Howso' great their clamour, whatsoe'er their claim,
Suffer not the old King under any name!
-- Kipling, The Old Issue
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
-- Bob Dylan
For some it shall always be "2008!":
My colleagues in the humanities support Barack Obama nearly unanimously, some of them still believing the salvation narrative that developed in 2008 whereby the junior senator from Illinois would rescue the nation from the hell of the previous eight years—not to mention four centuries of white supremacy. -- Humanities: doomed to lose? by Mark Bauerlein - The New Criterion
Their infernal machine lops and trims the green upstarts, the single emerald sprouts, the high stalk topped with the blue cornflower down to the level of the dull brown mass.
Their minds are the godless grave of words from which no living meanings can ever hope for resurrection.
Their secular "green" religion has its bad rap but no hymns.
Their dreams of a "better world" will become their children's small and shrunken lives on a nightmare planet where all men, finally equalized, will live like insects.
And yet, like zombies lashed to a dying animal, they persist in their death-in-life existence, seeking only the freedom of an approved and "assisted" suicide as their reward.
They call themselves "progressives" and flatter themselves that their thoughts and actions are "revolutionary" when they are as reactionary as can be remembered from history.
What happened to all those who, in my youth, marched and sang for "freedom?" How did they become so old, so hidebound, so mired in the past? When did they become stuck in "suppose?" How, from once striving so hard against colonialism in all its guises, did they allow their minds to become so utterly colonized by a matted mass of dim and discredited notions?
They chain themselves deep in the pit of pretend, and celebrate their servitude by bending heaven and earth to get you down in the hole that they're in.
They believe that the individual should become the mass, and that the mass should worship its apotheosis; that one who best reflects their ossified visions on which the anointing oil has long since dried to a brown crust of thought.
They are the monarchists of the mass. They seek a state in which the head that wears the crown may change but where the crown itself grows forever larger.
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying
Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying
So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing
As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it
Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only
-- Bob Dylan
Posted by Vanderleun at November 10, 2015 2:41 AMThey seek their solace in the perfectibility of man by way of his own mind.
Inf'nsane.
Posted by: monkeyfan at June 26, 2010 8:34 PMSounds like you may have read the link I posted at Neo's place this morning.
Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For
I strongly recommend it for everybody. This is what we're up against.
Posted by: rickl at June 26, 2010 9:41 PMNo I hadn't read that, but I will now.
Posted by: vanderleun at June 26, 2010 11:13 PMYou penned The Pagan's Nicene Creed...without the nice.
Posted by: Jewel at June 26, 2010 11:34 PMDamn you vanderleun! The bar's too high.
Posted by: TRKF at June 27, 2010 5:13 AMBeing parasitical, when the body morphs into death, they become progressively deader.
Posted by: clue by four at June 27, 2010 9:37 AMThese days, I halfway expect to see Jean Jacques Rousseau's face in amongst the press of the crowds. I think this is not an entirely unhealthy thing; not unlike expecting fireflies in the woods in the summer time. Really.
Things are moving very fast.
We will be waking up to this decade's 9/11 by the by. This time around, it will be our government holding the gun.
Wish it wasn't so.
Posted by: TmjUtah at June 27, 2010 2:12 PM
Some people can't tolerate freedom.
Posted by: Kate Rafferty at June 28, 2010 5:45 AMMany want certainty more than freedom, without understanding what certainty is.
Posted by: james wilson at June 28, 2010 7:50 AMAs a former member and fellow traveler, perhaps your experience may be enlightening. I'm assuming it wasn't just 9-11 that changed your mind about the Left.
Posted by: Stephen B at June 28, 2010 9:56 AMrickl: Superb piece. Absolutely a must-read.
Posted by: Aquila at June 28, 2010 11:51 AM"What happened to all those who, in my youth, marched and sang for "freedom?" How did they become so old, so hidebound, so mired in the past?"
When they refused to grow up and become adults. A generation of Peter Pans is a ghastly thing.
Posted by: Mikey NTH at June 28, 2010 11:58 AMWhat Mikey said. I had hoped that wasn't the case but I think it well and truly is.
Posted by: Eric Blair at June 28, 2010 3:35 PMWhy couldn't Peggy "Bugeye" Noonan say that?
Posted by: Bruce Hanify at April 20, 2012 2:14 PM"It's All Right Ma" is part and parcel of a trilogy which includes "Hard Rain" and "Gates of Eden". How do you cope with a chaotic world? Man up, son. Deal with it.
Shame that rickl's link of June 26 2010 (above) has been replaced by a panhandle. I would have liked to have seen it.
Posted by: Frank P at December 30, 2013 6:40 AMFirst heard that song at the end of Easy Rider. It still resonates with me forty years later.
Posted by: altered states at December 30, 2013 8:44 AMFrank P:
I found a functioning link to a pdf of that article at
Purifying the World:
What the New Radical Ideology Stands For
The 'marching and singing for freedom' were early symptoms of the same disease that is killing us now.
Posted by: Lorne at December 30, 2013 12:19 PMThe pendulum swings hard left And here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice.
Posted by: BJM at December 30, 2013 1:12 PMThank you, wayback machine.
Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For...
http://web.archive.org/web/20100704212100/http://spme.net/library/pdf/PurifyingtheWorld.pdf
Posted by: Joe Katzman at November 17, 2014 5:21 PMI started reading Purifying the World. Hilarious black humor. What utter bull shit.
Posted by: pbird at November 10, 2015 9:37 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.
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