Thought you fellas had something to say.
Simmering resentments.
Cultural clashes, commentaries, and breakthroughs.
Nada.
What do we have? Some chatter about comic books at the other site. Here? Nothing.
I promised there would be no intervention from "Over There."
This isn't intervention. It's a bit of wisdom you can accept or reject.
This is your opportunity to be on record. We are living through an incredibly important time. You may think your time is better spent earning a living, cuddling with kids, and riding your family through the recession. Better things to do and all that.
But you're wrong. "The unexamined life is not worth living." We could easily lose this confrontation between the Obamanistas and the Americans. If that happens, all that remains will be the record of those who lived through it, fought their hardest, and went down trying.
Does the "Diary of Anne Frank" ring a bell? A hundred years from now, that may well be all that remains of this resistance against totalitarianism. What we all write down now may be the only record of the fight and the catastrophe of our loss. Your lives, your ideas, your memories, your values, your land and friends and loves... these are worth some time out from the rest of life to set down with some care.
I'm asking you, beseeching you to LIVE here... so that the future will be able to see what living IS, or was... Don't just argue or postulate. Share. Record your lives and dreams and memories and all that makes you YOU. Think of this as a time capsule of the thinking ones who knew what was happening. Put all your beauties into the capsule as well as your angers.
As I said, disappointed. I mean, what do you think "Over There" is about? Showing off? It's always been about documenting a life of mind and heart and land and faith, fighting like hell the whole way against the countervailing tide. The joy of life. The rage against the gathering forces of death. The thrill of understanding how the war is being waged and leaping ferociously in wherever a well placed dagger might help.
This site should give rise to a hundred, a thousand. Instead it wilts in its lonely pot like an unwatered orchid.
Question your own passion, gentlemen. Question it every day. They may be unconscionable assholes "Over There," but when they wake up every day their first move is toward the sword at their side. Can you say that?
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Can't speak for all, but my own near-silence isn't quite voluntary. Just when I had some great articles in mind, and a specific invitation to blog with IP & Co, all hell broke loose in my life. Not to bore with details, but after work and work-after-work, I couldn't bring myself to organize thoughts worthy of screen space. It turns out that putting my hand to the literal instead of the literary is a bit exhausting.
ReplyDeleteThe Theory of Everything, once discovered, will be that the universe runs on irony.
In any case, the aforementioned ideas are still knocking around and won't leave until dealt with; and other things being more or less dealt with means that a return to contemplative pursuits is coming soon. It'll be nice to do more than the occasional comment again, and get some thoughts on record. Once the thoughts stop resembling James Joyce on tequila.
"James Joyce on tequila"
ReplyDeleteThat would be fine. btw, here's a glorious takedown of of post-modernism by Jonah Goldberg:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjhhZGQwODMwMzI4OGE1MzNmNzNkZTYwOGY3ZTYzZWU=
I'll leave you with one quote from it (for obvious reasons):
"The greatest exposé of postmodern asininity appeared, in 1996, in the pages of a respected postmodern magazine called Social Text. The editors of Social Text, as part of their long campaign against facts-without-quotation-marks, dedicated an entire issue to the problem of "science." For obvious reasons, PoMos hate science more than dogs hate vacuum cleaners, and they bark at it about as much. You see, scientists work on precisely the opposite assumptions as PoMos; they actually think that facts exist outside of clever word games. You can say all you like that physics is phallocentric, but it's not going to change the rules of thermodynamics. This really pisses off PoMos, because scientists keep making really cool gadgets that work while, to date, Duke's English department hasn't been able to make an airplane run on metaphors or to illuminate a football stadium with the adverbs from James Joyce's Dubliners."
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ReplyDelete"James Joyce on tequila"
ReplyDeleteThat would be fine.
You say so now, but just wait until you get my first installment of Meandering Dreck. However, I'm returning to usefulness, so with any luck you'll get, instead, Meandering Thoughtfulness.
Stellar article, by the way. Goldberg delivers the sort of wit that I'd not mind generating.