERANCE of GARBAGE, sheer NASTINESS and IRRELEVANCY.
SilberfiedelSeptember 5, 2017 at 10:58 AM tried to answer your questions, albeit with a pathetically oblique attempt, but you shut him down with a blithe religious music reference
ReplyDeleteNothing "blithe" about it, whoever you are. It's the BEDROCK of Decency Moralty, Just Jurisprudence, and Good Conduct.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO N-O-T ACCEPT IRRELEVANT COMMENTARY.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO not, not, NOT, N-O-T N-O-T ACCEPT IRRELEVANT COMMENTARY.
DeleteP_______E______R______I______O_____D______!
GOT THAT?
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ReplyDeleteI had my say over at AOW's: This is Maoist cultural cleansing, complete with punishing incorrect opinions, group shaming and public confessions all in pursuit of conformity of thought and correct opinions.
ReplyDeleteRemoving monuments to the hated, vanquished enemies is required to usher in a Brave New Progressive World, where all the old dead white detritus has been swept away.
It helps to note a few things: The social justice warriors come from the self-esteem generation, they are riddled with ADD and we don't know the effects that years of ADD and psychotrophic drugs (for more serious illnesses like bipolar) have on the human brain. They are a product of 13 years of government school indoctrination and the beliefs propagandized into them are reinforced daily by the Infotainment Media Complex.
The agitators also have a very-real history of very-real racism to stoke the flames and explain away inconvenient crime statistics, so its time to heed President Obama and punish some enemies.
Our nation is spilling over with a growing cohort of illogical people--on all sides--who cannot accept reality, cannot critically analyze and debate an issue, and cannot apply dispassionate thought to what is going on around us.
The divisions in this country are growing wider and deeper and demographic trends point to this increasing. As different groups ascend, they will assert their authority; that's just the way it goes.
Tribal Ideology has replaced logical thinking and rational analysis.
"The sleep of reason produces monsters" -- Francisco Goya
Thank you, Silver, for adding some substantive analysis to this issue –– at long last.
DeleteYou seem to want to credit –– or blame –– Mao tse Dung for these regrettable developments, but I prefer to blame two far more remote factors –– The Industrial Revolutionm the negative aspects of which spawned Marxism, –– and the insidious advent of CULTURAL Marxism as a way of rendering the brutality of Bolshevism more appealng to the Bourgeoisie, who a century ago were not yet aware that they had been targeted for annihilation.
The Fabian Socialists such as Edward Carpenter, John Davidson, sexologist Havelock Ellis, early socialist Edward R. Pease, Beatrice Potter, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell made the grievous error of beieving sciety could be recreated –– POLITELY, even DECOROUSLY –– in the Marxian-Collectivist mode through eloquent oratory and gentle-but-persistent attempts at persuasion through powerful argument couched, albeit, in genteel terms.
The inherently boorish, crass, violent nature of the Collectisit Ethos excaped them, as it does most "academics" tand "intellectuals" today.
Saul Alinsky, –– one of the most powerful and influential outgrowths of the Cultural Marxist Movement ––, had a Big Hand in fomenting the current climate of Extreme Truculence, Resistance, Rebellion, Violence, and profound Disrespect for Tradition and all forms of Established Authority that has plagued the land since before you entered Kindergarten., my friend.
I've seen this coming ALL my adult life. (SIGH!)
When TRADITION is wrong resistance to it is proper and right. Of course that begs the question... just who determines whether it is right or wrong?
ReplyDeleteThere always has been, there current is, and there ALWAYS will be differences of opinions. This is natural, as well as good and proper.
Respect for others and their opinions is what is missing, and it is getting more pronouced. Live and let live would seem to be a good antidote. As long as... You fill in the blank space.
Vandalizing statues is "natural?" Where?
DeleteRebeliousness, Lack of Self-Dsicipline and the tendency always to want to Blame Others for One's own Shortcomings is endemic to Human Nature, Silver.
DeleteAs Rose Sayer –– Katharine Hepburn's prim, prudish, decidedly unworldly character –– said to Charlie Allnutt –– Humphrey Bogart's slovenly, sweaty, unshaven, disreputable-looking character in 1951's classic film the African Queen –– "NATURE, Mr. Allnutt, is something we were put into this world to FIGHT AGAINST."
I believe we were supposed to believe that Rose was wrong, because of the heady, remarkably improbable romance that develops between her and Charlie during their perilous journey down the rapids, but in latter years I have reached a different conclusion.
We are NOT supposed to follow the Paths of Least Resistance, and neither should we let ourselves Yield to Desructive Impulses, nor be Led Down the Garden Path by scoundrels.
Charlie Allnutt, of course, was NGT a scoundrel, –– he merely LOOKED like one.
And therein lies the Work of a Lifetime –– learning how to look beneath the surface, see beyond the obvious, develop some DEPTH to our own individual character, then determine –– for ourselves –– what's good and what's not.
The Liberals National Anthem, DACA, DACA, DACA, replaces Russia, Russia, Russia, which replaced He's Not My President, He's Not My President, He's Not My President, which was replaced by Impeach, Impeach, Impeach, which was replaced by Hurricane Harvey, soon to replaced by Hurricane Irma... Don’t they ever get exhausted?
ReplyDelete