“I have zero interest in being a professional politician but conservatives like us need a squad of our own, so Alabama put me in the game.”
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.
Comments on this entry are closed.
What do you call people that say they want to solve problems they created?
They never solve anything, they just create more problems.
Paid for by you.
Well, if I lived in Alabama she’d have my vote!
(And I’m so glad to not get a 404 when I accessed comments! Thanks, Gerard!)
Savvy lady. I wish her well.
Ghostsniper around here we call them Commie Bastards.
I would vote for her.
Everything about this lady spells CLASS. A true American in spirit and courage. I would vote for her.
Ghostsniper is on target in regards to Jessica Taylor. Here’s the thing. While Taylor is hitting all the right melodic notes in that ad, which sing sweetly in conservative folks’ ears, and she’s attractive to boot, I’ll bet serious money that she already has a little list of new bills/laws she would like to see instituted. Until such time as political candidates get up on their soapboxes and state unequivocally that they desire to be elected so that they can begin the dismantling the bureaucratic state under which Americans suffer, rather than institute new rules, regs, laws, etc., all are simply blowing smoke. Trump is the only individual in political office who has made that promise. He’s delivering a little here and there, but his efforts are continually attempted to be thwarted by Demorats, and Republirats, in both the House and the Senate. Politicians are not Americans’ friends.
John Venlet has hit the nail on its head!
More than any new legislation, we desperately need to winnow out the multiplicity of laws we have that don’t work, or don’t do what was hoped they’d do, or have bad unforeseen side-effects.
These days, all of us commit at least three crimes every day, I’ve read; these are crimes on the lawbooks, but none of us even realize that we’re committing them since we’ve never heard of them & don’t even know of their existence. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” though, so if we get arrested & charged we have no defense.
I long for the days of old when felonies were obvious, and everybody knew what they were; nowadays lots of things that aren’t capital offenses, or even bad crimes, are felonies, though I don’t think they should be. A person can lose their 2nd Amendment right to own a gun forever, just by being accused of domestic violence; that’s a misdemeanor if convicted, but in many places no conviction is even necessary because of “Red Flag Laws” which are on-their-face unconstitutional (but so are almost all gun control laws.)
Let’s mow down the field of bad laws, and put a Sunset Clause on any new ones that are passed!
The 19th Amendment and women’s involvement in politics have corrupted the American body politic.