Then: 1950s teenage men:
Now: Adult males on a bus:
Physiognomy collapse.
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
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Lower sperm counts = little squirts.
Nobody grows up any more.
For 40 years kids have been raised by people other than their parents.
Daycare, then preschool, then kindergarten, then 12 years of public schools, then 4 years of college.
All along the way constant coddling.
By the time a person of today is 30 years old they have the mentality of a 15 year old.
And 15 year olds are not responsible for anything.
Children for ever.
I’d say “15-year-old” is a compliment. Look at any photo of 20-30-somethings and notice how many of them are (a) wearing baggy clothing and (b) carrying a backpack. They look like toddlers, holding hands as they cross the street.
I didn’t expect the collapse of western civilization to be this funny.
It’s worse than this. Now, they wear full body fleece animal jammies. To WalMart. The ones with heads.
Now, we have Russian comedians making jokes out of democrat congressmen (an easy target). Soon…war. Foreign enemies see this kind of crap at it’s a license to strike.
The comments under this post on Chateau Hartiste are almost all lacking in any intelligence,critical ability or insight. Silly hateful rubbish! I get the point of the photos but why link to a site that caters to the bottom of the mental gene pool.
I link to items not to sites.
To be fair, that’s not “adult males on a bus going to work.” That’s some kind of funzie tour. Everybody looks stupid when they’re mugging at a camera, and there are plenty of pictures like that from the 1950’s. Similarly, if you had told the guys on the bus to “look cool,” as the biker kids were doing, they would probably look pretty similar. If you were to compare frat boys at the prankier parts of frat conventions to each other, you might have something. The main difference would be the suits and undershirts, though.
The one that cracks me up is when you see comparisons of women, allegedly showing today’s women to be fatter. What they usually show is that today’s women are exactly the same weight as Victorian women of the chubbier-is-better period (when you have comparable height to weight), but that today we usually don’t wear corsets or girdles. If you compare ladies wearing contemporary Spanx to ladies of previous eras wearing foundation garments, there’s not much difference aside from height.
I was watching the launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket yesterday. At one point the feed showed a large atrium full of 20-30 year old men that looked just like the ones on the bus. They may, or may not have been the engineers behind the rocket. Not a suit or tie was in sight. There was also a significant lack of diversity, which is what makes me think they were engineers.
Now that rocket is a pretty big deal. Granted, Elon Musk doesn’t take a piss without a government subsidy. But they strapped 27 rockets together, hit the button and it all worked, including having the boosters fly back and land at the cape (one landed on a drone ship).
But the contrast between these guys and the ones back in NASA’s glory days is startling.
Heavy sigh.
I personally DO perceive a difference in younger “folks”. Collectively shorter, fatter, and more reticent. Slinking around like abused rescue dogs. Avoiding eye contact, shocked when asked something like “how’s it going?”.
And I’ve grown weary of spokes-cucks like the Tru-Car beard and the Can You Hear Me Now clown, portrayed as the status quo. Something has been lost, by design.
I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so.
It interests me how a group of young men can be photographed eating popsicles without looking ridiculous; in fact, looking masculine. And another group of young men photographed riding a bus look squirrelly.
Civilization has enemies, of different kinds. Sometimes it’s alright to hate something. Hate is useful, it is sometimes needed to fuel resolve. Some things ought to be hated, and stamped out if ever they show their head above ground.
The validity of any generalizations made about two generations based on two photographs is nil.
The validity of any generalizations made about two generations based on two photographs is nil.
How old are you?
Yeah, the guys on the bus look like a bunch of boobs.
The comments under that article are made by a bunch of trashy nazis.
That’s right, Redacted. While we are undeniably fatter, trust me, we had our share of homely, lumpy girls and skinny, nerdy boys back in the day. Why, I can even remember some markedly effeminate young men.
What we didn’t have were tats and multiple piercings.
The guys on the bus are on the way to military boot camp; soon they won’t be smiling and goofing.
The 1950’s guys are busy modeling what were called dungarees, now jeans. They don’t look too happy doing so. Why’s that?