Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

    The passage of years has made of a man on the make a man of wisdom. He stands on a street corner, a spectator of the passing scene. An old flame from his cocky youth passes by.  Gloria Mundi sees him but without acknowledgement. The old man thinks to himself, "What did I ever see in her?"


  • Can it Happen Here?

    It is happening here. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave, and we haven't been for a long time. Most Americans are now willing to give up their birthright, liberty, for a mess of pottage. Safety and security are their main concerns. The orchestration of fear by the powers that be is a primary tool for forcing us into political dhimmitude. The masked masses, complicit in their own cancellation, are proving easy to control.

    Dreher explains in under six minutes.

    While Dreher is an eminently decent man, he is pre-eminently stupid in his opposition to Trump. He doesn't understand that we are involved in a war and that in a war you have to take sides, and that attempting to float above the fray and be 'objective' — while appropriate for a political philosopher as opposed to a political activist — plays right into the hands of the enemy.

     

    Totalitarianism: Can It Happen in America? | PragerU

    Vito Caiati responds with a little help from Winston Churchill:

    Your comment on Rod Dreher in this morning’s post (“While Dreher is an eminently decent man, he is pre-eminently stupid in his opposition to Trump. He doesn't understand that we are involved in a war and that in a war you have to take sides, and that attempting to float above the fray and be 'objective' — while appropriate for a political philosopher as opposed to a political activist — plays right into the hands of the enemy”) brought to mind Winston Churchill’s broadcast of June 22, 1941, following the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia. His words, those of one of the most stalwart opponents of communion of the inter-war years, are worth remembering when dealing with “conservatives” such as Dreher and his kind, who confront nothing comparable to the hard and unpleasant political choice of the British Prime Minister:

    No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no words that I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. . . .

    We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us. Nothing. We will never parley; we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land; we shall fight him by sea; we shall fight him in the air, until, with God's help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its people from his yoke.

    Any man or State who fights against Nazism will have our aid. Any man or State who marches with Hitler is our foe. . . .

    It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and to the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and Allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end.

    We have offered to the Government of Soviet Russia any technical or economic assistance which is in our power and which is likely to be of service to them.

    We are indeed in a “war” with an implacable domestic enemy in which the tide of battle has dramatically and rapidly turned against us. What is most frustrating about Dreher is that he spends every day reporting on the assault by the Left on our culture, traditions, institutions, and freedoms, and yet he believes that we have the luxury of waiting for the coming of some pristine conservative leader, someone  più raffinato e puro than Trump. While he waits, the Republic is further undone by its enemies.

    Exactly right, Vito. Dreher shares the characteristic referred to in your penultimate sentence with many so-called conservatives. They are waiting for someone "more refined and pure" to come along, a 'true conservative,' in a bow tie perhaps, who speaks and writes elegant English and displays all of the social graces, a clubbable man, a man cut from the same cloth as a George F. Will, or a Bill Kristol, not a boorish, mean-tweeting alpha male from the mean streets of NYC willing and able to slice into such effete  opponents as Jeb! Bush with mockery and derision.  These pseudo-cons are flummoxed and distracted by Trump's style so much so that they cannot pay attention to the deeply American substance of his words and his (not merely promised, but implemented) policies, policies they themselves pay lip service to but lack the cojones to implement. 

    What are we to make of people like David Brooks and David French? Human behavior is multi-motivated and these two are undoubtedly complex and many-sided men with much good in them; I can't shake the idea, however, that a not inconsiderable driver of their behavior  is a desire for social acceptance by the elites and invitations to the most exclusive of Beltway soirees.  

    French, for example, opposes abortion. A man comes along, a man much lied about and maligned, a patriotic American, who, though something of a sybarite in his personal behavior, yet accomplished much to stop the slaughter.  So what does French do? He throws in with Biden and the pro-abortion gang.  

    If the distinction between style and substance were a stick, I would hit these pussy-cons over the head with it in a vain attempt at knocking some sense into them. 


    5 responses to “Can it Happen Here?”

  • Life’s Fugacity

    Substack latest.


  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Out with the Old, In with the New

    Happy New Year, dear readers. I wish you all the best for the coming year. 

    Neil Young, Old Man 

    Bob Seger, Old Time Rock and Roll. Does it really soothe the soul? Or does it stimulate something 'south' of the soul? If the soul has a bodily locus or point of attachment, where would it be? But I am done thinking for the day. Time to feel. Balance in all things, including balance.

    The Band, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

    Tom T. Hall, Old Five and Dimers Like Me

    John Fogerty, The Old Man Down the Road

    Ray Charles, Ol' Man River

    Bob Dylan, New Morning

    Eagles, New Kid in Town

    And many more . . . .


  • Victor Davis Hanson on Tribalism

    I was planning to upload a  batch of quotations from Chapter Three, Tribes, in Victor Davis Hanson's latest, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America, Basic Books, 2021.  But my effort was stymied when the book was recalled. For now, there is this:

    The reversion to tribalism that we are now seeing all around us may be inevitable. Collectively, we appear to be 'defaulting' to tribalism. Hanson:

    Tribalism is by far the most ancient, natural, insidious, and stronger idea than nonracial citizenship. It is the default state of mankind. Its pedigree dates back to prehistory, and its vestiges were worrisome to later civilized states. (100)

    [. . .]

    Tribalism is now swiftly becoming a synonym for multiculturalism. It accepts that the strongest human affinities in a society, past and future, must arise from similar and natural racial, ethnic, religious, or clannish ties of blood among like groups. These pre-state bonds properly should supersede the citizen's collective and constructed political and social allegiance  to the nation-state. (100-101)

    Hanson rightly distinguishes American multi-racialism with its commitment to a common culture from multi-culturalism and notes their opposition to each other.  A multi-racial society could work but only with a shared culture.  Without the latter, the nation will "unwind" and "revert to pre-state status," issuing in a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes.

    That is what we are in for, I fear.

    Not long ago, tribalism was seen to be backward, reactionary and pre-civilizational, as "innately toxic" and "anathema to any pluralistic democratic society." (101) But no longer.


  • The Left’s Ingratitude

    How ungrateful, and how wrong, to sneer at the very conditions of one's own existence, activity, and well-being! Nature and society, church and state, language and institutions, culture and mores, everything that one finds and was given, that one did not make, cannot make, and can improve only to a limited extent, and only with difficulty, and only with the tools that were handed down, but can easily destroy out of thoughtlessness, ingratitude, and perversity of will.


  • Such Sweet Sorrow

    Part of what makes "parting such sweet sorrow" (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) is the realization that one may never see the beloved again alive. Death presides over all of life; in leave-taking he steps out of the shadows. You see the glint of his scythe from the corner of the eye.

    In the twilight glow, I see her
    Blue eyes crying in the rain;
    As we kissed goodbye and parted,
    I knew we'd never meet again.

    Love is like a dying ember,
    Only memories remain;
    Through the ages I'll remember,
    Blue eyes crying in the rain.

    Now my hair has turned to silver,
    All my life I've loved in vain;
    I can see her star in heaven,
    Blue eyes crying in the rain.

    Someday when we meet up yonder,
    We'll stroll hand in hand again;
    And in a land that knows no parting,
    Blue eyes crying in the rain.

    Blue eyes crying in the rain.

    Written by Fred Rose and first recorded by Roy Acuff in 1947. Numerous covers.

    A little known version by Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

  • Why We Get Along

    I'm reasonable; she's sweet and agreeable.


  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tunes of the Season

    BoulevardierMerry Christmas everybody.  Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.  Me, I'm nursing a Boulevardier.  It's a Negroni with cojones: swap out the gin for bourbon.  One ounce bourbon, one ounce sweet vermouth, one ounce Campari, straight up or on the rocks, with a twist of orange.  A serious libation.  It'll melt a snowflake for sure. The vermouth rosso contests the harshness of the bourbon, but then the Campari joins the fight on the side of the bourbon. 

    Or you  can think of it as a Manhattan wherein the Campari substitutes for the angostura bitters.  That there are people who don't like Campari shows that there is no hope for humanity.

     

    Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
    Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie

    Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
    Beach Boys, Little St. Nick.  A rarely heard alternate version.

    Ronettes, Sleigh Ride
    Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas.  

    Jeff Dunham,  Jingle Bombs by Achmed the Terrorist.  TRIGGER WARNING! Not for the p.c.-whipped. No day without political incorrectness!

    Porky Pig, Blue Christmas

    Captain Beefheart, There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage

    Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas

    Wanda Jackson and the Continentals, Merry Christmas Baby
    Chuck Berry, Run Rudolph Run

    Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
    Judy Collins, Silver Bells

    Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate
    Bob Dylan, Must Be Santa

    Is this the same guy who sang Desolation Row back in '65? 

    Bob Dylan, Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache. Not Christmasy, but a good tune.  Remember Bob Luman? His version. Luman's signature number.

    Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except

    Tom Waits, Silent Night.  Give it a chance. 

    A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.  


  • Use it or Lose it?

    Substack latest.

    If you want to maintain your physical fitness, you must exercise regularly. Use it or lose it!  Not so long ago  I thought that the same principle had a political application: if you want to maintain your freedoms, you must exercise them.  Use 'em or lose 'em! But times have changed.  And when times change, the wise re-evaluate. I'll give two examples.


  • A Christian Koan for Christmas Eve

    From my Facebook page, three years ago, today. My writing is uneven in quality. But the Muse was with me below.
    …………………………..
     
    Man is godlike and therefore proud. He becomes even more godlike when he humbles himself. The central thought of Christianity, true or not, is one so repellent to the natural human pride of life that one ought at least to entertain the unlikelihood of its having a merely human origin. The thought is that God humbled himself to the point of entering the world in the miserably helpless and indigent way we in fact do, inter faeces et urinam, and to the point of leaving it in the most horrendous, shameful, and excruciating way the brutal Romans could devise, and from a most undistinguished spot, a hill in an obscure desert outpost of their empire.
     
    Addenda (24 December 2021)
     
    1) "Pride of life" above alludes to 1 John 2:16:
    For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. (KJV)
    2) Goethe considered the cross "the most disgusting thing under the sun." See Walter Kaufmann's  essay, Goethe's Faith and Faust's Redemption. A similar attitude in Nietzsche. That the central Christian symbol is a Roman torture device shows that Christianity is a slander upon life, the only life there is.  That, in a sentence, is what I take to be Nietzsche's attitude toward the Christian cross.

    3) How did we get to be so proud? Recalling our miserably indigent origin in the wombs of our mothers and the subsequent helplessness of infancy, how did we get to be so arrogant and self-important?

    In a line often (mis)attributed to St. Augustine, but apparently from Bernard of Clairvaux, Inter faeces et urinam nascimur: "We are born between feces and urine." 

    So inauspicious a beginning for so proud a strut upon life's stage.

    4) The Islamic hate for the Christian cross.  Raymond Ibrahim details the ongoing murder of Christians by Muslims.  But didn't George W. Bush tells us that Islam is the religion of peace?  What a know-nothing that pseudo-con Dubwa was and is. Living proof that being a nice, regular guy is not enough. Patriots owe a lot to Donald Trump for having put paid to both the Clinton and Bush dynasties.

    5) On the other hand, Daniel Pipes reports that Muslims are converting to Christianity like never before. But a word of caution. Some of the converters are pious frauds:

    Some Muslims convert tactically for practical reasons, especially to facilitate emigration to the West. A Church of God pastor, Said Deeb, quotes desperate Muslims telling him, “Just baptize me, I will believe in whoever just to leave here.” National Public Radio paraphrases Şebnem Köşer Akçapar of Koç University in Istanbul to the effect that “only some of the refugees are genuine converts. Others are using religious persecution as a way to get to the West.” Aiman Mazyek, head of the Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, reacts with acute skepticism about growing numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity.

    6) Vito Caiati sends this excerpt from W. H. Auden's For the Time Being:

    Once again
    As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
    To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
    Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
    Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
    The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
    The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
    And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
    Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
    Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
    Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
    Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
    Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
    And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
    And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
    It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
    Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
    The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
    The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
    The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
    For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
    Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
    Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
    We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
    Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
    Everything became a You and nothing was an It.


  • Wittgenstein’s Tractatus at 100

    Here


  • A Superspreader Testing Center

    Some of us have been through many a flu season. Did we ever have ourselves tested? Why get tested for a disease for which you have no symptoms? Fear, and the ever increasing 'wussification' of the populace, drive the excess of pre-emptive assessment. "But if it saves just one life, then all the fear, all the expense, all the masks and lockdowns and hardships for children and their parents, all the limitations of our liberty, all the expansion of centralized control, and all the destruction of small businesses  — all of this will have been worth it."  That was in effect the 'reasoning' of Andrew Cuomo. Remember him?

    Irony. Apparently, social distancing is not required for lemmings who agglomerate to be the first kids on their blocks to get a test they don't need.

    Superspreader


  • Abiding in Adobe

    Would that I could abide in adobe
    In the ghost town, Bodie
    With the shades in the shadow
    Of Boot Hill.

    (I do not say that this is a good poem. But it amuses me. If it doesn't amuse you, double your money back!)


  • Die Verkehrte Welt

    The world of the leftist is an inverted world in which making things worse is called 'reform.' 



Latest Comments


  1. Bill and Steven, I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think…

  2. Hi Bill Addis’ Nietzsche’s Ontology is readily available on Amazon, Ebay and Abebooks for about US$50-60 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=addis&ch_sort=t&cm_sp=sort-_-SRP-_-Results&ds=30&dym=on&rollup=on&sortby=17&tn=Nietzsche%27s%20Ontology

  3. It’s unbelievable that people who work with the law are among the ranks of the most sophists, demagogues, and irrational…

  4. https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  5. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

  6. Vini, Good comments. Your command of the English language is impressive. In my penultimate paragraph I wrote, “Hence their hatred…

  7. Just a little correction, since I wrote somewhat hastily. I meant to say enemies of the truth (not from the…

  8. You touched on very, very important points, Bill. First, I agree that people nowadays simply want to believe whatever the…



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