WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
— Bob Dylan
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
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An amazing sight!
I was to be in NYC in about a day or 2 from now, but that didn’t happen.
I watched the Chief of Engineers, US Army, on Fox News tonight. He was in full war mode. In charge, and taking the initiative. I told my family about 4 days ago that the military (I probably said the army) is going into activation mode: reserves and NG call ups, and recalls of retired and Individual Ready Reserves ( one step out of the reserves and still on a roster ). War, in other words.
It went without fanfare yesterday that POTUS signed the EO to permit DOD to bring active up to enough reservists to fill the active ranks to a million personnel. It was a few days before that that he authorized NG call-ups by state governors. At the same time, volunteers among retired medical specialties were called. A friend of mine who used to be a bird colonel is headed back to work now, from the retired ranks.
Mayor De Blasio made the idiotic mistake of calling his guardsmen “not military”. I am sorry to say that the political class in our country are sub-caliber sonsabitches. It scares me to imagine the idiocracy who now lead us.
The sailors on this ship, and the one that just sailed past the USS Iowa into berth in LA (Mercy), are head and shoulders better than the mayors of our big cities. I’d put a CPO up against De Blasio any day. God bless the US military.
Not only the US military. The British Army is doing much of the work fighting the virus in Britain, too. Everything from transporting supplies to building temporary hospitals to treating patients.
It’s notable that many in almost equally critical, but heavily unionised, jobs (train drivers on the London Tube and dustbin collectors, for example) are leaving work in droves. Which could have been predicted; that sort of job attracts skivers.
Casey sed: “It scares me to imagine the idiocracy who now lead us.”
=========
Indeed.
There seems to be little to no “leading” going on.
Men, stand up and jump right in and get shit done.
But there are very few men any more, instead, mostly wimmen no matter which gender they claim.
Lots of old lady hand wringin’ and little gurl bawling. This is the result of 40 years of attempting to make men irrelevant in all ways.
But we’re still out here and we are getting it done, in spite of the Mt McKinley size obstacles. It might just take a little longer. But it WILL get done. 1 man = 10 of anybody else.
Ghostsniper said it well.
Those points are correct and significant. I made this observation elsewhere:
Thank you for committing those points to writing. Thank you for getting that word of work and dignity out to many who do not organically understand it. Sadly there are too many who do not, and many of those are people of strong influence and persuasion.
Piss on them. Every last one of them and their delicate sense of self-importance, furrowed brows and all. Piss on them.
Turn the stupid TV off and leave it off.
And welcome to the redneck world of getting it done, making it work, Making do, suffering in silence, cussing about it, and doing it all over tomorrow. Scars and calluses. Tools. Engine exhaust. Dirt and sweat.
And by redneck I include all the ghetto, gang, single mom, single dad, unloved, discarded, misunderstood, and ignored. Black Americans, mixed, oriental, indigenous, Latin, mutt, doesn’t matter. Redneck.
Point your finger and place it in the middle of your chest. That’s the person who is going to make things survivable if not make things better. Start small if you have to and help those within reach, take care of your own, don’t do stupid stuff, and improve the things and the life surrounding you.
It is good to be Redneck.
On capital “L” leadership:
Leaders tell their people, “you can do this” and then show them how to do it. They LEAD.
The assholes in charge these days only know how to say “you are required to do this” and then poke with bayonets. I don’t have to tell you what that is.
Thus endeth the lesson.
My brother lives in NYC. His FB page is a long string of posts and memes, all of the most vicious Trump hate he can find. I find it most ironic that the most hated man in Manhattan has come to to rescue their wretched asses.
JWM
@Dan Patterson-
“Piss on them.
Turn the stupid TV off and leave it off.”
I am in 100% agreement with you Sir. Turn off the TV and disconnect the power cord. Throw it in the dumpster and be a free man.
It’s good to see the USNS Comfort entering New York harbor. Let us pray that this Chinese Virus pandemic will not come to mean “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Leadership. I think it was Buck Sexton, on the radio yesterday, who points out that dems say stoopidshit like “I want a thousand generators here!” and have no idea where, who, or how that would happen. They say an order into space; into thin air. Trump is exactly the opposite of that. He knows the logistics, and in that regards he knows the logistics in many fields important to our current crisis.
Sexton said the former way, the dems way of bloviating orders, is very Soviet in style. “I want 10 million bushels of wheat in Belarus next month!” No fukn idea how. Not even growing season. You just starved the farmers and truck drivers to death last winter. That’s our democraptic leadership in states and big cities. be really, really wary of those assholes. Be the sergeant whose new LT just stepped off the truck with starched fatigues and rosy cheeks: tell the dem leadership, with tact (sarcastic tact/ military style tact) that what they say is usually horseshit, and that the good governor, mayor, or city councilman can sit in the corner and let the men handle it.
Dangerous days we’re in.
I ain’t saying it didn’t happen, because I am reliably informed that it DID happen, but I find it strange that not a single one of the many clips I have seen of USNS Comfort entering NY Harbor SHOWS the fireboats giving her the traditional water cascade salute. I wonder, is this a sly little media poke in the eye, after President Trump made some of their heroes like Ms. Rachel (Nevada) Madcow look like idiots?