Noted in Passing: Civility in American Political Discussions Restored
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
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
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Comments on this entry are closed.
That guy! for president.
Doug Little suffers from the “little man” complex.
Openly ridicule him and he will break down and cry.
Isolate us Doug, when you shut enough of us out we’ll create a world of our own.
(the above w/thx to Nelson Algren)
Unfortunately, the Little man is a Canadian hoser; it would take the War of 1812 v. 2.0 to put paid to him.
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
~ H.L. Mencken
The Sage of Baltimore
1919 Prejudices (First Series)
The time is coming Corporal Rokka, the time is coming very soon.
Civility? Weak sauce.
You destroy evil not compromise or debate with it.
Spot on. They will reap as they have sown and it will be a bitter harvest indeed.
These little people toss these concepts and threats around with no expectation of the consequences, they have obviously not been sufficiently held to account
Poor Dougie Lickspittle probably needed smelling salts and a fainting couch when he received Aesop’s reply. Or maybe ointment for the severe burrrn.
Aesop living up to his reputation for calm, rational, reasoned debate.
Aesop showed commendable sensitivity and a refined sense of proportion in his response to Mr. Little
Well said Mr. Aesop! Well said. I notice in every rant against (pick a conservative pov) that none of the proponents volunteer to lead the stack, raid, whatever. Thats for the knuckle draggers of their faction as they themselves are tooo cultured. Or what might also be considered-they are pussies. Maybe I cant manage an investment firm but can they change a tire, spark plugs, clear a fallen limb from their front step or clear a jam in their weapon before the mob turns on them? I guess we will see who is resilient and who fumbles for the app to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.
Dear T,
I wouldn’t know about that.
I wasn’t volunteering anyone else for the task, nor ever would I. I think the spontaneity of the event will be as gobsmackingly surprising to such Leftards as the sudden reversal of fortune vis-a-vis the Taliban, when it happens. But where Lickspittle is concerned, I’d happily lead a stack of precisely one, pull him down the stairs by the hair, and undertake all that I promised, on his front stoop, just to see the look of shock on his face for the fleeting few seconds he possessed the faculties to appreciate the enormity of his miscalculation. It hasn’t been so long since boot camp that I can’t find my way to clearing a jam, were I unlucky enough to suffer one, nor fumble the basics of the bayonet tango, including the two approved methods for removing people who stick a bit too well. So be assured, it won’t be my chestnuts in the fire, come the day. But Lickspittle and his ilk are like eating potato chips: no one wants to stop at just one.
A famous quote from an outstanding man, “and the rest are free”.
There’s a lot more of us like minded people than the Dums believe.
We just don’t mouth off about things like they do.
When the times comes, actions speak the loudest.
We’ll let’em know right when that is.
When beginning a thing, you shouldn’t look too much at the finish of it being the finish of it. It often needs tweaking and revisions, and something as complicated as a nation and millions of people will need a lot of tweaking and revisions. The courage to do the things needed in a major revision of America is going to be the kind of courage that lets you do the bloodletting and purges necessary for a free people to exist afterwards. Our communist scumbags have our annihilation in mind, so it wouldn’t be good to extend mercy to them, they’ll be none for us if they triumph. This Little man who yearns for buckets of blood and subservient attitudes is but the latest iteration of our communist scumbags who want something, but don’t know how to get it without killing everybody opposed to it. Which is the communist way. I wonder what tune idiots like him will sing after the ball. Yes, I know, this is a pledge to do the very same things our mortal enemies pledge to do. I intend for my side to win, and I don’t care about anyone’s judgement of me. There are winners and losers. Pick.
I will eat a bowl of water with a fork before I ever care about their opinion of me
There was a time, for a long time, when people were at ease with civility because they knew never to force their ways onto a stranger because what would happen next was not civility. Nor should it be.
Local teams should be forming in Doug’s AO to relieve him of his burden to breathe.
Aesop is an idiot.
He spent MONTHS scaring the shite out of his fellow Californian morons with dire predictions of death and destruction from the fake COVID pandemic. Choked hospitals!! Backed up morgues!!! Bodies stacked in the streets!!!! Mass graves!!!!! The sky is falling!!!!! We all must mask up and social distance FOREVER!!!!
And now the pustule is waving his pudgy little fists around because the morons he goaded into a panic want him to take a shot. Not only that, he’s threatening to put local politicos on his list and go after their families in retribution. He’s selflessly offering to lead the insurgency against his chitlib overlords now… and he’ll be shocked as hell when he gets clapped in shackles by some rainbow haired she-twink policewoman.
The guy is a male nurse that empties bedpans and cleans the sheets. Give ‘em hell Aesop! 😂👍
Bravely typed, Anonymous Keyboard Commando!
When one is too chickensh*t to own one’s diaper-spackle, one shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of attention it merits.
Unfortunately, it’s obvious that along with the lack of bravery to own up to your screed, you also lack any reading comprehension, as nothing you posted is remotely what I said, at any point in time.
Everything I posted is still right where I left it, so you can feel free to quote any sections at your leisure, to illustrate your farcical claims.
But you won’t do that either, preferring to hide behind your keyboard on your Fartress Of Solitude, imagining yourself too smart to back up any of the nonsense you type.
And it’s pretty clear which of us fills the bedpans, given your oversupply of nothing else.
Stop being a hater, and content yourself with the anonymity you so richly deserve.
I say we all take some time off from worrying, fretting, and panicking about the Wuhan Flu.
WHY?
I’ll tell ya why- because there’s (GASSSSP!) WAY worse deadly things going around right now that deserve much, much more panic and dread.
Did you know that the Bubonic Plague is alive and well in Commiefornia?
Did you know that it’s been in the state for quite some time- with ZERO news coverage of it?
It’s true- and now squirrels, rats, mice, chipmunks, and fleas will be coming after you to infect and kill you! https://www.thecaliforniasun.com/chipmunks-in-california-test-positive-for-plague-parts-of-lake-tahoe-closed/
Also, INVISIBLE FLESH-EATING MITES are attacking people in DC! AUUUUUGGGGH!
https://www.thewashingtontime.com/invisible-flesh-eating-mites-terrorize-dc-residents/?unapproved=1726&moderation-hash=b687a2d1412cf2f0f4c4d0c0e8b11e7b#comment-1726
(Let’s hope they only attack Libtards.)
Fauci will probably recommend bathing in insecticides, completely covering ourselves with plastic trash bags, and only breathing while hiding in our basements, surrounded by mousetraps and flea powder.
Spread the word! Spread the panic! Spread the fear and terror!
And remember- somehow this is all TRUMP’S fault!
You are correct. They’ve been finding squirrels north of Truckee that have Bubonic Plague for at least 30 or 40 years. Hobart Mills seems to be the hot spot.
I worked two logging seasons near there while living in a travel trailer that was located right at Hobart and lived to tell the tale.
OK, this is coincidental, funny, and ironic- a little while ago I picked up my work boot and noticed what looked like a few small webs in it, so I gave it a shot of DEET and banged it on the kitchen sink. A live spider fell out, and I put it in a jar.
It’s a Brown Recluse, also know here in Ohio as a “Fiddleback.” The 3 sets of 2 eyes and “fiddle” on the thorax confirmed it.
And just 3-4 weeks ago, I had one bite me on my arm when I was cleaning out under my garage workbench. They aren’t near as deadly as some people say, but they sure can turn the ‘bitten part’ into a painful, swollen, multi-colored lump.
Oh, well… still beats living in Commiefornia.