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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.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Have you listened to Scott Adams’ rants over the last few days? You should.
https://www.scottadamssays.com/
I have my coffee with Scott everyday.
Good summary ‘toon.
I fukt up badly today! I commented on a Tweet! The Tweeter was a Seattle cop, who also is an NG brigadier general. He was explaining why he “took a knee.” I commented how that symbolizes an affront to the flag and that his cohort should go back to policing.
You cannot appease these fux. Nike appeased BLM and look who got looted first.
Back in my day, “take a knee” had a riot baton related meaning to it.
Adams supported reparations? He can go horse fuck.
What’s wrong with reparations? Be serious.
[In 1936 Dunne, with agreement of others in the government, proposed that northwest European governments make a proposal to Hitler: Germany would give German Jews a ‘homestead payment’ and expel them to another nation. The other governments would pay Germany’s administrative costs and the emigration fee. The government never approved the idea.]
So back to reparations, a one-time, refundable* payment. Maybe 40 acres and a tractor ($100,000+$50,000), maybe a cash payment, maybe free passage and a homestead in an America-African community. That nobody today is encumbered by past laws, slavery or black-code, is a diversion. The US has a recurrent problem and reparations may be a way out of it. Why not?
*refundable on a naturalization oath of allegiance. Expired time and per year limits apply, etc etc.
I think De Blasio genuinely believes he’s a hero. Like Roy Munson in Kingpin
Chamberlain, er, I mean Hoooda, I’m not in the mood to argue this morning but there is a chasm and deep abyss between what Hitler did to Jews and others during his reign and what occurred with blacks back in the days before the US was even a nation and slavery was legal and used by a VERY SMALL MINORITY of planters or farmers, in states that did not even exist as part of any confederation of states during that era.
Reparations…..? BS, over 760,000 Americans died during the civil war and the South was practically destroyed by MFers like W.T. Sherman, and well after the slaves were technically freed (1861) by Lincoln. And keep in mind that emancipation was not granted by Lincoln out of a love or concern for blacks but by pressure from abolitionists and ostensibly, by his good sense to do the right thing.
The recurrent problem with blacks in America has a foundation of pure hatred of white people. These GGGGGgrandchildren of slaves are given everything from free food the moment they’re born to free college educations or no interest loans that they typically do not repay and tossing more money at them, or giving them this or that of whatever value will not change anything about them and most of them, when they’ve pissed away their sacred reparations, “the money” that you propose to give them…not from your pocket but from the already horribly burdened tax payor who has no skin whatsoever in their game….they are going to tell you that your are just trying to buy them off, that your piss poor little payoff wasn’t enough and that you’re a racist and bigot for not giving them more and then, if you refuse or try to reason with them, all hell will break loose and you’ll be sitting there with a “WTF Happened?” look on your face, probably trying to come up with another way to make an incurably toxic culture, a so-called “proud people” come to terms with being a gd human being and wondering “why don’t he learn sump’ins”.
What you might consider is that black and white cultures are diametrically opposite and that our federal government, in an effort to drag these people, screaming and yelling into a better life that would include prosperity, education and social skills among other things, FORCED….with Federal troops, the rest of the nation to embrace them as all manner of special privilege was granted. Some have taken advantage of those things but the majority prefers to sit back on the well fed and coddled behinds and scream “racism” and “black lives matter” any time one of their color gets hurt or killed by a white cop or whenever any of them are bested by a white. Except maybe in basketball. Simply put, they admit they cannot do anything wrong….they’re perfect….and the rest of the world should just accept it and pay homage or else there is hell to pay.
I think you should consider reconsidering reparations. Why over pay for the hatred you’re going to receive for free anyway?
Reparations for the families Union dead of the Civil War. Then, we can begin talking about other reparations.
Scott Adams takes up a lot of odd ideas as fodder for possible solutions. In the case of reparations, he thought perhaps some sort of college scholarship program would be appropriate. What he doesn’t know is that any talented black student can get pretty much a free ride at many schools. The really talented can watch top schools fight over them.
He’s also got some touchpoints: fentanyl from China, which killed his stepson, 4th generation nuclear power, and what seems to be a persistent belief in the basic good intentions of people.
Jack and Casey, I hear you. But I don’t hear a resolution, you make a good case for ‘h*ll no!’. But that doesn’t solve or even mollify what you know is a very old and longstanding problem. Detroit was a great vibrant industrial city in, was destroyed by rioting, and has never recovered. It’s population today is half what it was in 67.
Adams says to think in terms of systems, not goals. In this case what would be a realistic and permanent fix? What I proposed would be about as permanent as permanence is. Maybe expensive, but compared to what the nation pays now and how much damage is presently happening, maybe a great deal to make.
But what I’m not hearing is realistic ideas to solve a realistic problem.